#everything else is just fanfic that made a profit

[kanansdume]

I've recently been watching these very interesting Star Wars video essays on YouTube (yeah I know, a rare breed) and it brings up these comments Lucas has made about how he views Star Wars as almost like a silent film in terms of how important the visuals are to him in comparison to the dialogue. But this essay also points out how important Lucas finds all of the "rhyming" moments in his trilogies and the way he utilizes them to remind you of something else for emotional or thematic reasons. And there's so many of them, both in visuals and in dialogue, and it's interesting to consider how important this is to him, the repetition for a purpose as well as the storytelling through visuals above everything else and then to look at Star Wars since the Prequels came out and realize how little has really been able to match up to those ideals since then.

The ONLY thing that's come out since the Prequels that I think really hits these two things the same way is, in fact, Andor. One of the things I noticed about the way people discussed Andor as it was airing in a way I haven't really seen for any of the other shows or films was the visual SYMBOLOGY. So many times I saw people noticing the Imperial cog everywhere, from the aerial shot of Narkina 5 as the prisoners escape to the architecture of Mon Mothma's house. There were people picking up on the use of items in Luthen's shop that are familiar from other things to give this idea that Luthen is from another time, he's attempting to preserve this world he lost, that if you're not looking closely enough you won't notice what he's really saying or doing with this shop. The color choices for the different locations and people got analyzed because the people involved spoke about how they intentionally utilized color to SEND A MESSAGE about the characters and the world. We know that the people who made the costumes and sets really worked hard to treat Star Wars almost like a period drama and study the history of the franchise as if it were a real place so that the things they came up with felt like they belonged in this world everyone knows so well even if it's completely new. And of course there were all of the myriad references to things from Rogue One, the constant repetition of "climb", the sunset on the beach, etc.

Nearly EVERY SHOT in this show was created with so much intention behind it in order to say something meaningful about the characters, the world, this specific story they're in, and the overall saga of Star Wars itself. It's insane how much greater impact this show was able to achieve through the incredibly careful usage of visual symbols and thematic repetitions, much like Lucas did before them. It feels like they didn't just study the history of the galaxy far far away, but they studied the history of STAR WARS and what Lucas was trying to do and say with this story. They peeled back his onion a bit more and were able to create something that really has that same visual feel even when it's not created for a child audience. It also is experimenting with its narrative style through its structure and through Cassian's character being allowed to be somewhat more reactive than proactive, and while that didn't work for everyone, it does feel like it's following in Lucas's footsteps of experimentation through Star Wars. Push the boundaries of what Star Wars is and can be and what you can say with it.

But this only works because they peeled the onion back enough to TRULY understand all of the messages Lucas was sending with it. They got the heart of Star Wars and despite its lack of space wizards, despite the lack of most major characters in the Saga, this was a show that honestly got the message more than just about anything else Star Wars has put out since the Prequels. The choices between selflessness and selfishness, the themes about how you always HAVE to make a choice even when it feels like you don't have any (sometimes ESPECIALLY when it feels like you don't have any), and how important it is to make sure to choose the path of compassion above everything else. The themes of connection to others, the symbiotic circle and the impact even the smallest person can have on world around them, it's RIGHT THERE and it's CENTRAL to Andor's storyline.

So yes, it experiments a little with narrative structure, but it's possibly the most Star Wars thing to exist Revenge of the Sith because it honestly truly GETS what Star Wars was about, both in its themes and in its filmmaking. A lot of people said that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars to them, usually because of the lack of space wizards and the fact that it's not a story aimed at children. But to me, Andor is EXACTLY what Star Wars is and has always been. They're stretching the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, but it's saying the exact same things Star Wars has always said, it's just saying it slightly differently. This doesn't feel like fanfiction to me, not really. Unlike things like the Mandoverse or the books, Andor isn't just taking some of the toys out of the sandbox and going to play with them somewhere else. Andor is IN that sandbox. It's building a slightly different sandcastle, but it's still within the sandbox, using the same sand that Lucas did.

#star wars #andor #star wars andor #i GET why some people feel like andor isn't star wars #but quite honestly that feels like not just a superficial reading of andor but a superficial reading of star wars as a whole #the only other show to come anywhere near andor's level was the obi-wan kenobi show #there's tons of visuals that are intended to link back to both the pt and the ot #from obi-wan and leia's costumes to things like the fire obi-wan is burned in and that flashback scene #i'm placing andor above owk still because i think andor takes it an extra level higher but owk is also in that sandbox #owk just got stuck with the fucking volume and the disadvantage of going from a movie to a miniseries #but it did far better with those disadvantages than just about anyone else and still told a VERY star wars style story #the fact that it feels like the prequels is exactly why everyone hated it #and it's exactly why i loved it and think it's the 2nd best thing to come out of star wars since rots #i'll give 3rd place to rebels since it tries once or twice to do some visual and dialogue repetition #but those kinds of things aren't something i see analyzed about rebels all that much tbh #everything else is just fanfic that made a profit #some of it is really BAD fanfic that thinks a cameo is the same as a visual motif. it's not. they suck. stop doing them.

[rweoutofthewoods]

fanfic/fandom ettiquite guide

Okay, I've seen some things recently that make me think there is some need to make a master post of some general fandom and fic ettiquite just because some people may not know and I think there's a huge wave of fanfic becoming more mainstream especially on apps like tiktok.

If you don't like it, don't engage with it!! I think this above all, is the golden rule of fandom. The internet is made for you to be able to mute, hide, and censor things you don't like. DO THAT! don't make a career off of hating things. This goes along with the three laws of fandom, which u should check out FIRST OF ALL.

DON'T GATEKEEP!! If you're posting about a fic, art, ANYTHING link it, credit it! Don't post a tiktok about a fic and then refuse to give the name. Not only are you failing to credit the creators of this content, but you're taking away from the fact that fandom is a COMMUNITY where content is meant for everyone.

Ao3 is an archive. You're going to see things you might not like or even find offensive or uncomfortable. But fanfic is not meant to be censored. Ao3 is made to be unfiltered, people can post anything and everything. Posting fics on other sites simply to shame their content not only brings MORE attention to it, but it's pointless. If you want a website that is censored go to wattpad. And of course, if you don't like it DON'T READ. You can filter your tags and warnings on ao3 so it won't show you that content.

Along those lines LEARN HOW TO USE AO3. There is no algorithm, it is not tiktok. You don't need to censor words in your tags. Your fics are not magically getting pushed out to people. Make sure you're using "person 1/person 2" for romantic relationships and "person 1 & person 2" for non-romantic relationships. Make sure things like non-con and underage are tagged under the warnings. AND AS A READER, know how to filter ships and tags to find the content you want. You can filter by kudos, certain tags, exclude certain relationships or characters etc. USE IT.

Do not create placeholder fics or other "non fics" on ao3. This is against their terms of service. You can (and probably will) be reported, this annoys people endlessly. We don't want to find a fic and open it to see "I haven't written this yet, sorry!" JUST SAVE A DRAFT OR DO IT IN A DOCUMENT? this seems like way to rack up hits, and it comes across as disingenuous, I don't see a real valid reason to make placeholders.

HOW TO WRITE AN ACCEPTABLE COMMENT: long is not important. A simple "loved this!" will make an author happy. DO NOT say any variation of "update pls?" regardless of how nice you think it is. Authors update when they can.I'm not the only author I've seen unhappy with this. JUST WAIT, either it will be updated or it won't, and either way you will live. If you have nothing nice to say about a fic?? MOVE ON. Don't leave a hate comment.

Do not rate or publicly shit on fanfic! A lot of authors know many people, and the chances of that author seeing whatever you're saying about their work is very high. If you don't like it, click off and read something else. If it's still living rent-free in your mind, that sounds like fan behavior to me. And there is no standard fics are supposed to meet, don't rate them.

Don't cross-post fics. Don't put fics on other sites, don't put translation on other sites. DON'T DO ANYTHING with a fic without checking with the author first. On that note, also don't post fics on GoodReads etc. unless an author explicitly says it's okay.

IF YOU DO NOT MARK YOUR BOOKMARKS AS PRIVATE AUTHORS CAN SEE THEM!! If you're going to say anything that isn't positive, you better mark that as private or better yet, move on. Don't say anything on a public bookmark you wouldn't want the author to read.

YOU CANNOT PROFIT OFF OF FANFIC, don't sell bound fics! Don't bind fics if the intention is to sell them. You're potentially creating a lawsuit for the authors of these fics and putting the existence of fanfic in danger. I've seen multiple authors debating taking fics down because of binding issues, just don't do it. AND IF YOU'RE BUYING BOUND FICS YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM. it's selfish and I wish bad karma upon you.

You wouldn't think I'd have to say this but don't plagiarize or use AI to create fics/art etc. firstly making ai write something IS a form of plagiarism. bUT ALSO just write your own content. If you can't, then writing fics etc. is just not for you. No shame about it!

DON'T ASK AUTHORS TO BETA FOR YOU!! You wouldn't believe how many people have asked me to beta their fics for them, I AM NOT A BETA. I HAVE a beta because my proofreading skills are shit. If someone wants to beta they will offer, or go find a blog or somewhere where people are looking to beta. Like @needabeta You can even make a post asking around for a beta, but don't go bug your favorite authors to proofread your fics.

Really just don't harass authors. Of course, don't be afraid to send nice dms, asks, or comments if their inbox is open, but don't spam them especially if they don't reply. Respect boundaries! Don't send nasty anons, everyone knows this is a sign of jealousy and obsession. You're only succeeding in making yourself look bad. Ask yourself why is this author living rent-free in your mind, hm??

If you don't like a ship, stay away from the content geared towards that ship. There's no reason for you to be in people's inbox harassing them over a ship. It's never that deep. If you truly hate it so much, go consume the content for ships you DO like.

Stay grounded. This goes to both fic authors and readers alike. Hits and popularity are not the mark of a good fic. Getting a lot of hits doesn't mean it's good and NOT getting many doesn't mean it's bad. I'm tired of seeing tiktoks asking "so what's the next big fic?" WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A "BIG FIC"? go look through the ao3 tag and find something you like to read, it doesn't have to be what everyone else is reading.

Headcanons are not law. People can think whatever they want about the characters. If you disagree with someone's hc, just move on... and just because a headcanon is popular, doesn't mean everyone has to abide by it. Be creative!

Don't treat artists and authors like celebs! We're all in this together! We're all losers who like the same characters and ships. Of course, compliment and be kind to all creators because we put a lot of time and effort into creating fan content for you all, but don't worship anyone. Don't treat them weirdly or make a post like "omg x followed me!" that's a bit weird. If you want to be excited, dm your friends and giggle together, but acting like authors and artists etc. are celebs only creates the room for people to stop seeing them as normal people and start acting rude or entitled. And many people are uncomfortable with it!!

TLDR; stop creating so much negativity in fandom spaces. At least in MY fandom it's just constantly shitting on ships, fics, art. It's hate anons, antis, and constant fighting about every headcanon. I'M TIRED OF IT! Learn to filter out content you don't want to see, and move on with your life instead of spreading more negativity.

If you have anything you think I should add shoot me a comment or an ask and I will add it! I'm sure I didn't get everything :) this mostly applies to my own experience being in the hp/marauders fandom for a good 10+ years, and I'm sure it varies slightly from fandom to fandom.

#fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #archive of our own #fandom #fandom culture #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #fanfic authors #ao3 author #fanfic readers #fanfic etiquette #fandom etiquette #fanfic rules #jegulus fanfic #jegulus #marauders #the marauders #marauders fandom #harry potter fanfiction

[whosaidsealscantfly]

My two cents on the whole situation

I think a lot of people in the Welcome Home fandom are misunderstanding the bigger picture here. It's resulting in a lot of people expressing disappointment and pointing fingers at people who aren't even the problem, and while the intentions mean well, it's causing the toxic environment Clown doesn't want.

In his post, which has now been privated, he talks about how overwhelming everything is. He even directly states that it's not just about boundaries, and while he has trouble putting it into words (and I will not put words in his mouth in the process either), Clown indicates that the sudden spotlight and attention is overwhelming him. And that's completely understandable - he's just one guy! Plus, he's been making stuff for Welcome Home for years, so it only makes sense to fluster over the sudden rush of attention in only a week. A week!!!

The reasons why boundaries come into play with all of this isn't just because his THREE rules were violated by garbage people. It's the fact that he had no time to establish boundaries beforehand, and it's stressful to suddenly have to think of EVERY facet of fandom culture and establish the dos and don'ts. But as Clown said, what's happened has happened, and all we can do is move on. Which leads me to my next point:

Clown explicitly said to not reprimand people on his behalf. He doesn't want the fandom to waste time and energy on people who have already crossed the line. What has happened, has happened. With that said, it's important to educate and point out when someone has crossed a boundary, but you shouldn't go through so much effort and anger over someone who clearly doesn't give a shit.

I've seen a lot of people who are making posts with a lot of "shame on you!"s and "You are all trash." I've also seen comments on harmless fanfics or art saying things like "You're the reason this fandom sucks." What awful things to say!

This fandom is probably one of the best fandoms I've been a part of. Why? Because a large majority, and I mean a LARGE majority, are respectful of Clown and want to do right by him. I've never seen a community band together so quickly to change their ways, apologize, spread the word, and evaluate the decisions they've made: not just in this fandom, but every fandom they've ever been a part of. That's HUGE. I've been on the internet for a very long time, and I don't think I've ever seen anything like that.

Yes, there are BAD eggs in this fandom, but there always is. What's important is that I haven't been seeing those bad eggs. Like, at all. I haven't seen a single explicit NSFW post, and I haven't seen a single piece of mass-produced merch. I've only heard about them through word-of-mouth, but I've never actually seen anything with my own eyes. Not that I doubt anyone, but I'm saying this to illustrate just how little bad eggs there are in the community. And this is a HUGE community.

In fact, I think we're so good, that we're starting to punish ourselves for making fandom content, and that is also awful. I want to reiterate what Clown's three major rules are:

Refrain from publicly posting NSFW content or content that wouldn't be safe for children to see/read.

Do not mass produce merch. Commissions and personal projects are fine, but they cannot be mass produced to be sold.

Do not impersonate and claim his art as yours. Give credit!! Don't trick people, and don't profit off of someone else's work!

And that's it! I've seen a lot of people taking down their fanfictions and art and AUs just because they're worried about Clown. That's super sweet and it warms my heart to hear that the community is so considerate, but remember, the three rules above are the only don'ts. Lots of people are scared of continuing to overwhelm him, and they're also scared that he might stop the project all together.

I assure you, he's not. Firstly, his fan works guideline is still pinned on his Tumblr blog!! If he wasn't sure of fanworks all together, he would have simply privated the post and write a new one with new rules. The rules have not changed. He loves to see fan interpretations, your AUs, your OCs, and your art! This is all explicitly stated! You can read it here incase you forgot -> https://www.tumblr.com/partycoffin/712519493403934720/apologies-if-this-has-already-been-asked-but-how?source=share

Secondly, he actually posted an update on his ko-fi that indicates that he's doing much better and that he's "elbow deep" into working on Welcome Home! I'm a member that gets to see all of his posts on ko-fi, and while I'm not going to show you the whole post (obviously), I will quote an important part you guys should see: "You have all been so delightful to me (Setbacks happen with an abrupt shift in attention, I realize, so roll I will with this newfound experience!) and I was like 'Oh, let's post a tasty preview!'"

Clown acknowledges all of the goodwill and kindness the community has shown. He even states that he's learned from the experience and he's working hard on Welcome Home to see it through!

This was a very long two cents, so I'll end it here.

tl;dr, You guys are being too harsh on each other/yourselves, and that's the last thing Clown wants. He's doing better, Welcome Home is still being worked on, and you shouldn't have to shame yourself or others for posting perfectly kosher fandom content. There's only three major rules, three, so you shouldn't have to feel bad about what makes you happy.

#welcome home #wally darling #welcomeh #frank frankly #julie joyful #eddie dear #poppy partridge #howdy pillar #barnaby b beagle #sally starlet #i think those are all the tags lmao #erica speaks #anyway stop being mean!! y'all are fine just be your silly little selves #I should also note that this isn't to change your mind if you want to delete your stuff #This is just a reminder that your stuff is okay! As long as it doesn't break the three rules ofc

[sagittato]

This is my first post and it’s gonna be low effort because I swear I can’t get this off my mind—

Do people from twisted wonderland realize how much Azul Ashengrotto could potentially look up at Vil Schoenhiet??? ONLY @jxnebuggy ACKNOWLEDGES THIS IN HER fem!twst FANFICS AND IT DRIVES ME INSANE!!!

Vil is a successful, confident, drop dead gorgeous fashion icon. He has a whole business for cosmetics because he’s so gorgeous. He’s very skilled in potion making, so much so bro makes his OWN makeup. He has a strict diet he follows and it’s clearly gving him the results he wants. Vil Schoenheit is everything Azul wants to be!! On top of that, Vil is Azul’s bloody UPPERCLASSMAN.

And does everyone forget how Azul literally info dumped about the man in Book 5 Chapter 2?? Nobody talks about it. They’re too busy headcannoning Sebek or Riddle or Floyd to be neurodivergent af (jkjk)!! Such a shame Vil told him to stfu but in his own pretty, 3w4-coded ways😔😔

Azul has shown before he will invest inhumane amounts of time into things he thinks are important. An example of this is in his birthday jackect card, he talked in a fair amount of detail about the quality of the pillow Ace gave him. He could do this because he researched ON pillow qualities.

It’s likely when he was trying to step up his game with success or diet, he stumbled upon Vil, researched the frick out of this guy, and lo and behold became a fan of his.

Some honourable mentions are when he made a deal with Vil in his ceremonial robes. I haven’t seen it because I wanna save the feeling of raw happiness with these two characters interacting once I get the card. If we didn’t see Azul show any sort of fan behaviour when Vil made that deal then I firmly believe he was kicking, giggling, twirling his hair off camera behind closed doors over it. Then I do hear in the second Camp Vargas event, Azul and Vil had some more interactions! I thiiiiiiink they were getting competitive with each other??? That changes nothing from my ignorant eye. It’s NRC. Everyone is really competitive and will turn on each other’s backs faster than Leona can fall asleep (bro’s actually depressed, I swear).

Anyway, I think it’s only right I list my headcanons now for them:

Azul gobbles up any dietary/beauty tips Vil has

Azul uses Vil’s makeup brand that’s probably vegan

He also collects Vil’s magazines and puts them all in a box hidden away in his closet or under his bed

Vil probably finds him annoying💀💀💀 (what can I say? he has a reputation for not stfu around higher class people)

Elaborating on that, Vil does respect his success but I bet he can see the unhealthy greed that lies under it all. Thus, that’s prolly a reason why he would try to distance himself away from Azul.

BADLY wants to collaborate with Vil because Mostro Lounge profits would soar if they did. Knowing his bold arse he probably made the request at least thrice and Vil shut him down each time. He’s obviously not gonna stop because we all know him. (never back down never what—)

Yes, I know he canonically looks up to Ursula, but I think he would like someone… yknow… alive to look up to.

Keep in mind I’m only on Book 5 Chapter 29 as of this moment so it’s totally possible I missed some things! Leave your opinions, headcanons, or anything else in the comments, I’d love to see them! Do leave spolier warnings though. That way I can decide whether I wanna spoil things first myself or not.

EDIT: I already fixed it but did I really just say book 6 😭😭😭 i meant book 5 i am so sry hdgdhjjjdhdjj

#azul ashengrotto #vil schoenheit #i’m procrastinating #the world needs to know how great the azul & vil duo is #first post #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland rant

[not-a-21st-century-girl]

There's something i think about a lot in the context of how gomens fandom tends to blindly follow everything neil says and view it as 100% canon, even though he himself said multiple times that's not how his words outside of the actual text should be treated.

It's the way modern fandoms, from what i see, are becoming too dependent on creators of their canon. Fandom culture, as a whole, is built on the death of author concept, on the idea that authors lose their power over their texts the moment they finish them. For years fandoms were something that creators of the canon used to look down on, or ignore, or disapprove — but no one cared, because the very idea of the fandom implies that you can do what you want and go against anything author says, or even against the things that are actually part of the canon, just because you don't like them.

But in the last idk how many years fandom culture grew bigger and more noticeable, and gradually stopped being perceived as something freaky or weird, and for canon creators, it simply became... more profitable? more logical? to interact with the fandom rather than ignore it. And ofc there's also the fact that fandom culture is and was largely queer culture, and it's becoming more and more normal to make mass media for queer people (which is a good thing!). So there we get more and more official social media accs being friendly with fans, PR-companies playing with hints on a popular ship, authors talking about their fandom and awnsering its questions, and canons themselves catering to fandom's needs, or whole canons being created with those needs in mind — "look, we have a new series with a queer couple that has a dynamic you people love! Come and write fanfics about them and we won't be mad at you like everyone was before!" And it works, of course it works, because we finally get what we want, we're finally being taken seriously! Things are finally being made for us!

And, obviously, it isn't inherently a bad thing. It's probably an inherently good thing even. But with that attitude becoming more and more common, the line between the "official" stuff and fandom becomes more and more blurred. And then... if the creators of our canon are friendly, surely we've got to be friendly too? If they're saying things we like, it would only be fair if we, too, would try to at least not say things they don't like? They've created that book/movie/series/etc that we all like after all, so the least we can do is be thankful and acknowledge what they have to say.

Which is all well, of course. But the way i see it, the moment fandom bends to meet the canon's authors' wishes, it loses its purpose. The decorum — the fanworks, the ships, the discourse — stays, but the very core if it is missing. It's not about bending the story any way you like it, no matter what author or anyone else thinks, anymore. And it frustrates me a lot.

#for the record: there are obvs a lot of the factors affecting everything #so ofc I'm not saying this whole thing with #fandom becoming louder > authors starting to make things for the fandom > fandom starting to try to not make authors mad #is that simple or that straight #but it's kinda there? #not really #good omens critical #but kinda related

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Oh, the Lure of Emily

I've been withdrawing.

Not for all that long, I don't think, but social media goes so fast, so that means letting a lot of opportunities to be "social" disappear into the ether. I shouldn't. I need to practice connecting with people and it used to be so much easier for me to do that on the internet, but I really hate just about everything about it now. It's hard to put what I mean into words fast enough, and it seems like that's hard for a lot of people, but we're doing it anyway. That's a lot of what I don't like interacting IRL, and it's here now. I haven't found a place that's not like that.

I entered into this level of interaction at the behest of a soulless corporation that doesn't care about any of us (clearly) and I'm being asked to pay more than I wanted to give (ex. curate an ever-lengthening feed of more people who want to be seen, help train AIs who'll render me and others invisible, accept a certain amount of increasingly heinous ideas with no pushback to be polite/for my own mental health/to keep my interaction from being nothing but that stuff), in return for much less than what I wanted to get. Mainly, it's so strangers can click a button that says they "like" something I did, and never interact with me, or any other aspect of me, ever again.

It's like that on my site, too, except I disabled the "like" and comment functions out of frustration. The interface became unsustainable and It's mainly bots using it. I've improved my ratio of "recorded clicks that were probably a human being" vs. "probably a webcrawler or spambot" for the privilege of seeing how few people are interested.

And social media isn't helping. I mean, why would it? It's getting all it wants out of me on spec, and it does not have to deliver visibility. It never did. That was always something I needed to "earn." It just seemed to be easier to do that in Web 1.0. I had a message board, once. It survived a move from one dying host to another (which, I think, is also dead now - everyone's on Discord) and I picked up enough people to write and have fun, with very few jerks I needed to ban, and no bots. Wow. If someone was being a total bastard, they were made of meat and I could yell at them and register an objection like a person. Does anyone out there remember that?

A big part of me wants to be a postmodern Emily Dickenson. You can have my work after I'm dead, if you want it. I'll "publish" by printing it out and putting it in a box. Even the fanfic stuff. Interacting with fandoms hardly seems worth it for me, they've got their own issues. And, as for social, you may have one garden party a year, and maybe I'll exchange emails with one guy who says "this stuff is good". We live small enough, and we're doing well enough, that I could probably hide and keep making art uncompensated. Unless something happened, and then I'd probably wind up on the street or in an institution of some kind. Not the nice kind.

And, as much as you [as in, anyone who trips over this] would protest the loss of me to my face - out of some feeling of human solidarity or philosophical devotion - were I to vanish, it wouldn't matter where. You'd get used to not seeing me. You'd read something else. Maybe I'd be happier, maybe I wouldn't, but that wouldn't involve you, so you'd move on.

That big, dumb jerk Nietzsche (who was, at least, made of meat) posited that Sisyphus must be happy, because he knows he's doing what he's supposed to and what's going to happen next, forever. But, really, the only thing you'd have to do is say to him, "Every time you put one iota of effort into pushing this rock, there's a small chance it'll take off and fly. If you're really doing your job, it will, it's just a matter of time!" And then it doesn't. Not just for his whole life, for eternity.

I'm not being punished for cheating death. I'm being punished for cheating corporations - not even cheating them all that much, I don't think, but it's enough. I don't look profitable, because that wasn't why I started pushing this rock. I wanted to make a difference. I'd like enough money to live and keep creating, and to pay some people to help me, but all that's just some boxes to tick on the way to making a difference. And I can't tick those boxes for a corporation or for myself.

The only thing that's gotten me attention is when someone bigger than me gives me a namecheck. I could just keep begging creators I love to do that, but a lot of people do that, and I don't think creators like it. They didn't ask for that responsibility. They don't have time to vet every person and see if their work is actually good or just AI generated garbage. Or delusional garbage from someone who thinks they can create, but can't, really. I'm losing the confidence to keep begging people to understand that I'm not delusional. Maybe I am, ya know? That would explain my situation too.

At least, if I kept it all to myself, I'd be dead when someone found my boxes and boxes of papers and chose an excerpt for their treatise on hypergraphia in freaky recluses.

Thoreau got it twisted. People make pretty baskets so someone will use them. If it has no use, it's neither a basket nor an art object. Someone has to pick it up and use it for it to be either of those things, and hopefully both. I use my baskets. I think other people could, but I know I use them. It would be a lot easier for me to do that if I didn't keep leaving them outside when I've finished weaving and hoping someone will pick them up.

But, I typed this into a window on Tumblr, so it's going outside with the rest. As will the others, for the time being. My words will probably be used to train an AI, and already have been. Yours too. Self-determination is reserved for the Emilies. I do want it, but...

Not enough to give up this painful hope that a rock might fly.

[fenmere]

Sunspot Coffee and Tea

Against our promise to avoid writing for a bit while recovering from a minor burnout, I wrote something here tonight. It might have been therapeutic to do so, honestly.

It's a coffee shop AU self insert crossover fanfic of Wildow's Otherverse and the Sunspot Chronicles, titled "Sunspot Coffee and Tea". It takes place on this Earth, though. Descriptions of Others, Practicioners, Aware, and the Seal are from the work of Wildbow, A.K.A. John C. McCrae, and belong to him. We reference them here with love, and no intentions to make any profit from them, even if we stretch their intended canonical possibilities a bit. References to everything else not of this Earth, including Ktletaccete, beshakete, and `etekeyerrinwuf, are of the Sunspot Chronicles and belong to us, the Inmara. All the characters are headmates and therefore real people.

The Black Drop was a real coffee shop that was really like that, and we miss it. A lot.

We'll probably put this up on AO3 later. No warnings are necessary for this fic. It's 6093 words, light, hopefully cute, and totally self indulgent:

In Tanasbourne, Hillsboro, Oregon, in one of the strip malls there, there used to be an Insomnia Cafe next to a brewpub.

It’s still a cafe. Of a sorts. It was bought out a couple years ago, however, and has a new name. It’s called Sunspot Coffee and Tea.

There are some interesting things about this cafe, not the least of which is that they don’t accept money. How they manage to stay functioning without actually doing business is a total mystery to all of their neighbors and patrons, but if you want any sort of drink or pastry there, all you have to do is walk up to the counter and ask for it. Of course, the pastries have to be available, and it’s first come first serve for them. But they produce them quickly enough that if they’re out of something, you just have to wait thirty minutes or so. At most.

Before it became the Sunspot, it was like most cafes of its sort, especially in that neighborhood, attracting working class people who had at least some decent income. And that part of Tanasbourne wasn’t really known for being accessible to the less fortunate.

However, after it became known what their new mode of “business” was, people in need would take the MAX and the bus from all around to get a free meal, and they were quite welcome.

The clientele changed quite quickly, and this created something of a controversy in the neighborhood. Theories sprang up and circulated when efforts to bring the law down on them failed utterly. Stories about the mafia, or even more unbelievable things. One of the stories is true.

Eventually, things settled down, and everyone got used to the new culture and routines that the Sunspot brought to Tanasbourne.

I happen to know exactly how that all played out and why, but I’m not telling. I’ve taken oaths. I’ll give you hints in this story, though, because I think I can get away with it, and it’s kinda fun.

In any case, it was under these circumstances in that cafe that I got to watch a connection made that I had never expected to see. One that may well lead to the kind of quiet, sweet partnership that causes the world to glow just a little brighter at the ambient level, without most people quite knowing the source.

Of course, it started during a day when Eh, our boss and Senior Captain, was working the counter.

I was sitting at a table with Gesedege and Gnargrim, enjoying a round of Brekken’s tea while slowly discussing the intersections of public relations and security for the shop. Which is to say that we mostly sat, quiet, watching steam rise from our drinks, looking around at the guests and just soaking up the joy of seeing people rest who might not otherwise get to. And then, occasionally, one of us would take a sip or say a word or two, and the other two would nod or take sips as well.

And a new person walked in. Someone we’d never seen before. And I could tell by the way they entered the shop, they hadn’t yet heard about who and what we were. They hadn’t got the story yet. They probably thought this was a typical coffee shop.

They put on a double layer of masks before entering, which was good. Largely unnecessary in the Sunspot, but with covid still running rampant in the rest of the world, despite all the propaganda suggesting otherwise, their N95 disposable under a metallic hot pink mermaid print etsy number was a really wise idea. And it certainly put most of our guests at ease, even though they weren’t wearing masks anymore themselves.

But there were some smirks as this person reached into the pocket of their navy blue sleeveless cloak to pull out their card purse as they navigated through the tables and easy chairs to the counter. The long, black feather in their wide brimmed black wool hat bobbed as they went, boots squeaking on the wood floor.

Eh smiled as they looked up from a drink they were preparing for someone else.

And it was at that eye contact that the person realized they’d walked into something different.

They probably hadn’t noticed the lack of a cash register or POS yet. They’d obviously missed the appearance of me and my compatriots, since they’d been absorbed in arranging their garments and fishing out their method of payment, and had glanced at the other guests. They’d just happened to look the other way as they passed our corner, which was right near the door.

If they’d seen us, they might have had the same reaction they were having at the sight of Eh.

Eh is tall. They tend to keep their height low enough that they don’t have to crouch while in the building, but their antlers will just miss scratching the ceiling when they straighten up from a task like decorating a mocha. Their tail has a tendency to fill the walkway from the kitchen to the front counter, and their wings will block the view of the front from the rest of the staff who are in the back. And through clever programming, they’ve managed to turn the outer skin of their body into a satiny dark purple that seems to be full of stars and nebulae and is somehow constantly rim lit, regardless of the actual lighting of their surroundings.

Most human beings, upon seeing that vision, will later describe it as having been like walking right into VRChat. Only, I’ve logged into VRChat, and nobody has yet been able to create an avatar of that detail and refinement.

“How may I help you?” Eh asked.

The newcomer looked around, clearly startled and worried, and caught the vision of Gnargrim, Gesedege, and myself holding our tea cups up in greeting.

If you look at my tumblr icon, you’ll know what I look like. I’m slightly smaller than Eh, and like to sit in my easy chair backward, resting arms and chin on the back. 

Gnargrim, built like a cross between Eh and myself, also uses chairs in a similar way. 

Gesedege, however, has taken to dressing like a human, and will stow their tail away in order to sit in a chair. But their muzzle, parabolic ears, and pair of horns tend to give away their origins as easily as Eh’s countenance.

Most new people at this point tend to freeze and gape, and it takes a certain amount of talking and coaching from the other guests to get them to relax and start to feel at home.

This person, however, scowled, brows knitting together above their mask, eyes squinting. They reached into their cloak to where a metal handled antique cane was hooked into an inside pocket and pulled it out with their right hand, clapping its point to the floor.

Gnargrim raised an eyebrow my direction.

We hadn’t seen this reaction before at all.

They whirled to speak to Eh, and asked, “Are we in the presence of Aware?” They lightly gestured at the other guests.

Eh opened their mouth for a moment, tongue and teeth glowing, pausing to think, before speaking, “Everyone here is aware of who we are, yes.”

The newcomer relaxed and bowed their head, then looked up and spoke more softly, “I’m sorry. My name is Anne. She/her. I’ve just moved down here from Washington, and didn’t realize a place like this was here. The Lord of Portland made no mention of the Sunspot, of course, but nobody else did either. I would have thought it would be recommended or warned about. Am I welcome here?”

Eh tilted their head, “Lord of Portland?”

Anne took a step back, and said, “Asterix. Right?”

Eh shook their head lightly, “I have never heard of them.”

“Him. How?” Anne corrected, then asked, tense. Then she shook herself out and stammered, “Sorry! Sorry. Please pardon my rudeness and short language. This feels like a very unusual situation and I’m finding it hard to mask.”

“You are wearing one,” Eh pointed out.

Anne looked around, then back at Eh and said, “I’m the only one here wearing one. Do you have a ward of protection up against pathogens?”

“You… could put it that way,” Eh said. “The air is heavily filtered and everyone here is personally protected with our technology. It should be safe for you to remove your mask here. If you wish to have your own personal protection, you’ll have to give us your consent to give it to you. It comes with side effects, however. You are also very welcome here. I am assured that this is considered a safe place to be, even though I have never heard of Asterix or a Lord of Portland.”

Anne hesitated midway through taking her hat off to remove her masks, then decided to proceed. Her long brown hair had a freshly trimmed sidecut, and her face was covered with a fine layer of stubble. Like many people in the Pacific Northwest, she didn’t wear any makeup, but she had earrings and an eyebrow piercing. Her glasses had little dragons sculpted into the sides of the rims. 

She smiled hopefully as she put her masks into her pockets, cane hooked into the crook of her arm as she worked.

“Can I order a coffee?” Anne asked.

“You may have one,” Eh said. “I’d be more than happy to make it for you.”

Anne paused again, blinking, then asked, “How much is it?”

Eh smiled, “It is free to anyone who asks.”

“Even a twelve ounce decaf mocha?” Anne asked, gesturing at the drink that Eh had just finished up.

Eh nodded and said, “Yes. Even that.” Then they looked across the cafe and called the name, “Maxwell?”

A man in an orange knit skull cap and a blue puffy jacket got up from his seat and wandered over to get his drink, thanking Eh and nodding to Anne before sitting down again. Anne’s eye followed the checkered handkerchief that hung from Maxwell’s left back pocket. She didn’t seem to have any strong emotional reaction. It seemed like a reflexive look followed but a decision to be satisfied with it.

Then she looked at the line of big pride flags along the wall, and smiled back at Maxwell, nodding.

“OK. Please let me know if anything is expected from me. I’d like to be a good guest,” Anne said. “I would very much like to have a decaff twelve ounce mocha, with no whip cream. And, do you have pastries?”

Eh nodded, then gestured to the case to Anne’s left, which held all the available pastries.

Anne bent to look, leaning on her cane.

“Are those cheese danishes?” she asked.

“They are!” Eh replied.

“I’d like one of those.”

“Certainly!” As Eh began to work on Anne’s mocha, they reached over with a foot and slid the back door of the case open. And then they did one of our little tricks, turning their extended hind limb into a tendril with a hand on the end of it and used it to select one of the danishes and pull it out of the case to put on a plate.

Anne watched this with an intense curiosity, completely unalarmed.

It was obvious that the other guests who were still watching were impressed with her reactions, but they also largely started to turn their attention away. To them, she might as well have been a regular at that point.

Not to us, though. She was behaving somewhat strangely. She was speaking of things that were established to her, such as the Lord of Portland, that we knew nothing about. I could see in Eh’s eyes that they were avidly intent on learning more. And I made a note to ask Morde to look into it if Eh did not.

It looked like Anne was about to ask another question when Eh beat her to the punch, “So, what brings you to Tannasbourne?”

“Ah, my girlfriend,” Anne said. “I’ve moved in with her.”

“Oh! Wonderful!” Eh said.

“Of course, what with Practice and the Seal, now I’ve got business here, too,” Anne said, a little less brightly, in a humorously onerous tone as if Eh should know what that meant.

Eh nodded absently but didn’t say anything, letting Anne think what she might think for the moment.

“How long have you been here?” Anne asked. There wasn’t anyone behind her, so she felt like she could stand and chat.

Which suited Eh just fine. Eh replied, “We arrived about eight years ago, and set up shop two years ago, after the pandemic hit the cafe that was here particularly hard.”

“And, if you don’t mind me asking again, you don’t know the Lord of Portland?” Anne asked. “How is that?”

“Well,” Eh said amiably. “We didn’t know that there was one, to begin with, if you’re really not talking about the Mayor.”

“I’m really not,” Anne said. “That’s kind of amazing.”

“Is he kind of like Emperor Norton?” Eh asked, referring to Joshua Abraham Norton of San Francisco, who had declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. We knew about him from one of our regulars.

Anne turned her head sideways slowly and drawled out, “nooooo? Not really. Though, I think Emperor Norton might have been a Practitioner.” She said that with an emphasis that gave me visions of both italics and a capital letter. “Asterix is an Animus,” she explained. “A surprisingly strong one, too, for his origins.”

“An Animus?” Eh asked, clearly dawdling on Anne’s drink to maintain the excuse to do something while talking.

Anne didn’t seem to mind, but she did sway side to side on her feet a bit, still leaning on her cane. I had to admit, even though her back was turned to me I was still watching her expressions via our surveillance channel. Really Gnargrim’s job, but I was very curious about her. As were we all. She looked like she was trying to concentrate. Not frustrated, but maybe confused.

I’ve been studying human expression pretty avidly, so I’m fairly confident about that. But I could have been wrong.

“An Animus,” Anne confirmed. “You know. An Other that is a manifestation of an idea or common emotion?”

“Oh!” Eh exclaimed, stirring chocolate into the shot before pouring the foamed milk into the cup. “We do know one of those, but it didn’t follow us here. It was afraid there might be others like it, and it didn’t want to encroach.”

“OK, so you do know what a Lord is?”

“No,” Eh said. “We really don’t.”

“But, you’re Other and you know what an Animus is, and you’re here.”

Eh held up a claw with one hand, and the milk pitcher in the other, “I am friends with a thing that can be described by your definition of Animus, yes. But that’s not our word for it, though. And I’m not sure what you mean by ‘Other’. That sounded like it had a weight to it and a context that I don’t know about.”

“But you’re not human,” Anne said.

Eh shook their head, then began to pour the milk into Anne’s cup.

“So you must be Other,” she concluded.

“So,” Eh carefully waved the pitcher to create a rosette on the top of mocha. “Other, in this context, means not human? Such as an alien, yes? I’m assuming you wouldn’t call a cat or a bird an Other.” Eh was managing to verbally put that capital letter on that word, just like Anne had been doing.

“No?” Anne said cautiously, putting a question to it in uncertainty. Then she asked more firmly, “What do you mean by ‘alien’?”

Eh glanced at Maxwell with a bit of a smirk, and said, “You know, like in 3rd Rock from the Sun.” We’d all watched that show on recommendation from our eldest regular.

Anne straightened up and did the backward step again, blinking.

Eh offered her her drink.

She squinted at them long and hard, then turned to my trio and did the same to us. I noticed that her pupils glowed a bright pink. Which is not something I’ve seen outside of our own Network before.

“You’re not Other,” she muttered.

“We’re not?” Eh asked.

“You don’t look like Others through my sight,” she replied.

“Interesting.”

“So, you’re aliens? Is that what you meant by ‘arrive’?” she asked.

“Ktletaccete,” Eh said. “Our word for aliens is ‘beshakete’, or Outsiders. And to you, we are Outsiders, yes. But we call ourselves Ktletaccete. It’s fascinating that you don’t detect us as Other, though. What does that mean, exactly?”

“You all have strong Selves like humans typically do. The spirits react to you as if you do, and you might be able to Practice, if you’re not doing it already,” Anne said. “You absolutely don’t resemble any of the Others I know about. My sight is particularly attuned to that kind of thing.”

Several of the guests were paying attention again.

“I think I need to sit down,” Anne said. “But, can we keep talking?”

Eh nodded, saying “Certainly.” And then commanded a chair to form from one of the bins, graphene colored clay crawling out of what people often took for a trash receptacle and slithering across the floor to shape itself into a seat particularly suited to Anne’s height and shape. Eh gestured at it.

Anne watched this and then pointed at the chair, stating, “That’s not Practice.”

“Ninite clay,” Eh said. “It’s part of how we got here.”

Anne experimentally sat down in the chair, and then looked surprised at how comfortable it was. It molded itself to her body and adjusted itself to her needs as best it could without the neural link.

Watching, Eh said, “The nanites are also how we provide protection against pathogens for those who consent.”

“Can they replicate?” she asked, with a tone of nervousness in her voice, moving as if considering standing up again.

“Yes,” Eh said. “But not without explicit command.”

“I thought that wasn’t possible!” Anne exclaimed. “I remember reading on Wikipedia…”

“The prevailing theory is that our Animus helped us make them,” Eh said. “If it is an Animus.”

“Oh.”

“Can you tell me what you mean by ‘Practice’?”

Anne took a sip of her mocha and raised her eyebrows in appreciation, “Magic. Through vows to keep true to one's word and uphold the old pacts, humanity can command the spirits to do work. Move energies. Alter reality a bit. Summon Others. Travel places. That sort of thing. Magic.” Then she looked startled with herself, and looked back fearfully at the other guests.

Maxwell grinned and waved back at her.

“Wait,” she hissed, turning back to Eh. “If you’re aliens and you don’t know about Others and the Practice and all that, then, what about everyone else here? Are they all aliens too? In disguise? Please tell me they are.”

“No, sorry. We cater to humans,” Eh said.

“Oh, shit,” Anne said, looking up at the corners of the room.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I just said a whole lot of too much,” she shrank into her seat with dread.

Eh settled onto their haunches and leaned on the counter with their elbows, lowering their head with deference and concern, “That sounds bad. What are the consequences? Can we help somehow?”

Anne glanced at the other guests again, most of whom were now watching with various looks of surprise, concern, and enlightenment. Some of them were clearly putting two and two together for the first time regarding things we still had no clue about. Others seemed to be familiar with what Anne was saying, and maybe displaying concern for her. And the rest might have been hearing about this all for the first time.

Anne slumped and looked down at the floor, “I’m gonna take a big hit. I don’t know that there is anything you can do. I’m responsible for what everyone knows now.”

“Don’t sweat it, Anne,” Maxwell called from his seat. “We all know they’re aliens, right?” He looked around at the rest of the room, and was met with nods. “I don’t think anything you’ve said has really changed any lives here. Except maybe theirs, you know?” He gestured at Eh and the rest of us. “But, I bet you the Kletachitay don’t fall under the protection of the Seal, right?” He pronounced our people’s name with a distinctly West Coast accent. Most people around here did.

She rose slightly out of her seat to turn and look at him.

He nodded solemnly, with an inclination of encouragement, gesturing with his drink. Then, when he was sure she took that sentiment, he turned to relax back down into his own chair.

“It’s probably true,” someone else said.

Anne visibly relaxed and grinned nervously at Eh.

“Tell you what,” Eh said. “If you want to keep having this conversation in private, we can arrange that. If it would be better for you. We have our own secrets. We understand. But I would also like to learn more about this Lord of Portland, and maybe I should meet him at some point?”

Anne nodded.

Eh smiled, “There are a couple of ways we could do this. We do have a back office, which we could use, if you like. Or – well – we don’t really have hours, but it’s usually super quiet around 4 am. Sometimes we don’t have guests here at that time. But that’s not guaranteed. Or, you could consent to a neural terminal, and we could meet over the Network, if that’s not likely to mess with your, uh… You do Practice, right? Would your spirits reject the nanites?”

Anne’s eyes went wide as she took in a breath and held it, looking up at a corner of the room in thought. She looked fearfully back at Eh and said, “I don’t know. I’m kind of afraid to try. Um. Yes, I Practice. Yes. Um.” She glanced around the room again. “Through a bit of a loophole I can tell you about later.”

“A loophole?”

“Later.”

“OK.”

While they were having this part of the discussion, I witnessed yet another thing that was unprecedented to us.

Maxwell gave several of his fellow guests meaningful looks and exchanged nods. Then, some of them got up and spoke very quietly to other guests. And as Anne and Eh negotiated how they might talk in private, the presumably human guests of the Sunspot cafe began to gather their things and file out of the shop. Some of them waved to Eh or to me, Gnargrim, and Gesedege.

Eh looked just as surprised and bewildered as I did, and Anne noticed, so she looked back at the rest of the cafe to see what was happening.

“Don’t worry, Anne,” Maxwell said. “We’ve got your back. We’ll keep as much Innocence as we have left for you. Might come in handy, right?”

Anne looked utterly flabberghasted.

“After all,” he explained. “You’re family.” Then he gestured at the trans pride flag with his paper cup, and smirked.

He tugged the fold of his hat as he passed me, uttering my honorific, “m’Drah.” 

Maxwell’s one of my favorites, but he surprised the hell out of me that day.

Anne stared at the flag for a few seconds then looked at the door closing behind Maxwell’s back, eyes brimming with tears.

“I never thought I’d find a replacement for the Black Drop,” Anne said in the now emptied shop. “I thought that was an era that was gone forever.” She heaved out a couple of silent laughs, shaking her head. “But this place. How do you – ?” She trailed off, apparently unable to complete the question.

Eh brought themself back from their own bewilderment and replied, “We have some secrets we’re not going to divulge to even you. At least, not until our Council can agree to it. It looks like we could convene one right now, though.”

“Let’s go a bit more slowly than that,” Anne said, shakily.

“Sure.”

“Um,” Anne said. “I’m not exactly human, myself. I mean, I’m human enough now that I can Practice. Gaining a human enough Self was… a neat trick. I’m not sure I can explain it without giving you a whole education on the different kinds of Others and how Practice under the Seal works, though. Let’s just say that I’m old enough and experienced enough that I’m absolutely mortified that I was that careless. Bewildered, in fact.”

“Was the Black Drop -” Eh started to ask.

“A coffee shop where I came from,” Anne replied. “They weren’t like this. I knew only a few Others and Practitioners from there, but you couldn’t talk about that stuff in their lobby. You could talk about everything else, though. You could talk openly and loudly about your weirdest special interests, about being plural, or what it meant to you to be queer, and no one would bat an eye. And they called me family the first day I walked in the door, too. We had to chase the occasional bigot out a few times, but it was home in a way that no home ever was, you know?”

“I’ve heard Maxwell say something like that about the Sunspot,” Eh said. “But I don’t really know? I can’t. I can approximate from my own experiences, but I’m not human or Other, as you describe it. I didn’t grow up in this world.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Anne said, finally trying her danish. She gestured with it, “This is phenomenal!”

“Thank you.”

“You really should meet with the Lord of Portland, though,” Anne said. “I think I can arrange that. I’m really surprised he hasn’t reached out to you. Maybe he doesn’t know you’re here for some reason? But he should. By virtue of his station, a place like this should be known to him. Your presence should be felt.”

“Could it be possible that someone we’ve done business with covered that without telling us how it all works?” Eh asked. “Kind of like how we operate here legally?”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “Also, you’re not Others and you’re not Practitioners, so you technically don’t fall under his rule. It’s just that you don’t really belong here, either. How did you get here?”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” Eh said. “But I think I can summarize it intelligibly.”

“I’ll try to understand it,“ Anne said. 

They were both so much more relaxed now, and my Crew mates and I fell still to let them continue talking as if we weren’t even there. Eh never gave any indication we should leave, though, so we did stay and watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eh so at ease with anyone before, honestly. I’ve known them through… so many lifetimes. I wondered what was different about Anne. Something was obviously clicking between them now. The speed with which they responded to each other picked up.

“One of our people, with help from `efeje`e, our Animus or whatever it is, figured out how to warp space/time and transport a vessel over hundreds of thousands of lightyears without aging significantly inside it,” Eh said, as if this was nothing more than discovering and developing a new Art. “We let her leave the original Sunspot on her own journey, with a Tunnel aboard so we could keep communication. And she’s been jumping around from star to star, exploring the galaxy since. And she’s been collecting a bit of a crew for herself in the process. But, um… That’s several novels worth of story. Anyway, she’s gotten pretty good at sneaking onto and off of inhabited planets without being noticed.”

Anne dropped her jaw and squinted, shaking her head, and said, “This sounds just like any science fiction story.”

“It feels like one, yeah,” Eh agreed. “The idea that we can bend space/time like that is phenomenal. After hundreds of millennia of evolution and development, you’d have thought we’d have discovered it sooner, if it was that possible. But, it did take help from `efeje`e, you know. And our agreement with it was also unprecedented.”

“So, maybe your warp drive was a kind of Practice?” Anne asked.

Eh shrugged, “Maybe.”

“But, wait,” Anne tore her danish in half and gestured with part of it. The chair had a cup holder when she needed it. “How did you get here, if you didn’t go with your explorer?”

“The Tunnel,” Eh said. “We can send consciousnesses through it. Everyone here is what we call Crew. We ascended long ago, our original bodies dying, and now live in the Network created by our nanites. When Molly told us about this planet, a few of us decided to transfer over and stay here. She dropped off a bin of nanites and we started making a new home here, as quietly as we could. But it became apparent humanity could use a little help, and our local Council decided to start being a bit more overt.” Eh gestured at the cafe in demonstration.

“And you’re doing this,” Anne gestured at the cafe herself, “without the help of Practice? I don’t even see Glamour at work.”

“As far as I know, yes,” Eh said. “Though, it seems Maxwell is aware of Practice, at least.”

“You’ve definitely cultivated a clientele full of Aware,” Anne remarked. “Which I supposed shouldn’t be at all surprising. You’re a bunch of extraterrestrials giving away food for free. Of course you’re going to attract the Aware. They need people like you. And they have a tendency to take weirdness like this in a certain kind of stride, because weirdness is part of what made them Aware. And if you haven’t even been visited by witch hunters, then someone’s gotta be covering for you.”

“Kinda figures, I guess,” Eh said.

Anne looked at Eh for a while, danish in one hand, drink in the other, then asked, “You look a lot like someone’s idea of a dragon.”

“I’ve been told that, yes,” Eh said. “We think this is what Ktletaccete looked like before we took to the stars and started tinkering with our genetics and life itself. Our oldest language hints at a shape like this, and it’s what felt right to me when I decided to stop being how I was born.”

“That sounds a little like something I’m familiar with,” Anne said, before taking a bite of the last of her danish.

Eh inclined their head, twitching it in the direction of that particular flag, “we’re family?”

Anne swallowed and looked at the flag, “You have trans people in your culture, too? Assigned gender?”

“Ah,” I couldn’t help myself from vocalizing, and Anne glanced at me. I grinned back, and nodded at Eh.

“Not the Sunspot. Or, the `etekeyerrinwuf,” Eh said. “We made sure our new world, our own Exodus Ship, didn’t have assigned gender. But Fenmere, Gesedege, Gnargrim, and I were all born on a ship that did. Or something close enough to it that it’s basically the same thing. We didn’t have the word ‘trans’, obviously. But, again, close enough. We weren’t able to end dysphoria by ending gender, though. Even with technological interventions before birth, eugenics even, as abhorrent as it is, we can’t stop some people from being born with the need for physical change. Sometimes it develops later in life, too. It’s better to accommodate it when it becomes known. Anyway, I digress. We have an understanding with your transgender people. We get it. It’s ultimately why we’re here.”

Anne, apparently, was stuck on the first few words of Eh’s explanation, “Can - can I ask? How old are you?”

Eh smirked, but I wondered if Anne would read it as a smirk. Anne was too focused on the subject of her question to be bewildered by Ktletaccete expressions like a lot of other Earthly people often are, though.

“Do you want to know my age by my own personal years experienced? Or from your perspective, taking into account relativity?” Eh asked back.

Anne grimaced, “Let’s go with years you’ve experienced.”

Eh titled their head and looked at the ceiling as if to calculate. I knew this was a hard thing to answer for a Ktletaccete of our age. I don’t like thinking about my own age, myself. It kind of defies memory. Causes a kind of dysphoria itself. I could see Eh’s face twitch as they settled on an answer.

 “I’m going to give you an estimate,” Eh said. “Calculated in your years, but for my experience. And really rounded off. At a certain point, the thousands digit means as much as the ones digit.”

Anne looked what I’ve come to discern as incredulous.

“Two hundred and some millennia,” Eh said. “Maybe thirty? Maybe fifty? It gets squidgy.”

Anne blinked and deflected internalizing that with an observation, “You use English vernacular like you were born here.”

“We’ve been here eight years, and we live in trillions of tiny machines that can house the consciousnesses of millions of us,” Eh said. “Our ability to translate and learn your language is… enhanced.”

“Two hundred thousand years?” Anne asked, back on the topic.

“Yes,” Eh said. “More or less. Mostly more.”

“Well,” she said. “At least you’re not embarrassingly older than me. Just a smidge, though. A bit of a smidge. Like a civilization or two. Well, technically, it’s off the other end, and there weren’t civilizations back then, so…”

Eh drew their head back and raised their lure in surprise, asking, “How does that work? If you’ll excuse me for asking. How does a human live that long? I thought your civilizations were less than a few thousand years old at this point. You only had your industrial revolution two hundred years ago or so. Your computer technology is less than a century old.”

Anne grinned, licked the icing off her fingers one at a time, and then rubbed her hand dry on her cloak as she stood up. She held out her hand as if to offer a handshake to Eh, and said, “Former Primordial Goddess of Hospitality and present trans girl, Anne Other Problem, at your service. Welcome to Earth, I guess!”

Eh straightened up and sloughed off a considerable amount of nanite clay, reconfiguring their body to be about the same size of a human, but otherwise the same shape as before. The excess clay oozed toward the large bin in the back, reverting to its graphene color almost immediately. Then they stepped around the counter to stand before Anne and took her hand to shake it.

“My name is Eh.Though, that’s really a title. My name is Yenfiri. My pronouns are they/them. Former Senior Captain and Founding Crew of the `etekeyerrinwuf, revolutionary, trans enby as you’d say, and co-Artisan of Sunspot Tea and Coffee,” Eh said. “And it is a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you.”

“I don’t have anywhere near the power I used to have,” Anne said. “But I’ll do my best to step back into my old role for you. Your customers… Or, I guess they’re your guests? Their actions speak very well for you and what you’ve done for them. We need places like this. But let’s try not to make too many waves. I think you’re in a more fragile position than you realize.”

“You’re our hostess,” Eh said, glancing at me. 

I nodded. The Council would accept this. We had a habit of still treating Eh like Captain, anyway. 

Eh concluded, “We’ll follow your lead.”

“Asterix might want you to pretend to be human from now on,” Anne said. “It might be for the best if you did, honestly. But that might also depend on what kind of protections you don’t know you have.”

Eh grimaced, “If it comes to that, we can comply. But it will hurt. Some of us will have to front more than others. Whatever it takes to do what’s safe, though.”

Anne nodded, “Let’s go see the Lord and find out what he has to say.”

“Sounds good.”

And nodding and waving to us, they walked out the door, just like that. Though, before they took their third step beyond the threshold, Eh had changed shape to their human disguise, which looked remarkably like Yenfiri had before their body had died. Just a different species, obviously.

#Sunspot Chronicles #Otherverse #crossover fanfiction #self insert #coffee shop au #selves insert really

[brandnewhuman]

Is there any slasher you like and you just don’t understand why you do? For me it’s Billy Lenz and I literally cannot explain why I do

When i tell you i had to squeeze my juicy brain really hard for this

I think it's Jesse??? Like yes, the part where he's upset about his face ecc it's kinda sad but other than that there's literally nothing about his background.

Think about it, everything meaningful we know about Jesse cromeans and his personality is from headcanons and fanfics otherwise he has nothing deep enough to be a complex character to sympathise for.

Throughout the whole movie they give you nothing about him and i think its made with the purpose of just having a bad guy who's really good at it and can really scare instead of having a background that could make him look like a mistreated and misunderstood person.

He has no redeemable qualities, no personality, he never shows mercy and he doesn't have a sad story or a somewhat reason for his killings. He murders people because he enjoys it and even makes profit from it.

Even Michael, who's said to be the most apathetic and heartless slashers, has shown his moments of weakness and softness. He's always portrayed and showed as someone with too much inner turmoil in his head who feels emotions in such an intense but basic way that is almost as if he has his neurogical and emotional responses atrophied by all the trauma ecc (im not going to dive too deep I'm the mikey discourse dw)

Even Asa has something you can use to feel for him and to find him somewhat likeable even after all the bad things he's capable of.

Idk if this is what you meant by liking without any reason but for me everytime i like a slasher is because i can connect with them at some kind of level.

They will always be the monster of the story but never entirely evil you know? Its that idea of knowing they have the ability to be good, that you're never completely bad or completely pure

Jesse is one of those rare villains who is depicted as entirely evil and so that's why i dont really have a reason to like him, i just enjoy him as a character and the rest is done by making up things i want him to be to enjoy it even more.

Its tricky cause you can project on him all you want since he is kind of a blank space but at the same time you know that the truth is more likely to be he just likes to kill people and he's not some tormented man who has decided to take his rage out on everyone else because life has been unfair with him.

For me a slasher that is likeable, as i said before, is someone that doesn't want to be a good person but it still human and can get his good side out once in a while. Thats the whole point of the slasher fanfics, to use those crumbs of backstory and personality to basically gaslight yourself into thinking that you could be so special that you could trigger they're soft side out.

Its the idea of such a monster being capable of love and seeing them suffer and do unspeakable things because of it, experiencing the havoc their pain can cause, watching them fully give in to everything and or just accepting their fate as the unlovable or hated monsters that no one wants so their only option left is to be what everyone makes out of them.

A hero is fun, lovable, easy to like and to forget and even worthy of rooting for to a certain point but will never be as relatable as a bad guy who has been defeated into taking his place as the wrong one and in the end having as their only comfort the terrible actions they can commit since no one expects nothing good from them and even if they do good its always going to seem sketchy or not good enough for the world.

There you go, Jesse is like the hero of the bad guys. He is wicked, easy to hate and to root for his death and even annoying but just to a certain point cause even if he's not relatable or deep nor complex he has some type of charm and leaves space to your imagination to make up something for him

Plus he's a dilf and mr baldy man here is dumb rich too so

#slasher fandom #slashers #slasher community #slasher fanfiction #horror movies #slasher x reader #slasher headcanons #jesse cromeans #laid to rest #slasher

[diamondcitydarlin]

do you think you'll watch any of Loki s2, write any meta about your thoughts?

I'd like to say probably not, but knowing me and my brain it's also possible I might despite my better judgement. The thing is -and it's 10 years too late- but I'm just getting kinda tired of writing and reading long, thoughtful essays on subject material the creators of which don't care even 1/4th about as much. Most of the education we've gotten in the US anyway in regards to critically evaluating art and media leans heavily towards this; we're taught to always assume every piece of art and media has a bottomless depth of insight bestowed upon it by the creator(s) that we must parse through to discover their genius treasures hidden cleverly within the text (ex. "the curtains are blue because the author wants to allude to depression"). We're told that every piece of art/media/literature etc is more of a detective's puzzle than anything else and anyone creating mainstream art is in on the game.

While I think it's absolutely true that every piece of art has a bottomless depth of potential in it, I think we were sold a lie in being led to believe that any and every creator cares at all about that, let alone is helping to construct some genius meta web for us to unravel (particularly capitalist, mainstream creators that are beholden to execs). I think because of this we also, historically, have fallen easily into believing that IF the creator IS doing this, they're constructing something for our appeal (a subtextual queer pairing for instance). We never consider the much more likely outcome (as has been proven time and time again) that the creator is constructing something solely for himself and others like him and doesn't give a single shit about what marginalized people might want to see in subtext or context or otherwise (but lord knows a suit is going to push them to do the safe amount of queerbait for views and investors)

As it stands at this point, I'm indisputably in love with Owen and Tom's dynamic and the very few things they're able to think up that make it into the text. I love the idea of what Mobius and Loki could be together if the MCU hadn't become a completely hollowed out capitalist husk spitting out garbage for profit as fast as it possibly can. I love what the fandom has come up with in the interim because everyone within is SO talented and cares so much more about these characters than the people being paid to write them. I can absolutely go read a fanfic or a comic and get far more satisfaction and food-for-thought than I would trying to sit through yet another churned out pile of MCU garbage that ultimately means nothing, because no one involved has or was allowed to have any heart in the work. I feel like I've been shown SO MANY times that I'm not only wasting my own time doing this, I'm wasting the time of others by helping to convince them a text without depth actually might have it intentionally.

So. I'd like to say absolutely not. I'd like to say I will not have anything to do with this 2nd season as much as I might want to, because they already made it clear in the first season (and the resulting messy, completely unprofessional interviews etc) that this show is not for me, so if I go wandering into this next season with some dumbass expectations or hope for things that absolutely are not going to happen that's on me. I also am not keen to support a show that has been OVERTLY stubborn about depicting genderfluidity in an accurate or responsible way, has repeatedly employed TERF ideologies into their plots, with multiple people on cast and crew being open TERFS, despite making sure the show was advertised as a queer-appealing piece that would explore Loki's gender identity. They are absolutely trying everything they can to take queer peoples' money and time without giving them anything substantial in return, and it's not the first or I daresay the last show to do it. I'm tired of being a fool to these narratives tbh.

However, again, my problem is that I love Tom and Owen together and immediately melted when I saw them in the s2 BTS pics. I don't know how I'll realistically talk myself out of watching any of their scenes together at least in the next season, even though I know the MCU is never going to write them to be what they could be. Let's just be honest about that now. It's never going to happen in canon, I'm sorry- and even if it did it would probably suck and all the Lokius fanfics you've ever read are leagues better than what the MCU would do to them even if they deigned to make them official. We need to stop kidding ourselves because the end result is just feeding a corporation accolades and money they don't deserve, while creators trying to make actual, heartfelt representation get ignored. (....now if I'm wrong someday feel free to bully me on anon or whatever lmao)

AND THIS ISN'T TO SAY WE SHOULDN'T HAVE A FANDOM. This isn't to say we shouldn't create our OWN versions!! This isn't to say we shouldn't love the POTENTIAL of the pairing and keep exploring what that could be, I don't want to be misunderstood here! I think it's just a matter of being comfortable enough to move away from that need for canon affirmation, which is something that while not impossible or unprecedented, is difficult sometimes for fandoms to do as we've historically seen canon as the ultimate authority, rather than a sandbox of things we can just grab what we like from to play with and ignore/nuke the rest lmao. It's about embracing the derivative for what it is.

I might end up writing some meta about s2, probably something that expands on a look Mobius gives Loki or something equally insignificant that I blow up and turn into my own thing, but that's if I can get access to Lokius scenes etc. Either way I will not be watching this show in completion on my own or paying the Disney+ sub to watch

#anti mcu #lokius

[swiftytheblonde]

If you were Taylor and was ready to come out, how would yo do it? (I am a Kaylor, so please don’t get hung up on that, there is some fanfic here. :). All in good fun.

I wouldn’t say shit. I would announce the tour, promo all the interview circuits, finish that….I would open my first concert in 2023 with Are you ready for it? Then roll into Style and have Karlie and Taylor hold hands while walking down the catwalk stage, with Karlie wearing that damn smoking hot black cape from VS 2014. Taylor could wear rose blush. We would hear in the background “Karlie and Taylor in 3 2 1……” before they hit the stage.

The crowd would flip. The Hetlors would enjoy it because their friendship would be rekindled. Then there are us Gaylors. There would be an Absolute ROAR through the crowd. We know what she would be declaring. (Like she has already declared for us anyway.) But I would like to see her GET THE GIRL. That would be the third song. 4th song Sing Call it what you want , Karlie what you want. Sing I want her midnights….Then I would close the show with Get Away Car. Then just live her life with a smile and a wave. Let time go by…….post pictures of Big Sur…..I would have daisies everywhere.. I would ABSOLUTELY drop a million Easter eggs in social media and have a blast with my fans. Gold tattoos, Karlie in a gold dress, drinking beer out of plastic cups. I could do this all night long. Polaroids for days.

Finish the concert. Start holding hands in public, don’t do interviews for awhile…(Just to terrorize everyone.). She owes nobody an explanation. No Oprah, no Ellen. Nobody gets to profit off of her. Just let people speculate. She is a master at Easter eggs and dodging questions. . They will move on. (Oprah and Gayle King have been together forever, they never made an announcement so it ended up being no big deal. They are always at each other’s sides)

Then just live her life with a smile and a wave. Let time go by…….post pictures of Big Sur…..I would have daisies everywhere.. I would ABSOLUTELY drop a million Easter eggs in social media and have a blast with my fans. Gold tattoos, Karlie in a gold dress, drinking beer out of plastic cups. I could do this all night long. Polaroids for days.

Straight people don’t have to come out as straight. She shouldn’t have to make her private life a spectacle. Let’s just not make it a “thing” We need to let her be the first to do it differently and make “coming out” normal. Just don’t give it air.

No interviews - she won’t have to explain everything from the past. The 2 of them can just smile and move on.

The lack of interviews and no backtracking would also allow her to keep her integrity, keep everyone else’s private lives in tact, and her full fan base in place.

I was a big fan and did not pick up on SwiftGron/Kaylor/Gaylor for a long time. I’m a STAN now. But honestly without a lot of press- people can only speculate. If you are a STAN - then iykyk.

It would be the sweetest con. Coming out with no questions answered. It could be the new normal for everyone. It’s nobody’s damn business. And that is how it should be.

And please don’t read this thru the lens of not honoring the gays big moment. This is about her not us. I want her to just let the crowd speculate and have fun with it. Can you imagine how much fun her videos would be going forward and all of the Easter eggs about a wedding.

If Kimmel asked her if it were true, she could look at the camera and blow it a kiss and say “wouldn’t THAT be juicy”. Evade and live her life out and proud.

But mostly have fun with her life. Life is too short whoever she is with I want them to be happy.

I love Blondie! Your turn! This is meant in all fun.

[arttrampbelle]

Cw: vent

Vent time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mk11 doesn't have plotholes

IT HAVE PLOT CHASMS. PLOT ABYSSES.

Plots so huge,so confusing,so stupid. It makes the old sub zero mythologies,and special forces side games look like decent plots.

The only thing good about it is the og actor is back as shang but even then it's still painful.

9,story is garbage. But the gameplay is amazing.

10,gameplay is out of this world. Story is mid,horrible for some characters but solid main big boss. Online i heard is better than 11. But i hate online competitive gameplay. It kinda sucks the fun away. And not worth it. Plus the amount of guest characters because they killed half the roster. It's ridiculous. And unnecessary. So yeah.

11. *breathes in*. 11. Again they knew the story was crap,half baked. So they made a whole ass expansion to a lukewarm story nobody cared for. To retcon a retcon THEY MADE. And guess what? It's that "we are gonna take everything you love about this series and take a huge fat shit on it. For profit" if you like shang tsung,you may love 11. But even then it feels off. But again thats the best they can do. And you damn well we ain't gonna have this again. If there ever will be a 12. Because at this point im not so sure. And honestly i don't care if they dont make a 12.

It would be a shame. But honestly I'd rather take a non canon ACTUALLY GOOD MK GAME. no bullshit. No fillers. No guest characters. No micro transactions. Just a good ol fashioned mk game. Pick a character,pick an arena,and fight. No complicated over explained story. Simple and to the point. Let the audience and players make a story. Or at least,bring back the spirit of mk. Bring back the ACTUAL CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY part in mk,with more than 2 choices. More than "good" vs "evil" actually have real constructive morally grey areas. Like it's not that hard.

Like get better writers. Fr.

Wattpad has better writers than you NRS.

WATTPAD!

You had 30yrs to get it right. 30!

Almost as old as i am.

Fr. No excuses. You are a decent,multibillion company. Or at very least a professional one. Your servers should be always up to date. You should have things actually in a row. The basics at least.

Like there is no excuses on being sloppy.

This isn't just about mk. This is also from a business perspective.

If you know your story isnt solid. Get better writers. Or tell your writers to stop relying on dumb tropes. And have actual creativity.

You can make things modern without pandering.

You can have nods to nostalgia without pandering too.

Subtle is better.

Cheeky one liners you cant rely on.

If the motives aren't solid. Then things fall apart.

Like they knew that if they dont bring back shang tsung as a big bad boss. It would suck.

Because how can they top corrupt form shinnok. Let's be honest....that was badass.

Nothing was ever really changed. And its a waste of time.

We get nothing but absolute perfection from tagawa's performance. But other then him. Mk11 is weak af.

So again. You like cary hiroyuki tagawa? Good. You're in luck. You like shang tsung? He's the man of the hour.

If you like anything else,anybody else,NRS said fuck you.

Which sucks. Because as a shang tsimp. It pisses me off that that's all they relied on.

And they can't pull that shit again. Because people will know. They already probably do.

They rely on cheap gimmicks,to prey on non mk fans,new fans who haven't touched mk in their whole ass existence and are just getting into it,and y'all fall for it. Because people seem to have short attention spans and need their gatcha fix no matter how poor quality.

Like im sorry. Even if you are new. Have better standards in storytelling. This is a professional company. They shouldn't be worse then us fans telling fart jokes in a fanfic about silly fighting game characters in colorful jammies.

Im just saying.

Im done venting now.

#mortal kombat #vent #cw vent #mk discourse

[kiltons-monster-manual]

But You Can Sure Try

Legend of Zelda fanfic Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask  Warnings: Graphic description, Major Character Death  Drama / Tragedy  Old fic, written several years ago. Can be found on fanfiction dot net and Ao3.  Disclaimer: I’m not Nintendo, no profit made, blah, blah blah.  Also, this is a deliberate playing with a debunked old fan theory. I am aware that Nintendo’s official word is that Termina was NOT a dying-dream.  I played with the idea, anyway. 

BUT YOU CAN SURE TRY

  Link was dying.  

 The sky above him had shifted from red and black to blue with white clouds.  He could smell a sudden greenness beginning to overcome the cinder-scent of ruined earth.  There was the stench of blood, though, blood, blood, blood, blood…

 The Hero had managed to stand up and to deliver the final blows to the dark beast, Ganon on the power of adrenaline and will.  Once he’d driven the Master Sword into the swine’s skull, his body had given in and he’d fallen to the dirt.  He’d heard a multitude of voices at once, all familiar.  Zelda had called the Sages to send their enemy into the Void.  

 Link could hear Navi panicking above him.  Fairy-panic was an interesting sound, almost like gentle bells or wind through the trees, at once high and tinny, but almost like white noise.  Link’s chest was heavy.  His stomach hurt.  At first there was a horrible ache in his legs and thighs, but he could not feel them anymore.  

 Agony shot through his entire body for a moment as he felt the ground falling away from him.  There were hands on his back – no – a hand, just a very big one.  Darunia had picked him up.  Link turned his head and looked at him.  “I don’t have any heal-fairies,” he said.  When did his throat get so dry?  All of the fighting had left him slick with sweat. All the smoke of night magic and battlefield debris had made his eyes sting and his throat sore.  He tasted iron and did not know if it was from a split lip or something welling up from deep within him.  

 “We’re gonna get you some help!” Navi assured him.  “Just hang in there, Link!”  

 Link focused his sight on Navi.  Everything hurt less when he was watching the dear fairy.  He felt his body trying to force him into a sleep.  He tried to lift up a hand and couldn’t.  He needed to reach Navi.  That much he knew if he remembered nothing else.  

 “I did it, didn’t I?” Link asked.  

 “Yes,” Navi said, “Yes you did.  You should be very proud of yourself.”

  ____________________

  “Yes, you did,” Tatl said impatiently.  “You should be very proud of yourself! You agreed to help that creep out and we’ve only got three days – this on top of everything else!”

 Link looked down.  He toed the brickwork of the south side of Clock Town with the tip of his right boot.  He’d taken a look up and immediately looked back down.  He’d seen the moon in the daytime before, but never so large and never so menacing.  The moon in Hyrule didn’t have a face, much less one filled with such malice.  

 “What is it, kid?” – An impatient sigh.  Tatl wasn’t quite like most fairies Link had known.  She was as shrill as Navi, but not nearly as kind.  “Eh, the moon’s just ugly today.  Don’t tell me that you’re afraid of it!”

 “Uh…”

 “You act like you know something awful.”  

 Link looked up.  “I don’t think anything good is gonna come from that moon.  It looks like it wants to fall on us.  Did it just move closer?”  

 “Come on you big baby. Let’s ask around town.  We need to hurry up and find the Skull Kid so I can get my brother back and so you can get your precious item back, and… that mask that weirdo was talking about.”  

 Link watched the carpenters in the center of the square, thinking they might be a likely people to begin an investigation with.  They were building a scaffold.  They looked strangely familiar – like the group of carpenters he’d rescued from the Gerudo prisons.  

 The boss was hollering loudly.

 “It’s not gonna fall! If you flee, consider yourself fired, you cowards!”

   ___________________________

 “His wounds are evil,” Nabooru said, covering a blackening gash back over with a bandage.  “Ganondorf – well, Ganon… the Beast… he must have sent some power of darkness into his great swords.  The tribe has known him to poison weapons.”  

 “I can’t seem to dispel it,” Zelda said sadly.  “I’m not powerful enough!”

 “You should keep trying, Princess,” Navi encouraged.  “But don’t exhaust yourself.”

 “Well, ever since I saw him grown up, I have wanted a better look at his body,” Nabooru said with a rueful smirk.  “Not quite like this, though.”  

 “Link’s a fighter,” Navi assured.

 “At least he’s been asleep,” Zelda said, watching the gently breathing young man before her on the bed in the room at the inn in Kakariko Village.  “Those darkening wounds are nothing I’d want to feel.”  She reached over to his head and gently stroked his hair and one ear. He wrinkled his nose, but remained asleep.  

 “I’m really more of an eye woman, myself,” Nabooru said.  “I was struck by those beautiful blue eyes of his more than anything.  I wish he would open them.  I’d like to see them again.”

 “Don’t we all,” Zelda sighed.  

  _________________________

  Link had finished the task for the Deku Scrub.  The mask that had taken over his body had filled him with sorrow and anger.  “I don’t want to be dead…” it whispered into his mind.  The mask was quiet, but there was the overwhelming feeling of “I don’t want to die.”  It was cold rather than panicked, however, as if it was the lament of someone who did not have a choice in something that had already been decided for him.  Link’s body felt like wood when he wore the mask, a stiff, unpleasant feeling for one used to muscle, moisture and skin.  

 Link had a choice in wearing the mask now, at least.  Whomever this face had belonged to, the mask needed him to save his people – including an innocent maiden and a friend who was an innocent criminal.  He took up his sword and fought through the corrupted temple. He was going to change the fate of this swamp!  Link knew that the corruption here was connected to the moon and the coming fate of this entire world.  He had foreseen it – with himself and Tatl saved only by the sacred Ocarina of Time.

 The world would burn again if he did not get a move on…  It was time to fight fate.

 “We need you,” the mask spoke into his spirit.  “Don’t die.”

 ______________________________

 “We need you, Link. Don’t die.  Please?”  

 Nabooru sat aside, watching Saria as she sat in a chair beside the bed and held Link’s hand.  A Kokiri was not supposed to be outside their forest, but Saria had ascended as a Sage and did not suffer any apparent problems.

 “All we can do is wait and hope,” the thief-made-innocent said to the maiden.  

 “The fairies aren’t working,” Saria said forlornly. Navi and her own guardian-fairy were gently bobbing close to her head.  Saria had called healing-fairies out of the grass, but Link’s wounds were deep and were too infected with evil magic for the benevolent spirits to help the boy as they had previously.  Navi had tried her own energies, but she was a guardian fairy and did not have the ability for magical medicine.  

 Various friends were in and out of the inn room.  Princess Zelda was elsewhere in the village, trying to organize Hyrule’s survivors.  

 “It’s been a day and a half,” Nabooru said.  “I’ve seen friends wounded in raids sleep off their injuries longer and come out alright.”  

 During that evening, Darunia came in to see his honorary brother.  Link’s eyes cracked open a sliver.  He tiredly looked at Daruina and smiled.

 “Do you see me?” Darunia asked.  Link fell back under before answering.  The young Hylian did not hear the Goron chief’s cries to the rest of the village that there’d been a change in his condition.

  _______________________________

 “You see me?”  the gray Goron-spirit asked as he floated in the cold air of the snowy village.  

 Link nodded.  The ghost was clearly just that – transparent and floating, a being that only the Lens of Truth that Link had just won had revealed to him.  Link decided that Goron-ghosts were interesting.  Darmani looked hefty, as heavy as a great boulder or stone statue although he was not solid and had no substance.  Darmani begged Link to bring him back to life, which even a determined young hero could not do.  

 All young Link could do was to heal his soul with a song and to take up his quest.  Link knew what he was doing now.  The Giant of Woodfall was free and so the remaining Guardians needed to be liberated.  It was all connected to the Skull Kid and to the moon.  

 It was closer now, glaring down.  Link had repeated a cycle and had even slowed time’s flow to try to win more of it.  He wondered why it was just the clock that ticked more slowly:  None of the people he interacted with – living or dead – seemed to do anything differently.  That horrible moon still seemed closer than it should have been.  

 He did not like repeating time.  He’d feel a throb through him, like twisting angered wounds. His breath felt like it slowed and sped.  Link wondered if it had done something to him.  He felt like he should be taller.  When he’d been back home in Hyrule, he’d felt like he should be small.  Time was not kind to its Hero.  

 Link felt the heft of a Goron’s body overtake his own flesh as he tried on the Goron Mask. Strangely enough, he thought he felt the ferocious wound that had killed Darmani – if the appearance of his ghost was any guess.  The wound did not appear upon Link’s Goron-body, but he still felt it.

 Darmani had disturbed Link. He was a nice enough spirit, but he looked so much like his friend, Darunia.  Seeing him was like seeing a dead version of his friend.  Link did not like the thought of saying goodbye to his friends.  

 It was not long after he’d met the remains of Darmani that Link watched a strong young man die in front of him.  He had tried to save Mikau, but was too late to be of any service other to be someone there so that the poor wounded Zora didn’t have to die alone.  Link had shared an immediate connection with Mikau – a bond of creative musicians.  Of course, the Zora was brave, too – letting his dying words come out in vibrant song, wailing on his fishbone guitar.  It was a strange death, but one that Link could respect.  

 When he wore the Zora Mask that resulted from playing the Song of Healing, a maturity beyond Link’s years flooded into him.  Link had never before wondered what it would be like to have children, for when he’d grown up in the forest, he was sure that he was a Kokiri and Kokiri never grew up to have offspring.  A more familiar emotion flooded into him, however, after that fatherly protective urge. Mikau had some fame – as had Link back in Hyrule by the time he went to challenge Ganondorf.  He hadn’t asked for it – he just felt compelled to help people with their problems along the way. As a result, he was known by many and at least one person had named their son after him. He did not know if he was known at all anymore, due to coming back into his child-self. He would be known in that other time, the one he was no longer a part of.  Link knew that people would tell the stories the way they saw fit – the legend as it served them.  

 The boy got the feeling that Mikau had never asked for the fame he’d gotten so much as he just liked to play music.  The artist’s soul had burst out of him and he was known all around Termina – hence the posters Link had seen in Clock Town, though most of them had featured the female lead-vocalist of the band.

 Link felt a whisper telling him “People will make you what they want you to be.  Most of them will be more interested in their image of you than in the person you really are.”  - Such was the price of fame.  Link also got the sense that it was the price of dying. One could never control the thoughts and memories of others, nor the legends one would leave after oneself.  

 The boy felt, strangely, like he was in the process of leaving behind a legend even as he took up the story of a Zora warrior’s bloodline.  

 “Do you really want me to play at being you?” his mind asked the Mask.  “I don’t think I’m able to do a good job.  You were in love… I don’t know what that’s like for adults.”

 The Zora Mask assured him that he should do whatever he needed to do keep those he loved safe. “Let me be what they need me to be.”

 What a strange mask Mikau had become.  The scent of his transformed body was almost intoxicating, as was the scent of the silent singer, Lulu.  Link had rather liked the smell of Zora.  People who’d only ever seen pictures of them expected them to smell fishy.  They did, in a way, but not in the decaying fish way that most people assumed.  They smelled like water tumbling over rocks and like rain.  It was a rather distinct odor.  

 When he’d spoken to Lulu, however much he’d wanted to secure a dead man’s legacy, his mouth said one thing and his mind screamed another.   He let her believe that he was Mikau and assured her that he would rescue the eggs and bring back her lost voice.  

 “Everything’s gonna be okay, baby…”  

 His mind reached out for its own voice, unspoken in the world of Termina, moaning elsewhere.  

 ______________________________

   “No… I’m… not your fiancée. I never was… the truth…the truth is…”

 Link was rolling around a little and muttering something about being too little for commitment and not being ready to be a father.

 “Easy,” Ruto said as she gently generated water and washed Link’s hair using a bowl. She dabbed a wet cloth over him. Ruto felt offended.  She did not expect him to make good on the promise that had involved the Zoras’ Sapphire – not now, at least.  She’d more or less had wanted to just get her father off her tail back then. Link was a different species, so it probably would have never worked out.

 “Ssssh, Link,” Impa imparted as she adjusted the blanket over his body. “He must be having quite a dream.”  

 “Technically, he is engaged to me,” Ruto said.  “I don’t think he understood it at the time.”  

 “We haven’t seen him this lively yet.  I wonder what you did to wake him up, even though he is still well out of it.”  Impa sniffed.  

 Ruto gave her a glower.

 Link mumbled something else in his sleep.  “Alright… I’ll be… what you need me to be.”

 “What was that?” Impa asked.

 “One day, maybe you’ll remember who I really was.”  

 “He’s sweat-slick with fever,” Ruto said.  “Maybe it’s my cool Zora skin, but I can feel his heat.”

  ____________________________

 The moon drew closer. Link did not know if he could fight fate, but he could sure try.  The canyon was scorching, but he strangely felt at home.  It was a bleak place where the remains of child soldiers could not rest.

 Link could not convey to them how much he felt alike to them.  

 The shadows and skeletons seemed to beg him to stay.  One did not have to worry about one’s impending demise whether by a falling moon or anything else if one was already dead.  They’d done their darndest to make him stay, too – between the Garo in the shadows, the dancing ReDeads, a scientist who’d destroyed his own body and the beasts of the Stone Tower.  

 Link still fought fate and still shouted a challenge to the grimacing moon.  

 There was one last thing he had to do before he went to face the Skull Kid and wicked Majora’s Mask that was feeding upon his desires for destruction.  Link worked very hard to reunite the separated couple whose troubles he’d learned about in his journey.  Anju reminded him of a kind lady who liked cucoos that he’d met in Kakariko Village.  She’d cared for the birds despite an allergy.  He’d learned that Anju loved cooking despite being terrible at it. They fought fate and never won, but kept trying.  The young hero understood Kafei in greater measure than he could ever convey – “What’s my age again?” was a question that wasn’t a joke or an abstract for either of them.  

 As he brought the Sun and the Moon together, Link was pained with a thought for Zelda.  He missed her terribly.  He could only be with her again, to play as friends or perhaps some day to dance as adults once he’d managed to correct the ills of this land and to find his way home.  

 He had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t happen.  Fate grinned down at him as the world got hot.  

 __________________________

 Navi rested upon Link’s chest as the world heated up.  Link fidgeted subtly, like a dog chasing a dreamland rabbit. The fairy noticed how the fingers of his left hand twitched as though he though he was holding a sword.

  __________________________

 Link looked down at his own face in his hands.  The mask wasn’t entirely like him, but it bore a resemblance.  The Fierce Deity – purportedly a Mask of awesome power, was built only for the fight.  Link wondered whose soul it might carry – as it was implied that he’d take on the form of a god if he wore it.  He feared that power.  He had to use it, however, if he wanted a sure and quick way of breaking Termina’s curse.

 The boy felt the Mask flush with his skin and with it a flood of various experiences and memories. This was everyone – He felt like he was wearing everyone he ever knew.  It was like swimming in their spirits, leaving his wake.  It wasn’t just everyone in Termina, but everyone that they seemed to represent for him – all of his friends and acquaintances and enemies in Hyrule.  

 He was taking them with him, into him.  

 He was leaving himself behind.  

 He’d broken the curse with some decisive strikes of the double-helix sword.  With it, an old friend was free – a lost child, not so lost anymore.  He’d fought fate and won.  He knew that much as he looked up at a moonless sky.  

 Somehow, he thought that he’d also lost – that he’d tried to fight fate, but lost.  It was, however, alright with him.  There was peace.  

 Link spied upon the people of Clock Town.  He would carry them and, even though not all of them would know it, they would carry him. He’d fought through and accepted that he could not stay forever.  This was not a place he belonged to anymore.

 Tatl helpfully nagged him to get going.

  _________________________

 All of the Sages were gathered in the small room.  Zelda let tears fall down over her cheeks.  Navi shivered.  She did not like what she had told everyone, but facts never cared for the feelings of fairies.    

 It was dawn of the fourth day after Link had triumphed over Ganon and freed Hyrule. The marking had faded from his left hand.  

 Impa took Link’s pulse a final time and shook her head.  She sighed. “He fought bravely and saved us all,” she said, “but even the bravest cannot fight fate forever.  Even a newborn’s life must fade.  The Hero of Time is dead.”  

 Zelda ventured a look at him, knowing that the dead were not beautiful.  She did, however, see the faintest and gentlest of smiles upon his face.

  _____________________________ 

 Fate was behind him. Link looked off into the darkness of the forest.  He gave Epona a gentle kick and rode off into the depths of the unknown.    

  END.

 Shadsie, 2015

#the legend of zelda #majora's mask #zelda fanfic #my fanfiction #fanfiction #cw: death #cw: major character death

[gabriel-gabdiel]

【Draft】 Rurouni Yahiko Chapter 59: The Swallow Return

Lucas pushes his half-brother Kinta to the brink while Yahiko realizes something about the Seiryu Clan's personal ninja Kaita.

Will they be able to handle the machinations of the Brigands Guild or not?

Many years ago, during dinner with Kinta's late grandfather, Toshiro Minakata...

Both Toshiro and Kinta Minakata ate in silence at a long Western-style high table in contrast to the smaller and lower traditional family table typical of the Japanese.

The strict and imposing Toshiro was a vanguard among hatamoto samurai.

Realizing that the samurai after the Sengoku Era and during the peaceful Tokugawa Shogunate Era were essentially soldiers without a war to wage, he had tried his hand at business and trade.

He worked to make the Minakata coffers and fortune grow even as many impoverished samurai ended up seeing the merchant class rise and become more powerful during this period of peace.

He made sure the Minakata Clan would survive in the coming eras in every way possible, whether it was by wealth or political privilege.

Toshiro proved himself ahead of the curve, even though he was cut-throat enough to resell the confiscated black market opium of Wokou pirates to his fellow Japanese citizens or even export them back to China as a profit.

He found ways to thrive in both wartime and peacetime. Like a rat or a cockroach. Crafty as a fox, he was.

"I've heard you've been chosen as part of the Kyoto Mimawarigumi (Kyoto Patrolling Group)," probed Toshiro.

"Yes, Grandfather," answered a teenaged Kinta.

No older than his fellow iaijutsu (sword-drawing) practitioner, the Hitokiri Battousai (Battousai the Manslayer) on the side of the Ishin Shishi (Patriots).

"And how are your studies?"

"There are no issues there either."

"That's fine. Keep doing both like you used to."

"Of course, Grandfather."

"Being well-versed in letters and arms, a man from the Minakata Family must excel in all fields. My eldest, your Uncle Tatsuya, became a banker. My second child, your Uncle Kaneda, became a lawyer. Your mother, my youngest..."

Toshiro trailed off and cleared his throat while Kinta stared at him, unblinking. Pretending he didn't notice his grandfather's pause.

"Remember, Kinta. The strongest of people are born from the strongest of adversities," his grandfather said with such confidence, Kinta just knew that he spoke from experience.

Whether it was him battling Wokou pirates in the South China Sea or dealing with local Tokugawa Era politics like he was Julius Caesar amidst the traitorous Roman senate, his every word dripped with veteran knowledge.

He did everything he could to keep himself from swimming in the middle of a sea of daggers and a pool of his own blood, whether in the hands of sea-faring criminals or landlubber backstabbing politicians.

Toshiro continued. "Bring honor back to the Minakata Family. Honor both your father and your mother. Erase any stains the name might have by excelling in what you do. Prove yourself to be a worthy heir of the name and the fortune of the Minakata Family, Grandson."

"I will, Grandfather."

As far as the Minakatas were concerned, winning was everything. The world was composed of winners and everyone else.

***

Rurouni Yahiko

A Rurouni Kenshin Continuation Fan Fiction Story by Chester Castañeda

The Swallow Return makes an appearance after Kinta is pushed into a corner.

Disclaimer: All characters used in this fanfic (save some others) are the rightful property of Nobuhiro Watsuki, Shueisha, Shonen Jump, Viz, Sony Studios, Fuji TV, Studio Gallup, Studio Deen, and ADV. This disclaimer also covers all the other copyrighted material that are far too many to mention here. Don't sue me please, I'm very poor.

***

Chapter 59: The Swallow Return

***

Back inside the memories that Kinta Minakata had of his grandfather, Toshiro Minakata...

Kinta's grandfather told him long ago the following.

"The world is a tough, unforgiving place, Kinta. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. In an eye blink, a king can become a pauper and a pauper can become a king. Those who adapt the most consistently in a merciless world that's always changing are those that survive in the end. Today, we eat like royalty. But tomorrow, what if the bakufu lost its power? What if Japan was colonized by foreign powers? What would happen to the hatamoto?"

Kinta answered, "We would become nothing."

Toshiro nodded. "Yes. That's why I'm building our family fortunes. So that the Minakatas can survive the dawn of a new century or even a new millennium. If tomorrow, samurai ceased to exist and all our political clout became moot, our wealth will keep us afloat. Always remember to keep moving forward and changing with the times, my grandson."

In order to remain on the top of the food chain and survive, one must win. Always win in everything they did. It was the rules of nature. It was survival of the fittest.

In their world, the winner was acknowledged and the loser was disavowed.

Like how his mother was banished from existence and forgotten as the black sheep of the family, for example.

The clan of rumored ochimusha (defeated samurai during the Sengoku Era considered as low class citizens) that stole away the name and valor of the original deceased Minakata clan knew as much.

They did what they could to save face, thus they were able to pluck victory from the jaws of defeat to cur favor from the Tokugawas.

To the ears of any member of the Minakata Clan, what Kinta's grandfather Toshiro was implying was crystal clear.

His orders were to erase the shameful actions of Kinta's shameless mother by becoming a standout among the Mimawarigumi ranks.

Just like how their ochimusha (fallen warrior) ancestors became hatamoto retainers to the Tokugawa Shogunate, so too should Kinta remove from memory the embarrassment of having an adulteress for a mother and a cuckold for a father.

Winning was the only thing that mattered.

Kinta simply had to keep his head high and win. That was all he needed to do. Because he was victorious over all, he deserved to win.

"Keep on winning, Kinta. Keep on winning because you're a Minakata. And Minakatas are born winners, through hell or high water. Even in spite of fate itself conspiring against us," his grandfather would always say.

There was nothing more important than winning at all costs. This was how the Minakatas survived through centuries. Millennia. Ages.

Toshiro also regularly said, "You know that old saying, 'It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game'? That's bullshit. The bottom line is winning."

This was how Kinta earned his place at the Minakata table despite his uncles despising him, his father committing suicide, and his mother bringing shame to the family name.

He looked at his plate. The pristine chinaware was where he ate foreign food like the Salisbury steak.

If it were broken, it'd be thrown away. A plate could never be restored once it had a crack. But if it was still usable and you were desperate, what you had would suffice.

Besides which, winning was the liquid gold that helped glue together even broken pottery or ceramics, thus making it whole and beautiful again in its own right.

That was the art of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi (Gold Repair), after all.

***

Back at the abandoned building within the narrow alleyway near the Minakata Moneychanger Office…

Yahiko Myojin gasped for air, his face beet-red, his hair somehow messier than usual, and his whole body an aching mess. Also, his shirt and pants were in tatters.

However, it was him who was left standing. It was Fabian La Cerca, the infamous "Faceless" of the foreign assassination squad, "The Brigands Guild", who ended up on the floor on his posterior, his mask shattered into pieces.

God. Dammit. That stubborn, agile gaijin finally fell down.

Unbeknownst to the slightly concussed Faceless, Yahiko had set him up from the start with the Genei Gami (Phantom God).

Yahiko let Fabian memorize his tempo of overhead swings to train him to always anticipate and parry swings from the direction, thus allowing Myojin to blindside him with a side-swiping strike to the temple.

Aware that he couldn't time him by virtue of his odd rhythm, Yahiko instead baited him to counter repeatedly until he followed the samurai kid's more predictable rhythm.

The Tokyo Samurai Descendant bet on Fabian's weakness—his over-reliance on counters—and made his usually broken rhythm more predictable as a result.

Even then, he couldn't have landed his trap on The Faceless had Kaita not arrived to assist him with timely kunai or shuriken throws.

This foreign fencing genius from the West could give most of the members of the Oniwabanshu (Guardians of the Gate) or the Juppon Gatana (Ten Swords) a run for their money! Probably.

'How's that, Cat Eyes? Here's the proof of concept of my anti-Cat-Eyes training! Everything is going according to plan.'

Yahiko grinned from ear-to-ear, feeling himself in the moment.

However, he broke a cardinal rule of being a martial artist or even an old-school samurai from a bygone era. He became overconfident and let his guard down.

It wasn't composure but pride that led to his fall.

"Good work, Yojimbo!" appraised Kaita. "Now let's finish off the assassin before he recovers and goes after the Minakatas!"

"Wait. Let's just take him down and let the police handle him," insisted Yahiko, which made the ninja pause. "He might be useful in learning the whereabouts of their gang or something!"

"He's too dangerous to be kept alive!" argued the young shinobi. "I'm authorized to kill him. I don't answer to the police."

"No! Let the coppers arrest him and have him answer for his crimes!" insisted the samurai boy, going by what Kenshin or Kaoru would normally do in such a situation.

What he said to The Faceless about the sakabatou being a life-giving sword wasn't just empty words. He lived by that code of honor and ethics in swordsmanship.

Kaita realized he couldn't reason with the child, remembering the spiel he overheard from him about a Sword of Life—a reverse-edged blade was blunt on its outside curve, yet he didn't use it like a sickle or scimitar.

Something about the kid's "life-giving" sword sounded familiar to him though. Like he'd heard about the unusual weapon somewhere before in the recent past.

In an eye blink, the shinobi disappeared from Yahiko's midst. However, the teenaged samurai figured out where he went and shielded La Cerca from the incoming ninja throwing knives.

"Despite your looks, you're quite the tenacious guy, Yojimbo," said the unseen Kaita, who kept evading Yahiko's probing strikes with his blunt weapon.

"The name's Yahiko, Ninja Dude!" Yahiko said as he swung blindly at air yet still felt the presence of the ninja by reading his bloodlust. Just like how Kenshin would.

Soon, Yahiko's sakabatou found its target, with Kaita blocking the longer blade with the Okinawan three-pronged weapon known as the sai.

"You know, you remind me of someone I fought months ago. What was his name? Take? Taikai? Tatakai?" Yahiko tried to remember the name of the aged ninja assassin who went after Kenshin several months ago.

The Tokyo Samurai Descendant faced the camouflaged shinobi on behalf of Kenshin Kamiya (nee Himura). 

'Wait.' Something then clicked inside Kaita's mind just then.

 "Oh yeah, Takae! Takae was his name! His invisibility trick was amazing, just like yours! I couldn't see him at all when we fought!"

"…Battousai," said Kaita, which made Myojin's head snap into attention and La Cerca stir in his own stupor. "That's the Battousai's sword."

Yahiko and Kaita then just looked at each other before they asked in unison:

"How did you know that name…?"

***

"Like waves from the sea," said the blood-stained Lucas Grant with a deep exhale. "The high tide and the low tide. The ebb and flow of the limitless ocean."

"…What are you talking about?" asked Kinta Minakata, who only looked a little scuffed up with tiny cuts and bruises while his half-brother looked like he had one foot on the grave.

Or an undead, vengeful zombie soldier from the foreign legion that refused to die.

"Facing your Musou Madden Ryu is like dealing with the rising tides. Your attacks come in waves. You even have a move named 'Tsunami', for goodness' sake," said the bilingual Lucas.

Curiously, even with the crimson mask on his face, Grant's slashes, stabs, chops, and pummels (from his bastard sword's pommel) seemed to increase in strength the more damage he received.

Was it the swell of adrenalin? A second or even third wind? Or perhaps sheer willpower? Kinta couldn't tell. He was just tired of trying hard to land a strike, only for his long-lost bastard of a brother to shrug it off like nothing.

Lucas Grant was no John Rathbone. Nothing about his swordsmanship was elegant or skilled. He kept on coming like a caveman, almost.

However, what he lacked in finesse he more than made up for in undeniable, sobering power. He was the difference between skillfully untying a knot and gnawing the rope apart.

More importantly, after repeatedly receiving the different techniques of the Musou Madden Ryu, Luke had started timing his blocks and parries better.

Kinta was still several moves ahead of him in every exchange, but by sheer trial and error, the stamina monster tanked enough shots to learn their timing, thus allowing him to slip past them better.

Like a sailor navigating his boat through treacherous waters and weathering the storm from experience. Unwilling to sink. Unwilling to let nature take its course and send him down the depths of the unforgiving sea.

Like villagers waiting out a typhoon until it left the area, resiliently rebuilding everything in the wake of its devastation because life always moved on.

Kinta then noticed that like the Prodigal Son of the Minakatas, he was only managing to do nicks and bruises on his half-brother.

The (literal) bastard was blocking most of his strikes with every inch of his heavy bastard sword, including its thick hilt and hammerhead-like pommel. None the worse for wear.

Well, not exactly. But all the major damage he currently had were ones he got earlier from Kinta and Zan. Wounds that might as well looked worse than they really were because of how nimble Grant moved regardless, like he'd long ago recovered from them.

Like the bloodstains all over his body were just war paint. Like his lacerations were scars or tattoos.  They were just for show and he was actually completely unharmed.

Luke had nerves of steel. And the pain threshold of a rock to boot.

A shiver ran through Kinta's spine in realization. Lucas had taken his best shots and remained standing. Could he take one of Lucas's best shots or any one of them in turn…?

His breathing had become heavier and heavier as the battle drew on. The same problem he had with the more skillful Faceless, but this time his half-brother exposed his weakness through a war of attrition.

His arms felt tired from just slashing at his brother over and over with strikes that would've normally plowed down hordes of Ishin Shishi rebels one after the other.

For someone who used techniques based on the moon phases and sea tides, it was Kinta who ended up getting dragged down deep waters by the inimitable, unfettered Lucas.

"Let me be the cliff that stands steady as your waves uselessly crash against my rocks below. The high ground where your waters couldn't reach," said Grant.

***

Yahiko crossed swords with Kaita, his mind racing a mile a minute. Or a kilometer a minute. Or roughly 1.6 kilometers a minute if it were still measured in miles.

"How do you know about Takae…?" Myojin asked Kaita, pushing the ninja away with his hard sword block.

"That's my line!" Kaita countered in words while also countering by disappearing from Yahiko's midst and stabbing him with his twin sais. "His last mission was to take out the Battousai. How did you end up with the Battousai's reverse-edged sword?"

Not knowing what else to say, Yahiko responded, "That's none of your business...!"

Unable to see him in time, the samurai kid attempted to blast the unseen shinobi away with a blind Dou Gami (God on Earth) to the floor, which his fellow bodyguard chose to parry and expose his location anyway by reflex.

The concussive force of the technique then bent and snapped one of Kaita's sais apart.

As Yahiko followed through with the Tsui Gami (Hammer of God) to break apart Taikai's other sai, the two combatants heard a voice from the blue.

"It's because he's Takae Kaita. The son of the man you apparently met. And fought. Did he die by your hands or the Battousai's?"

The recovering Fabian La Cerca had just spoken. Or was he John Rathbone this time around? The Minakata bodyguards couldn't tell.

"No, it couldn't have been you," hissed Fabian, referring to Yahiko. "You would've spared Takae with your foolish beliefs regarding a life-giving sword."

'Takae is Kaita's father?!' Yahiko's blood ran cold in realization. He'd been fighting alongside and crossing swords with the late Masahiro Takae all this time? He didn't know what to think or what to do next.

'Oh no, The Faceless is awake…!' Kaita finally disengaged from crossing blades with Yahiko to face the formidable Brigands Guild member.

Suddenly, the remnants of Fabian's broken saber then ended up on the now-visible Kaita Takae's neck before, a split-second later, his blood-spurting body got replaced by a plank of bloodstained wood wearing the ninja's clothing, the sword wedged deep into it.

With a thousand thoughts colliding inside his mind like a derailed train wreck, Myojin hesitated in attacking the charging unarmed gaijin in that same split-second, which proved to be his undoing.

Yahiko aimed and swung at The Faceless's shoulder with a simple downward sword strike, electing not to use any of his Kamiya Kasshin Ryu Revisal techniques for fear of the blunt-force trauma finishing off the man before him.

La Cerca simply dodged and stabbed the young samurai with three retractable claw blades that shot out of his left arm brace. They looked suspiciously like the claws that the late Hannya from the Tokyo Oniwabanshu.

"You're an amateur after all. To defeat an enemy without killing him... How naïve are you? You should've finished me off when you had the chance."

However, unlike Hannya, Fabian only had a single pair of the claws instead of having both hands sport the hidden weapon.

"Why won't you stay down, Faceless?!" demanded Myojin.

"If you had given me the final blow, that wouldn't be a problem. Also, the name's Haruka now,"  answered The Faceless.

For The Faceless was not Conde (Count) Fabian La Cerca any longer. Instead, he was Haruka. The half-Japanese burakumin (outcast) who had his own unique style of hidden-weapon ninjutsu.  With the destruction of one mask, he had donned another.

"Show me the power of that so-called life-giving sword you have, kiddo!" said The Faceless as he replaced his broken mask over his featureless face with another.

Regardless, Myojin blocked the claws in the nick of time with a parry from his iron sheath just before their pointed tips could pierce all the way into his vital organs.

'Magnificent,' thought Haruka, who blocked Yahiko's riposte with his other arm brace. 'The boy does not disappoint!'

"Kenshin's life-giving sword protects both you and me! That's the promise I made to both my master and Kenshin!" Yahiko spat out as his mouth spewed blood.

"Spoken like someone who has never killed a man. Naïve and foolish. If you try sparing my life, it will come at the expense of your own!" said Haruka. "Remember this painful lesson, boy. When at war, mercy is for the weak!"

Personally, Myojin wasn't as closed-minded about killing as the vagabond version of Kenshin who promised his late wife Tomoe Yukishiro to never kill again.

He knew there were times when he had no choice but to kill, especially when defending himself and/or others. However, he also wanted to emulate his idol Kenshin as much as he could.

He wanted to match his resolve as the inheritor of his reverse-edged blade.

"If you won't die so easily then neither will I!" retorted the young samurai with a bloody grin.

***

And just like that, the tables had turned. Or rather, the tides of battle had changed. Kinta's tides had started receding while the tides of Lucas grew in turn.

The exhausted Kinta looked pristine compared to his bloody bastard of a long-lost brother. However, the way they moved belied their appearance.

Like with The Faceless, Minakata had started to tire out and sweat hard. This manifested with his shortness of breath and slower movement. He also hesitated and made more mistakes than before that kept him from finishing off his brother earlier on.

Meanwhile, the bloodstained Lucas Grant kept attacking, swaying, ducking, and countering against quick-draw shots and ripostes like he could still go into battle for many hours longer.

Like Luke was a spry younger man or spring chicken dancing circles around a sickly senior citizen or an anemic old rooster at death's door. In contrast, his estranged sibling wheezed and struggled through every exchange like he was in stuck in quicksand or a tar pit.

It also helped that Grant's seemingly inexhaustible stamina and toughness allowed him to figure out his brother's swordsmanship using a similarly superior blade made of superior European steel versus the pig metal of Japanese swords.

For example, Luke figured out that Kinta relies on momentum and centrifugal force in order to make his iaijutsu strikes increase in speed and power whenever he performed one of many Tsunami kata variations.

The first few shallow strikes served as probing slashes to gauge the distance of the target and the last few strikes ended up the more deadly accurate bone-cutting attacks based on the information gathered by the initial swipes.

By refusing to get herded by Kinta's first few strikes that he also allowed to hit nothing but air to find his range, Grant could sidestep and counter or riposte the deeper cuts with his harder swings.

However, what made the Mimawarigumi Battousai truly dangerous was that he could go from zero to a hundred on the first slash by doing the Mangetsu O Tsuku Nari (Full Moon Slash) straight from the scabbard or even the Aoitsuki O Tsuku Nari (Blue Moon Slash) in case the first slash missed.

Alas, as Kyoko Sakaguchi herself discovered, doing that devastating technique from the start instead of building up to it with momentum-gathering Tidal Wave technique could literally tear a person's body apart.

When used over and over, the double-edged technique sapped the stamina of its user. Or if it was done incorrectly, it could even injure him.

Luke also pressured Kinta to counterattack and react over and over while keeping himself safe with feints, fakes, stabs, and his own probing strikes only to switch to a hard block, parry, or dodge at the last second.

His excessive, elaborate swings that would've been discouraged because of his many openings served as traps for him to catch Kinta with a slash or two. If he got slashed back, he could block or simply absorb the damage with his resilient body.

Whenever Kinta hesitated, Luke turned his feint into an actual attack care of recoveries or follow-throughs like a trap activated by a tripwire.

The Brigands Guild member pushed the hapless iaido master into a corner and made him backpedal from his accurate attacks and automatic counters.

Having both The Faceless and his son Cain scout Kinta's skill level and disseminate his abilities first before Lucas faced off with him had paid dividends for their mission.

The Brigands Guild had caught the Mimawarigumi Battousai unawares and flatfooted with their schemes, research, and preparation.

Kinta's shoulders reached nearly up to his neck as he gasped for air, his red hair matted with sweat and blood.

The Kagemusha (literally meant "Shadow Warrior" but also meant "Body Double") drowned in a whirlwind of steel while his own attacks got deflected, absorbed, swallowed, or tanked by the walking disaster area himself.

An earthquake. An avalanche. A landslide. The irresistible human tempest indulging in a roaring rampage of revenge.

***

"What pushes you to act now?" asked Haruka the Outcast. "You have no relation to the Minakatas. What is your purpose for risking your life for them?"

If Yahiko were honest, he'd admit to pushing through this bodyguard gig partly because he thought it'd be a waste to not use what he'd learned training with May Brooks/Satsuki Sakaguchi at the Sakaguchi Dojo.  

The samurai kid responded through grit teeth, "I met them through a friend of mine. Also, even if we're strangers, what good is the life-giving sword of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu if I can't save the lives of those under my protection?"

"There you go again with your lies," hissed the foreign super spy and assassin. "A sword is a weapon. The art of swordsmanship is learning how to kill. To believe otherwise is to invite death at your doorstep. Or to give a child a gun to play with. Don't be so gullible."

The Faceless twisted his claw knives around Myojin's abdomen, which made the boy swallow down a guttural scream he wouldn't release to not give his opponent the satisfaction of seeing him in agony.

"I feel like I've heard that speech before," said Yahiko. "I believe in life-giving swords. There is such a thing as a sword that protects. I've seen it with my own eyes."

He didn't actually hear it the first time Kenshin told Kaoru those same words. However, the Kamiya couple did have discussions about their first meeting later on that the boy did listen to.

Dully, Yahiko wondered who could save him now? Munenori Minoe? Gan? The police? A wandering Kenshin Kamiya looking after him? Sanosuke Sagara back from America? Or even Seijuro Hiko himself like when he faced off against Fuji's gigantic blade?

It certainly wasn't going to be Kaita, if what Haruka said about him being Takae's son were true. He might even stab him in the back instead.

Maybe this was it. His luck finally ran out. He bit off more than he could chew.

"…Gesshoku (Lunar Eclipse)!"

"UGH! MIERDA…!"

The next thing Yahiko knew, he ended up on the floor, blood spurting from the three wounds on his abdomen while he saw a lanky man with huge hands grab hold of The Faceless's face and slam it down to the concrete ground.

"…Kiddo. I've learned long ago that the Shword of Life doesn't exist. All shwordsh are Shwordsh of Death. The Shword of Life is one big joke. A deadly one that could getchoo killed," said Yahiko's ultimate rescuer with a slight drunken slur.

"Who the hell are you, man?!" exclaimed Yahiko as his eyes stared at the man before him from his coiffed head to his sandaled toes and his flowery pink haori and hakama (shirt and pnats) in between.

"The name'sh Kojima Sho." The man smirked and let go of the struggling Faceless before standing up and retreating from the swipes from the masked man's claws. "…Ah, screw it. Let me be that silly fool. Let's make the Sword of Life into a reality!"

It was at that point that Myojin noticed the weird man had six fingers on each of his two humongous hands, giving him extra grip on his sword or on Haruka's masked face. Also, his face was as pink as his haori for some reason.

Was he drunk right now? Oh gods. Yahiko's rescuer was a drunkard. Yahiko could smell the booze from Sho's breath from where he lay. "Get away, old man! You'll get killed!"

Also, for some reason, the drunkard reminded Yahiko of Hitokiri Gasuke.

No wait. That was wrong. He actually remembered him. This was the guy who was with Kinta Minakata when they first arrived in the Sakaguchi Dojo!

Meanwhile. Haruka growled, "It's always one thing after another…!" as he jumped around and swiped his claws at Kojima in every which way. It had been quite a long day so far.

The unsteady, hiccupping Kojima unsheathed his cane sword but wielded it strangely. Like it was a scythe. He blocked and parried The Faceless's claw strikes with the spine instead of the edge of his katana.

'Was this the Sword of Life this guy was talking about?' wondered Yahiko, who by now found the strength to sit up. 'A way to wield ordinary swords so that they don't immediately finish off opponents like the sakabatou…?'

Sho then fell into a wobbly Waning Stance of the Musou Madden Ryu, with his back turned against his opponent and his face giving him a sidelong glance at most. Just like the favored stance of his fellow student, Lieutenant Satoru Sakaguchi.

Unlike Minoe and his/her split personalities, The Faceless remembered everything his other identities experienced because he merely donned different guises rather than transform into someone else entirely.

Therefore, he remembered the iaido stance from his bout with Kinta Minakata and prepared to counter it in kind.

The burakumin thusly charged at Sho to stab his back or his neck then sidestep to the right or clockwise to avoid the right-handed quick-draw slash from his scabbard.

It was his way to trip the trap without getting caught in it, just like he did when he faced off against Baku the Bat Ninja.

Only for him to get blindsided by Kojima swatting the back of his head with his scabbard instead of his blade, much to his surprise.

***

Kinta Minakata was one of the few people who've met all the Shidai Nikuya (Four Butchers)—Hitokiri Shinbei, Hitokiri Izo, Hitokiri Hanjiro, and Hitokiri Gensai—of the Ishin Shishi.

They were also known as the Four Hitokiri (Manslayers). The hitokiri who worked under orders of Hanpeita Takechi and Ryoma Sakamoto.

He didn't face off against Hitokiri Shinbei (Shinbei Tanaka) as a Mimawarigumi at 14 years of age, but he did assist his kenjutsu masters in hunting him and his partner at the time, Hitokiri Izo (Izo Okada), down when their identities were still a secret.

Kinta's masters were also the founders of Musou Madden Ryu—Genzo Sakaguchi, his father Azuma Minakata, and Kyo "Sword of Death" Kojima.

The  Shidai Nikuya cried out "Sonno Joi" (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians) even as the Shinsengumi shouted in turn, "Aku Soku Zan" (Kill Evil Instantly).

He'd later meet and cross swords with Izo, Hanjiro, and Gensai (or Izo Okada, Hanjiro Nakamura, and Gensai Kawakami) at different points of the Bakumatsu.

On top of the Shidai Nikuya were the Choshu Han Hitokiri working in the shadows—the Hitokiri Battousai and the unnamed hitokiri rumored to have a flaming sword—under the orders of Kogoro Katsura and Shinsaku Takasugi.

The Hitokiri Battousai rose to prominence as shogunate forces concentrated their might on taking out the more prominent hitokiri of the Four Butchers, with them dying one by one.

In turn, the Mimawarigumi Battousai rose to prominence himself, such that a fateful duel between two Battousais was expected to happen during the Boshin War. Let the true Battousai emerge victorious in the end.

Alas, they never crossed swords. Battousai Himura ended up fighting mostly Shinsengumi forces while the Kyoto Mimawarigumi moved to Osaka and dealt with the rest of the Satsuma Domain.

As Kenshin Himura battled against his closest rival Hajime Saito, Kinta Minakata instead dueled against the inimitable Kawakami Gensai.

By the time the two Battousais could've crossed swords in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, the Mimawarigumi had to retreat back to Osaka to regroup with other Shogunate forces on January 31, 1868, after their leader Tadasaburo Sasaki was fatally injured.

The Kyoto Mimawarigumi was even temporarily renamed the Shin Yugekitai (from January 8 to 19) and permanently renamed the Sogikitai (April 10) a day before the Tokugawa Shogunate surrendered to the newly established Meiji Government (April 11). The group disbanded soon after.

Like with Hajime Saito and Kenshin Himura, Kinta Minakata was offered government positions in the military, cabinet, or police in recognition of his skill, contributions, and heroic exploits during the Bakumatsu and beyond.

He turned them all down, but the rest of his family were quick to cur favor with the new government to allow them to keep their wealth and remain a privileged oligarch family even as the samurai caste was abolished.

***

Back at the front yard of the Moneychanger Office…

Kinta Minakata should've finished Luke off when he had the chance. Like behead him or cut his jugular before he could even draw his superior European steel bastard sword against his inferior katana.

Lucas Grant merely walked the haggard Kinta down at that point, running him ragged like a fully grown adult manhandling an asthmatic child having a temper tantrum.

There was nothing his privileged samurai half-brother could dish out to him that he couldn't handle. His deadened nerves had gone through  much worse than this.

Good thing Lucas forced Minakata to drag the fight out with the revelation that they were half-brothers. Had the skilled Kinta not held back, Lucas might've ended up half-dead or wholly dead without touching a hair on him.

'Dammit,' thought Luke. 'What a waste for someone like him to get in the way of my revenge.'

To conduct his revenge against the Minakatas properly, Lucas did his due diligence and researched about his estranged family who disowned his mother and removed her from their family registry.

If they weren't as wicked as he believed them to be, he'd spare them from his vengeance. Had the Minakatas repented and changed for the better, Lucas would've not bothered continuing his plans for revenge.

Alas, they were perhaps greedier and more evil than even he anticipated. All of them except Kinta.

Learning about the compromised health of his brother, fighting a war of attrition, and practicing counters to some of his moves beforehand with The Faceless before experiencing the rest firsthand during the fight had paid dividends for the young Grant.

"Sorry, Aniki (Big Bro). In another life, we could've been friends. Or even real brothers," said Lucas while swatting away another iaijutsu attempt by his tiring sibling.

He'd been researching and observing from afar his estranged brother while masquerading as one of the Minakta bodyguards. He'd learned of both his exploits in the Mimawarigumi and the Hidden Christians of Shimabara.

The Minakatas had long been spoiled rotten by money, but Kinta actually fought for his ideals. Like the Shogunate Forces or even the Ishin Shishi of the past.

When Kinta's father got dishonored by Lucas's father by having an affair with their mother, Kinta's heroic exploits in the Mimawarigumi helped recover the reputation of the Minakata name.

While Kinta's relatives filled the family coffers so they could still live a life of privilege after the Ishin Shishi took over, he went and avenged the death of his master then took down the leader of domestic terrorists who claimed himself the Son of God and the descendant of Shiro Amakusa Tokisada.

He infiltrated the Hidden Christians ranks as Shogo Amakusa's Kagemusha (Body Double) before ultimately betraying the cult leader at the cost of his health, even.

 At that point, none of Kinta's Musou Madden Ryu techniques could escape Lucas's automatic blocks and parries, like he'd memorized their patterns and tells over the course of their protracted battle.

"It's over, Kagemusha. You've already lost. Enough is enough."

"…."

Luke had no doubts that six years ago, he wouldn't even have a chance against his venerable elder brother in his prime.

"I don't fault you for what your family did to my mother. In fact, I'm truly honored to fight someone like you. What a damn shame, seeing honorable men like you die for the sake of the wicked."

Kinta had fought for the Shogunate and saved Japan multiple times in several wars and countless battles, only for the leeches he called relatives to reap the rewards of his exploits and prestige, taking government positions and privileges originally offered to him.

It disgusted Luke to his very core.

Kinta's greedy family of swindlers, drug dealers, and money launderers turned oligarchs who control politicians with their blood money didn't deserve to live. They bring shame to the honorable Seiryu Clan.

Kinta, unlike the rest of his corrupted kin, was a man of principle.

***

Back at the abandoned factory…

Instead of a sword-drawing technique, the pink-shirted drunkard did a sheathe-drawing technique and swung it at Haruka's noggin like a hollow baseball bat.

Its impact also got doubled by the brigand sidestepping right into the unexpected strike.

"SHINGETSU O TSUKU NARI (NEW MOON SLASH)…!"

As expected of a loopy drunkard. Yahiko had half the mind to believe it wasn’t a real technique.

The New Moon Slash hit The Faceless strong enough to fling him into another set of windows, with him crashing right into them. He could've died right then and there from the shards alone, but when Yahiko and Sho checked the wreckage, he was gone.

"…Dammit, he got away," said Sho Kojima with a hiccup, a stinky belch as he rubbed his stomach and cleaned his ear with his pinky finger.

'So much for the Sword of Life, huh?' Then again, Sho himself didn't really believe it such things. He himself called it a joke.

Then again, unsheathing the scabbard instead of the blade to catch an opponent by surprise with your unorthodox iaijutsu was quite the out-of-the-box thinking. So was using the flat part of a katana to take people out.

"Well, I hope you're happy, kid. You just helped save your enemy," began Sho, only for him to trail off as he saw the bodyguard tend to his V.I.P.

"…You okay, Mister Thin Man?" asked Yahiko to the shook but otherwise unhurt Tatsuya Minakata. "The Faceless didn’t stab you while we weren't looking, did he?"

"'Bout time you remembered me," the sullen Tatsuya rasped, trying to look like his old boisterous self, but his white complexion belied his bluster.

Myojin exhaled. As far as he was concerned, as long as he was able to protect the people around him, his mission was accomplished. To Sho, he asked, "If you think the life-giving sword doesn't exist then why do you practice it?"

Kojima smirked and winked at Yahiko. "Probably for the shame reashon you do, Kiddo. Shomething a drunkard would come up with, y'know?"

The man with the huge bouffant hairdo and colorful clothes then assisted Kinta's uncle back to his feet and guided him out of the building, with Yahiko following close behind them.

The young samurai pondered those words. As th son of Tokyo Samurai, he'd heard how they had the right to cut down peasants who offended them. "Kirisute Gomen" or something to like that.

The teenager found the prospect of having the power to judge who lived and who died by something as petty as being annoyed by them as quite grisly. Like a politician such as Jusanro Tani abusing his power over the poor and underprivileged.

Like with Kenshin, he'd rather follow the edicts of Kamiya Kasshin Ryu than indulge in the uglier side of being a privileged, rich samurai.

He didn't want to be judge and executioner over criminals. He'd rather protect those before him as he sought the same strength Kenshin had. Let these villains pay their crimes in jail or have their chance at redemption.

Yahiko had always admired Kenshin and how he never used his sword for anything but protecting the weak. He never bullied anyone weaker than him but instead kept bullies at bay without serving as their executioner.

No matter how strong, Kenshin would never wield his sword for his own battles or bloodlust. His sakabatou always existed only to protect other people.

He never drowned in his own strength. He never had any meaningless fights to show that might or strength justified any action.

This was why the Tokyo Samurai Descendant took Kenshin's non-killing vow to heart even though he personally never killed anyone. Not directly, at least. Not by his own hands, certainly.

He didn't need to become someone with a body count attached to his name to do this. He didn't need to atone for murders he'd already committed. He didn't have to make a vow to a loved one he accidentally killed to avoid killing again.

If Yahiko wanted to be as strong as or even stronger than Kenshin Himura/Kamiya himself, the least he could do was be as careful as Kenshin was whenever it came to protecting human life, including his own.

Myojin wished to be pushed as much as Kenshin was before he became willing to take a life to spare others. The Kenshin who still upheld his refusal to kill no matter how angry he got.

That was the vagabond's true strength—his ability to tame the bloodthirsty Battousai inside him and make killing an absolute last resort.

That Kenshin, the Kenshin that risked his life to save others and had the willpower to live on as well, was the strongest man in the world in Yahiko's eyes.

Even stronger than Makoto Shishio, Hajime Saito, or even Kenshin's master Seijuro Hiko.

Even against monsters like Shishio, Saito, or Hiko, Kenshin's resolve allowed him to always find a way to win. That was the kind of man Yahiko wanted to become.

For Kenshin Kamiya (nee Himura) was a man of principle.

***

The gasping Hatamoto Samurai Descendant refused to give up, much to the chagrin of his bastard half-brother. Much to the detriment of his own health. Like the principled man that he was, he intended to go down swinging.

Like there was nothing else he could do but fight. A Shadow Warrior who was a shadow of his former self.

Thusly, he launched another Tsunami that Lucas anticipated, blocking the first few slashes to prevent the waves of slashes from gaining any momentum while the tides were low.

'You were something else when you aided your masters in hunting me down, kiddo,’ said a voice from within Minakata from out of the blue.

A familiar voice from Kinta’s past. The voice of Shinbei Tanaka (Hitokiri Shinbei). A ghost from his past. 'I saw your potential from the start.’

Also known as the Ansatsu Taicho (Captain of the Assassins), Shinbei had previously crossed swords with the Seiryu Clan’s best and brightest swordsmen under the Musou Madden School of swordsmanship, before his identity was exposed and he was arrested for treason.

The young prepubescent Minakata merely served as support to the adult swordsmen battling the rebel forces of the Ishin Shishi and their top assassins like Shinbei.

However, Kinta showed his mettle by saving their hides from time to time by fighting alongside them and showing off his early mastery of the Mikazuki o Tsuku Nari (Crescent Moon Slash), which was able to keep even the skilled Assassin Captain at bay.

Kinta started landing those Crescent Moon Slashes on his brother again after a long stretch of him failing to penetrate through the gaijin bastard’s impregnable defense. As though Luke had long ago memorized all the tricks in his bag.

Shinbei also died in July 11, 1863 by seppuku at 31 years old while under custody of the police. The same year as the establishment of the Shinsengumi and a year before the establishment of Kinta's own group, the Kyoto Mimawarigumi.

'That flat, bored look on your face pisses me off!’ said the Izo Okada (Hitokiri Izo) in Kinta’s mind. Izo was Shinbei’s partner-in-crime for most of their assassination missions. 'You look like an emotionless mannequin, you’re so creepy!’

The man they’d later identify as Hitokiri Izo had said as much to Kinta’s face when they themselves battled each other—Musou Madden Ryu versus Nakanishi-Ha Itto Ryu.

So his expressionless face gave Okada the creeps? As far as Kinta was concerned, the feeling was mutual. Izo's manic smile as he slaughtered his foes unsettled him in kind.

Compared to the more patriotic and straightforward Shinbei who wanted to deliver “Tenchu (Heaven’s Retribution)” on every weak and submissive head of state who submitted themselves to the Western nations, Izo was a wild card who enjoyed his job as butcher of men a bit too much.

From Kinta’s encounters with him, Okada fought like a wild beast. Or a serial killer. Izo certainly demonstrated resiliency bordering on the supernatural in their duels against each other that would put Lucas's current performance to shame.

Okada would later get arrested for assassinating Toyo Yoshida. He’d then get tortured, crucified, and then beheaded in May 11, 1865 at 27 years old.

Half-delirious from the pain and exhaustion of the prolonged battle, Minakata soldiered on against Grant. Unwilling to let himself falter against his long-lost brother who tried his best to keep up with him.

From there, he got his second wind and pushed back with swinging ripostes and counters to Luke’s hard blocks, parries, and attacks.

Meanwhile, someone else said, 'You really are a true samurai, Minakata Kinta. Your father would be proud,’ to Kinta’s mind. It was the ghost of Hanjiro Nakamura (Hitokiri Hanjiro).

Nakamura would later be more famously known by the Meiji Administration’s history books as Toshiaki Kirino. The longest surviving hitokiri among the Shidai Nikuya.

As Kirino, he lived all the way to 38 years old before getting killed in action on September 24, 1877 during Saigo Takamori’s samurai rebellion against their fellow Ishin Shishi and the Meiji Government they helped build.

A practical and pragmatic man in life and in combat, Hitokiri Hanjiro’s Ko-Jigen Ryu reminded the Mimawarigumi Battousai a lot of The Faceless’s fencing swordsmanship.

Every move they did was deliberate and calculated, with  one move always leading to another five moves like a high-speed game of chess or go, but enacted by sword attacks, counters, ripostes, and feints.

Thusly, Kinta began focusing more on tactics and strategy.

Luke used wide sweeping swings with his blade that would normally lead to straightforward stabbing counters or precise well-timed ripostes, but he didn’t just swing randomly.

He baited the Counter Attacks changed the levels of his swings every so slightly to deflect, recover, and angle his own Counter Times, like The Faceless himself would with his rapier.

He also only needed fewer strikes to cause major damage while he treated most slashes to his persons like annoying if prickly paper cuts.

Also, even though the wounds on Minakata’s body weren’t as deep as Lucas’s, his body was apparently frail enough to get affected by them. His movement slowed to a crawl compared to his “fresher” yet bloodier brother.

This was an insult to Kinta’s manhood. He hadn’t been as damaged as his little brother yet he was the one on the brink of defeat?!

'What is this? You can do better than this, surely,’ drawled another voice. 'You survived the Bakumatsu. This li'l brat is nothing compared to what you’ve been through.’

This time it was from Gensai Kawakami (Hitokiri Gensai). The Mimawarigumi Battousai’s greatest rival and most common opponent.

Despite the pain, injuries, and depleted oxygen, the Mimawarigumi Battousai dully remembered his battles against another swordsman who also drew comparisons to the famous legendary manslayer, the Hitokiri Battousai.

Hitokiri Gensai was the closest thing Kinta had to that Battousai versus Battousai duel that neve happened during the Boshin War. He couldn’t imagine the whirling dervish that was Shiranui Ryu to be any less dangerous than the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

An underrated tactician, Gensai’s savagery in the battlefield belied his intelligence that could challenge even the likes of his fellow brainy manslayer, Hitokiri Hanjiro, when it came to cerebral battles.

Kinta truly dealt with better slashes than those thrown by Luke. Bone-cutting strikes that killed many a man from one of the deadliest hitokiri of the Shidai Nikuya, Gensai Kawakami.

This frightful man would later go by the name Genbei Kouda. This name change was the reason why by the time Kinta learned that Kawakami had been incarcerated for harboring Kiheitai stragglers, it was too late.

Kinta learned months later that Gensai had already been executed on January 13, 1872 at 38 years old before he or the Minakatas could pull some bureaucratic strings and have him pardoned for his crimes.

All the Shidai Nikuya ended up dying before hitting the age of 40.

Thanks to their mutual sacrifices, they paved the way for a much stronger Japan with a brighter future than becoming another potential colony for foreign superpowers.

Was Kinta headed for the same fate as Gensai and the others? Maybe he'd learn the answer in the next exchange.

' You should've taken me with you, Gensai. To heaven. To hell. To limbo. It doesn't matter,' thought Kinta. 'I can't wait to face off with you in the afterlife, old friend.'

The Mimawarigumi Battousai dodged and parried the chops and slashes at him from Luke’s bastard sword, his body remembering the extreme quickness of Gensai’s Shiranui Ryu compared to his brother’s comparatively clumsy Western swordsmanship.

'There’s still some life in his swings,’ thought Grant. 'What will it take to take you down, Aniki…?’

***

'Man, that Kagemusha is hard to kill,' thought Kai Hidaka with a head shake and a heavy sigh. 'And here I thought Luke was resilient!'

He stood on wobbly feet. Winning his fight against Zan the Sharpshooter Ninja and his gigantic warfork took its toll on him.

However, it was only a matter of time. This second wind from Kinta should be his last. The Mimawarigumi Battousai of yore was no more, replaced by a sicklier version of him with low stamina and respiratory problems.

The Battousai became a mere Kagemusha. A copycat of either the more famous Hitokiri Battousai or the seditious Christian rebel Shogo Amakusa.

Kinta Minakata was the moon to Shogo Amakusa's sun. The satellite orbiting Battousai Himura's planet. 

Kinta actually served as the body double of Shogo until he betrayed the cult leader, in fact. Minakata was merely a shadow of people stronger than him. Or he was supposed to fill that role.

Could it be possible for the shadow to be greater than the man…? A Kagemusha that became his own protected dignitary? An imposter that usurped the role of leader?

Fine. If Luke failed to finish his brother off, it was his duty as a fellow brigand to complete the mission for him. They had a 90 to 100 percent completion rate on all their assassination missions for a reason.

He looked over his options. The recovering cop and daughter was still nearby, unable to escape because they were still worried about Kinta's state of health and mind while battling his half-brother.

They could again serve as Kai's hostages, distractions, or meat shields when push came to shove. Or he could be the distraction himself to allow Luke to land the final blow.

However, just as he was about to again pounce on Officer Satoru Sakaguchi to avenge himself from their exchange earlier, a golden blur arrived at the periphery of Hidaka's vision.

No, not a golden blur. A blonde blur with a huge warfork-like naginata (glaive).

'What in the world…!?'

***

What was Kinta Minakata's reason for living? For the sake of his family? To honor his deceased father and estranged mother? To uphold his honor, whatever that meant?

What was the gold lacquer that kept his fragile, broken self together? How did apply kitsugi in his own broken life and home?

He needed to win. He needed to always win and survive. To save his loved ones or even those who weren't beloved to him, he had to shoulder the burden of always winning no matter what.

If he won, the world kept turning. If he lost, their world would stop. It would be the end of the Minakatas and even the Sakaguchis by proxy.

He couldn't let that happen. Not when he still had a lot to fix. Not when he still had a lot to atone for.

As long as he had the resolve to win, his fragile self would not break apart. Like broken ceramic kept together by gold lacquer.

But still, maybe dying here in the hands of his family's bad karma made flesh wasn't so bad.

If it was his fate to die here in the hands of his half-brother then so be it. He couldn't have written a better end. Surely better than committing seppuku in jail or getting crucified.

Kinta took careful breaths to calm himself down and conserve his energy. His counters to his brother's counters were enough to make the (literal) bastard hesitate for once.

Besides which, he'd been playing defense all this while to brace himself for the tidal wave to come. Like waves on the beach receding like an extreme low tide before a big tsunami hit it.

Luke had a feeling that something big was coming though. Through trial and error, he'd memorized the essence of Musou Madden Ryu combat in his heart and soul.

And so finally, Kinta stopped dodging then charged forward in his Waxing Stance or iaijutsu/battoujutsu form.

Grant grabbed his bastard sword's handle with both hands, bracing himself for a heavy impact.

So should Kinta do the Blue Moon Slash? His body felt like it was about to break. Like how his Akatsuki sword banging against the slab of steel that was Luke’s bastard sword.

At this point, after being hit by it over and over, Luke could see even the supersonic iaijutsu technique coming a mile away, allowing him to block, sidestep, dodge, or counter by reflex.

Luke's reaction time was also fast enough to recover from any feints done to him. The half-breed swordsman could course-correct and turn a missed swing into a stab or a parry at the last second.

Also, the effort of doing that body-straining technique would only hurt Kinta in the end. It was almost not worth doing.

The thicker European sword used more high-grade carbon-rich steel versus the multi-layered Japanese steel folded unto itself that made up for the lack of carbon by putting powdered carbon into the melted metal during the forged process.

However, the Akatsuki katana was different. It could take the hardness of foreign steel because it was made from melted European swords during his grandfather’s exploits against pirates and stolen weapons from the galleon trade.

Toshiro broke his sword and Genzo Sakaguchi reforged it with high-carbon European steel and folded it unto itself to create a new, better sword.

It was a Japanese sword that used Western steel to forge something stronger. Not unlike the old primitive Japan being reforged into the current modern one after the Sakoku (Closed Country) policy was lifted.

The Western steel was the kintsugi to his katana. Like a broken bone mended so that it'd grow stronger afterwards.

With the fall of the bakufu, the New Japan—a stronger, modernized nation-state version of Japan that mixed Western technology with Eastern sensibilities--would hopefully get a seat on the table of world affairs.

Where both Western and Eastern superpowers viewed Japan as a respectable peer instead of a primitive, backwards country ripe for colonization and invasion.

'Heh. What am I even thinking?' thought Kinta. The way he mused about the Akatsuki, you'd swear he was thinking just like one of the Ishin Shishi.

And so the Akatsuki sword flew from its scabbard. At this point, Kinta's resolve was thusly if Lucas could win against this exchange then he deserved to kill him.

All this time, the Prodigal Son had been blocking any point-blank iaijutsu with the intention of tiring his brother's body with the mere effort of doing Full Moon Slashes.

However, Lucas realized that if this was a last exchange then his half-brother had every intention to cut through the block.

He could see it in the X-shaped scar in the middle of Kinta's face that deepened like wrinkles every time he strained himself. That was his most telling of "tells".

Grant then used the Tactical Wheel that The Faceless drilled into his very core.

Simple Attacks were beaten by Parry and Ripostes or Counter Attacks. Counter Attacks were beaten by Counter Times (feints used to draw out the counter). Counter Times were beaten by Feints in Time (feinted counters to draw out the counter times).

So Luke expected Kinta to feint a Mangetsu O Tsuku Nari by half-unsheathing his blade then sheathing it back again (Counter Time) and responded with a Feint in Time (feinting a counter).

However, Minakata's feint itself was a feint and he went ahead in the split-second he motioned to re-sheathe his sword, he instead unsheathed it.

The iaijutsu expert turned his Counter Time into a Simple Attack, which was the best way to counter a Feint in Time in lieu of two swordsmen continuously saber-rattling and posturing against each other without ever actually attacking.

However, Lucas was a bunch of nerves himself, his adrenalin rush slowing time enough for him to notice the change and electing to do a hard block (Parry and Riposte) instead.

The Full Moon Slash created a flash of steel that rotated fully and turned into a moon-shaped perfect circle, shining like a second moon that appeared on the ground.

As though Kinta used his iaijutsu and twisting movement to create a perfect circle using his sword and his center of balance like a protractor.

The Aoitsuki O Tsuku Nari worked like the Tsunami in that it built upon the momentum of the first perfect-circle Mangetsu O Tsuku Nari. Using foot pivots, full body rotation, centrifugal force, and the empty air left by the Full Moon Slash, the Blue Moon Slash should travel at double the speed and power.

This broke through Luke's defense, but he'd been memorizing the timing of the expected Blue Moon Slash all the while. With one hand on his claymore-like bastard sword, Luke prepared his riposte.

The bastard child knew what to do. Sidestep then stab at the center of the Full Moon Slash as the swordsman prepared to do a second one. In other words, stab the eye of the spiraling storm. This will drill the sword into the body of the rotating samurai.

A grisly death for sure, but an honorable one at least. A warrior's death in the line of duty.

However, none of that happened. Instead, halfway into Kinta raising his Akatsuki to do a Blue Moon Slash, as Lucas timed his stab, the Mimawarigumi Battousai flipped his sword, reversed his momentum, and did a downward slash.

Somehow, the bloody Lucas became even bloodier than before, producing a fountain of red from his sudden chest laceration. His deepest wound yet. 

Grant had forced the gasping, cornered Minakata to do his ultimate forbidden hidden technique.

The legendary technique of yore known as Tsubame Gaeshi (Swallow Return). The same technique he used to defeat Shogo Amakusa.

And now Luke was the one gasping and cornered in turn.

Originally the signature technique of the legendary swordsman Kojiro Sasaki, the Kagemusha himself learned the similarly legendary skill from his second swordsmanship master, the blind swordsman Hyoue Nishida.

The maternal uncle of Shogo and Sayo Amakusa (formerly Muto). The black sheep of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu.

Nishida's Tsubame Gaeshi allowed him to survive his master's Kuzu Ryu Sen (Nine-Headed Dragon Flash) when they were doing the succession duel to pass on Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to a new successor.

The pacifistic Christian Hyoue actually learned the technique solely to find a way to counter the Kuzu Ryu Sen without killing his master, Seijuro Hiko XII, with the Amakakeru Ryu no Hirameki (Heavens Gliding Dragon Flash).

Regardless, that last technique from out of the blue was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That ripped the last thread of the rope that kept the hanging Lucas from falling into the abyss below.

Lucas had finally hit his limit.

***

To Be Continued...

The exchange between Toshiro and Kinta is based on the exchange between Seijuro Akashi and his father from Kuroko's Basketball. The Faceless and his ornate masks are also based on Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who wore elaborate masks to hide his crippling leprosy.

Also, Lucas Grant's first name is taken from George Lucas, who famously created the Star Wars franchise that started with a movie about an orphan forced to fight a relative in the backdrop of an intergalactic war.

Also, thusly, Lucas uses Form IV (Ataru) of Lightsaber Combat when fighting against his half-brother's more precise and rigid iaijutsu reminiscent of Form II (Makashi) of Lightsaber Combat.

Danke, Abdiel

#rurouni kenshin #rurouni yahiko #yahiko myojin #fanfiction.net #fan fiction #brigands guild

[brigdh]

2 & 14?

2) What is your favorite fic of yours?

Oh my god how could I choose only one of my babies????

I'm always very fond of So Many Are the Crossings and the Roads (BenJan Medieval AU), because at the time it was the longest thing I'd ever written (it's only 9k, but at the time that was very impressive to me), and I wrote it in a crazed rush over a single weekend after getting hit with a burst of inspiration, which is not at all how I usually write.

I'm also kind of fond of What Power (Saiyuki reincarnation cyberpunk) which has never really gotten that much feedback, probably because there's way too little of the story on the page and way too much of it left in my head. But I think it's a fun idea and fun characters, even if it probably should have been an original novel rather than a short fanfic.

I think Marks (Swordspoint, Alec fails to teach Richard how to read) is one of the best things I've ever written, craft-wise, though uh I haven't reread it in a long time so my opinion might change if I did.

14) What is something you wrote in a fic that you are hoping readers picked up on but you don’t know if they did? And/or, what is something that you were excited that readers did pick up on?

In chapter 7 of lay me down in the bed that I made (which I SWEAR TO GOD I haven't abandoned!!!), I spent so much time debating what story to have Stede tell Ed. I was looking up all sorts of myths, googling stuff to see what was around in the early 1700s; I wanted something that had resonances with the fic's plot without being too on-the-nose. I went with Mr Fox (aka The Robber Bridegroom), which is of course about a girl who (almost) marries a man she knows nothing about, only to discover that he has a deadly past. And also he's probably planning to murder her and eat her, but that part's less relevant to 'lay me down'. The other one I came close to using was Cupid and Psyche (marrying someone you don't know, going through trials to prove your love).

Anyway, I spent a ton of time thinking about this and then not one single person mentioned it, hahaha.

I also haven't learned my lesson, because I have a scene planned for a few chapters from now where Ed and Stede discuss a Shakespeare play, and I've been wasting too much time looking up quotes and deciding between Othello (Desdemona falls in love with Othello when he shares his stories of victory in battle; their love is sabotaged by Othello's right hand man; Ed has strong feelings about turning a husband murdering his wife into a performance), Antony & Cleopatra (choosing between love and duty; a man destined for greatness who just wants a happy private life instead; also a lot of performances have a scene with Antony and Cleopatra switch clothes) or maybe The Tempest (the closest thing Shakespeare has to actually writing about the Caribbean; about colonialism; also it's not even that relevant but I'm obsessed with putting the line "You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse" into everything). I'm sure no one else will care about this discussion between them except for me, but I'm very excited to get to it.

Thank you for the asks! :D

#meme #writing

[nataliaphantomhivesblog]

In the end of it all, Monaca Towa was still a child.

To start this off, this isn't my usual Black Butler posts but ive been meaning to talk about Danganronpa for a hot minute, so please bear with me! Second, this is solely my opinion and before anyone wants to attack me please read thoroughly first. Thank you:)

(Spoiler warning for Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 3)

Also, before we dive in I'm going to list some trigger warnings:

Physcological abuse

Physical abuse

Manipulation

P*dophillia

Suicide attempt

Violence (?)

Childhood trauma

Please take care and read at your own risk<3

Hello there Danganronpa fandom! Today I will be talking about Monaca Towa (as stated in the title) and how people often minimize her trauma and sometimes forget the fact that shes still a child who got heavily manipulated by Junko too.

Monaca is seemingly very amiable and caring, because of her charming personality, all of the Warriors of Hope love her and try their best to keep her happy and go along with what she wants. However, it's slowly revealed that she is actually manipulative and cunning behind her friendly facade.

Monoca is a character that is cruel, manipulative, and extremly unhinged. Many of her actions cannot be excused or justified, but you can understand where she's coming from.

Monaca's Backstory:

She was born an unwanted child by both her father and her mother. Monaca's mother was supposed to take care of her but instead abandoned the child soon after her birth. Because of all her actions, Monaca saw her mother as a completely selfish and pathetic person. Monaca's father thought of giving her to an orphanage but instead took her into his family.

However, Monaca was always unwanted and everyone else felt uncomfortable around her. Every time Monaca smiled or joked, the others looked at her coldly, as if she didn't deserve to laugh. Every time she spoke, the others turned silent. His older-half brother thought of her as an alien, not part of the family.

She was also physically abused to the point that she pretended to be seriously wounded for them to stop as a result.

Monaca also attended Hope's Peak Elementary School and was part of the "trouble-makers class" along with Nagisa, Masaru, Jataro, and Kotoko.

Along with her fellow abused classmates, she planned a group suicide; however, Monaca never had any plans to commit suicide in the first place and was planning to let the others die as a prank.

The group suicide was stopped by Junko, who took the kids in and manipulated them by treating them with kindness and love.

Monaca then helped Junko mass produce Monokumas for the Tragedy by using her position as a representative of the Towa Group.

She lied to her father and the other adults in order to produce the Monokumas, telling them that she wanted to create futuristic robots that could be domestic helpers and emergency aid workers.

Due to her separation from the family and her genius, her family decided to give her leg room to do what she wanted as long as she brought in profits to the company, and didn't delve too deeply into her plans.

Things to keep in mind about Monoca's backstory:

She was emotionally and physically abused from a very young age.

She started to pretend to be paraplegic because she was finally treated with some kindness and she could have more control over people.

She convinced Nagisa, Jataro, Kotoko and Masaru to commit suicide.

Out of all the Warriros of Hope, Junko took the most intrest in Monoca due to her position, meaning that she was the one who got used and manipulated the most.

How Monoca's mindset works:

The moment she got physically abused to the point that she had to fake her injuries to make her family feel bad was the moment she learned that through sympathy from others comes power. Due to her families neglection and abuse, she started to quickly pick up on things in which benefited her yet hurt others.

She started to use manipulative tactics on her family to gain control over them. She then started implicating these tactics with the Warriors of Hope.

When Junko got into the picture, everything changed for the worst. Junko was the only person in Monaca's life who showed her affection. Even though deep down Monaca knew Junko only cared for her as a means to use her robotics genius for the Tragedy, Monaca didn't care, and happily helped out Junko with her plans if it meant being loved and appreciated in return. At the heart of it, despite all her horrific acts, that's a very child-like thing to do, right? So when Junko dies, Monaca's entire reason for living basically disappears.

AI Junko via Kurokuma may have planted the idea of a successor in her head, but in Monaca's mind it's a way to get her big sis back, and very specifically chooses to mold Komaru into becoming Junko's successor. That's for a big reason, Monaca doesn't want to become Junko, I'd say she actually just wanted her big sister back who would love and appreciate her again, and hence tried to make someone else take on that role initially. Once again, that's the mindset of a child.

Monaca's relationship with the Warriors of Hope:

The Warriors of Hope are a group of children who are extremely resentful and hateful of adults, regardless of whether or not they were involved in their rough paths. 

We all know that the Warriros of Hope are extememly tramutized kids. Masaru had alcoholic parents who physically abused him, Jataro was physcologically abused to the point he bealived he was so ugly that if anyone saw his "repulsive" face they would die, Kotoko was r*ped multiple times by disgusting p*dophilic men (not to mention, Monaca's brother was attracted to her), and last but not least we have Nagisa who had pressuring parents who wanted to raise him as the child prodigy and expirimented on him constantly.

Monaca used the Warriros of Hope's trauma against them, manipulating them to the point were they had to do her bidding completly.

As much as I hate to say it, Monaca truly saw them as pawns. Although there are some instances where she openly declares her care for the Warriors of Hope, it's likely she does that as a form of emotional manipulation.

If anything, she probably did see them as equal in the beginning but then when she started to gain control over her own family, she started to do the same with the Warriors of Hope as a way to protect herself from getting hurt, then again this is my baseless assumption.

Her dynamic with Nagito:

Monaca was amused by Nagito's strange behavior and contradicting beliefs and appeared to be somewhat annoyed with him at the times. However, the two appeared to at least seemingly respect each other in some way, as they treated each other somewhat formally as allies.

Her dynamic with Nagito is one of the most intresting ones. Obviously I think that her being rasied by Nagito was potentially a dangerous thing, considering Nagito's goal was for Monaca to become Enoshima's successor. Monaca seemed to agree with this goal, but Nagito's constant rambling about hope and despair made Monaca bored and feel embarrassed about the whole thing.

She claims he made her an adult in a way, as she grew up in the mental sense and became more cynical and apathetic, not really caring about anything.

In the end, Monaca found Nagito creepy and annoying, but she also appeared to get closer to him during their time together, while originally calling him just "Mister Servant" in UDG, she later refers to him as "Big Bro" in Danganronpa 3. I do think their dynamic was sort of soft and I would've loved to have seen more of it. Honestly the concept of Nagito being a soft brother to Monaca warms my heart, and the wasted potential will forever anger me.

(If any Danganronpa fanfic writer or any writer in general is reading this post: if u could be so kind and do a PLATONIC Nagito and Monaca prompt and tag me in it, I would love you forever!!)

My opinion on Monaca:

I think that Monaca was a very well-written character who deserved more than what she got in the end of Danganronpa 3. She was abused, mistreated and belittled by her family. If anything, I see her as a completely misguided little girl. If she actually had a positive authoritative influence in her life, she wouldn't have turned astray.

A lot of people disregard Monaca's trauma and forget that at the end of the day, Monaca was a child who the moment she was born, the people who were supposed to love her were unwelcoming.

Don't get me wrong though, there is no way in hell I will ever justify or condone the things Monaca has done. If anything, I just think that she alongside the rest of the Warriors of Hope should've been properly taken care of.

Also, if you dislike/hate Monaca thats 100% valid! She did a lot of inexcusable things and its alright to hate on her. I personally love her character but I know she is not everyones cup of tea.

If you read all the way, I'm actually surprised! Thank you and I hope you enjoyed<333

#Danganronpa #danganronpa text post #Warriors of hope #kotoko utsugi #masaru daimon #jataro kemuri #nagisa shingetsu #Monoca Towa #Monokuma #Junko enoshima #Nagito komaeda #Ultra despair girls #udg #udg nagito #Danganronpa 3 #Komaru Naegi #Toko fukawa #Tokomaru #Hope and despair #Monaca Towa #Haji Towa

[weebsinstash]

I’m sorry if this is a dumb question, but I don’t understand why doing fanfic commissions is illegal? Artists (who draw I mean, not writers) do it all the time, hell, they even create fan merch and no one yells at them for going against the law or something. Why are the rules different when it comes to fanfics? I thought as long as you don’t claim the characters you write about as your own everything’s fine?

Its complicated because in essence it all comes down to many different factors,, the biggest being if you're worth the company's time to sue (for example, people doing hundreds of commissions a month are bigger liabilities than like a teenager writing about a fictional character holding your hand). Technically, creating any sort of fan merch for profit --art, fanfiction, clothing-- is illegal. Whether or not you are actually going to get in trouble or the creator would even bother sending a simple cease and a desist is debatable, but regardless, you're selling something that has someone else's intellectual property in it and that essentially constitutes as theft and plagiarism under current law. Doing the whole "i don't own these characters, all rights reserved" doesn't actually do anything to protect you, at all, and actually when you do that you're admitting you're aware that you're using a property that doesn't belong to you, which is an "admission of guilt" which could be used against you if you ever did get in trouble imo

It's not really consistent at all because like, obviously most IP owners do not have the time to track every single person on every single website down, especially obscure little bloggers, but people do still get in trouble. In fact, there have been vindictive people who report fancontent straight to the companies/creators themselves for the express purpose of getting fan creators in trouble using the whole "You're illegally selling content" debate just because they don't like their shit. Like, for example, it's a separate but similar issue, but look at what happened with kazooli getting her PayPal or patreon or whatever mass reported by people who'd never even read her shit and were just dogpiling onto performance activism over nothing and they cut off her income just because they knew they could cause a big fucking mess with no consequences to themselves

tbh making money with art commissions or fanfiction commissions is always a gamble because sure, the creator of whatever you're making fan content for isn't aware of you, but there are plenty of dickbags on the internet who could decide to cause shit for you just out of spite. And also with it being the modern era, sometimes the creators themselves or members of their team are on the same website as you. Some larger companies actually have teams and departments for hunting down stolen content (which is why everyone is immediately saying that Disney is going to be the one to shut tumblr down because it's a megamonopoly with tons of wealth and this website is COVERED in content with their IPs)

Tl;dr companies don't want you taking any money that they perceive as belonging to them, they don't want you to tarnish the image of whatever IP you're using and thus hurt the company's profits, and also, as part of basic IP/copyright law, if you do not defend your IP from copying and theft you can actually lose legal ownership of that IP. A prime example is if Nintendo didn't crack down on everyone they catch making knock off joycon controllers, they could lose the patent for the controller design altogether and that could then be stolen by competitors

Tlrdr tldr its just a bunch of money grubbing legal bullshit and while most people will never run into any trouble, the risk is still there, and if you're caught you can be fined (however this is usually relative to whatever you've been doing. Unless you made significant significant money i doubt they'll even sue you, just send a cease and desist telling you to stop or else)