#but... it's not you. it's the structures we grew up in. even moreso if you are marginalized in (an)other way(s)

[blueskittlesart]

okay so i’ve never done an ask before but what’s your opinion on link (botw) and religion? i think he is religious because he does pray to hylia but that could just be like because he’s her hero or something. we also don’t really know about religion in botw except that there are temple ruins, statues, and hylia so it’s kinda hard to say for me. you are such an analytical person when it comes to zelda so i wanted to ask you about your thoughts!

yes i can talk about this but this turned into kind of a deep dive into the concept of religion in botw so sorry lol. i promise the stuff about link is in there

religion in loz is very interesting because like. in pretty much every game except botw i hesitate to even call it religion because the goddesses are like, tangibly, provably real entities. people have seen them. there is no believing vs not believing because the goddesses are so obviously real.

botw, however, is an interesting deviation from this because it takes place over ten thousand years since the last calamity and, by extension, the last appearance of a goddess/godly power in hyrule. this seems to have allowed for several different denominations of hylia-worship to spring up around hyrule. there's the standard worship of the goddess herself, which seems to be the most common in hylian cities and structures and is seen through the goddess statues and the temple of time/similar structures. then there are the ancient shiekah priests and temples, which could be considered a more pious sect of that same hylia-worshipping denomination, but they could also be a different denomination entirely considering how much their architecture and technology seems to vary from the modern hylian stuff we see. (i consider it to be a near-dead religion personally, and i think the modern hylia-worshipping denomination was once a less-pious version that got extra watered-down over the years.) then of course there's the dragon-worshipping denomination in the jungle, which we know very little about but their architecture and proximity to one of the 3 dragons makes it pretty obvious that they worshipped the lesser goddesses/their dragons moreso than hylia. the final denomination that i think needs to be considered is the yiga. because we know that they existed long before ganon's return was even prophesized, meaning they are a denomination that worships the spirit of DEMISE, in whatever form it may take. Their architecture's similarity to shiekah structures suggests to me that they were a breakaway or perhaps open rebellion against the ancient shiekah religion seen in the shrines, and the existence of the "evil god" statue in hateno village suggests to me that there may be a watered-down version of the demise-worshipping religion as well. important to note, though, is that with the exception of the dragon-worshippers, in modern hyrule pre-calamity almost NO ONE would have thought of these dieties as real, tangible beings. there would have been exceptionally pious worshippers, obviously, but your average hylian would probably pray to a goddess statue for good health because it was a tradition, not out of a ton of deeply-held belief in hylia. it would have been decades since any normal person had received a response from the goddess herself. there were probably some people who didn't really believe in hylia at all.

onto the actual question of link. Assuming he grew up in a regular hylian village, it's likely there was a communal goddess statue that people prayed or left offerings to out of tradition or obligation, but it's unlikely he believed very strongly in the goddess or even knew any of the myth of creation as it exists in hyrule. when he lived at home, the goddess hylia was probably not much more than a statue to him, something that he could leave an offering to or ask for help or guidance, but not a real, tangible entity that had any control over his life. basically, i think pre-sword he would have been a part of that sort of casual denomination of hylia-worshippers who honored her with statues but didn't think of her as much more than a symbol.

after the sword link obviously has to reevaluate his worldview a little bit. it's unclear how much of the myth of creation or really any of hylia's actions have survived the test of time in botw, but i think it's safe to say that the triforce has been lost beyond the symbol itself, since it's never mentioned by name and is only referred to vaguely as a "sacred power" in regards to zelda. they know the power has some connection to the goddess, but the triforce seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. So i think after link pulls this sword and everyone starts telling him that he's been chosen by the goddess, he would probably do a little more research into what the hell that actually means. And we don't have any real way of knowing what he might have found, since so much of the myths of hyrule seem to be lost knowledge by the time botw takes place. but it's safe to say that he now understands as much of the myth surrounding hylia as a pious believer in her might.

whether or not he believes that she's REAL, though, is a different story. There's no real way to know if he ever heard her voice pre-calamity. it's entirely possible that her closest contact to him before ganon's return was when he claimed that sword, and he never heard from her again until he woke up post-hundred-year-gap. (i think this is fairly likely, actually, because the goddess statues only speak to link post-calamity when offering him power-ups, which he ALREADY HAD pre-calamity. if you interact with the goddess statue on the plateau before completing the first 4 shrines, all you get is "the goddess statue smiles upon you." which is probably what link felt pre-calamity when interacting with symbols of hylia, since he was doing well for himself and wasn't necessarily in need of her help or guidance at the time.) What this means is that the only evidence he had as to her existence was the split-second moment when he pulled sword from stone. with that in mind, I think he probably believed in her passively, as a diety watching over hyrule, but not necessarily as a tangible power over his life. as far as he was concerned, his destiny was set in place by the circumstances he was born into and the actions he took, not some higher power pulling the strings. and that's kind of why he had an easier time reconciling with the goddess than zelda might have, because he never really resented HER for forcing him into a hero's destiny, he belived that ganon and the people around him placed that weight on his shoulders.

post-calamity is, again, another story entirely, since he literally hears her voice when interacting with her statues. I don't think there's any way he doesn't understand the influence she has over his life post-calamity. He definitely believes in her, he's not really given a choice. she is real. he knows this for a fact. which actually kind of puts him at odds with the majority of hyrule who see her only as a myth to be passively worshipped or respected. like. can you imagine if you knew for a fact that god was real and was forcing you to fight monsters but everyone around you was like "we use that statue during weddings and literally never touch it otherwise." like. its almost a percy jackson situation. The Gods Are Real And No One Knows But Me. which is a REALLY interesting departure from earlier games where EVERYONE knew for a fact that hylia was real and religion and worship of her was totally integral to society. most people can't even see KOROKS in botw, which are essentially lesser mythical creatures of hyrule--forest spirits. it's never really explained why link can see them when most people can't but i think it would be really cool if it was because he is one of the few people left in hyrule who knows the hylia myth as absolute fact. like. seeing them requires absolute belief in the myths u know? anyways WOW this was long sorry religion in botw is such an interesting topic lmao

#this one is 6 paragraphs. good luck lol\ #zelda analysis #asks

[ell-vellan]

I like how you portray Bull in your fic, especially his POV sections. Do you find Bull to be a difficult character to write? He definitely is for me -_- he’s just too complicated. How do you do it?

Oh wow thanks so much! He is so complicated and I love delving into that, but he is absolutely a tricky character to understand - and on purpose, too, just like he is for the companions in the game. I think I lean more heavily into his disillusionment with war, his PTSD, and his spy training because it's the part I understand and relate to better (moreso than his wilder mercenary life), having known and worked with a lot of old retired soldiers and hearing them talk for years and years.

I definitely have to sit on his chapters for a while and go back and forth wondering what he would think about this or that. He does not like revealing his secrets 😅 

This got long so more under the cut!

His sense of himself as a mindless tool for violence, his identity as Hissrad and as a liar, wars with what I think is an innate desire to help people and a deep love for his friends. It fascinates me. I obsessively read all his banters, watched YouTube playthroughs (the way he responds with bitterness when Gatt calls him Hissrad informed how I think he feels about that identity), and his history from the Wiki and just go from there. I’ve also read fanfics and fan meta about him that make me go “oh wow” and shed light on an aspect of his character I wouldn’t have come to on my own. 

But a lot of his mindset, in the fresh after becoming Tal Vashoth time period like he is in the fic, is figuring out who he is now that he gets to choose, which is also something a lot of young soldiers deal with when they leave the military. A lot of them join up young, either fresh after high school or even in high school with JROTC, before they've really developed a solid, independent sense of self. And then they have this culture of violence and strict obedience molding their minds for a few years, they're dependent on the military for housing and feeding them, can really only rely on each other, and are sent off to kill people - or at least train and mentally prepare to kill people.

But unless they're lifers, they'll leave eventually. Sometimes they're kind of lost and bitter and disillusioned with how they feel they were betrayed by the system. Sometimes they have lifelong injuries. And they might have trouble adjusting - like what do I do now with all this violence in my head, all these horrible memories? What do I do without the rigid structure and hierarchy telling me how to live?

I grew up in that culture and as a teen read a lot of war biographies like Band of Brothers, so that's the lens I see Bull through, and probably informs my take on him the most. I really love writing him and especially the transformation in his head we didn't get in the games, where he has to deal with that loss of structure, struggle mentally with it, and then slowly gets to develop a personal sense of self-determination for the first time.

It definitely depends on the “type” of Bull you want to portray - he has so many layers and I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong to write him in any one of those faces he shows to the world. I write him like this because it’s the aspect of him I best understand. You may notice how I don’t really write the “flirty mercenary chief with the vulgar jokes” version of him in very much detail because for some reason that just is way harder for me to do, lol.

I’m also consciously trying to show the Venn diagram of what he and a mage Lavellan might have in common. They’re SO different, so I like kind of teasing apart their religions and cultures and figure out how these two people might relate to each other. I spend probably too much time thinking about it tbh.

#thank you so much for asking i was genuinely thrilled to type this out #sorry it got long #totally just my personal take on him and the military in general #i hope this helped some anon! #i love this question #i just hope it makes sense because i'm currently sick and sleep deprived lol #asks

[sendmyresignation]

In Defense of Teenagers:

Ok so. There seems to be a general consensus that Teenagers doesn’t fit on the black parade or that it ruins the trajectory of the album or that the song order of bp needs to be changed to fit the b-sides and drop Teenagers, or it should have just been a single- basically any option other than its inclusion between Sleep and Disenchanted would have been better. now, i’m not here to tell anyone that they’re wrong- i just want to offer an alternative perspective because i truly believe Teenagers is right where it belongs and that its inclusion on that album is, in my opinion, completely necessary to the album’s narrative arc. I want to focus on the way Teenagers builds into the foundation of the Concept Record, the way it bridges the gap between Sleep and Disenchanted so as not to delegitimize Disenchanted’s impact, and the fact that no other available material fits into the struggle the Patient endures at the end of the narrative (sorry this got LONG here’s a read more)

So, before we get into the meat of Teenager’s narrative significance, i wanted to briefly mention the way it makes Black Parade a more cohesive whole in relation to the material it is mimicking. Like Black Parade as an album is structured very differently from Pink Floyd’s The Wall- but it takes a lot of the same beats and recontextualizes them for a new purpose. Both records use war and relationship troubles and school and drugs to create an atmosphere that leads to disillusionment. In The Wall, this is quite literally the protagonist, Pink, building up “bricks in the wall” that isolates him from the rest of society and lead to a downward spiral into cynicism and hate. But Black Parade uses the same tools that The Wall does to say something different- things, specifically the actions you've made or the trauma you've endured, haunts you and makes your life seem insignificant in the face of what happens to you and those regrets are what causes the Patient to fall into a cycle of damnation and cynicism. This is representative of the Patient's descent through the afterlife- each new "layer" of the Patient's exploration is equivalent to a brick in The Wall's metaphor. Additionally, in this new context, this song in particular takes The Wall’s discussions of adolescence and the vice-grip control older generations attempt to force on teens and the disillusionment with the future and retells it from a new perspective- both literally in the fact the song is now more reflective of the 2000s post-9/11 and post-columbine culture, but its also literally from the perspective of the Patient as an adult. Teenagers, as a result, becomes a necessary piece of that puzzle- it is the refraction of Another Brick in the Wall repurposed to mean something new entirely- it’s no longer about kids being forced into complacency by a cruel education system from their own perspective (the children’s choir allows them to speak for themselves) but about the ways in which adults see those kids and why they decide to enact actions similar to those within The Wall. I mean even the imagery used in the song’s music video is purposely almost plagiarizing The Wall- it feeds into a separate analysis of the video and song outside the narrative as well- which i don’t have time right now to get into, its just very interesting that the band is bodily removed from their instruments at the end of the video and the teenagers in the audience have rendered them incapacitated (“they’re looking for a rockstar to kill” anyone?) it's the metaphorical tearing down of the wall from a completely different perspective. Anyway, the work Teenagers does for the narrative is it fits the album into the Concept Record Cinematic Universe- it is a piece that evokes the material it is influenced by to build off of the old to create the new- without it, the connections to The Wall would still be there, sure, but it wouldn’t be as complete- you cannot recontextualize the album without the foundation of Teenagers.

Teenagers is also, at its core, a subtle subversion of genre- using the blueprint of a specific kind of song to center the song within the timeline/narrative. In this case, the same way I Don’t Love You mimics and exaggerates the emotive and plaintive 80s rock ballad, Teenagers twists the classic rock of a bygone era to specifically call back on the stadium rock anthem.  Black Parade, on the whole, does this quite frequently- most of its songs take pre-existing genre cues and subverts them in ways that play off of the expected tapestry of a concept record to create individual sounding songs that seamlessly transition into one another yet remain entirely separate. It maintains their presence as scenes in a larger tapestry- specifically the fabric of the Black Parade being a morality play. This serves two purposes, it allows for this exaggeration of genre to become a motif within the work (see mama, cancer, house of wolves, i don’t love you, wttbp -> they all play with a different, varied song type/structure that is distinct from each other) and it plays off of existing genre-stereotypes in ways that contribute to the songs overall function. I Don’t Love You, for example, undermines the fundamental purposes of sappy power ballads- to express one of the two dualities of love songs: the cheesy unconditional “i will love you forever” types or the plaintive, melancholic end-of-relationship song by instead focusing on the complexity of a not-quite-finished relationship. The ballad then shifts from an expression of love to one of human loss- and the loss is less about the individual speaking, but moreso about what the other character has become - it’s a mourning not for the relationship, but for the person themselves, who they used to be in a way. It shifts from the one-dimensional view of what a ballad can achieve and instead infuses the anger, the resignation, the drama, the transformation- it humanizes a very stock genre full of platitudes and uses our expectations to create something more interesting. Similarly, Teenagers takes a tired genre and utilizes the working mechanisms of its typical song structure to subvert and repurpose those into commentary- its literally a stadium rock song that devolves into a chant. Looking at the loud drumbeat that resonates in your chest, the all together now as a command that lures the listener into singing along, the addition of more chorus vocals at the end like a crowd is shouting along, the screaming and the solo on after another like the song is falling apart a little bit, all of these elements build into a song literally meant to be infectious and replicated by the audience. Herein lies one of the songs many interpretations- humans can be easily influenced by the media they consume, the perspectives they are fed. What happens when the view that we have of adolescence is cloaked in mistrust and violence? This aspect of the song is less about the band reconciling teenagers being moved to committing acts of violence and more in analyzing how an audience can be persuaded into believing the erroneous view of teens as fundamentally destructive- are you not repeating the chorus? do teenagers not “scare the shit out of you”? Obviously the band doesn’t want you to believe this but it does what you to think about why this perspective is so common. It's a cultural subliminal message that is present in songs and tv and books that we simply do not question- it is a chant we cannot help but join in on. Teenagers is a replication of that process, but is clearly just subversive enough (both as a piece of genre and just as a song in general terms) that the listener knows its commentary and not itself propagating that viewpoint. Every song on Black Parade does this kind of “genre-bending” to make a point in some way or another, so it's a significant reason Teenagers fits into the albums cohesion.

But,Teenagers isn’t just important to the album in its sound- it lyrically parallels Disenchanted in a way that effectively moves on from Sleep without losing the album’s emotional momentum. Sleep, conceptually and lyrically, is a very heavy track- its influence from the Dune soundtrack’s Final Dream turn a cinematic, swelling piece of instrumentation into an oppressive blanket of noise that bears down on the listener and the lyrics are referential to the patient believing themselves to be irredeemable and monstrous. It's also inspired directly from Gerard’s vivid and violent night terrors during his stay at the paramour- including a recording of Gerard’s recollection of those dreams, that mentions being choked, seeing loved ones die, burning alive, etc. To transition directly from such a dark, personal subject into a reflective acoustic number about the narrator’s adolescence would be tonally inappropriate and almost laughable- it would stop the progression in its tracks, while also doing a disservice to Disenchanted. Having a break is necessary! And it's even more appropriate for that break to be a song about teenagers considering Disenchanted is so nostalgic. Additionally, Teenagers brings up a really interesting narrative thread about the Patient becoming disenchanted with the youth that then directly transitions into a song about him losing faith in his values and sense of self- they are directly correlated conceptually. Looking deeper, Disenchanted is a punk song. sort of. more specifically, it is the foundation of a punk song that becomes a ballad through narrative framing- it takes punk cliches (running from the cops, the crowds, the imagery of guillotining traitorous rich celebrities) and turns them wistful and sad because the Patient is looking back at something they no longer understand or identify with, it allows the narrative to illustrate how the Patient feels like their life was worthless and didn’t amount to much and they’re just another stupid punk kid who grew up and didn’t achieve anything. and you can’t get to this point from Sleep because it would weaken Disenchanted’s impact, make it seem insignificant and petulant in the face of Sleep’s heavy and grand sorrow. Lyrically, you need Teenagers to bridge the gap between the war metaphors and the visualizations of hell and the all-encompassing nature of cancer in order to redirect the focus to the Patient and limit the scope of the narrative at the end of the album. Teenagers, within the story, then functions as the Patient reflecting on the nature of youth and, in the wake of Mama’s “we all go to hell” rhetoric, comes to the conclusion that teenagers are wholly violent, easily manipulated, and unsympathetic. It's another step in the Patient removing his own agency and viewing his life as predestined at the same time it allows the “plot” to focus back on the more nostalgic and mundane aspects of the patient’s life. Doing so makes Famous Last Words so much more significant because it forces the Patient to reconcile with his past before he can move forward (whether that's living or dying its still applicable). so, Teenagers is very important to the overall “plot” of Black Parade- it is fundamentally necessary for the pieces to fit together.

Another larger aspect of Teenagers' importance is that it introduces the fate versus free will internal debate central to the ending fourth of the record. The song lays the foundation for this thematic idea by being about the fated violence of the youth and how they cannot help but to respond to their world with anger and cruelty. This realization about adolescence by the Patient leads to him perceiving his own youth as destructive and worthless and in following the themes of guilt/regret and damnation it's this violence that began his path to hell or his current state of suffering.  In that vein, Teenagers leads into the idea that your life is predetermined or that there is a destiny that we all have (in the Patient’s case its the absence of a future, or “a lifelong wait for a hospital stay”) and no matter what, you cannot fight that. While Mama gives a blanket statement about how "we all go to hell", Disenchanted centers the Patient's specific destiny by saying his whole life has led up to his illness and, looking further, there is the implication that life before that was retrospectively pointless. So, as previously mentioned, Disenchanted begins, structurally and lyrically, as a punk song- this sort of expression of youthful existence that, in any other song or under another faster instrumentation, would fit on some basement demo from 1986. But it doesn't stay that way, instead it actively subverts the genre it's cliches are lifted from- thinking specifically about “we ran from the cops” and the “roar of the crowd” that is juxtaposed with the change in structure  or theme. Namely, punk songs (speaking generally here) aren’t wistful because there isn't really a sense of legacy in punk music. There's history yes, but most songs are about the immediacy of emotion, not existential questioning. The retrospective nature and the shift into a ballad structure are elements reflective of a change in the main character brought on by the disillusionment present in teenagers from a punk kid to a dying young man looking back on the banality of youth and the hypocrisy, the trauma and the lack of agency. It's so much easier to think that nothing matters and the perspective makes it so much easier to give up.

This build from Teenagers into Disenchanted regarding the Patient's fate allows Famous Last Words to become an even stronger end because it's in direct opposition to that perspective. Famous Last Words is a song that screams fuck fate and fuck the past- the only thing that matters is moving forward. The image of the Patient keeping on whether he’s walking into the afterlife or continuing to stay alive as long as possible becomes something difficult, something he had to fight to achieve - he had to struggle to find a new understanding. That he can't be "afraid to keep living" or "going home" and that these are concrete actions, a use of free will. And that free will is very specifically defiant. Regardless of how you view the Patient's end, he makes the conscious decision to accept the present and move forward. We are not fated to die alone, nor is life worthless. Black Parade proves that the opposite is true, that we must grow to accept the value of life, and it's so much stronger having the Patient actively reject nihilism and apathy. Ultimately, Teenagers introduces the main thread of the final songs and without it, those songs would be narrative incomplete.

So, Teenagers has a valued place on the album sonically and within the narrative whole, that much is clear. But another reason that the album order of Sleep, Teenagers and Disenchanted is important is that none of the other material written for the album comes close to filling its place. In this case, I am going to be specifically talking about the b-sides since the demos are incomplete and we have no idea what the final version would have sounded like (but I would contend they don’t fit either). Beginning with the easiest song to discard from the narrative- My Way Home Is Through You has its moments in the lyrics but it's completely out of place musically- plus the tone is a little too hopeful for this point in the album which does not gel with Disenchanted’s hopelessness. It's also incongruent with the album since Disenchanted is effective as the only “punk” song on a record that plays with and explores genre and having this come before it would ruin the previously mentioned motif of each of the songs being individual and unique in form. Also, it really adds nothing to the fate vs free will theme- meaning its placement would weaken the disenchanted/flw combo ending. Moving forward, Kill All Your Friends seems to fit, considering its cynicism and nostalgia, but the bridge (“you’ll never get me alive, you’ll never take me alive, do what it takes to survive and I'm still here") doesn’t fit the Patient’s slow decent into apathy at all and contradicts Disenchanted’s loss of faith in the idea of living- it's too hopeful and centers survival and resilience in a way that makes it an ineffective substitute for Teenagers as a bridge song. And finally, Heaven Help Us is too religiously centered- it would refocus the fate vs free will discussion in the context of god/angels when that isn’t a theme in the album up to this point (hell is the grounded point of the album- the protagonist has already accepted their fate by Mama- having a reconciliation with a lack of faith or the absence of God seems completely out of left field when its just not an established part of the narrative) Black Parade is actually one of the mcr albums with the least references to god/angels in the heavenly religious sense- more centered around the human struggle against determinism: the usage of damnation is Catholic inspired but divorced from the division of hell vs heaven and is instead about guilt and worthiness and agency. The presence of angels or god or any divinity would simply weaken the narrative by expanding the album's focus outside its own limitations. Also, the Patient isn't ever a martyred figure, if anything he is purposely pathetic. Including any comparison of the Patient to Christ ("give you all the nails you need") or a saint unravels the key feature of the Patient's character: that he is insignificant. His insignificance and his struggles with his past actions make him a character who must find the strength to live through the guilt and pain to prove that everyone is worthy of life. The overarching purpose of Black Parade is emphasizing that no matter what we've done and how dirty we feel, we can move forward and either accept our afterlife or we can find value in being alive. Because of this contradiction, Heaven Help Us destroys the central theme of the entire album if it is included. With all of this in mind, it seems to me that the b-sides are their own nebulous thing- they don’t tonally fit on Black Parade (though I do think they fit together and are interconnected thematically) but any of them would break the flow since they seem angrier and gritter in a way that is noticeably absent and would be at odds with from a lot of Parade’s resignation. They also just do not complete the narrative, they are simple not as good as Teenagers at bringing all the pieces together.

If I still haven’t convinced you, a bonus reason Teenagers is a valuable memeber of the Black Parade tracklist, Ray was the only one who believed in the song- he called it genius (x) so listen to mr chemical romance himself telling you the song is Good and Important :)

anyway now you should, at the very least respect teenagers based on a couple thematic ideas expressed here, if not also understand why it’s imperative to black parade as an album, as well as the narrative itself. <3

#here she is. my teenagers manifesto. months in the making :') #this is the equivalent of getting on my biggest soapbox and screaming for hours please enjoy <33 #my posts #mcr assigned reading #my chemical romance #mcr #black parade

[atomicblasphemy]

I was bored and decided to speculate on the upcoming Owl House episodes

Buckle up, this got way longer than anticipated.

Often I tend to have as much or even more fun with TOH’s b plots as with the main ones, and seeing the memes the fandom I guess that’s kind of a normal feeling. But this last episode didn’t really have one and I’m pretty glad it didn’t.

Here’s how I’ve been thinking of the show, specially when it comes to episode structure. Pretty much in the first few scenes they will go like “hey, here’s an idea.” Then they go on the rest of the episode showing why that is not such a good idea. Case in point, Understanding Willow’s “out of sight, out of mind” only for the episode turn out as an argument for therapy, or that grom episode with Luz unable to answer her mom’s messages only to do so by the end of the episode (even though that is not a full solution, but still, she’s the main character and that looks like it will a main source of conflict until the show’s end... probably). On today’s episode I feel like it came out in two ways: from Luz perspective it came in the form of her indulging King’s narrative and self-image; on his case, well, it pretty much boils down to that whole identity crisis thing.

In other words, although in a certain way there are two big stories being told they both are a part of the same plot line. Moreover, King is a part of the show’s main trio.

Now, this may just be my own perception, but I feel like the last five or so episodes were kind of meant to be some turning point for specific characters, in this sequence: King, Willow, Luz, Amity, Eda, Lilith. Those episodes seem, again, at least to me, to mark some form of shift in the characters story. For Lilith it was her betraying the Emperor, for Eda it was learning who cursed her and her imprisonment for Luz’s sake in a way (learning she grew to care for Luz over her own well-being), for Amity it was her taking a first tangible step towards getting out from her parent’s dominion (which culminates in the events of EE) and becoming her own person, for Luz it was confronting the fact her biggest fear is somewhat related to guilty about how she left her world and her mom and finding in herself (and the friends she made in the Isles) the fortitude to actually confront all that, for Willow it was what I said before (which, btw, ends her whole arc that started on the conjuring episode, the whole thing about her and Amity’s friendship). The only one of those I can’t really see clearly what the episode’s point really was is King’s Really Small Problems.

Again, going on a bit of subjectivity here but I feel like that episode was kind of the show’s lowest point so far. First of, there’s the fact that Willow, Gus, and especially Luz don’t apologize to King because, I mean, they were pretty much about as guilty for everything that happened as him. They did either hijack or forget his day with Luz, so you know... Buuut, still, if I were to hazard a guess as to what the point on that episode I’d say it circles around the line “The King of Demons misses nobody.” early in the episode being contrasted by “Demons do crazy things when they’ve been missing someone.” In other words, the point of the episode, to my best guess would be him starting to deal with a shifting sense of identity.

So, this brings us to the current season. If I’m right in my understanding of Really Small Problems, then that’d mean that Echoes of the Past is picking up on that episode’s thread. Likewise, the same can be said about Escaping Expulsion. And in a sense, both King and Amity’s (moreso in Amity’s case, admittedly) arc seem to have in a way concluded with those two episodes. Moreover, going by the episode’s synopsis the next upcoming episodes seem to also doing something similar: either picking up a previous storyline and finishing it, or starting new ones. Separate Tides would be a bit of an exception, since it was the premiere and had to reacquaint the audience with the world and characters, but even then I feel it sets up a potential point of conflict for Luz in the form of her guilt over Eda’s loss of magic.

Then, again, going off a limb here, but I’d guess that, from episodes 2 to 8 the main objects will be, in this order, Amity, King, Lilith (going by the trailer implying we’ll see her beast form), Gus (who thus far didn’t really have a longer story arc beyond The First Day), Luz, Eda (which, given how it introduces a new character from her past I’d imagine it would mark the beginning of a new arc for her). But I feel bored so I want to elaborate a bit further.

Episode 4: Lilith, maybe (this part is pretty esoteric, to be honest), possibly, starts to come to grips with the consequences of sharing the curse while, due to mamma Clawthorne’s visit, seeing their past in a more nuanced fashion. I mean, Mamma Clawthorne is in the beast keeping coven, her presence while her first born daughter literally turns into a best could make for some interesting potential stories. Anyhow, I think some other interesting thing will have to do with Eda. As I said I can’t really see an arc or something along those lines happening with her as of right now. Now, bare with me while I go on a bit of a tangent. So, in Understanding Willow Willow herself is the object of the story, however in that episode we also get to see the cause of them falling apart was Odalia and Alador threatening Amity indirectly. By doing that the upcoming conflict regarding her gets established. Then next, at the Grom episode, we as the audience learn that Amity is at least attracted to Luz. There’s no point on getting too deep into this beyond this: her crush on Luz works as a strong reason, from her perspective, to stand up to her parents. Then at the Grudgby episode we see her taking active steps towards getting more agency in her life from them when she chooses to play against two people her parents sanctioned as suitable companions. Eventually this would culminate in the EE episode as I already talked at length about. The reason I’m bringing all of this up is because I get the feeling Eda’s upcoming story will follow some similar lines, whatever happens here (and will either be developed or solved on episode 7) will be set up at this episode.

Episode 5: As I said, I don’t really see clearly what Gus’ main conflict is, and I would imagine that this episode will either make that more evident or outright introduce it, so I don’t feel I’m in the position to speculate the specifics. However, we do know that the B plot is Lumity and I’ll need to dwell on this one a bit longer. After season one, I had this guess that this ship would become cannon somewhere between episode 3 at the earliest and 7 at the lastest. The reason I thought so, and I still think there’s no solid reason to reject this hypothesis, was that after WiLW the only thing standing in the way from Amity coming clean about her feelings was probably her relationship with her parents. UW set that up, WiLW took a first step in that direction, EE went through with it. Moreover, I thought that’d be in line with what we had shown of the show’s pacing up until that point. So, basically the situation I see here goes along the lines of setting up a new source of conflict for Amity (in the form of Luz eventually leaving the Isles), and for Luz in the form of (if my guess of Lumity becoming cannon in this specific episode is correct) the start of a new relationship, something she never experienced before, which would make her question whether or not she actually wants to go back to the human realm, or at the very least muddy the water a tad. However, I am not so dead certain they’ll become cannon (and, btw, by cannon I mean simply an unequivocal sign that their relationship changed, however the showrunners decide that should look like.) Moreover, that only gets accentuated if the thing she’s helping Luz with is a portal. In other words, my “prediction” that it’d become cannon around this time was mostly due to me feeling that turning them into a will they won’t they at this point would be tantamount to the show chasing its own tail, but that’d feel uncharacteristic of the show, in light of the first season. That being said, if I’m right about there being this upcoming conflict about Luz having to decide between the Isles and the human realm (which may or may not keep on developing until the shows finale, but I digress), then it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. If handled well her being uncertain as to whether or not to take the leap with Amity could potentially be an interesting way convey her internal conflict. Still, I think that having those two be together would be more effective in give her one more strong argument in favor of staying in the Isles. Besides, there’s my thoughts about the following episode which would make the will they won’t they approach redundant. Also, the fact Amity is the one

Episode 6: Pretty much would pick up on the place it left Luz in the previous episode, again, if and only if my speculations so far are right. Two things the synopsis doesn’t really make clear: why Luz is having problem hunting a palisman; and who the foe in question is. Now, I know we see her carrying Golden Boi’s staff. I’m choosing to ignore this for now because I would actually have Boscha (who we see in one of the teasers), and who would kind of go along with some hints at her redemption like that “you’re a really good friend...” line. Besides, if this palisman thing is a part of Hexside’s curriculum it would make sense that she’d be in the same situation as Luz. Not to mention that Golden Boi helping her gain access to a weapon she can and most likely will turn against him and his boss seems pretty odd. Ultimately, however, the identity of this foe is inconsequential. The main point of interest for me is the reason why she is having trouble finding herself a palisman. We don’t know the specifics of palisman adoption or creation, so I will try not to depend to much on it. But here’s the gist: getting a palisman as a commitment not only to the palisman itself but to the world. Whatever happens between her and Amity and going by the mad logic I’m using, her sense of belonging would probably be completely scrambled even before the episode starts. Being made to make a commitment like that in midst of an existential crisis of sorts as a means to create internal conflict in Luz, that’s what I’m trying to argue is the point of this episode. Also, before I move on to another thing I think is pretty important and I’ve decided to say it now because I don’t want to rework the structure of a rambling session that’s already way longer than I expected: we see Camilla in the trailer, I think this would be the best moment to put her. The reason for that is simple enough. In the A plot we see Luz trying to decide where she belongs to, and working towards becoming more and more part of the Isles figurative landscape; on the b plot however we would get to see in the form of Camilla that she still has a home in the human realm, that there’s still someone who loves her a lot and is doing everything within her power to get her back or at least to ensure she is safe and sound. Not to mention, it would be a great moment to bring up those letters we see at the end of the Grom episode, but I’ll get to that when I get to that.

Now, that important thing I wanted to talk about: the overall message of the show. I think I said this before but my favorite thing about Luz is the effect she has on the other character, essentially she is the catalyst to their growth. She is the one that ensured Willow would confront her past with Amity resulting in her getting rid of the hang ups that were holding her back allowing her to forge her own path. She is the reason why Amity chooses to stand up for herself. She is the reason why Lilith is capable of hope to rekindle her relationship with her sister thus empowering her to break away from the Emperor. She is the reason why Eda now has some reason to, as she put it herself, “stop wasting away her magic”, she gives her something to look forward to. Hell, even if we are just starting to see it, I’m positive we can make an argument that she’s why King became more open to the possibility he is not who he thought he was, making him see himself more as who he is to the people he cares about than a dethroned king of demons.

In a sense Luz seems to find all other characters in something of a stagnation point of their. A sort of fatalistic view of their own identities, be it in a more “ontological” sense, according to my interpretation, as in Lilith and Amity’s case, or as products of Lady Luck’s whims as for Willow and Eda. {Sidenote: For me at least Lumity’s mutual crush always made more sense on Amity’s end than on Luz’s and in a certain way it still does despite EE. Case in point, if I were to pin point the precise moment her feelings towards started shaping up in a way that makes infatuation possible it would that “I’m not a witch, but I’m working hard to become”. If what I’m saying is not absolute non-sense, then this would have been a “Holy shit. You can actually do that? You can actually have enough agency over your own life to that extent do something like that?”. I mean, their following interaction, at the library has her looking like “Ok, maybe I was just a wee bit of a needlessly belligerent dick just now” after she pushes Luz away from her offering to help when reading to kids.}

To put it succinctly: the message of the show is that your identity, who you are as a person, is not the product  of a pre-existent essence but of who you actively choose to be. That even if one is not capable of deciding their circumstances (like Willow, Eda, or Amity), that are the choices one makes as they go about living their lives that determine their identity. And by centering Luz’s core conflict now as where her belonging lies only for it to be solved at the show’s finale by having her, the main character, effectively having to make this choice, to realize she belongs to wherever she decides she belongs to would be a pretty poignant way to get this point across.

So yeah, if my guesses so far are right this may as well be one of the show’s most important episodes.

Anyway, back to my esoteric predictions about the upcoming episodes...

Episode 7: Eda and Rayne. Now, I don’t to sound like a party pooper or something, but we don’t really have a reason to predict those two having a romantic connection. There’s no reason to necessarily refuse this possibility a priori either though. I mean, the further I get into the future episode the less I have to work with in terms of speculation. We don’t really know where her story is heading, and I feel like I already covered it enough when I was talking about ep 4. But there are two things I want to point out. First, like Mama Clawthorne, Rayne is a figure from Eda’s past, so whatever conflict she may have to sort through from now on stems from her past. The specifics are up to anyone’s guess, so yeah, it is perfectly possible that those two were a couple or something along those lines at some point in the past. But other than that picture that shows that they were somewhat close, we really don’t have much to go by. Second thing, and this is not really all that important. If the foe from episode 6 is not Golden Boi, I think this will be the episode on which the two interact (again, that picture of Luz with his staff, we know they will get to interact at some point, and this seems to be the one episode out of all we have a synopsis for that depends the least on Luz for the main story).

Episode 8: Just imagine me blowing raspberries. I got nothing for this one, except that: a - I really hope Axel Rose does not get to be a guest voice acting role, same goes for Slash and that bassist I keep forgetting the name of; b - I hate this expression, but this really strike me as a “filler episode”, or a breather as I’ve seem someone put it. Still, as much as with anything else I could be wrong here.

But before I move on, there are three very important characters I haven’t talked about enough thus far at least in terms of speculation. Gus, Willow, and Bellos. So I’ll address the three of them just now. Bellos: he is the force that will ultimately make Luz confronting the question about where her belonging lies all but unavoidable; essentially - and I know I must sound like a broken record, but if and only if my take is right - his actions are not all that important to the story and its message because he is less of a character and more something akin to a force of nature. Gus: again, not so sure where his story will go or if he even has one in a more strict sense as the other characters. Frankly that’s one of the  aspects of the show I find the hardest to form an opinion on, unlike the others he sort of feels complete, that makes him pretty neat but also means that there’s less stuff you can do to him, less places you can take his character and develop it. That being said, I think he has a function in the show and he fulfills it pretty nicely. Besides, they can always just go and introduce new aspects to him we just can’t foresee as of now (which might as well happen in episode 5 for all we know). Either way, I have nothing but adoration for this precious boy. Now, Willow. As I mentioned, as far as I can tell her character got pretty much done with at Understand Willow. It was really weird for me when I watched that episode because it is until now my absolute favorite of the series (although Echoes fro the Past is putting up a pretty solid fight), the first thing I thought afterwards was “Idk how many seasons the show has left, but it feels a bit too soon for a defining moment like this and I don’t know what else they can do with her.” I mean, you could argue that the Grudgby episode seems to kinda sorta set up a conflict between her and Boscha, but that story seems to concern more Luz and Amity’s characters, especially the ladder. Willow and Boscha act more as a means to make Amity take that first step and for Luz to learn not to start a mosh pit in a Radiohead concert. That being said, I feel like she is now in a similar position to Gus’: either a new unforeseen source of conflict for her or they simply leave her to occupy a fixed role in the story. Personally, I’d much rather they introduce new stories and conflicts for them, not only that would help push for that overall message I was raving on about, but I also just wanna see more of them. I adore all characters in this show, I have fun with them and want to keep doing so until the show ultimately ends.

Almost done, I promise. Just a tad more of your patience, that’s all I’m asking. I will not revise or edit this so hopefully I’m still making a semblance of sense. I mean, if you’re reading this sentence then it probably means I am. Otherwise I can only ask you one thing: why?

Now, Eclipse Lake, or episode 9. As I said when talking about episode 7, we are now in too distant a territory for me to feel any confident as to my basis. Take all of this as more wishful thinking than anything else. So, you know, if you have a tin foil hat at hand now would be a good time to put it on.

Going by this episode’s synopsis as well as episode 5′s it makes it sound that Amity will become steadily a more central point to the whole portal conundrum. She is the one going on about it more than anyone else. There’s a first a fairly obvious reason why she put herself in that position: she has a gargantuan  crush on the girl and wants to spend as much time as physically possible with her. There’s also a secondary reason why she would want to do that, and for that I’d need to bring up those letters Camilla has or had been receiving.

Now, I’m aware I can’t really make an ironclad argument for her being the one writing them. However, it is more than a bit suspicious that those letters would be brought to attention immediately after we see a piece of writing that we know for a fact was written by her and seeing how closely those two handwrittings match. Not every piece of scenary put by an author necessarily be a Tchekov’s gun, but this one reaaally looks to be the case, still circumstantial evidence so tin foil hats or whatever. Moreover, as I on at length before, Amity’s story up to this point was that of someone learning to be her own person and aim for her own goals, in this sense I can see her decision for writing those letters as an early and not stellarly thought out way to do that even if well meaning. Like a poorly articulated if good intentioned act made by someone who doesn’t really understands why she’s doing what she’s doing, what it entails, or what the full length of the consequences could be. I mean, she is a kid after all, and she is bound to have a few hiccups along her way to self-discovery. Again, I’ll get to it when I get to it. Lastly, however, the second reason why she would have a reason to volunteer to help Luz with her portal situation: if she is the one sending those letters then she has access to some form of a portal herself, be it fully functioning like Eda’s or just capable to dispatch smaller objects that’s not really the point. The point is that, if all I’m saying is right she will be put in a very strange situation. If she is possession of a portal and is “helping” Luz find one, then she’d essentially be lying to her much like Luz herself is in a sense lying to Camilla. Moreover, she’d be at this point one of the characters with the largest amount of reasons to delay Luz’s return to the human realm as much as possible, meaning that the question she’ll have to answer would probably go along these lines: do I act in self-interest, lie or maybe even do some sabotage, and make sure I keep the person I’m growing to love next to me, ooooor do I act accordingly to this love and help her achieve her goal which could potentially mean I’ll never see her again?

Also, season one’s finale had an ambiguous title. Young Blood, Old Souls can just as easily be taken as referring to Eda as well as to Lilith, the two focal points of that episode’s conflict. Likewise here, “Yesterday’s Lies” could be taken as either a reference to Luz’s lies to Camilla, or these hypothetical lies Amity may be telling Luz. That means, in this hypothetical mid-season finale I’m conceiving here these two would be the focal points of conflict (maybe alongside Camilla).

In any case, a possible counter to everything I’m saying here is Dana stating that romance was not the show’s endgame, and that is not what I’m suggesting. I have more to speculate on Amity’s role, so going from that I can say that this would in a way be a continuation of what we saw in EE. Something like: Okay, so you want to become your own person, in order to do that I’ll have to make some tough decisions, here’s your first one. It’s like confronting this infant who just took its first steps with the knowledge she’s actually running a marathon.

Anyhow, I don’t really feel well equipped to speculate on how things would play out on Luz’s end so let’s shake things up a bit and try to see things from Camilla’s perspective before getting to the long awaited conclusion. And by long awaited I mean me, this was more tiring than I expected but what the hell, I’m almost done. I can see the finish line already, so yeah. 

So, Camilla. What we know given the trailer and the Grom episode is essentially this: she is most likely aware Luz never made to the Reality Check Camp in the first place, and that regardless of where she is there’s someone who (up until the Grom episode) was sending her these comforting messages. If and only if, all I’ve said is right then well have a line of communication between one of Luz’s big arguments for staying in the Isles and her biggest argument for coming back.

Hold on to your tin foil hats, y’all need it. Because my next point is: once Camilla finds out that the letters she’d been receiving up to that are more than a bit sketchy (her ooooohhhh face at the trailer could be that) and if she has some means of responding to them, which I mean... That’s the closest thing to a lead as to Luz’s whereabouts she has, she most likely would confront this hypothetical Amity if that’s the case. If the stars align just right there’s a pretty good chance Amity would give the broad strokes of Luz‘s situation in as much a cryptic fashion as she can, as well as start creating some form rappor with Camilla. Meaning that that choice she’d have to make as I mentioned before would get this extra layer of nuance, because now she knows beyond any doubt that if Luz does cross the portal she’d be with someone who deeply cares about her. Moreover, if I’m right about Amity’s upcoming conflict centering around her apprehension with Luz crossing the portal, her correspondence with Camilla could be a way for her to overcome this fear, for better or for worse. In other words, Camilla possibly unknowing giving her potential daughter-in-law the necessary tools for her to grow as a person. And honestly, I think that would be a pretty cool story.

And that could cause a pretty interesting dynamic between the three of them: Luz not sure as to who she wants to chose to become and most likely getting very upset once she learns of Amity’s lie, whilst still wanting (I don’t really have a defense for this I just think it’d be interesting) to keep her first romantic or potentially romantic relationship, while also being worried as to how things would be with her mother considering her own lie; Amity lying to Luz, while trying to balance out her on desires versus her loved one well-being; and Camilla having mixed feeling about Amity or whoever wrote those letters (they did lie to her after all), worrying like crazy about Luz and also feeling a tad upset at Luz’s lie. 

And holy shit I think that does it. I’m done.

Anyone, next finale is “Luz x Camilla x Amity”, that out of the way like Lilith x Eda and Lilith x Luz, my guess is that season 2.5 finale would be “Gus and Willow x Luz” or “Luz x Eda and King”, the finale finale therefore would most like be Luz x Luz.

Ci vediamo.

{Couple of edits I just thought would be important:

1 - I know that considering what I’ve said regarding the mid-season final may seem like a bit too much for a 20 something minutes episode. But I mean, this fandom and Amphibia’s seem to overlap quite a bit, and we all saw the metric ton of information they threw at us during True Colors. All that I’ve said seem to me well withing the realm of possibility.

2 - In the EXTREMELY unlikely chance I’m absolutely on point on everything I’ve just spouted (Despite being purposefully vague. But oh well. We can argue the semantics of vagueness some other time) I’ll consider this fandom as owing me a rendition of The Number of the Beast’s cover art (the album, not the single... not even I am morbid enough for that) featuring the Owl Beast, Belos and Kikimora or the Golden Boi. I call it the Owl Maiden. Will I go aggro if no one does that? No. Do I have means to demand it in any forceful way that would grant that I’d get to see said rendition? hahahaha I obviously don’t. Will I be poutty? Yes, that will 100% happen. But really, that would be for the benefit of us as a community. I mean, that look pretty awesome and you can’t argue otherwise.}

#The owl house #Luz Noceda #Toh King #Willow Park #Gus Porter #Lilith Clawthorne #Eda Clawthorne #Amity Blight #Camilla Noceda #Boscha #Rayne toh #emperor belos #toh golden guard

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Belos’ Deterioration

           Honestly I’m VERY fascinated by the implications of this fanart by @thedemondeity. Coupled with how Belos seems to have a rather deteriorated state to him, the implications of his connection to the Titan, and his unusual form of Magic… I’m going to go ahead and summarize my thesis here; I think Belos’ own body could lowkey be a magical construct similar to an Abomination, one that he regularly uses up to fuel his hybrid glyph-bile magic, while relying on the magical bile of others to constantly uphold and replace his used-up flesh. Belos was once flesh and bone; But after using up his entire body to fuel his magic, he’s become a Theseus Ship paradox, having more or less grown a new body made from magic that is constantly being used up and replenished, and is thus not all that tangible, cohesive, nor natural.

           To start, let’s go with the idea that Belos doesn’t have a magical bile sac. Either it’s because he’s a human, a witch with a disability, and/or some other third party, I’m not sure; But regardless, the results are the same. What if to get around his inability to perform bile-magic, Belos learned glyphs from none other than the Titan itself, just like Luz is doing! Though I imagine his lessons with the Titan were a lot more straight-forward and face-to-face than Luz’s, especially since Belos may be having an adverse effect on the Titan in the present; Even so…

           I’ve speculated and analyzed in the past on how magic works, and generally seeming, this show seems to take cues from Equivalent Exchange from Fullmetal Alchemist (which Luz would be a fan of according to Dana Terrace herself); To get magic, you need to sacrifice a ‘fuel’ source in return. When it comes to glyphs, this is usually pieces of paper and whatever medium they’re drawn on, and possibly the very magic/nature of the Boiling Isles itself. I imagine even air would serve as a useful fuel for a Fire Glyph; Different materials resonate more with different spells, essentially. An Ice Glyph carved into the snow could be much more potent than another Ice Glyph of the same size, but drawn on a piece of paper. The efficiency and strength of glyphs could also be reliant on a witch’s intimate knowledge and study of them…

           Regardless, not all fuel sources are created equal, it seems- Magic Bile seems to be a far more efficient, readily-available source of energy to create spells from, and it was early Witches who realized the usage of their bile sacs that spawned the current, bile-based magic that spawns glowing circles from thin air, that we see today. It’s magic coming more from the user’s body, than the surrounding nature itself; I could see some stuck-up snobs dismissing Glyphs as being weak and ‘dependent’ on the Boiling Isles, while bile-based users are more ‘independent’ and draw actual strength from themselves… Essentially, it’s a bunch of dumb, ableist rhetoric.

           If Belos lacked a magical bile sac, and serves as a parallel to Luz –who has a disability metaphor going on in her relationship with magic- then what if he was someone who grew up in that sort of elitist environment? Told that glyphs were lesser, that Witches who took advantage of their bile sacs were the future; And all others were to be left behind in the dust. It’d be an environment talking about hierarchy, about how there are those who are born with a literal, innate inclination towards magic moreso than others; And that THOSE witches are naturally more powerful and superior to the rest.

           After all, it’s worth noting that there seems to be various residents and denizens on the Boiling Isles that can’t cast bile-magic; But what about glyphs? Glyphs aren’t reliant on one’s body whatsoever. Going off-topic, but what if the abelist shift in attitudes towards bile-magic as being the only acceptable form, was in-part done to oppress those beings without bile sacs? I imagine that having access to magic grants you more opportunities; So what if an artificial hierarchy was enforced to set bile-users above those who only had access to just glyphs? And with the discouragement of glyphs, amidst the move towards more efficient bile-circles… It could’ve contributed towards society forgetting about glyphs; And thus resulting in a large number of the population unable to cast spells because they don’t know about glyphs, and thus set at a disadvantage while those with bile sacs have more opportunities.

           Given what this show has to say about artificial hierarchies, ableism, lower-class people having less access to educational opportunities, etc…. I think it’d be an interesting concept. And that gets us back to Belos- As someone who can’t cast bile magic, because he lacks a bile sac. As someone who may have been raised in an ableist environment that derided his usage of glyphs, or at least made it feel inadequate compared to bile-magic, which seemed to be embraced as much more efficient. Perhaps Belos didn’t start off knowng glyphs, perhaps this was after they were forgotten, and THEN he met the Titan and learned; But I can see Belos being mocked for his usage of glyphs. I could see the current power structure even seeing his glyphs as a threat that could upturn the hierarchy by giving magical access to those without bile sacs; And that could’ve made Belos become demonized alongside his glyphs.

           And/or, Belos recognized that some forms of matter served as better fuel for Glyphs, than others… If Bile was the ideal fuel for Magic, what of the body itself? Getting into some Body Horror territory and speculation here (which is to be expected when Belos is the subject here), what if Belos carved/tattooed glyphs across his body? We’ve all discussed about what would happen if a glyph was drawn on oneself and activated- Would this take a physical toll on oneself? In this scenario, I imagine that it would- Though through this knowledge of Glyphs, Belos didn’t immediately sacrifice an entire limb nor a chunk of skin; Instead, he distributed the loss across his entire body, losing nutrients and cells here or there, instead of having all of the damage concentrated wherever the glyph was located.

           Why would Belos do this, if he could just rely on his surroundings as a fuel source? Amidst the potential ableist rhetoric I’ve speculated about; Perhaps one’s flesh and nutrients, used to sustain one’s very own life, serves as an even more potent source of magic than your typical dirt, paper, wood, etc. It’s not as good as magical bile; But it serves as an adequate substitute, and is more easily applied across all glyphs, providing stronger spells than typical nature. Given Belos’ parasitic, downright cannibalistic motifs… I wouldn’t be shocked if he sacrificed a few people in the past for his own spells, before turning his glyphs unto himself and using his own body as a reliable, ‘independent’ source of energy.

           One or two glyphs here or there, which take nutrients and flesh across the entire body instead of from a single concentrated spot; It can be a bit draining, but not too life-threatening, right? You can just recover by having a good meal and rest… But if you’re Belos, who is possibly power-hungry, or up against adversaries? You need to be casting a LOT of spells, in rapid succession; And quickly the damage and toll on your body begins to add up, until your flesh becomes necrotic and you decay, feeling the starvation of your glyphs. It’s not enough to just eat normal food to replenish and heal your wounds, now; You need something a little bit more potent…

           And so- Belos turns to Magical Bile. His body doesn’t have the ability to directly convert it into magic, he lacks the sac and proper physiology; But he CAN cast magic in a more indirect sense. Belos began consuming the bile of others, usually palismans, to enhance his recovery and growth, as his body began to heal; Magical Bile could be incredibly nutritious, after all. And from this replenished flesh, Belos then sacrifices it to continue casting spells, before restocking on magical bile, etc. It’s like his own body is a coffee filter, an incredibly worn-out rag that is the process for his very unorthodox way of casting magic; A damaging process, but one he stubbornly sticks towards. Because unlike his counterpart Luz, he never truly learned to accept magic that was different in a way that specifically accommodated him; Belos still wanted to cast magic the way other witches normally did.

           Perhaps he transplanted a magical bile sac at some point, or took advantage of a potential connection to the Titan. Either way, as Belos rose to power; I can see him having a trusted ally, such as Kikimora and/or the Healing Coven Head, cast Healing Magic to help feed his recovering, collapsing body. But alas, Belos’ condition is a unique one cast upon himself; And the consumption of magical bile, combined with the clumsy application of Healing spells towards his own injuries, and… Let’s just say that his cellular growth was accelerated to a point where it was no longer beneficial. To a point where it just left Belos with MORE flesh and cells, and thus an even hungrier appetite… What I’m saying is, Belos basically gave himself magical cancer and tumors in his attempts to heal and replenish from all of the body-matter he sacrificed for his spells.

           So you’ve got a body that’s constantly decaying, only to replace itself with cancerous masses of flesh and tumors; Belos’ body is beginning to warp and distort, and I can see him making alterations to himself to become more powerful. Maybe replacing limbs and organs with lab-grown ones, or even body parts stolen from others! And as Belos’ power and authority increases, he gets hungrier and hungrier; And he sates this appetite by consuming more bile, but it just leads to more cancerous tumors that demand even more of him. It’s a self-feeding, never-ending cycle, a positive feedback loop; And it results in the horrifically messed-up, deteriorated mess of a monster that we see today. No doubt so disgusting and decayed and torn-up, that Belos wears a mask and armor; Both to hide his appearance, but possibly to literally hold himself together!

           Belos’ body is constantly falling apart, being torn apart; And then reassembled at a whim. His experience with this makes it easy for Belos to literally dissolve and reform here or there; And it leads to Belos knowing intimately how to create those fleshy, veiny constructs that he attacks his enemies with. He’s a scientist and an experimenter, and Belos himself was his main test subject; And that meant he suffered the most from the trial and error of discovering how to become more powerful. Perhaps his magic manifests as spheres instead of circles, because it’s dual-natured; Relying on glyphs AND bile, amidst Belos’ own body. I’m not entirely sure where his more technological staff comes into play, if it’s merely the result of his constant experimenting and toying around, or something else; Perhaps his staff is more a conduit for himself, than a separate Palisman! Either way, his spells manifesting as a blood-red would take on a whole new meaning, considering what Belos is sacrificing to fuel them…

           It’d really recontextualize his exhaustion, his need to drain bile from palismans- And it leads to the idea that Belos doesn’t have a lot of stamina. He can summon power and spells in terrifying bursts, and his unusual nature and knowledge make him seem all the more intimidating- But in a drawn-out battle of attrition, Belos is a witch who lacks substance. Manage to survive the first few waves of attacks, get Belos to tire himself out- And one can land a quick and decisive blow, maybe even victory! Perhaps it wasn’t just Belos’ arrogance that allowed Luz to damage him…

           This of course all speculative, and almost entirely baseless- But it’s definitely a fun ‘fuel’ for thought! I’m mostly just enamored with Belos as someone who has this impermanent presence, and as a potential parallel to Luz- And what this could entail, amidst his unusual form of magic and Belos’ obvious body horror at play here. If so much of his current body and flesh has been replaced with new cells, spawned more from magical bile and Healing Spells than anything tangible like food or water; Perhaps it’s a Theseus Ship paradox. Where so much of Belos’ current body comes from a magical source… And as a result, it’s not very tangible. Regular glyph-spells retain their form when attacked by a Greater Basilisk; But bile-based magic seems to be reduced back to its base components, or at least into a digestible one for these creatures.

           If a Greater Basilisk were to attack a tree, it’d be… A regular tree, getting torn up. But a tree spawned by the bile of a witch? I imagine that tree would almost instantly disintegrate, explaining how that one Greater Basilisk was able to so easily devour Amity’s Abomination and Willow’s plants. It all comes from magical bile, and thus lacks substance- At least compared to glyphs, which spawn their magic directly from pre-existing nature. Perhaps the Greater Basilisks weren’t just enemies to Belos’ reign, nor competitors for bile; Perhaps their unique feeding abilities served as a direct weakness to the Emperor himself. If a Greater Basilisk attacked him, perhaps Belos’ entire body would literally just dissolve, being made more of magic than actual physical substance and stuff found in nature; And this major weakness of his could’ve caused Belos to spearhead genocides against the Basilisks, under the additionally-credible pretense of protecting witches.

           And, if Belos is also constantly using glyphs, as well his connection to the Boiling Isles and the Titan itself, to sustain him? Then if he were to go to Earth, where Luz’s glyphs fell apart- The results might not be so pretty… Not that Belos is much of a looker himself, in general. He’s like an Abomination that’s constantly melting and trying to hold itself together; So Belos poured himself into the person-shaped mold that is his armor. And I suppose that’s both ironic/appropriate, given Belos’ insistence on making others conform to a specific mold within his Coven system…

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house belos #emperor belos #speculation #body horror #glyphs #magic bile #fanon #headcanon

[no-dull-days]

Bogota, Colombia

Exploring Bogota's Misunderstood History

Three weeks in to Colombia, I headed to the infamous Bogota . As dawn approached, I arrived at the North Terminal. 14 hours had passed during the night bus from Popayan. The trek to Bogota took us through the Andes mountains, hairpin curves, and peculiar weather. I was suspicious as we drove by uneasy scenery. I’d researched every other destination prior to arrival. Bogota was the exception.

History: During the 1980’s & 90’s Bogota was the most dangerous city in the world. I'll bet you think it's danger emanated from drug cartels…More people were killed in Bogota by buses and cars than by military or political problems. Children feared being hit by a car, truck, or bus. Public transportation was a mafia run business. Buses would block traffic or run people over on the sidewalk. The people of Bogota were ashamed of the city. There was a lack of infrastructure coupled by low security and high safety concerns. Residents had zero faith in the future. Leaders didn’t know where to go or what to do. Bogota had no vision, no model and no money. It was known as the worst place in Latin America.

In 1998 Enrique Peñalosa was elected mayor of Bogota. During a visit to Europe, Peñalosa said, “as a fish needs to swim, we need to walk. Not in order to survive, but in order to be happy.” In regards to Bogota, Peñalosa was convinced, crime and poverty were connected to Bogota’s design — how the city was structured.

Something had to be done, considering Bogota’s population grew from 100k to 7 million in 100 years. Peñalosa created automobile restrictions. In the following ten years, Bogota’s murder rate fell a whopping 70%! From the highest in the world to less than that of Washington DC.

Bogota’s bus system was modeled after a Brazilian city. Today, Bogota has an internationally acclaimed bus system. Public transportation has brought the community together. Take Avenida el Dorado— there’s what seems to be endless miles of road dedicated solely to pedestrians. On Sundays, over a million people show up to ride, walk and socialize. It’s the safest place in the city. By way of urban design, a city for the people was created.

It changed beyond belief. We changed the city more for people than for cars.

— Enrique Peñalosa

As a statement of priorities, Avenida el Dorado was built to go through the poorest communities. It’s the longest pedestrian walkway on the continent. Buses and parks are all connected causing entire neighborhoods to interact. When communities know one another, crime rates fall and the quality of life improves. Locals even denounced those who violated the system.

Public transportation was a multi billion dollar industry. By placing mafia members on the board of directors and giving them stock options, the system evolved. A power play considering the mob could crush the city.

Bogota’s large sidewalks show people are equally or more valuable than automobiles. These and other changes made it more difficult for people to access businesses which led to a movement to impeach Peñalosa. People soon realized public interests come before private interests. This urban design proclaims a bicyclist is just as important as a $30,000 automobile. Bogota’s mayor, Peñalosa, left office with the highest approval rating of any mayor in history.

This is one iota of Bogota’s history. The powerful drug cartels of the 80s who ruled cities such as Medellin, Bogota, and Miami were historical times no doubt. Seeing the murals, sites, and stomping grounds of these tumultuous times was spine-tingling.

I explored the Halls of Justice where Supreme Court Justices were assassinated and many others were killed or held hostage. I’ve watched dozens of documentaries on Colombia and Pablo Escobar’s reign over Bogota. Walking around the city was like being in a history book.

The history was so thick, it almost rivaled The Lost City of Petra’s history! Escobar and the drug cartels pillaged Bogota and ran the city at some points. Escobar practically owned the police. He was both loved and hated by fellow Colombians. He also made the Forbes Top 10 List. Netflix’s, ‘Narcos’, does a great job of documenting what happened during this time. Both enthralling, and terrifying.

My Experience: Upon arrival, I had no plans. My Spanish had drastically improved. I was sociable, yet cautious. Violent crime still occurs at random. After Cartagena, I discovered it was tough finding a place to stay in advance. Taxis can be dangerous and I didn’t know how far I’d be from my destination. There were times I’d arrive in a new city, by plane or bus after dark. I didn’t think it was wise to take a bus or walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods. Speaking far from perfect Spanish and carrying thousands of dollars of electronics didn’t ease the situation.

All through Colombia, ATMs dispense pesos. Many of the bills are COL$50,000 and finding change can be difficult. Exchange rates and small bills was another barrier. If you’re traveling to Colombia, I’d recommend learning how to count to 100,000 in Spanish.

I rented a room in the common style five bedroom home for COL$50,000/24 hours. This gave me time to make plans, look at a map and figure out where I wanted to stay thereafter. I had a queen bed with a private bathroom. 15 minutes later, I was walking to another bus. I paid special attention to the landmarks because addresses were beyond my understanding. Getting lost was no fun.

Perhaps my favorite thing to do in Bogota was play tejo. Tejo can be played for fun with points or in professional tournaments. The object of the game is to throw fairly heavy discs at small triangle packets filled with gunpowder. Points are acquired when there’s a ferocious bang! They sound like revolvers firing at random. It’s fun playing in lanes with 30 people. It sounds like a fire fight. Only difference is, everyone’s drinking beers and smoking various substances. Players stand about 40 feet away and the gun powder packets are about 3 inches. They sit in a clay bay at a 45 degree angle.

Aside from tejo, sampling mouthwatering exotic fruits was a meal in itself. I sampled literally dozens of fruits I never knew existed. Fruits with vibrant colors and bizarre shapes with funky names. Outrageous natural flavors. I’d return to Bogota just for the fruits!

Though Bogota’s fruits were an enlightening experience, it made me sad and angry. I thought of Monsanto — the massive evil corporation based in the US that’s burned farmers in more ways than god intended. I thought of the politicians and lobbyists that support GMOs — special seeds created from the same corporation that developed Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Between fresh fruits in Bogota, godly organic produce in the rural Nicaraguan mountains and Panamanian islands, I practically had steam coming outta my ears. I drank water from a stream near Ecuador. It was the purest, most amazing water I’ve ever had. If you know what food and water should taste like, it should make you absolutely livid that corporations and politicians are taking control of our food supply and destroying our water for bigger profits.

La Candelaria: I made a friend at the bus stop who guided me to La Candelaria in Bogota. La Candelaria is a hipster neighborhood that reminded me of Berkeley and San Francisco. Graffiti on every corner, VW’s, head shops, music stores, and reggae music all flooded by local college students.

The nightlife here was unique. Hundreds of people mingled throughout the area on bicycles and mopeds. The energy was comforting and it was refreshing to meet a wide array of travelers in this area who spoke broken English.

The daunting feelings of massive Bogota subsided when I found a great hostel in this neighborhood. I got a private room and bathroom for COL$60,000/night. I met other international travelers. I had a solid internet connection, private living quarters, a hot shower, and food from all over the world in my neighborhood.

In the following days, I explored the city on bicycle — by guided tour and on my own. Two friends and I rode around for five hours with a Bogota local. We saw cemeteries, tasted the world’s finest coffee, learned about political graffiti, human rights, Pablo Escobar, terrorism, cocaine, Buddhism, the upper class, and people who lived in sewers. We learned about the Emerald Industry and agriculture.

Attractions: The city of Bogota, home to about 10 million people, is a massive city. It resides at 8,660 ft in the Andes Mountains. The air is a little thin, but I got used to it. You’d really need many months to see everything the city has to offer. I enjoyed the hike to the top of the Monserrate.

Monserrate is a mountain that dominates the city center of Bogota, the capital city of Colombia. It rises to 10,341 ft above the sea level, where there is a church built in the 17th century. — Wikipedia

Bolivar Square is a huge plaza with government buildings, tremendous history and usually the location of concerts and festivals. It’s a great place to socialize and take in the open air. I also enjoyed the Bogota Botanical Gardens. It too was a nice place to casually walk around, mingle, and learn something new.

However, I enjoyed Parque 93 moreso. It reminded me of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where singles, families, couples, bikers, and dog walkers all come together for lunch, reading the newspaper, and snoozing in the sunshine. The bike tour was probably my favorite though. There’s a number of companies throughout the city. If you’re looking for nightlife in Bogota, I can vouch for that too. If you’re a social butterfly, workaholic, party animal, foodie, or entrepreneur, Bogota has plenty to offer.

[bluerosesburnblue]

I’ve had a LOT of thoughts about the nature of data in Kingdom Hearts, particularly what it could mean for the current story arc in KHUx, so I’m just gonna write down all of my data-based musings below so that I have at least some record of what I’m thinking of

First and longest order of business revolves around the “The Black Box houses the Datascape of KHUX” theory, which is my personal favorite theory about its contents right now

For anyone unaware of the “The Black Box houses the Datascape of KHUx” theory, the name tells you pretty much all you need to know. If KHUx takes place in a datascape, including Daybreak Town, then the machine running the datascape must be somewhere. The current status of the real Daybreak Town is unknown at the moment (and whatever’s going on with the Arc/Lifeboat room is unclear. Darkness says “From the tower, you can head back to the real world and find the lifeboat that’s hidden in the real tower.” So are they in the datascape until they get to the pod room? If so, how did Maleficent get out of the data? How did Lauriam get out of the data to confront her? Are the pods even the lifeboats/arcs like we’ve all been assuming or are these just how you get back to the REAL Daybreak Town?). But, back to the point: we currently do not know what computer is running the KHUx simulation or where it’s located

“Black Box” is a computing/engineering term that refers to any system that can be fed inputs and give outputs, without the internal workings of it being known. It can refer to other things in different contexts, but this is the most common form. (And, interestingly, black boxes are relevant in the recent Square-Enix game Nier: Automata, where they function as the “consciousnesses” of the main Android types you see in the game. You could say... like the Android’s heart)

And not only is “Black Box” a computing term, but so are “Daybreak” and “Dandelion,” which are types of Xerox computers from the same line. (Some more interesting ones can be found in this Twitter thread [x] even if I think their theory has a few holes, specifically in that I’m pretty sure that Scala ad Caelum is NOT a simulation). But we have the Dandelions inside a simulated Daybreak Town, and I think that the Black Box could contain that simulation

Now, my absolute favorite bit of trivia about datascapes, courtesy of the KH3 Gummiphone Glossary, is this:

Artificial simulations based on real-world data. Inside a datascape, time can be made to loop infinitely, and the impossible becomes possible. The alternate Twilight Town that Roxas shared with Hayner, Pence, and Olette is one such world.

I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have added that unless it was relevant. Time is as irrelevant in a datascape as it is in the Realm of Darkness, maybe even moreso. So long as the machine running the datascape remains intact, the simulation can run indefinitely with the inhabitants being none the wiser that time is passing

Another bit of trivia is the fact that hearts cannot be made into data. This is stated in coded when describing the Data Sora’s Heartless, and it seems to be corroborated in KH2 as Ansem the Wise’s machine designed to digitize Kingdom Hearts, an aggregate of hearts, just EXPLODES when it tries. There’s just something about the structure of hearts that makes them impossible to convert into a digital format (and if DDD’s visits to The Grid are any indication, hearts don’t normally develop within data without strong outside interference, either)

I’ve been thinking about this since the cutscenes after quest 910 first came out, but the implication that I see is that wherever the Dandelions are, their bodies have been converted into data, but their hearts are intact inside of whatever houses the Datascape. Hearts seem... kind of immortal in the ageless sense, so they can exist in there indefinitely. If the Black Box does house the Data Daybreak Town, then it also holds the lost hearts of all of the Dandelions, trapped in an ever-looping simulation. It would be a literal Black Box: you input the Dandelions, the simulation runs with no one able to observe it, and at some point we may see the output

Luxord did say that the box contained “hope”

And there’s not enough pods for everyone. Any number of characters could be in this data stasis, waiting to be released in the future. It could be one possible way for Player to still be around, at any rate

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding a break here because this is related but different: I’ve been mulling over the idea of Player getting trapped in Game Central Station. Brain calls it a place that “doesn’t exist in this world or time,” and with Ralph showing up as a Link in KH3, my initial hunch is that Game Central Station and its sub-worlds exist in the modern time of Kingdom Hearts. And since KHUx definitely takes place in the past (otherwise what is the point of the Lifeboats?), then that makes Game Central a paradoxical location and when Player goes there they could also be taking a shortcut to the future

And the whole point of the Game Central plot right now is to detach it from the Data Daybreak Town. So what happens if they do, but with Player still in Game Central Station? Would that, then, trap Player in the future using an abuse of the rules of data? And if so, would Sora and Friends be able to go to Game Central Station and find a very lost and confused Keyblade Wielder and their Chirithy and get them out?

Just food for thought

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Also, also, on the data talk... The Grid in DDD leads to the impression that data does not naturally have hearts, yet the characters in Game Central Station appear to have hearts. They certainly act like they do. We know through Toy Box that inanimate object can gain a heart through the love of someone who does. So could the same principle then be applied to data characters? Is it possible that the inhabitants of Game Central Station grew hearts due to the strong emotions that the people who played their games had for those characters?

That would certainly be one way to resolve the “data doesn’t have hearts” “explain Tron and Data Sora” thing going on in the series sometimes

#kingdom hearts #khux #liz's secret reports #this is really just three random khux musings involving data #but i just... REALLY like the implications you can draw from how data works in kh and what it could mean

[beeftony]

There’s a moment early on in campaign 2 of Critical Role, after the Mighty Nein first make the acquaintance of The Gentleman. To prove their merit, Fjord bets every piece of gold he has in the Gambit of Ord, and wins. Once that interaction is over, Caleb pulls Fjord aside, asking if he had wagered the party funds or if it was just his own money.

Fjord, perhaps misunderstanding the intent behind the question, reassures Caleb that he only risked his own gold. Caleb then surprises him by asking, “Did you know I would have been okay if you had?” He then goes on to explain that, while he doesn’t put much stock in luck, he does believe in calculated risks.

This interaction is the key to understanding Caleb as a character and why things played out the way they did in the Bright Queen’s court. And, not coincidentally, it all ties into the dodecahedron.

The dodecahedron, by its very existence, seems to contradict Caleb’s worldview. Once per day, it allows one person to alter fate in their favor. This becomes especially interesting knowing that Liam’s previous character, Vax, had this as an inherent ability that, while based on a feat, tied in narratively to his relationship with the literal Goddess of Fate. But in truth, the Luxon actually serves as the perfect illustration of Caleb’s philosophy, and his ultimate goal: with the ability to bend time and fate, any sort of risk becomes much easier to calculate.

A running joke in the fandom has been that the Mighty Nein have used this incredibly powerful, unknowable, culturally significant artifact for ridiculously petty things, such as winning a drinking contest. After all, what’s the point of having power if you’re not going to use it?

At the same time, Caleb can seem like a cipher of a character sometimes because he plays his long term goals close to his chest. While one could reasonably assume he may want revenge for what the Empire did to him, he instead focuses his efforts on becoming powerful enough to ensure that the defining mistake in his life, the moment that broke him, need never have happened to begin with. And he’s not going to get that from the Empire.

Moreso than campaign one, a major focus of campaign two has been about questioning audience assumptions regarding various fantasy tropes. Vox Machina traveled along a much more traditional arc, starting out as a group of misfits who grew to become heroes of the land. With the Mighty Nein, however, the players have specifically built their characters to go against that kind of standard fantasy mold. Similarly, Wildemount as a setting has more of a focus on grey morality, entirely by design.

We first learn of the Krynn through rumors, through books in a library, and even smutty historical fiction. They encounter one and fight him in the sewers, but only because he attacks them first. They have no skin in this game, no interest in getting involved in this conflict. They don’t even want the dodecahedron at first, but end up taking it anyway.

They also start to question what they’ve been told about their supposed enemy. Jester is quick to correct people not to use the term “Crick,” as the phrase is a derogatory slur and she doesn’t approve of being disrespectful to anybody in that way. She’s fine with pranking people, but not demeaning or dehumanizing them (technically they’re drow, but you get what I mean). Once they get a taste of Xhorhas, and see that the monstrous races have managed to build what amounts to a functional society, Beau questions her mentor, Dairon, when they suggest that not even one of the Krynn deserves to live.

Fundamentally speaking, there isn’t that much difference between the Dwendalian Empire and the Krynn Dynasty. Both believe that they are doing their best to keep their people safe and prosperous. Both can be extremely harsh and draconian in the way their societies are structured, but within those societies there exist a multitude of beings who simply want to find their way in the world and live out their lives. The Krynn kidnap children, massacre garrisons and darken the skies, but the Empire imprisons people for worshipping unapproved gods, recruits children with magical potential and proceeds to torture, brainwash, and convince them to kill their own families, all in service of some supposed greater good. This means that allying with one or the other isn’t a question of morality, but political advantage. Which is where this all comes full circle.

When Caleb reaches into that bag, he makes a bold declaration: “I am of the Empire... but I am no friend to the Empire.” When he produces the dodecahedron, all the blades in the room clatter to the ground, and the Bright Queen is rendered momentarily speechless. He takes a calculated risk. And I’m very excited to see how it pays off.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #caleb widogast

[lotus-mirage]

The Untamed episode 50 liveblog

Wow.  D: I can’t believe I’m almost done with this.  I will probably wind up at least watching some of the animated version, but for now this is the end!  Aaahh

So Jin Guangyao didn’t make a move, then.

Focus is squarely on Nie Huaisang now. He did it on purpose then?

‘Didn’t have a clue’?

Okay, but was the rest of it him, too? He seems pretty shaken right now honestly.

He pushed the sword further in??? D:

Oh that’s a horrible confession to make. That he didn’t want to hurt Lan Xichen, I mean. That’s absolutely going to hurt the guy after Jin Guangyao finally passes.

It’d almost be kinder to tell him that he was using him too, frankly. Almost. I don’t know. Yikes.

Oh jeez that background shot of Jin Ling D,:

I keep forgetting he’s here watching this too yikes

Wait what’s he doing

How the heck did he do that???? He’s been bleeding out for at least a few minutes already!

Is he breaking the seal thing!?

Uh oh

Is he going to stay? It looks like he’s at least considering it.

???? I thought he wanted him to stay!?

Okay now these are the dramatics I was expecting from Nie Mingjue

Jin Ling D,:

Where’d he go? Is he still in there?

I still don’t know what to make of Nie Huaisang

Oh! Was he the last person he had to get revenge on?

Well there’s literally everyone else

:,( at Jiang Cheng just watching him

He’s leaving!? D:

How many child actors did they have for like one scene each??

Oh Nie Huaisang was holding the hat?

Wait is that blood

Not sure what he was feeling there. It was interesting though. Huh.

I’m D,: at this entire conversation with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. It’s so good.

Oh flashback?

Did he get himself caught on purpose!? D,:

Ahhhhhh

Hahaha was that an interrupted confession? It sure felt like one.

Ahhh Lan Sizhui :,D

Oh good they’re telling him

Ahhhhhhhhh

they’re hugging ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

‘Sad but thrilled’ is a good description

Hahaha this is fantastic

Okay the leg hug is a little awkward but the sentiment is nice

Ahhhhhh

Oh! They’re going back to Qishan together! Oh that’s so nice.

There is a lot of ‘person in black and person in white walking off together’ in this show

WAIT WAIT is he not going too!??

?????

WHAT

?????????????????

is this a flashback or a time skip what is happening

I mean very pretty but what

Okay these are new clothes so assumedly not a flashback

Good they didn’t split up

Oh I recognize this shot

Several of these shots actually - they’re used in either the opening or the ending I think

Oh good Nie Huaisang’s here too. We might actually be getting an explanation.

Okay that ‘Thou shall not befriend the devil’ was very threatening please clarify.

They laughed but I’m not sure if it was actually a joke

...okaaaay

Oh good they’re confirming it even without him

More or less

?? Okay what’s going on now. I’m on edge after that whole-

Shoot they are splitting up!?

??????

Okay so it’s not forever but??

Oh he’s playing the song!?

Thank goodness they’re implying it’s not for too long.

Wow is he in another outfit already?

That’s very pretty

?? What prompted the pause in music??

Okay he turned around was that them meeting back up?

Oh.

Oh thats the end. :,(

End notes:

Okay I had to do something but I am back half an hour later and watching the ending and it is giving me very strong emotions wow

Okay so.

First off: very good series - I was confused a whole lot but it made me feel things and I love it.

The ending was really well done, I think - there was a lot of ambiguity but it wrapped up enough of the emotional threads in a very effective manner.

Wow, uh. Hmmm. What to say.

Thoughts on characters/plot threads as I remember them:

I found that the strongest emotional thread of this show was probably the family/grief aspect. Mainly the family aspect, but the two were often combined. It showed up absolutely everywhere - it was both Wei Wuxian’s driving factor and in a way Jin Guangyao’s? Moreso the lack of it in the latter’s case. And a complicated issue with both (especially with their parents). On second thought this may hold true for a lot of the cast.

It did kind of feel like Wen Ruohan was kind of not a character and was just there to drive the war forward (and thus the characters and plot). Which is fine? But it leaves me feeling like the driving force behind the war was a little hollow, which is eh.

The Wen remnants were super compelling, though. That entire arc hit hard and made sense as a logical effect of the war.

I don’t really know how to feel about the post-timeskip stuff as a whole. On the one hand, I enjoyed myself a lot? It was great fun. On the other hand a lot of it contrasted sharply with the mass death at the end of the last arc.

The characters themselves were mostly pretty great (with the exceptions of, like, the Wen antagonists, some sect leaders, Su She and Jin Zixun).

I always have a hard time talking about main characters (in this case WWX and LWJ). I think it’s because we know so much about them that it’s hard to pick a single subject to talk about with them??

Anyway, they were really great. They had unique dynamics with each other and with all the other characters that evolved as they did. Neither were static characters and each step they took made sense?

Jiang Cheng is a very flawed character and he made me feel a lot and he’s my favorite. After a certain point he just had so many strong emotions, many of which conflicted each other and it was just entirely compelling and relatable. I feel like he is the strongest character outside of the main two + Jin Guangyao, although that may be my bias speaking.

Jin Guangyao. I totally forgot to think about story structure with him, frankly - didn’t see why he kept getting so much screen time and was constantly developing as well. I didn’t realize he was going to be a full-blown antagonist, let alone the antagonist, way past when I should have. He’s a sympathetic character, and the audience is reminded of this even as he does all these awful things. Yeah, he keeps finding himself in terrible situations but he also causes a lot of innocent casualties. I don’t totally know how to feel about him fully, but I think that’s the point.

Lan Xichen is also very flawed, but like. In a gentler way? I’m not sure we really see enough to know him as well as we could, but we do know that he’s trying and he cares, and sometimes that sucks for him.

Nie Huaisang is frankly a bit of an enigma. Unlike Jin Guangyao, he doesn’t exposit or drop masks where we can see him. I think he’s very interesting but maybe too underutilized in the majority of the series for me to say much else about him. I did really like the banter he had with Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, though.

Not sure I have as much to say on the other characters. Oops.

Lan Sizhui! Best boy. I love him.

Wen Ning is also best boy. He’s adorable. And also terrifying sometimes.

Wen Qing was fantastic. I liked her character so much and was very sad to see her go.

I was very surprised by how much Jin Zixuan grew on me. Props to that.

Jin Ling was also great. I loved his interactions with basically everyone. Also I feel like with maybe the exception of maybe Lan Xichen the ending probably was the worst for him. Smack dab in the center of the family drama, if you can count multiple set-ups and murders that.

I kind of simultaneously wish Jiang Yanli was more and am kind of content with how she was? I mean some of her role is a little... overly-limited, but she’s still a fairly important aspect of the story and continuously makes her own decisions and the like.

Madame Yu was a more interesting character to me than her husband but was also much more antagonistic. It’s an interesting duality where I want to see more of her but also want her to not interact with the other characters much, which doesn’t make any sense.

Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan didn’t have much of an impact outside of the Coffin Town bit, but frankly that was painful enough that it’s fine!! It was well done and their situation was awful but that hurt enough already!

Xue Yang is a character. Very well-portrayed and I feel like the actor had a blast but I feel like he didn’t have a giant impact either? He was a cool and scary villain.

Overall, it was a great show with a lot of interesting characters! It was great at emotional storytelling, except for when there was whiplash. I loved the music and the costuming, and the actors were great. Some of the special effects were a little wacky (looking at Lan Xichen’s instrument and the Wens’ dog thing), but some of them were really cool (see: Wen Ning’s entrance into the temple). Sometimes the politics-talk grated my nerves a bit, but that may be mostly a personal preference thing. The fighting also took some getting used to, but was impressive in some areas.

The show made me feel a lot and I am still feeling both the mixed bittersweet feelings from the show and that oh-shoot-the-story’s-over hole-in-the-chest feeling right now, but I don’t know how else to talk about that.

It wasn’t perfect but I enjoyed it a lot and am very impressed by it.

Let me know if I missed anything - there’s a lot and I am totally open for discussion.

#the untamed #mdzs #untamed liveblog #my thoughts

[fuwafuwamedb]

A Cursed G Pt 25 (Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Hakuno)

Previous Part: 1 - HakuPOV / GilPOV, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

_____

She dressed up.

It was a bit of a mystery why she bothered to do so, but she found herself spending several minutes after the shower in the morning looking through her wardrobe and picking out something a bit nicer than some of her other attire.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu were talking about fish they’d looked up while she’d been asleep, the king commenting on building something similar once they returned to Uruk.

“We could put it in the gardens,” Enkidu offered.

“I would like to get a good look at these sharks, since they are prevalent to weather disasters and known for their violence against those who tread their waters. They remind me of my lions.”

She wasn’t going to get involved in that discussion.

No, instead she was putting on some of the jewelry that Gilgamesh had left in the room. She was brushing her hair out and taking the time to fix her dress a bit more before she found herself pausing by the mirror.

Ages ago, she would have been spending her Saturday afternoon in the living room, watching crime dramas and snacking on some cheap snack from her fridge. Her phone would have been on an app or playing some light music in a vain attempt to help her focus and to fill in the silence of the empty room. She would have taken the time to maybe order a pizza as the evening wore on, perhaps some Chinese food if she felt in the mood.

The woman in the mirror was entirely different.

The attire was far too much for a lazy weekend. The extra color to her face was entirely different from her usual pallor… and then there was the impression she got from her own reflection.

Things were happening.

They hadn’t really been happening before.

“Hakuno?”

A knock at the door stopped her from thinking too deeply about what it all meant. She closed her eyes and turned away from herself, opening her bedroom door and looking at the two.

“Ready?”

“We’ve been ready,” Enkidu promised.

They drove to the aquarium with the same conversation continuing of what to look at once they were inside. She found her hand slipping into Gilgamesh’s own as they made it to the parking lot near the place, Enkidu bouncing ahead only to walk backwards as they spoke.

And then they were soon inside.

The entrance was exactly the kind of thing that would impress the two: a large dome room showed a world of jellyfish swimming with a quiet ambiance of smooth jazz and the lines of those wishing to enter the rest of the building.

The movement of the jellyfish were just as soothing to watch as one would have hoped. Their string-like tentacles flowed forth from the great umbrella shaped bells of their body.

“Hakuno,” Gilgamesh nudged.

“Jellyfish. They’re called that because they’re really gelatinous. They look like they’d be really weak, but they’re packed with stingers on those tentacles that would cause serious damage.”

The line moved, inching forward further and further as Enkidu and Gilgamesh distracted themselves with looking at the scores of jellyfish swimming around them. She could feel Gilgamesh pulling her in, wrapping his arms around her more and taking in the area.

This is what the future holds.

It was things like this that she’d be giving up if she went to live forever in the past. There would be no watching majestic fish swim or listening to music without a band playing nearby. There wouldn’t be places were everyone could go to see something without having to have a certain status that she would lack due to her gender.

They made it in, with her paying their entrance fees and moving along.

Scores of colorfish passed them as they moved into the next room. A whole reef passed before their very eyes, with hundreds of fish moving in schools to and fro. The clay being stared in awe, needing her to tug them along to the glass to get a better view.

“This is impossible.”

“Welcome to the ocean, Enkidu.”

Gilgamesh was still holding her as Enkidu moved as close as possible and watched it all.

There was something about how they looked at it all.

She had never seen someone look that way before. Their eyes were so alight, their hands were pressed to the glass. She could see them trying and failing to keep their mouth shut. It helped with the light music playing, creating more and more of an atmosphere.

“Hakuno!”

Hakuno moved forward a bit, bringing the silent king with her as the being pointed to the floor of the large tank.

“Look at that! It matches the sand.”

“It does.”

“What’s it called?”

She hadn’t a clue, but… Her eyes went to the area around them, motioning to the sign nearby.

“You can learn about them there.”

The being took off for it, finger moving along the information panel a moment before they were noting the kids around them.

A series of eyes were looking to them as Enkidu laughed and began to read aloud for them.

“No sharks,” Gilgamesh noted.

“You want to see the sharks?”

The man shrugged, all too pleased with himself for some reason. Whatever was on his mind, she wasn’t going to intrude right now. Leave him to his bubble of emotional space.

She motioned for Enkidu and began to head deeper into the building.

The rooms grew darker and darker as they went.

Once per room, they had to stop.

The glowing fish from the pressured depths of the ocean had the king and clay’s attention. Hakuno found herself reading aloud the signs for them, remaining held in the king’s arms the whole time.

They paused again at the sight of the seahorses, watching them swim around and around in their circular tank, clinging to the plants within. Each of the little fish seemed to simply gleam like gold underneath the lights, drawing murmurs of praise from the clay being.

“They’d be noble steeds if they were bigger.”

“I don’t think they’d be the best ride for getting across the water.”

Enkidu dismissed that immediately with a handwave.

Further on they went.

And there, just beyond the anglerfish statue, was the large tank she had remembered all too well. The reef below and the anemones sheltered great numbers of clownfish. The depths of the coral showed signs of eels, all of whom seemed to be enjoying the task of sticking their heads out or simply bathing under the artificial lights of their enormous tank structure.

What was most important though were the fish on prominent display, swimming just over their heads and before their eyes. Their great size was only matched by the rows of teeth that a few showed off.

They lost Enkidu to their awe once more, finding the being scampering forward to look at the collection.

The room was mostly empty right now, but they could sit on the benches near the tank without anyone interrupting them.

It was nice to settle in, even moreso to just watch Enkidu move from panel to panel to read aloud from the information. They would look to her for clarification.

“New Zealand is south from here, it’s near Australia.”

“Australia is a country and continent. Think an enormous island.”

The being nodded at each answer before they began to follow after the movement of the large beasts above their head.

“That one has younglings,” Enkidu noted.

It did?

She looked up, finding the king’s face looking down at her.

They were… cuddling.

She hadn’t really noticed until she found his face so close to hers.

The whole time they had been traversing through the aquarium, she hadn’t moved more than a half a centimeter from the king’s side. Her hand had remained firmly laced with his, holding it close until this moment, when she realized that she was holding his hand.

Her heart began to beat a little faster in their tank surrounded space. The sounds of Enkidu’s voice seemed to blend in with the silence in the background.  Now there was just that soft beating in her ears, the sound of her own chest hammering away. She could feel her body warming as she felt the other’s shadow loom over her a bit more. She could feel him-

No, she couldn’t feel him moving.

He wasn’t moving an inch now. He had simply leaned a little closer, looking to her.

It was her who was closing the distance between them. It was her who was being the fool and prolonging this eye contact.

Her hand tangled in his hair, watching the smug hint of a smile. Her breath simply stopped at an inhale as the man tilted his head towards the hand she had in his hair. Her lips found his, seeming to almost drift to his.

There was something nice about being in his arms, she thought idly to herself.

Gilgamesh pulled her onto his lap.

Hakuno closed her eyes and simply sunk into the depths of his support.

This was truly like nothing else.

She hadn’t come here in so long, having found that none of her friends ever wanted to really look at the fish or learn more about them. She’d forgotten how much the building emptied out between the guided tours.

“Gil!”

Those lips pulled back, the king setting her on the bench before he moved to look at what Enkidu was pointing out.

It was genuine interest.

No humoring her like Cu and Emiya. No yawning like Rin and Rani. Sakura tried, but she would get tired after the seahorses and want to leave. It was rare that she got to visit this room.

They could see a couple turtles joining the swimming collection now, earning the king’s and the clay’s attention. The two were commenting on the shell and the capabilities of the creatures. Both of them were grinning, taking in the scene around them.

‘You plan to marry Gilgamesh, take him home, marry him there, and then come back here to…’

Hakuno looked around at the space they were in again.

There wasn’t a single soul in there with them right now. Everyone was opting for the guided tours so they could sit through the other unique features of the aquarium. There were no friends or acquaintances.

Right now, if she picked up her phone and she opened up her contacts, she had more for her bills and her money than she had for her friends.

“Hakuno!”

Enkidu was motioning at the turtle, mimicking its motions through the water. She couldn’t help the smile that came to her face at the sight, but…

‘It’s lonesome here,’ they had told her during the last evening.

It was lonesome here.

The being and the king were moving back to her side though, Enkidu leaning in and frowning a bit.

“Is something wrong?”

She was thinking about staying in Uruk, somewhere that she barely knew a thing about and was still working to become fluent in their language. She was considering staying with Gilgamesh, who she had only really just started to get to know.

And she was thinking now about the being smiling and dancing around them through the aquarium, finding unending joy in the sight of a bunch of little fishes and in turtles.

She was finding herself unable to make a list of things in her mind that required that she be here.

Everything in the world seemed to be moving her towards the hands that were extending her way. Both Gilgamesh and Enkidu were offering to help her to her feet.

Her hands went to theirs, finding herself up upon her feet once more before she was being led to the glass.

“We were looking at this fish,” the king informed her. “We’ve seen a few like it in our Euphrates.”

“That makes sense. It’s just a ah…” She paused, looking at the two as she realized.

They were speaking Sumerian.

How long had they been doing this? When had she stopped speaking her own language? She had been talking to the two, working around saying words and things that she meant, but she didn’t know the word for turtle.

“It’s a turtle,” Enkidu replied, motioning at the sign nearby.

She gave a small nod, moving to lean against Gilgamesh a bit more.

“I like a lot of the fish, but the turtles have always been one of the ones that I look for when I’m here.” She enjoyed their swimming around just as much as the being seemed to enjoy. She could see them looking at the scene before them and thinking deeply.

Perhaps…

She really shouldn’t miss a week of classes.

She would miss a couple more after that as well, missing the last of her semester. Her teachers wouldn’t be pleased. Her friends would be wondering about how she was doing.

The strong arms around her waist said that she wouldn’t fall into despair though. The being in front of them flashed a smile that said that everything would work out just fine. The more she was alone with these two, the more the world felt like their oyster.

The two at her side seemed like they ran the world. Money was not a worry. Boredom was gone, entirely out the window and running as far from her as possible. She wasn’t thinking about what had to be next.

Her eyes were on the scene she hadn’t seen in a good couple years and she was finding herself in awe with the two at her sides.

The world she lived in…

It felt like a pair of shoes she could no longer fit into.

The new life was too promising, too exciting and vast, lying just beyond her fingertips.

“Hakuno?”

Gilgamesh drew her attention back to him.

“We should keep moving.”

People were coming into the room, rushing to the glass as they stepped back.

Enkidu wrapped their arm around hers and motioned her to head off.

They moved to the next area, settling onto the front row for a show with whales and dolphins. The king and the clay being looked upon the beasts in excitement, chattering away to her about the beasts as they would perform flips and jump through hoops.

“Hakuno! They’ve tamed the beasts!”

“We should tame ours, Gil!”

“Enkidu’s right. We’ll have to look into how they managed this. The information should be on a sign, shouldn’t it?”

“I don’t see a sign nearby, Gil.”

She pulled the two in closer, pressing her lips to their cheeks.

The two settled in.

The two settled closer.

“Siduri would like this too,” Enkidu murmured as the show went on. She was nestled between them nicely as the show came to an end, leaving her to force herself and them up to their feet.

“We should head out, shouldn’t we? It’s getting towards closing,” she told them.

“Is it?” Gilgamesh asked, glancing to the room around them.

“Ah, right, they’re only open until a certain time.” Enkidu nodded. “We figured they’d just keep the place open for us.”

Every employee would hate them if they did that.

She shook her head, motioning towards the front doors. “It is getting close to dinner time.”

“Hold on,” Enkidu motioned to the manta exhibit nearby. “You can pet the fish here.”

It had been a while…

Her hand was in Enkidu’s immediately, Gilgamesh laughing as Hakuno ended up smirking to the being and leading them to the room nearby.

They had to pet the mantas.

The skates and the mantas were too cool to miss out on.

“Hakuno?”

Gilgamesh was talking to one of the employees nearby for a few minutes as they pet the fish. At the being’s call, Hakuno turned, glancing their way.

“This was a great trip. We never would have seen half of these fish if it weren’t for you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The being glanced to their friend again, their smile going soft.

“You are worried about him still?”

“I do not like thinking about Uruk without you there.”

She hadn’t even stepped foot there yet. They were in this world, learning about a bunch of fish they would never encounter outside of this building.

Perhaps it was best to tell the being about her change of heart in the shark exhibit. The more she got herself used to the idea, the more she found herself accepting that it was going to be a thing. She would need Enkidu’s help in the end, since she wouldn’t know much about living in the palace and Gilgamesh seemed like someone who would give half directions about things.

Her mouth opened. The words were on the tip of her tongue.

A slow shift from near one of the other doors caught her attention. The dark haired woman in white and gold glanced her way, smirking a little before looking to the king nearby.

“…Hakuno?”

She forced herself to look away from where the goddess was, to where Enkidu was.

“Did I say something wrong again?”

“No, I just…”

The woman was gone.

Enkidu looked uncomfortable, pulling their hand back and accepting a paper towel from a nearby worker.

“Enkidu,” Hakuno followed after them, wrapping her hand around their arm. “Listen-“

“It’s alright.”

“I want to stay in Uruk.”

She could feel the being still, but the room still felt off from before. It felt like Ishtar was still watching them.

The being in front of her turned to face her.

“You want to stay?”

“I do.”

It was risky, but she would have the two of them and Enkidu and Gilgamesh were both incredibly attentive. She wouldn’t get bored, not with so much to do and see. This world was at the touch of a keyboard and an internet browser search.

Their world was barely even touched upon in her most detailed of books. It was full of lives that they helped and a whole kingdom…

It would take adjusting, but she would do her best.

“Just promise not to let Ishtar near me,” she asked of the being.

“She will never touch you,” Enkidu vowed, pulling her into their arms and holding her tightly. “You will like Uruk. If anyone will get along with you well, it will be Siduri. You both’ll drive Gil and I crazy there.”

She really hoped so.

“Enkidu!”

Gil’s firm tone left the being snickering, hugging her closer.

“Aw, Gil, Hakuno and I were just sharing a warm embrace. You cuddle her so much I figured it was my turn. You had only how many months before I came along?”

“Don’t forget we can send you back to Uruk,” the man growled.

“He threatens me, Hakuno. What are we to do with him?”

Marry him, probably, Hakuno thought idly.

She found herself pulled back to his side, the two beginning an insult contest that was thankfully incoherent to the other aquarium guests. Their insults turned to playful jabs in the side as they left the building, heading further and further from the doors and towards the car.

Something still felt wrong.

Hakuno glanced back, frowning as she found nothing.

“…Gil?”

The king paused from giving the being a good kick in the rear end to glance her way. “What is it?”

“How much safer is Uruk compared to here?”

“It depends,” Enkidu answered for the king, “The gods protect the people when it’s divine problems, like other angry gods.”

There was a flicker of gold not too far off, just behind the bushes.

“I think I need to do my homework,” Hakuno told them both. “Let’s head home.”

#drabble #drabbles

[newsnerd-ooc]

The Eternal Traveler

It had been a few weeks since I had met Shalla. The enigmatic elven character had captured my imagination in so many days, his words consuming my thoughts. It was odd.

No, it was not a notion of emotions. Moreso curiosity. Everything about the man was a source of fancy and fascination, whether it was his unique elven structure, the cadence of his words or perhaps his dress. 

And I think he knew he had that effect on me. I'm a naturally curious woman, somebody who could not put a good mystery down without finding out the end result, even if that means I have to cheat and skip to the end. 

So what drew this out of him? Was this a trap? Was he a slaver, drawing me in for some idolatrous operation that would end with me in chains? (Not that they could keep me.) Was he an enigmatic representative of something fouler?

A dozen options ran through my mind as I journeyed to the all-too-familiar town of Buccaneer Bay. It was here that a dozen memories of ill-intentioned memories rose to consciousness. My meeting with the cult leader Malus. My dealings and fights with the traitor Blackfyre. My trips across to the other place. Was this to be another in those entries?

I met Shalla by the docks, where he had been smoking a peacebloom joint. His ears perked as he seemed to detect me before I could get into range. A lopsided smile grew on his face. “You’re right -on- time Miss Rommel.” He would gesture toward a crate across from him. “All goes well?”

I roll my shoulders and shrug, my typical mask of nonchalant contact visible on my face. “As good as it can be. Just settling back into Stormwind until life calls me away once again.”

“And what keeps you in Stormwind?” Shallas queried.

“Friends.” A flash of Elia’s ever-loquacious grin crossed my mental eye. “Family.” Risri. “Familiarity.” The office. My old office. “You know?”

“Mm. I never took you to be one who settled in a single place.”

“Oh, I’m not, Shallas. But it’s nice to take a few days here and there, sticking to a single place.”

“Mm. The call of the wanderlust. Named after the need to always move. Always see. Always do. Does that befit you?” The elven figure asks. 

“I always said it does.” I could sense that Shallas was fond of the word games I tended to play with those who I did not know well, mixing mystery and ambiguity with the truths necessary for the moment. So I decided to breach it. “.....can I ask -why- you wanted me here? What are we seeing?” 

He smiled. “You found the Heart of the Theralts, didn’t you?”

I froze at the mention of the heart. No one was supposed to know about that. How did h-

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. We’ve been watching you for over a year, Miss Rommel.”

“We?” As he mentions that, my fingers trail toward a pistol I had hidden in my boot. 

“Yes. We. We’re aware that you..well ...your nature is unique. Have you ever wondered why you died?”

“I ...thought it was a timeline error.”

“Sort of. You are a unique entity, Miss Rommel. Your dealings with the otherworldly forces that center around your plane of existence has tainted you. It is a good taint, do not worry.” He chuckles, his amber eyes flitting before reaching into his suit, withdrawing a flask. “You and your friends. Those who touch the space between spaces are often permanently changed. Because of that, When you died, we played our part in your return. Arbiter is a hard man to convince.” The elven figure takes a sip. 

“The who now?”

“You’ll know soon enough. But may I ask what you were going to do with that heart?” He asks pointedly. I pause, patting the bag that held the creature’s form. I was hoping I could find somebody who could use it to further anti-void research. “Was in development….”

“Well...allow me to make you a deal. Do you like deals? Certainly, your Fellow does.” A cold yet informed smile crosses his lips. “If you give it to me, I can explain much.”

I bite back almost immediately. “How about telling me who you are and why you want the heart.” My entire body was tight, ready to bounce at a moment’s notice.

“I am what we call an Eternal Traveler...we wander the worlds, seeking that which has not been known and maintaining an eye on the forces that cross the planes of existence. We are not exactly like your Fellow; we do not deal in literary metaphors or linear arcs.”

“...Right.” I lower my shoulders, taking a deep breath. “So what do you deal in?”

“Understanding and empowering those we see with that -spark- of potential. Something you seem to reflect over and over, what with the parties and groups that seem intent on investing in you.” A pause for dramatic effect. “The heart is a relic that allows us to understand how death and the void interact. It will matter…but that is all I can offer. To get more.” He gestures at me. “Trade.”

I hesitate, considering the trade. Then I pull it out and offer it to him.

“Wonderful. You have made a good call, Miss Rommel.” He would stick the bag-of-hearts into his coat, the item disappearing beneath its fabric. “And now...consider us friends.” He would then withdraw a large bag from his coat, offering it to me. “ They are the garments of members. You are still a friend...but if you give me time. Perhaps more could come of it?” 

I take the bag out, pausing to withdraw the golden mask and the Titanically reinforced robe. “I...I’m flattered?”

“Use it wisely, Miss Rommel. We are eager to see what comes of you.” With that, he sat up and began the slow walk down the dock, leaving me with the magic of otherworldly beings in my fingers.

#A new path #a new canon #a new world #Latilda stories #If you have a problem with my canon or writings #I know it is canon divergent #but it's my story #so bite me.

[ryder-s-block]

Jaig Eyes (Ch 38)

Jaig Eyes (38/?)

A Clone Wars fanfic.

Always available on fanfiction.net 

Summary:

Kida, a former slave who now thrives as a bounty hunter, finds herself sucked into the war she advised Jango Fett against. Now that she's involved, she has to finally mourn the loss of Jango, seeing his face in the clones that man the GAR. What happens when she allows herself to get attached to one, not for his resemblance to her former mentor, but for his heart?

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Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Owner of the Voice

The planet of Moraband...or Korriban...reminded me slightly of how Tatooine looked from orbit. Though, while the dry and clear look of the nearly uninhabitable planets seemed similar, Korriban’s surface practically gleamed red. In addition, the usual shady traffic I encountered on Tatooine was nowhere to be found. 

Embo had mentioned a trading guild location on the planet, but with some asking around, I determined it was on the opposite side of the planet as my approach was.

I wasn’t sure why I preferred that. Maybe it was because I didn’t want word possibly getting back to the Republic about my exploration of the planet. Or maybe it was because I felt drawn to this particular part.

The planet almost seemed to be breathing, it was teeming so much with the Force. Despite the obvious life power that flowed through it, I felt cold. It was the Dark Side. Still, I could tell that what I was feeling was only a gentle echo of the power that had once resonated on the planet.

When my ancestors had practiced their dark arts there. When the fallen jedi...also my ancestors, technically...came to the planet and enslaved the Sith purebloods, entwining the dark arts of the natives with their own knowledge of the Force.

I swallowed as I turned off my autopilot, entering the planet’s dusty atmosphere. The moment my sensors registered that I had dipped below the dark cloudline, my senses burned like a fire in my mind. I was in a daze, my hands tilting the joystick to turn my ship and coast through the desert landscape. The very planet itself glowed a dark orange in the slow sunset, the dark red sand of the world spinning in slow circles in the wind. Massive formations of red rock towered above the wings of my shuttle, casting me in shadow as I passed them.

I didn’t know what navigation I was following. I just knew that something was calling me. Tugging at the back of my mind like a child pulling incessantly at a string. 

It wasn’t long before I emerged from my low-flying flight, passing a few final towering structures of stone to find a valley. It pulsed with power.

And with the echoes of the dead.

The valley was lined with temples that I somehow knew were tombs. A particularly large pyramid structure stood at the end of the valley, the long stone courtyard that led to it littered with destroyed statues. The statues that remained intact depicted massive towering warriors, their heads bent. 

I couldn’t tell if the action was supposed to be out of respect...or submission.

The engines of my shuttle whirred to a low, cooling hum as I set the ship down within the massive courtyard. The gangway descended, the surprisingly cool wind whipping past my cloak that was draped over my plain, dented armor--I’d scratched away the paint during the hyperspace jump to Korriban. I pulled the hood of the dark gray cloak up over my short hair, trying to block some of the swirling sand.

Whatever had called me here was quiet now. There was no voice in my mind. No enticing words to draw me closer.

But there was a darkness. And power. 

I strode from the gangway of my shuttle, following the pulsing power that pulsed from deep within the towering pyramid. My eyes were drawn to the horizon, aware of how the sun was almost halfway below the mountains, the valley darkening from orange towards red. My peripheral vision caught movement, drawing my gaze.

Something feral loomed up in the broken structures that lined the valley. Its stature vaguely reminded me of Marrok, Embo’s anooba. Yet, instead of covered with fur, the creature looked almost leathery with long spines trailing down its haggard back. It’s long tail, difficult to make out in the fading light, looked long and whip-like.

Even though it didn’t come down from where it lurked, I could tell it was watching me. I walked a little faster up the stairs and through the towering metal door that was slightly ajar. I wondered if it had been pried apart by raiders, searching for lost trinkets of the Sith species. Then again, maybe it was pillaged by those that continued to study the Dark Side. 

Had others heard the call that I did?

I briefly considered that the door may be ajar on purpose...to invite me inside.

The halls inside were dark, illuminated only by the sweeping beam of my flashlight. It was only a short distance to cross a second threshold that opened into a long room. A stream of orange light filtered in from structural insecurities, encasing what looked like a stone coffin below at the end of the hall.

I stopped at the edge of a short staircase, leading into what I could only guess was once a court. It almost resembled a throne room. Massive statues along the room, depicting bent humanoid forms looking like they were trying not to be crushed by the pillars they were holding up. I swallowed hard, feeling the power resonating from the sarcophagus at the end of the room.

Decorating the stone were lines of old-looking metal, inscriptions etched into its surface. Despite my knowledge of languages, I had to admit that I had my shortcomings. Whatever was written there was old...so old that I couldn’t even begin to decipher what it might say.

As I drew closer, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I saw a looming statue towering over the sarcophagus. The figure was cloaked, its face in shadow. His large arms were crossed over his chest, as I imagined the body within the sarcophagus was lain. 

My heart leapt to my throat as I felt a familiar surge of power, my chest going cold as the air grew frighteningly still. I stopped in my tracks, a black mist rising from the sarcophagus with a low hissing sound, like sand sliding over stone. The mist continued to rise, an orange glow resonating from the top of the coffin, like someone had lit a fire inside. 

Fear froze my muscles as a figure began to take shape within the mist and fire, lifting his head slowly to stand in a mimic to the statue behind him. His hands unfolded from his chest as his glowing eyes regarded me. Despite the glow, his stare felt cold. Deadly.

The figure, though floating as a frightening apparition, wore armor as if he was in battle. Beautiful designs that I was sure once held meaning decorated the metal plating, his helmet sitting low to almost over his eyes. Were they not glowing, I was sure they would have been cast in shadow.

“Finally,” he spoke, the hair raising on the back of my neck. “You have answered my call.”

I knew his voice. His was the one that spoke in my mind, drawing me to Korriban. The one that gave me power...and darkness.

“It’s you,” I whispered fearfully, my fingers curling nervously around the pistol at my hip.

The spirit--as I now determined him to be, considering the circumstances--laughed. “That weapon won’t serve you here,” he assured me, waving his hand. I half-expected the pistol to fly from my holster, but nothing happened. Was he so sure it wouldn’t hurt him that he didn’t even bother to remove it from my grasp? He was obviously Force-sensitive, given his connection to me and his ability to somehow live past death...like Qui-Gon had.

“Who are you?” I asked finally, mustering my courage. I forced my hand to come off my pistol in a fake show of understanding and confidence.

The spirit rose to full height--which was rather impressive, mind you--and let out another chuckle. His voice in my head had always been a bit off-putting. But in this massive chamber, it was even moreso. I could tell his power was even greater here than anywhere else. His words echoed, almost sounding like three voices rather than one.

“I am Darth Bane.” For some reason, that name sparked a recognition. I’d heard something about him...somewhere. “I am the greatest Sith Lord to have ever lived.”

For some reason, my sass found its way back to the surface, my eyebrow arching. “How is that? Wouldn’t the greatest Sith Lord find a way to defeat death? Wasn’t there one of you that did that?”

That was dumb to say. I felt his anger chill the room even further, his head bowing to glower at me. “You speak of what you do not understand, girl,” Darth Bane hissed. “I alone have saved the Sith.”

I kept myself from responding with a sarcastic remark about how he was dead again. “How?”

“The Rule of Two.”

That sparked a thought. I’d heard about that. It was whispered in the darkest corners of the underworld. Especially after Obi-wan killed one on Naboo. “Always two Sith,” I whispered. “Did you train Maul?”

Bane let out a dark laugh. “An apprentice struck down be a padawan? No. I would not train one so weak.”

I breathed slowly, trying not to panic as I felt Bane’s powers curling into my mind, wrapping through my thoughts. It was violating feeling, as if my fear was unlocking the doors of my mind for him.

“Why did you call me here?”

Bane regarded me for a moment, sifting through my thoughts. “I created the Rule of Two to ensure the survival of the Sith.” The spirit floated around the room as he explained, his eyes only straying from me briefly. “Once, we were a vast empire, overflowing with power. The old sith powers...as well as the jedi...believe that the Force is like fire.” He either saw my confusion on my face or felt it in my mind. He continued. “They believe that the Force is passed like a torch to their followers, spreading light throughout the galaxy at an equal brightness. They are wrong.” I felt his contempt, not only for the jedi, but for the sith army that existed long ago. “The Force is like venom.” Darth Bane turned abruptly, tilting his armored head. “You’re afraid.”

I found no sense in lying. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t understand. These abilities have always been there, but as of late, they only continue to grow. I can’t control it. I could hurt someone.”

Darth Bane chuckled lowly at me. “Your bloodline is strong in the Dark Side. You will learn.”

“You mean how I’m a descendant of the Sith.” 

“Not just any Sith, girl. A king. And powerful fallen jedi that would eventually claim to be a sith himself. Though, he was never a lord as I am.”

“Why not?”

“Few dare to take on the title of Darth, child. Those who have borne it before me have proud histories.”

A thought occurred to me, some of my fear beginning to eb. This spirit, while imposing, had yet to display any true threat to me. Thus far, he seemed like he was merely interested in me. Why would he call me here, only to kill me?

“What do you feel of those that call themselves Darth now?”

Darth Bane’s demeanor darkened as he loomed around the room, glowing faintly in the shadows. “The current Sith Lord has held fast to my rule, in which the apprentice, when he or she surpsasses their teacher, slays their master.” I started at his words, my forehead folding in fear again. “This disturbs you?”

I swallowed. “Killing the person who taught you everything? That’s...brutal.” My mind flashed to Jango, who had taught me nearly everything about bounty hunting that I now knew. 

“You think of the man who saved you from slavery,” Bane mused, sending a chill down my spine. “The ways of the Sith, in order for them to continue, must be contained within the Rule of Two. When an apprentice surpasses the master, they become the master themselves to then continue passing on our teachings.”

“Why does the master have to die for that to happen?” I asked, clenching my hands. “It works just fine for the jedi to have multiple apprentices in life.”

Darth Bane hummed lowly. “You’ve spent time with the jedi. How do you perceive their power?”

I shrugged. “They lead armies. They can tip the scale in the war. I’ve seen them do incredible things.”

“Perhaps,” Bane allowed, which surprised me. “But I see where your thoughts stray. To the supposed sith you battled on Vandor.”

“Supposed?”

“He is but a pawn. His end will come when his master chooses a new, better suited apprentice.” I thought for a moment about how Dooku could possibly just be a pawn. He practically led the Separatist alliance. He fueled the continuation of the war itself. Bane read my thoughts. “A powerful pawn, mind you. But a temporary piece that will be replaced by one even more powerful.”

“Do you know who the master is?”

Bane watched me, chuckling. “You are not ready for such knowledge, child. First, you must learn why there are only two. I said before that the Force is like venom. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“It dilutes in numbers.” For some reason, I didn’t entirely believe that. I’d seen the jedi do incredible things, and there were a lot of them. “Consider your jedi friends,” he butt in, following my thoughts. “They were subdued by a half-baked sith. Imagine them facing a master. There are only two sith because our lust for power, which drives our strength, turned our armies to infighting. That was why we lost to the jedi long ago. With two, there is always one master and one apprentice. The venom does not get diluted when shared between only two. The teachings of the Sith Order are passed down between them, and they work from the shadows. This is how the sith survive. How we will find power again.”

I swallowed. “I understand that,” I allowed. “But I still don’t understand why you brought me here. There are already--” I cut off my own words, remembering Bane mentioning a new apprentice for the dark master. An apprentice to replace Dooku.

“You are a swift learner. Good.”

“Wait,” I cut him off, watching the spirit float above his sarcophagus once more. “What if this isn’t what I want? I don’t even fully understand the sith. I only know what--”

“What a jedi taught you,” Bane completed for me. “I’m aware. I called you here for your potential to be the next great Sith Lord. I care for the furthering of our code, though the current master is greedy, seeking immortality as many have before him. If you are fit for this, you will be his student and one day, surpass him to continue our order the right way.”

“But--”

“You have great power, young one. You must learn how to fully tap into that power. I will teach you. Show you that this is your destiny as your bloodline demands. I will make you fear nothing. You will be unstoppable.”

His words, though dark...were seductive. I used to have a lot of fear. I had many things that still frightened me. To be rid of that weight? To be able to strike down those that have hurt me? That scarred me so deeply that they still creep in my nightmares?

“Never listen to what others say. Take the jobs you see fit to yourself. The ones that you believe in.”

Jango’s voice was so loud in my mind, I nearly whirled to see if he was in the room. Still, my senses told me otherwise. I wondered if Bane had tapped at that particular memory on purpose.

“I am…” I hesitated, glancing at the stone beneath my boots. “Willing to listen. I want to understand. Hear both sides.”

“Good. Sit, child.” I breathed deeply, steadying myself before sitting cross-legged on the floor. “You have felt the power of the Dark Side before--my own, flowing through you. What did it feel like?”

“It felt…” I searched for the words. “Hot. Powerful. Uncontrollable. Dangerous.”

“Not good?”

He was prodding me towards an answer, I knew. But he wasn’t entirely wrong in his assessment either. “Maybe a little good. It felt good to protect my friends. To have power over someone so horrible.”

“Yes,” Bane praised. “Do you understand that this is a power you would not have possessed if not for you anger? For your hatred? You were facing a sith, after all.”

“I understand. But what made my ability better than his? He was a trained jedi once. And trained by a sith.”

“Bloodline is part of that. Those born of strong force users are often strong in the force themselves. Another is you have quite a well of passions to delve into. Dooku, though wronged by the jedi, still learned their ways of coping. Of suppressing their emotions. That keeps him from his true potential for growth.”

“A well of passions?”

“Your pains. Wrongs done against you. Hatred. Fear. Anger...love.” I recoiled slightly at his words. “You’ve lost so much, child. Use that sadness. Turn it to anger. To power.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to be angry all the time. I think,” I paused, sounding pathetic even to my own ears. “I think it would consume me.”

“It very well could. As is the risk of all sith.” That answer surprised me. “Your emotions give you power, but you are not a slave to them. You are a slave to nothing.”

“The Force shall free me,” I muttered, remembering the words the spirit had fed me while I battled Dooku.

“Yes,” Bane hummed in approval. “I can sense your hesitations at the jedi teachings.”

It wasn’t a question. He was more...leading me to explain. “Yes,” I allowed. “I understand they aim to control their abilities, which I do as well. But they allow not emotion. No attachment. That’s not...possible.” Bane floated before me, his hands folding behind his back. “Even two of their most powerful jedi have broken this rule. No one can truly let go of attachment.”

“So you see the lies of the jedi. They praise the light and try to snuff out the darkness with no regards to the power it provides. The freedom it provides. Do you understand that the Jedi Council would lose their power over others should their younglings understand this? This is why they fear the Dark Side so much.”

I understood. But something else flashed to my mind. “Wouldn’t that defeat the Rule of Two?”

“No,” Bane insisted, looming closer to peer at my face. “Those who were shown the truth would forsake the jedi ways, but they would not be Sith Lords. It would merely break the corrupt power of the jedi.”

“Why is the Dark Side...bad?”

“It’s not. The jedi have painted it so. In their overly righteous minds, they deem that all those with Force-sensitivity must serve the cause of the jedi--a cause they use to better themselves. Sith allow emotions, as it better connects us to the Force and strengthens our abilities within it.”

Every word he spoke drew me in further. He was right. I was angry. Hurt. Alone. Scared. The jedi would have be hush those feelings. Bury them deep within myself. Or even worse, let them go. 

They would belittle the things I’d gone through.

“I will teach you,” Darth Bane said again, floating before me. “Stand, apprentice.” Something within my swelled with pride at the title. I’d never been a formal student before. Even Jango had only taught me so that I didn’t die the second I left the planet. Bane wanted to teach me.

I stood, regarding my new teacher with some excitement.

“Close your eyes. Feel the living Force that flows through this planet.” I did as he asked, already aware of its power. “Think back. What makes you hurt? What angers you?”

That wasn’t hard to do, despite the memories being painful. I felt Bane in my mind, nudging me towards terrible memories, painting them in red in my mind. 

Living on the streets of Corellia, abandoned by parents I never knew. Forced to work for local gangs and criminals. The torture of the Zygerrians. The sting of their whips on my back--scars I still carried on my skin. The burn of the brand on my inner forearm. Being sold like livestock. Being eyed by all those who passed through Jabba’s Palace. Having to defend myself whenever Jabba wasn’t there to protect me. Death Watch. Defiling me. Using me. Scarring me even further until I barely had a will to live anymore. Jango dying. Boba blaming me. The jedi’s mistrust. Their plans to kill me because of my biology. Aurra pitting Boba against me. Rex...Rex saying he loved me. That he wanted me to stay.

I felt Bane in my mind. A part of me screamed that I understood Rex’s dilemma. I understood why he couldn’t leave. And then Bane entered my thoughts, splashing red over all the memories.

Rex had asked me to stay because he feared me. He wanted the jedi to control me. Maybe even kill me. He didn’t love me, like he claimed. He was trying to say whatever he could to keep me there.

“Good. Good,” Bane chuckled. “Feel your anger. Let it help you connect with the Force. Do you feel it?”

Angry tears pooled on my cheeks as I nodded, breathing heavily. “Yes.”

“Lift those rocks.” Bane gestured to a pile of heavy looking stones in the corner. My anger began to dissipate immediately.

“I’ve almost never done this on command. It’s always been...survival.”

Bane invaded my mind, bringing me back to Lawquane’s homestead. Rex had known about my Force abilities. Had he really just perceived that...or did he already know my secret? Was he a tool all along to gain my trust. To make sure the Republic--no-- the jedi had control over me?

“Lift them, my apprentice,” Bane demanded.

I turned to the rocks, stretching out my hands as I had in the past when I used the Force. I expected it to be difficult, as it had been before. I expected it to take all my concentration and will power.

Instead, fueled by my rage and confusion, the rocks lifted off the ground rather swiftly, surprising me. Still, my power drained quickly, my stamina within the Force poor at best. The rocks dropped back to the floor as I breathed heavily, looking at my own hands in awe.

“Good, my apprentice. You have incredible power. You will learn quickly,” he assured me. “The sith create their own lightsaber crystals,” he explained, floating before me with his hands behind his back. “They were once forged artificially through the Dark Side. Most apprentices I would have create their own. Yet, I sense that there is a particular crystal calling out to you.” That sentiment surprised me, considering I’d heard no call apart from Bane’s. 

Bane’s spirit swelled as if he was taking a breath before turning to me to glower from beneath his helmet.

“Go. Find this crystal that calls to you. Return when you have found it, and not before. Then your training will continue.”

I bowed my head slightly. Maybe it was my years as a slave. Or maybe it was Bane’s thoughts prodding me to do so. “Yes…” I hesitated for a brief moment. I’d had to call people master before, when I was a slave. But this...this was different. He was my master not as an owner, but as a teacher. “Yes, Master,” I said finally.

Bane’s spirit seemed pleased before his essence began to dissipate, the mist sliding back into the stone sarcophagus at the end of the room. I was left in darkness, aside from the pale moonlight that now filtered through the crack in the ceiling. 

I turned my flashlight back on before heading out of the tomb, hoping I could hear the call of whatever lightsaber was apparently meant for me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Sorry for being off the map for so long. Lots going on. Updates should come with a bit more speed since I’ve actually already planned the next few chapters (so long as I keep up on actually writing them).

As always, reviews, comments, questions, and shares are always welcome and encouraged!

-Ryder

#fanfc #fanfiction #fanfic #star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars oc #oc star wars #captain rex #captain rex x oc #rex x oc #rexxoc #rex #Clone Troopers #The Clone Wars #Clone Wars #clones #korriban #moraband #sith #jedi #bounty hunter #jango fett #darth bane

[the-cryptographer]

I know you probably get asked this a lot, but I can't help myself. You can tell me to fuck off if you don't want to answer, though. Do you still want to finish Lottery Ticket? Because it's one of my favorite YGO fics and the idea of you dropping it makes me so very sad.

It’s fine anon. I mean, I appreciate the recognition that I don’t owe you an answer or free content or anything, but I don’t get asked too often so it’s not a bother. And I’m not gonna tell you to ‘fuck off’.

Short answer is that - No, I’m not dropping Lottery Ticket. I still want to finish it. And, although I’m moving at a glacial pace, I was working on writing the next chapter as recently as sometime last week.

I’m going to give a longer answer though - Yeah, I also get scared I’m not gonna be able to finish it sometimes too. Not in the sense that it’s not important to me, but in the sense that I’ve been writing it for over two years, am over 100k words into it, and I’m not even halfway through the the planned story. I hope that I’ll be able to pick up the pace at some point, but moreso I hope that two or four or however many years in the future I’ll still care as much about finishing it as I do now. I’m kind of lucky I had some experience under my belt when I first started writing LT, enough to be able to know that I need to have a rather concrete understanding of my plot and story structure to see a long project through. But what LT has really driven home is that I have a very poor understanding of how many words and chapters (and how much time) it takes to execute the ideas in an abstract outline.

Also, yeah, idk how obvious it is, but Lottery Ticket is pretty personal to me. Not in the sense that I grew up with a gambling alcoholic dad, started a long distance relationship with a classy older woman straight out of my teenage years, or worked as a gofer for the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. But a lot of the themes it deals with - feeling trapped in a household with a deteriorating abuser, class struggle through the lens of the more personal relationships between employers and employees, codependency and not being able to trust that people love you bc they depend on you, the intersectionality of poverty, racism, and crime, etc. etc. are all pretty heavy themes that I care deeply and personally about. And you’d think that that would make this story easier to write at times, but it mostly just makes it more difficult. It often feels a lot easier to rattle off oneshots about characters and ideas that, while maybe not entirely without emotional gravitas for me, certainly don’t hit as many soft spots so consistently.

And, in a more immediate sense, yea- next chapter is killer. I recently complained on twitter about how the draft for it cracked 8k, and I didn’t feel it was remotely finished. I like to divide the chapters so that they individually have a crescendo of rising and falling action - or at least that’s what I tell myself - so, having established the previous chapter that the next chapter is going to be about dealing with this problem where Jou owes an ungodly amount of money to yakuza affiliates and has no paycheck to pay with, I don’t think it really makes sense for me to post until I’ve reached a resolution to that conflict eleven days later. But, in addition to the mad scramble for cash, the chapter also has to include Jou dragging an unconscious Kaiba home, Jou negotiating with his landlord, scenes with Honda and Yuugi that establish how Jou feels about relying on them, an extendend flashback with Mai (& Anzu) that does much the same thing in addition to giving more background on Jou’s living situation, all that foreshadowing, etc. Also, I was kind of up in the air about whether or not to include this scene in this chapter or next - because there is /so much/ this chapter and I have very little concretely planned for next chapter - but I’m increasingly coming to think that Jou should confront his dad about the stolen paycheck this chapter instead of next one. Like- Jou’s kind of avoiding coming face to face with his dad and directly asking him for the money back. And the idea is that Jou’s been in situations similar enough to this in the past, that he already knows what the likely result of such a confrontation is and that it’s probably a dead end. So he’d prefer to wait until after the situation with Kyoutarou is dealt with to speak to dad. But the more I think about it, the more I realise the audience doesn’t have the same information that Jou does, and would probably benefit more from seeing the outcome of that confrontation firsthand. And to see it firsthand while there is still a hypothetical possibility for Jou’s dad to somehow influence the outcome when Jou goes to pay his debt, instead of after it’s somewhat of a moot point.

And, yeah, that brings me to the last part, which is the anxiety for what comes after the next chapter. As I’ve said, the fic is plotted out pretty heavily, but the two-three chapters after the next one are the part of the fic I have planned out the least in terms of their concrete events. I know the scene that the chapter after next ends on, but I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to fill the first part of it in with beyond the extremely vague ‘need to have a scene with Mokuba and start filling in more foreshadowing before the shit entirely hits the fan’. This isn’t explicitly a problem, per se, because Lotto Ticket has a big cast and there are a lot of threads I can pick up with Mai, Anzu, Shizuka, Honda, Yuugi, the other secretarial staff, etc that will hopefully fill out the pacing gaps in a way that will hopefully be entertaining and insightful, before I get back to the more solidified chapters directly preceding and including the climax of Part 2.

And, mmm, in addition to the anxiety related to chapter planning or lack thereof, there’s also just anxiety about what I’m going to have the characters say, do, and think? Next chapter is going to start dropping some pretty horrible headcanons about Jounouchi’s misogyny and his criminal record that I think should reasonably turn some people away from a fic featuring him as the protag. Following this he will spend a while comparing Seto rather unfavorably to Mai, and I mean that in an extremely intimate relational sense. And while I, as the author, know this is him struggling with his own homophobia and that it’s not meant to reflect negatively in a meta sense on Seto or JouKai, it takes a while before Jounouchi even starts to get over himself. Also, like, I’ve dropped some hints already that Jou and Mai have an open relationship (and that it’s a setup Jou’s not very happy about and kind of considers cheating anyhow). But I think the further progression of the “cheating” as it exists in this fic has the potential to be increasingly upsetting for readers, and it’s also the first of multiple issues regarding Jounouchi not really having a very good understanding of consent. And, finally, although I started the fic with a rather stark and controversial picture of Mokuba, and have since tried really hard to communicate that he is the same kid from canon that loves his brother to death, we have absolutely not reached the worst in his conflict and anger with his brother and I’m sure at least a few people won’t like it. And, mmm, I’m not really willing to compromise any of these things or tone them down. Even the few that aren’t directly baked solid into the plot structure of the fic, even the ones that I’m really not going to be able to frame in such a way that I can address them in detail given Jounouchi’s POV, I think they’re all extremely thematic and pointed towards the story’s idea of the situation Jounouchi grew up in, what he learned from it, and how much is at stake or not at stake, when he tries (or doesn’t try) to escape the poverty and abuse that (at least in part) defined him. But, yeah, idk. Even though I’m decided in that ‘this is the story i’m gonna write and no other’ it’s still anxiety provoking to think about readers being upset with me or dropping the fic even if I think their reasons for doing so would be completely justified - you know what I mean?

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ramble about writing (or not writing) one of my favourite fics, anon. I hope I’ll be able to get the next chapter out sooner rather than later.

[wardoftheedgeloaves]

@missalsfromiram:

This is a great discussion. I’d actually assumed there was something to McWhorter’s theory of massive adult acquisition - after all, look at creoles, which originated in contexts with truly massive adult acquisition. But it is true that there are a lot of counterexamples, especially in North America.

There are two contrasting points about North America - moreso than the fact that some American groups had empires, it was also a very common custom in much of North America for a given nation/people to adopt and integrate slaves or captives from other communities into their own people - and, later on, escaped African slaves and defectors from European colonies. That would seem to imply a large amount of adult acquisition.

However, wrt the idea of indigenous and modern polyglossia: In the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon (as in much of Africa) multilingualism is a normal part of life, with people acquiring the languages of neighboring villages starting in childhood and continuing throughout adult life. This is very different from the McWhorterian idea of massive adult acquisition as a sudden, (metaphorically or literally) traumatic event where a population is suddenly exposed to the language of a conqueror or of their captors. If much of North America had a Lower-Fungom-type pattern of multilingualism, adult slaves and captives adopted by (say) the Iroquois may have already had some level of competence in an Iroquoian language, thus averting the effects of sudden adult acquisition that we’re assuming took place with, say, the Norse settlements in England or the development of creoles.

And yes, my original point was simply that, although sound change on its own does tend to obscure and destroy morphological structures, morphonological restructuring and analogy, and grammaticalization of new morphology, are both just as natural and inexorable as the eventual loss of older structures.

(previous discussion clipped again)

I was wondering “wait, isn’t most of Cameroon part of the Bantu dialect continuum?” but nope; all of them are “Bantoid”, but they aren’t particularly close and their genealogy has not been worked out other than to know that they don’t really form anything resembling a close-knit group. A lot of West Africa west of, like, the Cameroon-Nigeria border is pretty low on the inflectional morphology metric (like Yoruba), but Bantu’s definitely not. The only language on that list that I’d heard of is Fang, which is Bantu and so I presume has all the classic Bantu features like grammatical tone, applicatives, polypersonal marking and a couple dozen noun classes; I don’t know about the others.

That sort of “modern polyglossia” is fairly common in India as well, if I recall correctly, though Kupwar at least speaks to quite a bit of unusual contact stuff going on; maybe Lower Fungom Fang has ended up like Kupwar Kannada and looks exactly like its neighbors except for the lexicon.

Back in Eurasia, we know that parts of Yorkshire still spoke Norse for a pretty long while, and it wasn’t that traumatic as I recall. The real case study here would not be what happened to English north of the Danelaw but what happened to Norse, which was the language of a group of mostly adult male invaders who conquered and intermarried with the locals--in that respect it is Norse that resembles Latin in Gaul and Spain, Prakrit in India and Greek (and, later, Arabic) in Egypt. But English won out in northern England, whereas Celtiberian, Coptic and the lost Dravidian languages of northern India didn’t. It’s also not that difficult to learn Old Norse if your native language is Old English; IIRC it’s believed they were mutually intelligible, which was not true even of Latin and Gaulish and definitely wasn’t true of Greek and Coptic.

(there were Norse-speaking and English-speaking villages side-by-side in the early Middle Ages; presumably their kids would have been playmates and have grown up essentially bilingual.)

And how much evidence was there that the Roman conquest of Gaul necessitated a bunch of adult Gauls learning Latin? Gaul was sparsely populated and mostly run as a tax farm for rich Romans at first. If you’re a farmer living in a small Gaulish village, you don’t need to know Latin at first; your interaction with Romans will mostly be to pay them taxes, and you’re not marrying them, though your kids may. I’m guessing the initial development of French (and Vulgar Latin more generally) was mediated by people who grew up between the Roman and Gaulish worlds.

(and then shouldn’t we expect Italian to be significantly more conservative than French or Portuguese? It is in phonology and lexicon, to an extent, but the most grammatically conservative Romance language is...Romanian*, and Dacia was conquered relatively late. Of course, Dacia was also isolated, and Old French had a case distinction, but still!)

*ninja edit to the ninja edit: well, in the nouns, at least. what’s the most conservative Romance language in the verbs? It’s not Sardinian, which only has four synthetic tenses. It’s probably some variety of Catalan or Romansch or something like that.

[muses-of-ideen]

Guardian’s Fall Excerpt

This is a part of Guardian’s Fall that I’ve been working on on and off.  I’ll be adding more to it over time, and I’ll reblog it when I do, but this is the chapter where Tiras nearly loses himself to his Curse and Pyrha has been tasked with bringing him back as punishment for sending him into his downward spiral in the first place.

Please note that this chapter will contain themes of abuse, psychosis, racial discrimination, and general tragedy over the course of being written.

             When Pyrha awoke, the sight that met her was a sea of blackness- no sky, no stars, no earth beneath her feet, neither the comfort of warmth nor the frightful cold.  And, as she began to become aware of herself in that space, the only thing she felt was in her heart; an overwhelming presence of hatred and despair.  Quickly, it brought her to her knees, first shaking and gasping as the feel of a thousand knives dug themselves into her ribs and chest, then sobbing and screaming, her hands tearing at her hair and ears as emotions that weren’t hers overwhelmed her.  It was the feeling of being betrayed by the only people who’d ever cared, the feeling of hope crushed by remorse- like everyone she ever loved had died spitting words of venom in her face.  It was enough to break a person.  She would rather die than to feel this despaired!  Hot tears ran down her cheeks and she choked on the air in her throat.  Everything hurt.  Everything burned.  She wanted to die.  She’d rather die than suffer endlessly like this!  She could feel her sense of self gradually being eroded away by the pain, and she just wanted it to stop-

              ‘Now do you get it, Priestess? This is the pain you caused him. This is what you are going to fix.,’ came a voice.  Despite the voice’s scolding tone, it brought a wave of relief in to muffle the strangling emotions.  She found herself able to breathe again, and she swallowed the air of the black void like water.  Even the soul needed to breathe, and she felt like hers hadn’t been able to catch its breath for a long time.

              “This is… a Curse?”

              ‘This is what makes a Curse.  And it is slowly eating away at Tiras.  He has been holding it at bay for many many years, even now he tries to hold it back, but your words drove him over the edge and if nothing is done to fix his broken soul he will turn into a Curse Spirit; suffering endlessly, for eternity, in loneliness and despair, and when he gives in, I too will fall, and all the world’s air will stagnate and sour.’

              “What?  N-No. There’s no way that what I said did this,” Pyrha retorted.  There was no way that just her words would lead to the end of Air!  “He’s just weak is all.  He’s too sensitive.  He didn’t need to take it that seriously!”  The wave of relief from before left her and she suddenly found herself once again drowning in a sea of pain and anguish; her Spirit taken from her, her tribesman slain, Spring’s face when she had confronted her, all of it burned and itched at every part of her, a fire that was truly unbearable.

              ‘You dare to call him weak when he has suffered emotions like these since before he even came to this city! Ignorant child, know your place! He may not always act in the most righteous of ways, but you who refuse to know him cannot presume to act as if you do!’

              ‘That should be enough of that.’ Another voice, a new calming wave. It wasn’t until Pyrha stopped gasping for breath that she realized that voice belonged to the Phoenix.  ‘You are emotional Dragoon because your precious one has been harmed.  I would be too; however, she will understand better if she goes in search of his heart rather than continuing to sit here and take your rage.  You will lose him.’

              “If it’s… that bad… release him from being your Priest.  You have others, right?” Pyrha said, her voice still wraspy.

              ‘The previous Priest, his father, still lives, however that man has strayed from the path.  All of his people have.  And Tiras is a special existence.  He cannot be replaced.  There will not be one like him for maybe another thousand years.’

              “What-?”

              ‘A Primae Nocturne, my child. ‘The First Priest.’  Tiras is one of these; a child who will lead his Spirit to prosperity, whose existence revolves entirely around his master even moreso than you or any of the others in that Council.  Our love, our children, our honeyed mead: to us Spirits there is none more precious than the First,’ the Phoenix answered.

              ‘And he has been forsaken by his people, his tribe, his clan.  If I abandon him… If I let go of him then his despair may engulf the world.  He is… fighting me, trying to make me let go, but I cannot.  I… cannot…’  Pyrha had always thought of Spirits as omniscient beings who transcended emotions like sadness and attachment, however the Dragoon’s voice sounded so incredibly sad. The way it spoke of letting go of Tiras was as if it would be killing its own child.  It truly, truly loved Tiras.  Pyrha gave a sigh, half of reluctance- she still did not believe she should be punished with such a task and that Tiras should just rot off for all she cared, but the Dragoon was insisting otherwise and it would be rude to not only go against the Council Master’s orders, but against a Guardian’s as well.

              “Fine.  Tell me what I have to do.”

                 The Council Master sat opposite the two sleeping Priests, hands folded under his chin.  He was more than well aware of just how wrong this could all go, and the feathers adorning Tiras’ body had long since begun to jaundice.  Several other Priests stood by in case the Tiras finally lost control, but Maeve knew for a fact that they would be powerless in the face of a First Priest.  When Tiras lost control- not if, but when- they would all be torn to shreds by the raging winds.  The city he had built would not last either; buildings would be picked up and smashed into one another, smaller structures would simply crumble apart.  It would be a true calamity.  Maeve had heard stories of Curses who had rampaged to such a point that they changed the topography- Curses of Calamity.  Tiras would most definitely fall under this category if Pyrha could not bring him out of himself.  The Council Master’s grip tightened, finally making the worst case decision just as the air in the room began to turn foul.  First is was small wisps and breezes, but then it became clear that the wind was not only picking up, but that it was becoming corrupted.  Several Priests moved into position to attack, but Maeve stood and sounded his cane against the ground.

              “Cease.  Fall back.” With those words, while shooting him wary looks, the Priests fell back behind him.  “Darius!” Maeve shouted.  “An emergency has occurred!”  A wall of the room began to crack- or more precisely, the space in front of the wall rather than the wall itself.  Otherworldly light came pouring out, and a being that was clearly neither human, nor Nocturne, nor Spirit emerged from the opening.  The creature had skin the color of old ash and sunken black eyes with red irises.  On its head, poking out from under neatly slicked black hair were two ram’s horns that curled around pointed ears.  Much of him took the shape of a human, however the bottom half of either of his legs resembled the cloven feet of a deer or a horse, and the tail that emerged from its back was long and hairless like a rat’s.  However, despite all this, the most unusual part of its appearance was that it donned glasses and the almost uniform wear one would expect of a record keeper.  The being adjusted its glasses and spoke.

              “Maeve, I am not some familiar you can summon out of thin air.  How many times do I have to explain that-”

              “Darius, as much as I would love to catch up, we do really have quite the emergency.”  The Council Master motioned to the two sleeping youths, the male of while was clearly starting into the final phases of becoming a Curse.

              “Well fuck…  Can it not be stopped?”

              “An effort is being made by the sleeping Ignatian there, however she may not make it in time, and the Spirit attached to him refuses to sever the connection.”

              “So it’s a Priest that’s going to turn?  Hell Maeve.  Why not just summon the Etherial of Death itself and put us out of our misery?!”

              “He’s not just any Priest, Darius.  He is the Dragoon’s Primae Nocturne- A First Priest.”

              “And just what do you expect me to do against a Cursed First Priest?”

              “Contain it.”

                Pyrha walked down a single lit path in the darkness, passing by faded, dark doors from which disembodied sounds would occasionally exit.  She had to find the memory that Tiras had hidden himself in and draw him out, but that was easier said than done.

              ‘You need to sift through his memories and find the moment he has chosen to relive forever.  When you find him, you must convince him not only to come out, but to calm his curse. Right now he is near to falling over the edge, and once he takes that last step, all of us will be lost.  I can provide you with guidance on where I believe he may have hidden himself, but that is all I can do.  The closer we get, the more he will reject me, so my assistance will not be substantial.’

              The Dragoon’s words stuck with her, however she had no idea how to go about trying to convince him to come back.  She didn’t particularly care if he did, to be honest. As far as she was concerned, he was just a child throwing a tantrum- a human who was trying to be something more than he could be.

              The path turned and lead into a single lit doorway.  The design of it was clearly different from the homes of her people, but looking at it made Pyrha feel like she had arrived at home.

              ‘Open it,’ the Dragoon advised. Pyrha grabbed the handle and held down on the latch, pushing the door in.  Strangely, it opened to a park- or at least what looked like a park; shrubbery and small grasses grew intermittently, but the vast majority of the ground was sand, very little of it solid.  Children rolled around and played with one another, though most notably there was a lack of toys.  Off in the corner she saw a gathering of adults crowded around one small boy who couldn’t have been any older than five.  Feeling drawn to it, Pyrha wiggled her way in to find that the boy was Tiras!  He was very small, but that hair and those eyes definitely belonged to Tiras!  An older gentleman at his side clapped him on the shoulder, and the young Tiras jumped, seeming to panic for a moment.

              “Rejoice!” said the man.  “For today my son, Tiras, has been chosen to take over my duties as Priest to the Great Dragoon!  He will be the next Chief of our people, so be sure to treat him well and the Dragoon will bless us!”

              “What?!” Pyrha gasped.  “But he’s hardly more than a toddler!”  No one in the crowd seemed to respond to her outburst.  Rather, they were cheering for the nervous boy in front of them.  “Why does no one find this odd?  A child can’t bear the responsibilities of Priest! That is why we all fight and train for the honor from the time that we can walk!”

              ‘Primae Nocturne are special, or did you not remember what I told you?’  It was the sisterly voice of her own Master, and the scolding tone made Pyrha calm herself.

              “I do, however this is far too young.”

              ‘He showed a proficiency for magic as soon as he was born,’ the Dragoon replied.  ‘I needed to make it clear to his people that he was a valued existence to be cherished and protected, however my decision may have only made things worse.  You must understand, Phoenix Priestess- Tiras’ people are corrupted. They can think of nothing more than their own self-gain because I have trapped them in a land that has so little. Calamity struck several hundred years earlier and threatened to wipe out their people.  Rather than forsake them, I created a space that could remain untouched, however it has trapped us all at the bottom of the sea.  Their gills are a curse I offered them so that they could remain self-sufficient, one that is completely harmless but only when underwater.’

              “So then Tiras-”

              ‘Truly risked not only his freedom but his life to save you and your Phoenix.  Tell me how that is weak or cowardly.’

              The boy at the center of the crowd smiled as his father patted his head in pride, but Pyrha could say for certain that this was the only time she’d ever truly seen Tiras smile.

                “You do realize that I am not combat oriented, correct?” Darius hissed as they placed up barrier after barrier to try and contain the coming storm. “I mean really, do I look like some kind of all-powerful being to you?  I’m not an Etherial, Maeve!”

              “Nope, but you’re the next best thing,” the Council Master replied, clapping the Dae on the back.  “Besides, you made an interdimensional library that eats people.  Don’t tell me you can’t hold off a Curse.”

              “Weren’t you just saying that this is no ordinary curse?!  Oh if I ever meet my parents I swear I am going to feed you to them!”

              “You wouldn’t.  You’d need a new conversation partner.”

              “Well you look like you’re about to kick the bucket anyways!”

              A tap came on the Council Master’s shoulder.

              “Council Master, just what is this creature?”

              “Oh, right, my apologies,” Maeve said, turning to the throng of confused Priests.  “This is Darius- Dae of Knowledge and Space.”

              Several of the Priests scrambled back.  A Dae was not only an incredibly rare existence, but a powerful one- they were the children of Gods and Spirits and were considered the most powerful beings in the universe that had a physical body.  They were also often moody and had a tendency to smite or play with anything that got in their way or caught their attention.

              “No need to worry so much.  Darius is one of the more accommodating Dae, unlike that one that went around causing wars and making little girls shoot death beams from their eyes.  Darius created the Bibliothecam Mortuo, the Library of Lost Knowledge-”

              “Of which I am seriously considering revoking your privileges to!”

              Maeve gave a chuckle.

              “See, perfectly accommodating, although I will admit to being the only human that has said privileges.”

              “Maeve, stop showing off to your underlings and get them to help!”

              “That being said, who here has confidence in constructing barriers of the magical variety?”

TBA

#Guardian's Fall 002 || Mistakes Were Made {Tensions Rising} #Guardian's Fall #Tiras Wiater #Pyrha Equia #Maeve #Darius #swearing tw #abuse tw #((This is four word doc pages long and it is all I have done today so I'm really hoping someone reads it.))

[almasidaliano]

a few of today’s new epiphanies; a dissertation. {pt 1 // 0304.}

telepathy is a beautiful thing really. strange this little experience. i thought i was delirious and honestly maybe i still am. however, i’m in control of how i use that. i understand now, a little more than before. i have a lot to do; few book series in store. i must commit to fluently typing on a typewriter. because of the aesthetic. {the idea is to release at MINIMUM 3 books in various structures; all the beginning of a different series/saga.} i plan to stick to handwriting until my muscles breathe with the memory. every word i write, solidifies the world’ll remember me. and every seed indeed.

thurtherfore, my mouth is not my only gifted piece, you see coupled with my ears- i don’t know how else to be.. blessings are curses too; it the most melocholny ways.. i listen to myself now; not immediately not completely however {i’m prone to self sabotage so we won’t be greedy😂} - only up from here ; just as soon as we find it again. :$ if everyone is truly listening how are things as they’ve formerly been? let that sink in..

so am i wrong; for trying to preserve, something that took every level of my existence to procure? seeing as it took every level of her existence to preserve; long enough to see the top; i didn’t expect the drop.. there’s power in having nothing to lose - expect i didn’t want to be who i was around your family because i couldn’t see past the bruising and the scars. i’m a product of my environment , just like you. different environment, so initial different construct. i met you and then all i thought knew was confirmed or surprisingly corrected. still easier said than done simply reframing your ideologies. because wounds aren’t healed, things still have been suppressed and have yet to even be addressed; because time had other plans in mind.. {so do i..}

so here’s the sitch ; i miss my stitch. and refuse to indulge something less than what exists within the bond we built, whilst feeling guilty so then receding into isolation to avoid feeling as if i was compromising myself and that bond. like i only can’t access 3/4 of one piece now. that physical aspect is missing.. that comfort that grounds you. the way her existence was my only addiction; used correctly you can help someone you love remember/find themselves; that’s what she did.

i’m in a place i’ve never been. this is when everything changed. WELL 2021. i say that because i’m way out of my lane; i have never been through nor felt the things i’m experiencing. i’m in a position i wish i had only ever seen on tv, while simultaneously thanking divinity. because - it is better to have loved and have lost, than to never know love at all.

***my ENTIRE romantic life before her was a sham. no shade, peace and prosperity to most. i say that because before i was testing society or fitting the picture; i was chasing platonic love because my friends were my family. they helped me manage and maintain my sanity. but friends aren’t caretakers yk we all get older. and not to say s/o are either; just meaning on the day to day. mental health is not easy, and i was never too much.

my friends and i we don’t touch like that {intoxication don’t apply because everybody extra —- eh only alcohol make the volume rise ; just depends lmao} i mean in day to day casual setting ? no. we may quick hug as the family bond grew, had handshakes and mf theme songs before that😂 my family dont exhibit PDA. when i seen people who were together interact it was usually abusive, toxic, portrayed through necessities {extremities} in some form. tough love has been vastly misconstrued. A PRODUCT OF THAT HERE! lmao however- a late winter night, outside a laundromat changed my life. HONESTLY. infinite times for the laundromat cause listeeennn; changed my life night after night. she touched me; and i could breathe again; and feel it. i could feel everything. the way i had been absent from the present; so numb.. she confirmed the theory she created when our eyes met; she always knew she “won”. and i wasn’t hella clingy; i craved the way she showed affection from the first look, first touch, first kiss or moreso gave me the support and courage to accept. besides her i can’t even tell you when any of that happened. AND she’s the only one w a first look and first touch qualifier lmao.

the bond is infinite. spiritual emotional and mental all intact. it’s the physical; the touch i’m searching now to get back. or get a consistent “this’ll be do” ; like we’ll be cool and shit still too.

confession 1: if i collected every night i ever SLEPT meaning truly rested, alone; i may have 2 years at max though.

whether family, roommate, friend, partner i’ve never spent too many night alone. and developmental years? yea maybe 10 of those single nights are from those.

ever seen twitches? i really think to an extend some darkness can consume souls. another time another place we’ve arrived at the gold; two gems to wrap up this expressions ordinance.

so the plan if not bone marrow when we would have a baby was going to be her brother because of the lineup of genes. i still feel , and want {regardless of semantics it will be} to continuing manifesting towards our dreams. it’s just strange; because well how do you approach any person in this situation? 😂 but how do you go to the brother and say this “ like i want to continue to build on the foundation we pavemented. and i was wondering if you’d mind—“ i never expected it to be under this condition. i think she’d be fine with that .

here’s the cavieat: first everything is the same but everything has changed i stg. he doesn’t look the same as i recall from my birds view . however he reminds me of her so much more than the rest of — eh depends it’s anywho. and it’s strange because i strayed and now i don’t know how to break the ice. and i meant to speak to him at all. and that’s like the most important part lmao. because i wanna know him. because him and i are a lot alike because i can’t really believe the “he’s okay” without talking to him, except niggas real short and vague these days i see lmao. he lost his big sister; i my big brother. full blood. balance. your rod. my brothers keeper. it’s ; i am him in this situation above the other siblings dynamically and i want to help however i don’t want to pry or seem weird. some people just want to be bothered because he also doesn’t talk to me so maybe he doesn’t want to. they have the same kind of light in their smiles he only squints his eyes when he laughs. dimples are genetic and let’s just say thanks yall lmao.

it’s energy. it’s just vibes fr. like —

sometimes; even my mind isn’t a place i’m alone.

to be continued..

-A.