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akechi-stole-my-heart · 2 years

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Persona 5 and Justice

I wrote this essay for school, hence the more "formal" language. It's a bit long (and yet still very surface-level, lol) so I'm putting it under the cut.

Persona 5, a Japanese roleplaying game (JRPG) is currently my favorite video game. It's a game ripe with symbolism and thematic meaning, but I've decided to deconstruct its main theme today: justice. As Persona 5 is a game with over one hundred hours of gameplay, there's so much story to it that I could go on for a very long time on just this one topic. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on three main aspects of the core theme of justice: (1) how society within the game views Justice (2) how the Phantom Thieves view Justice and (3) how Goro Akechi views Justice.

First of all, we have how society views justice. In the society of Persona 5, which is modern-day Toyko, Japan, justice is seen as something enacted by law and executed by figures in positions of authority. Justice is seen as lawful and retributory. Authority figures are to be obeyed and respected unquestioningly. However, there are major flaws in this idea of justice, and the protagonists counter this view in their rebellion against society's unjust acts. There are many, many examples of the injustice of society's "justice" within the game, but perhaps the most poignant is what happens to the main character before the events of the game. The player character, who goes by the moniker "Joker," has been falsely convicted of assault and put on probation for a year; an innocent high schooler is left with a criminal record and ostracized by all of society and his peers because of this false conviction. Joker suffers immensely throughout the game because of this false conviction. Society has enacted its "justice" on Joker through the force of the law, but in doing so has only created more injustice, as he has done nothing wrong.

In contrast to society, our protagonists have an entirely different view of justice. Justice is not something written in the law and enforced by authority figures--justice is something individual to the person, something one must decide on their own. All of the Phantom Thieves (the name given to our group of protagonists, led by Joker, who "steal hearts" of criminals and force them to confess their crimes) decide their own version of justice and rebel against authority figures in an act of self-actualization and discovery. They defy society's expectations of them to forge their own futures not dictated by society or "rotten adults." Justice is rebellion and defiance of authority and unique to the individual. Each of our protagonists has a slightly different version of what they think is true justice, and that's how they are able to self-actualize and become stronger, better people.

Finally, we have Goro Akechi, who in a way, embodies both sides of this moral dilemma of the true meaning of justice within Persona 5. Fair warning, from here on out I will be discussing MAJOR spoilers for Persona 5. (If you haven't already, as it is a popular game, I highly recommend you give it a shot.) At the start of the game, Akechi is presented as the antithesis to Joker: he is a high school detective who wishes to discover the identities of the Phantom Thieves. Akechi believes the Phantom Thieves are immoral to force confessions via what is assumed to be some form of brainwashing, even if those confessions are true. The Phantom Thieves take the law into their own hands, and are therefore unjust, regardless of whether their actions are "justified" or not. However, late in the game it is revealed that Akechi is not all who he seems to be. He is actually working for a very powerful politician Shido (who also happens to be his father) as a secret assassin, as part of a complicated revenge plot against his father. However, through enacting this plot, Akechi sacrifices his own sense of justice and becomes a villain and puppet of Shido. Akechi's sense of justice is distorted in his tunnel vision for revenge. Persona 5 does not villainize the want for revenge in and of itself--many of our heroic characters find revenge in their own ways. But unless that anger is used for good, it can twist you into a person you don't recognize anymore, which is what happens to Akechi. He forgets his childhood wish to become a hero and is obsessed with making one rotten adult suffer no matter the cost or suffering he may cause to others.

Akechi is a killer, but the true reasons he is a villain are twofold. One--he allowed hismelf to become the puppet of a corrupt adult. By becoming Shido's hitman, Akechi sacrificed his own agency and sense of right and wrong for an adult he knew to be corrupt, just for his approval. Two, and most importantly--Akechi is not true to his own sense of justice. His justice is split into two contradictory ideas--one of idealism and lawfulness, and one of revenge and hatred. They are irreconcilable, and as such, he can never be true to himself or his individual idea of right and wrong. He is torn between two extremes, never fully faithful to his true self, always wearing a false mask to gain the approval of others rather than be himself.

In this way, Akechi's conflict distills the core conflict of Persona 5. Akechi is a villain because he is not true to himself, and therefore unjust. It is when he loses sight of himself and gives up his free will for the approval of adults that he becomes unjust.

Persona 5 uses its theme of justice to critique the real-world society of Japan, which idealizes respect for authority and encourages obedience in its youth. The justice system in Japan is also highly corrupt, with over 99% of all cases ending in conviction, which results in many false convictions. While the game is a critique of Japan's corrupt society, its themes can be extended to much of our world, as corruption in authority figures and the struggle to find a balance between finding a place in society and being yourself is a struggle most youth around the world can relate to.

#persona 5 #p5 #goro akechi #justice #akechi does manahe to reconcile his two ideas of justice in hereward but it would be way too much to have gotten into that in this essay #and even if id tried i ran out of time anyway #anyway i hope yall enjoy this #i know its kinda surface level but this was for an assignment for school that was meant to be 1-2 paragraphs long #and i only had 45 min to write it before the deadline

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meimae · 2 years

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4/3/22

Been a little busy, but here's my February Immersion Overview!

You'd think I'd immerse less this month given that there was only 28 days, but this is probably the best I've done especially in terms of reading, and I'm still giving myself a bit of a pat on the back for it.

Let's get into the details, shall we?

ANIME

Me? Watch anime? Never!

Oh, wait. I watched Angel Beats! this month. I had always planned to watch it after I finished the VN (the same goes for every anime or drama that originated from some form of reading content really), and I'm glad that I finally did because the pacing felt way better. Shows like this shines in its comedic timing, and while I am getting a bit faster at reading, the pacing still felt really slow compared to just watching the anime. It also concludes the show properly; we get to see the true end pan out, something the VN didn't cover because it delves into each character's backstory more. Glad I finally get to graduate from this story as well. For now. Angel Beats! Next, Next Beat when?

DRAMA

I watched one drama again this month. An anime and only one drama? Seriously, what is going on?

やめるときも、すこやかなるときも was pretty short, and semi melodramatic, but it wasn't as bad as how its currently rated in MDL. It tried its best to showcase how two individuals dealt with their trauma and how they ended up facing it together in the end. It was sweet actually.

GAMING

To add more to my weird immersion choices, I decided to delve into and start playing the Japanese localized version of Stardew Valley after watching hundreds of Youtube videos on it. I can't say that its the best way to spend reading time, but it is a good way to relax without thinking that I'm wasting my time gaming. It's pretty comfortable to read now (although sometimes the font throws me off lol), and knowing where everything is, just in case I'm too lazy to look up words, is comforting.

GRAMMAR

Remember when I said last month that I wanted to concentrate and study grammar more? Yeah.....no. At the beginning of the month, I spent a lot of time dawdling, thinking about how to go about it. I figured I could just continue making Anki cards for them, but realized that I keep quitting my reps for them midway anyway. So, I started reading them instead, even computing how many days it would take to read all of them without feeling like death. Then I stopped....oops. I swear I'm trying really hard, but forcing study time makes me not want to immerse too which is very counterproductive. It's not as if I hadn't read up on all of this before anyway. This is literally a refresher course to nail everything down...if I can just stay motivated enough for it.

LIGHT NOVEL

So while I was having a pretty shallow dilemma, I started reading a bit of 無職転生 again. I figured I don't like 異世界 plotlines that much, but I'm curious why people praise this as the one 異世界 you can't skip out on.

PODCASTS

Still very much into podcasts, since I can actually follow them now. Read to listen, fellas.

I need to find more podcasts to mix it up, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

YOUTUBE

I rarely talk about my quest for good Youtube 実況s, and キヨ。is definitely someone I can recommend. This is probably the most chaotic let's play of Undertale I've ever seen, definitely a must watch. Again, if you have Youtube channels you use for immersion, especially female gamers, do drop a comment.

VISUAL NOVELS

Excerpt from my post on The Moe Way Discord server: "Roughly 380 days later and after 760 hours of reading everyday, I managed to hit 10 million characters read from visual novels...I saw a significant comprehension increase in both my reading and listening skills, and overall less time spent doing anki reps due to seeing them often when I read."

So yes, the visual novels are truly the backbone of my immersion these days. Who knew that it would mean so much to me now, even though I've never read one before I used them for language learning. Don't shun it til you try it, I guess.

I also did a personal reading challenge with them early this month: read 100k characters everyday for 10 days. Took that goal, smashed it, and read 1,411,512 in 11 days and finished both White Album 2 and 君と彼女と彼女の恋。in the process. As a length comparison, that's like reading around 13 or 14 short light novels. In total, I read 1.75 million characters this month, a new personal best. ʕ•̀ω•́ʔ✧

I have to say that it required me to read something I really enjoyed (White Album 2, easiest 10/10 I'll ever give), and something really easy (Totono) for me to complete the challenge, which just proves that a combination of comprehensible input and genuine interest in the media is the way to huge language gains in a short period of time.

Might have given myself major White Album 2 withdrawals though, because oh boy, everything feels inferior to it now, and I kept switching VNs just to rid myself of the feeling.

That said, I think the rest of my picks have all been interesting: finally feel comfortable enough with my level to start Fate/Stay night although I will be continuing it in April instead for The Moe Way's quarterly reading challenge. Also, picked up and shuffle reading literally every monthly VN challenge in the club namely サマーポケッツ, サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－, シュタインズ・ゲート, because they are all interesting in different ways and are quite big VN fan favorites.

The one I dropped almost immediately though was something I thought I'd like because it was the same developer as 剣が君, ブラックウルヴスサーガ -ブラッディーナイトメア- because it freaked me out somehow faster than オメガヴァンパイア (although I did give OV more of a fighting chance at redemption before giving up and dropping the last two routes.)

I once thought that I'd be a bigger, general fan of joseimuke content, but it seems that I only like romantic and fluffy 乙女ゲーム or 女性漫画, because they likely won't include really disturbing and triggering content (...I say as I read Taishou Alice), and I read to de-stress and not to get stressed. My comfort levels are being tested and I don't like it.ヾ(｡>﹏<｡)ﾉﾞ

I guess nothing still beats the impact 剣が君 had on me, the way White Album 2 does for me now in なきげ.

-☆-

That's it for this month! I'm nearing two years of immersion so stick around for my post for that. I'll probably also drop my review for White Album 2, because I already wrote and posted a good part of it in the club. Although I enjoyed a lot of what I've read the past couple of months, nothing has hit me like White Album 2 has, that it actually inspired me to write about it in the club as soon as I finished it.

Truthfully, writing in depth reviews all the time when I finish so many very quickly is quite difficult for me, and I've managed to hit quite the writers block, but I'll still try my best to get them out as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading, and I'll catch up with you all again soon! ʕ•̀ω•́ʔ

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btsandvmin · 3 years

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A personal dilemma

I feel like I have to explain properly why I have reacted the way I did and why the asks about me not doing videos for Vmin affected me so much. I am sorry for dwelling on this subject so much but it is something that is important to me and effect what I do and how I do it a lot.

This post is a bit confused and I might also come across both as a hypocrite and as "high and mighty". But I believe every person has a responsibility for what they do no matter how small the effect. And I need to get this off my chest. This is a conflict within me that I don't have an answer to yet.

For the last few days I've seriously considered if I should continue with writing analysis for Vmin or not. Because at the end of the day I know what I do have a sort of snowball effect that is out of my control. So asking me to not do videos in worry about Vminies getting delusional faster or me being seen as a analysis maker more similar to some ji/kookers or tar/kookers like tkk/lives made me wonder not only if putting out videos was something that bring more bad than good, but if making any analyses at all was something that brought more bad than good.

Even if I try hard to stay away from sounding delusional and to warn my readers of the problems with believing the things I point out and the narratives I share might still lead to more confidence in Vmin being superior or real. Even if it's not my intention I can't control what people do after reading or watching my material.

Thus if creating leads to more bad for both the Vmin community and perhaps in the long run even Vmin... How can I in good conscience keep doing it?

I always believed and hoped that my way of writing, and of being open and transparent with the problems with shipping analysis would rather at least to some extent halt the ones reading and understanding my stance from turning delusional or over confident etc. That I could be clear about the difference between facts, theories and narrative and make others aware too.

When I started this blog I was just shipping happily and reblogged others posts. Until the "you can't ship Vmin they are friends" issue bothered me enough to write about it so I wrote "The “bromance” issue". Then I kept making material to show why Vmin is just as good and easy to ship romantically as any other ship. Thus my 10 reasons to ship posts etc.

The first time I truly got into analysing territory was with my first song analysis. And even then it was just a feeling that the songs could match and speculation mostly for fun. Vmin kept doing things, and yet I saw a lot of people get angry or defensive just for shipping Vmin. For example as 4 o'clock came out and Vminies got attacked for "making it about Vmin". Already feeling like Vmin's songs kind of fit together, and how other shippers tried to make the songs about their own ships (including 4 o'clock) I started to look closer at various ship analyses and seeing the lack of Vmin analyses compared to other maknae ships made me feel like people just zoomed in on their own ship and ignored everyone else. I couldn't help but want to add my own Vmin interpretations. I wanted to add a Vmin perspective as a sort of counter weight. Especially since I felt the things I saw had more to them than similar theories from other ships. For example the songs, being soulmates, using army as a substitute for each other or my own version of Vlive analysis, which was that Vmin seemed to avoid it rather than them hiding in each other's room. Other ships had these theories, despite Vmin having at least some of these things confirmed. So in a way, the soulmate claim and 4 o'clock was my starting point to look at Vmin in a different way and a bit after that I started making analyses.

It felt weird to see all of these things go ignored when other ship communities made their followers believe in the relationships with a lot less than I felt Vmin had. I never got confident that Vmin was real and I still think the odds of any ship being real aren't that big. But I did feel like many people completely ignored Vmin both as soulmates and as a ship.

So, while asking my fellow Vminies to be careful with believing I kept looking at Vmin and added my biased theories to show it could very much be done with Vmin as well. I never wanted to make people delusional, but having been in many fandoms before I also knew that with size that is something that can't be avoided. I saw that as BTS kept growing and as big Vmin moments happened, that more and more people shipped them. It made me happy. But I also knew it would mean more and more would eventually start to question Vmin the way other ships got questioned. I really think it's something that happens eventually with enough of a following. There are so many ships in Kpop that people believe in and try to prove, it definitely wasn't exclusive to BTS. (You can even look outside Kpop at things like the Sherlock or Supernatural or even Hunger Games fandoms where many speculated that the actors weren't just close, they were romantically involved.)

I wanted to talk about Vmin, but I didn't want to be one of those that told people what to think and to believe me no matter what. I wanted peope to question without "knowing" what the truth was. I was hoping to bring something different than just the safe "this is just my thoughts and you can take it or leave it" disclaimers. I wanted to explain the problems and to remind ourselves (me included) that shipping is something that can easily turn into more if you don't actively remind yourself that we actually don't know the truth. We have narratives that seem to make sense, but so does other shippers... So for many of these belivers it is impossible to be right. Not everyone can be right about their "truth", if anyone, since they go against each other. If Vmin turn out to not be together I do not want to be the one responsible for people believing they were real, only to get hurt when they aren't.

This is something I've always felt, and as I kept writing analysis I always wondered if I really should. Especially since I saw some Vminies get inspired by me or even taking some of my theories and run with them as facts rather than the theories they were. I put things out there, moments and ideas. A narrative for Vmin. And I saw others adapt them and go further with them. I wasn't sure how to feel as I realized my blog perhaps contributed to Vminies feeling more suspicious and slowly more confident in Vmin being more real than other ships.

Even if it was my goal to make people look at Vmin, I guess with all the things Vmin did it all started to feel more "real" for me too. So many of my theories seemed to work and even get proven or added new material. The songs kept coming and Vmin kept being Vmin. But I also knew this exact thing happend with ji/kookers after G.C.F came out. New material that "confirmed" their beliefs and in turn allowed them to become more confident in being right. So I kept reminding myself not to get swept away, because in the end I don't think no matter how much we have gotten, that it has to prove anything besides how much Vmin mean to each other. Romantic or platonic truly doesn't matter.

Another thing that makes a difference to me is also the way I view the different ships if they would actually be real. For example watching ji/kook and ji/kook theories it seems pretty clear they don't mind people shipping them or seeing things between them. I've never seen Jimin be careful, but instead rather bold and almost pushy, with moments with JK. If Ji/kook is together their shippers too believe that they want people to know. With Vmin I saw it a bit differently... I've seen Jimin be careful with how he and Tae comes across since 2014. Why I don't know. But if we imagine there to actually be something between Vmin, then it doesn't seem like it's something Jimin wants us to know. Taehyung is a bit bolder, but either way the "narrative" I see for Vmin if they would be real is that they are careful with getting exposed. Thus there is also that factor to consider when writing theories about them. If Vmin would be real somehow, and they don't want to be "exposed" how is what I do the right thing?

I have had a post in my drafts for a while and I wanted to add it here in case you are interested. After all, this isn't something new that came after the video asks, but rather something I've always questioned. Which is why it really got to me when I got asked to stop doing something for the sake of the community, myself and Vmin.

This is something I wrote a while ago and I decided not to post at the time. I hope you will understand my feelings a little bit better after reading all of this.

I hope you understand where I am coming from and excuse me for generalizing and speaking about the Vmin (and other ships) community as if it's one big force and not many individuals.

***

Now, I have debated for a long time if I should talk about this at all and basically take a stance in a way I would prefer not to. I know I will lose followers over this, and that's ok. I can't force anyone to listen. But with the way I see the Vmin community grow I also see the confidence in Vmin being real grow. It's natural and happens with all ships eventually, but I still hope Vminies can look at shippers from other communities and realize the same kind of reasoning applies to us all.

I get more messages that sound borderline delusional now than ever.

I always suspected we would reach this point, because again, as things get more normalized and ok to talk about the bolder statements and theories will become. It literally happens with all ships, slowly at first and then gradually worse and worse until you reach truly delusional levels where Big Hit are playing up other relationships to hide the truth or trying to create a glass closet for another ship and where every choice and action has a possible agenda. I don't think Vminies will get worse than other ships that are much bigger and bolder. But I do think we have already changed a lot in the last year. Even looking at my own posts I seem to have at some point escalated from "Vmin seem to have these push and pull moments" to "Vmin's push and pull" if you see the difference. It might be small, but it definitely matters in how my views comes across.

When I write I do try to present facts and then speak carefully and not confidently about narratives or meanings. If we take my song analysis for example I think there is a substantial amount of things even when just looking at facts. But, saying what those facts might mean will in the end always remain a biased guess. Especially since other shippers have their similar theories as well that they believe in 100%. I mean, I could make a case for Tae and Hobi's songs being connected as well. I've seen analysis like this from all shippers at this point, and I can't dismiss them anymore than they can dismiss mine. (As long as they keep to facts.)

I am careful, and even then I see some of my theories being talked about as fact, or att least very close to facts.

From what I have seen I have moments between Vmin I have notcied and shared that haven’t been picked up on before I did it. I still have some things like this I haven’t shared at all, simply because I think fans would run with them and become more delusional simply by knowing about them.

Sadly, the way things are going I feel uncertain if I should share more of these things at all. I don’t want to have to go around and debunk Vmin moments or urge people to watch other ships, because in the end every person has the right to enjoy a ship in their own way. But I do think confidence is dangerous no matter how good moments we get.

Ji/kookers got a lot worse after GCF Tokyo and started to talk about how Big Hit might be working towards a glass closet. And that might sound ridiculous, but I have seen Vminies say the same with the way Vmin has been "shown" as Friends came out and other pretty good Vmin moments from the last year. The question of "Do you think something is up with Vmin?" or "Do you think they are planning something based on the amount of moments we get?" are questions I have gotten many times.

You might think I am being too careful, but because I have been in many fandoms in a period of over 15 years I literally see the same development happen for all different kinds of shipping communities. Real and fictional. Where the fans get more and more confident as the groups gets bigger. It’s a gradual change towards feelings certain and allowing more logical leaps to fill the gaps, but it will get faster and faster once it starts.

I don’t want Vminies to get more and more similar to how many ji/kookers and tae/kookers act and think. Where we find suspicion in everything and allow ourselves to feel confident. (Or worried whenever something goes against that belief.)

I might sound a hypocrite considering I do write analysis on Vmin, but I am sorry to say, the way things are going maybe I shouldn’t anymore.

Every ship in BTS have moments, and every ship in BTS even have believers who truly KNOWS their ship is real. I often used to get the question “do you know this or that about this other ship” and “if you only looked at and knew about xxx you wouldn’t ship Vmin” etc. And honestly, they have a point. Only I think it works both ways for all shippers. We all mostly look at our own ship and have our own narratives and reasons to think they make the most sense. But as soon as we allow narratives to sound like the only or most logical explenation we have lost a big part of our ability to question others and ourselves. That's why I wanted to add the Vmin narrative in the sea of ji/kook and tae/kook theories.

Recently I posted Can shipping turn into conspiracy theories? and part of the reason I did so was because I have seen an increased tendency in the Vmin community to walk this thin line between shipping and belief.

I feel very conflicted honestly. I want our community to try and stay away from being sure, no matter how compelling the arguments. Again, I have literal hundreds of pages about Vmin being weird or doing things I think make them the most likely to be real in some form when looking at BTS.

AND I AM STILL NOT GOING TO BE CONVINCED.

I have followed another group where members kiss when drunk and talk like they ship each other and even if a ship might seem real there is just too much we don't know. And a lot about other ships we decide to ignore or don't know. I have been accussed of being a ji/kooker because I won't say ji/kook being real is impossible. But how can l? How would me saying ji/kook can't be real be any different to the aggressive ji/kookers who has come to me to say "Vmin is cute but ji/kook is real".

Of course every person might have their own level of what might convince them, but we also know that literally millions of other people are convinced of completely different things with incredible certainty.

I don't want to be scared to put my theories out there so they can be taken as facts.

I have said it before, and I know shippers are drawn to confidence, but that's the exact reason to why I choose not to be confident even though it gets me more hate and less followers.

***

So this is what I wrote a while ago... And hearing people worry about what might happen if I start making videos just made these thoughts resurface. Especially since I didn't feel that video was very analytical, but it still likely would make people notice Vmin in a "what if they are real" way. Again, I use moments that exists, but I also add them in a different context, with a Vmin narrative. If what I write or make seems legit and makes sense then my tone of being careful might not matter. People will get exposed to moments and ideas I highlight and then take them further. That's why I hesitate.

I don't think I am big or influential enough to do much, but just doing 'a little' shouldn't excuse it if it in the end leads to something bad, more than it leads to something good. That's why adding YouTube as a platform doesn't make much of a difference in my mind if I still do what I do here. Sure YouTube is bigger and things get spread faster... But I write much more analytical and questionable things here than I did in that video, and even if it gets spread slower and to less people isn't what I do here in a sense then worse?

If me making videos makes some of you nervous (which I understand and relate to) then what will it lead to if I post basically a book on everything weird I've seen and thought in regards to Vmin?

I want to feel like I add more good to the community than I bring bad. I always thought I was doing the former as I tried to make my followers feel open minded rather than convinced. Now I don't know where I stand anymore and so I feel even more unsure of what to do.

Maybe I should have kept this all to myself and not vented out my worries to you. But I take this rather seriously and while I love what I do and love being part of the Vmin community I am feeling conflicted and I felt like sharing why might be good for me.

I know this was long and I applaude you if you managed to read through it all. I am truly so happy to have gotten so many nice and understanding and kind messages from you all. And many of you even saying you are happy you came across my blog and that I brought a new perspective, made you more open minded or even kept you from turning delusional. It makes me feel like I at least did some things right. I purple you all. 💜

#vmin #btsandvmin #personal #my post #shipping vs believing

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damienthepious · 2 years

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Elle. Elle I want you to talk about that bit in teeth around my organs where Damien shows up late. I think I got the title wrong but listen

[Pick a short passage from any fanfic I’ve written (OR SPECIFICALLY Need Your Teeth Etc) and send it to me, and I’ll give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet!]

YES OKAY FANTASTIC. WHEEEE~

this got long, as usual.

["Oh thank the Saints you didn't leave. Oh," he pauses, breaking into another gasping sort of sigh, fluttering with uncomfortable, uncertain laughter. "Oh I thought I- I thought I would be too late. I-"]

These morons have exactly zero contingencies for missing their duels. They are MUCH less responsible about this whole thing than the HB3 versions are, ironically, and Damien experienced three simultaneous panic attacks on the run over here, thinking that Arum would LEAVE would HATE HIM would THINK HE'D BETRAYED HIM- and this Damien is rather acutely aware of his own... dilemma. Currently.

["Honeysuckle," Arum says, stepping closer, his remaining fury vanishing into something more like fear. "What- are you hurt?"]

lizard instantly forgets to be irritated when he thinks something might actually be wrong with Damien. absolutely gone. Also slips to honeysuckle so instantly. also, this fucking DUMMY lies even in his own HEAD. "something more like fear" my entire ass. it's just fear. you're just afraid. you're TERRIFIED, Arum.

["What?" Damien lifts his head, brow furrowing, and then he laughs again. "Oh, Saints, no, I am- I'm sorry, no."]

Damien, not even considering himself, utterly thrown off by Arum leaping to that assumption. Which is, i should mention, the SAME assumption that Arum leaps to in the following chapter. Gee, It's Almost Like Lord Lizard Cares About Him. And Damien apologizes, because he's compulsively polite, and also because now he's realizing that Arum worried.

["Don't- apologize for not being injured, takatakataka," Arum grumbles, frowning. "What happened?"]

Which Arum immediately tries to backpedal. A little. Arum doesn't like being thanked, and i don't think he particularly likes being apologized to, either, at least not unprompted.

["Nothing-" he bursts into another gasping sort of laugh, his expression tight and uncomfortable in a vaguely self-deprecating way. "Nothing exciting, I'm afraid, it was only- the Queen summoned all the knights in the Citadel for an unexpected meeting, and it- ran much longer than I hoped, and I couldn't- I could not find a way to extricate myself, and- and I knew I was leaving you to wait here, unknowing, alone, and I- well, as soon as I was released from my duty, I came with all speed and I-"]

Damien probably feels awkward talking about his more mundane knightly duties with Arum. He also feels guilty about leaving Arum hanging. He's having a stressful night, so far.

[He pauses, his expression lifting oddly, a sheepish little smile as Arum blinks at him, trying to decide exactly what to feel-]

But he feels a little better, very quickly, when he and Arum are in the same space again. and poor Arum doesn't have the first clue what to do or what to feel when Damien looks at him like that.

["I was... I was afraid you would have already given up on me," Damien says quietly. "That you would have given up on the duel, assuming... well, any old wretched thing about me, I suppose.]

An exceptional amount of Damien's dialogue in this fic is layered. He does a lot of saying two things at once, and fortunately/unfortunately, Arum is fucking STUBBORN and usually refuses to notice anything below the surface. "I was afraid you would have already given up on me." That's a weird way to say that, Damien. Very... emotionally loaded. 👀

[I was afraid of missing you entirely, and I didn't know what I would do if I had, except- to wait and hope you would return to seek me, eventually." He pauses, face flushing a little darker for a moment as Arum notes with some bafflement that Damien's instincts on that front mirror his own so well.]

They're very similar in some very stupid ways. Mostly to do with drama and bisexuality. "Oh yes, we haven't discussed ways to reach each other in case of emergencies, but if any were to come up, i would just WANDER THE JUNGLE where we usually meet and HELPLESSLY HOPE HE FINDS ME." idiots.

[Damien shakes his head, lips curling in a delicate frown. "I came as quickly as I possibly could, but- I am sorry, Arum. Truly, I am."]

Damien is so fucking earnest. love him. h

[Arum-

Arum should be angry. He knows he should be- furious with the little knight, for wasting his time, for-]

"should be" in the context of this whole ridiculous framework they've built around their continuing interactions. Arum is stuck in a fucking nesting doll of lies and intricate rituals and THAT framework says he should be frustrated with Damien for "wasting" his evening waiting for a duel that did not happen. however.

[He cannot hold the feeling. He is, perhaps, too exhausted on his own part, from his fury earlier in the evening. From his fear. From the way his feelings ricocheted so quickly from one to the next while he waited. He cannot hold any more anger, tonight. Mostly, he just feels-

Relieved. Exhausted. Warmer, oddly, now that Damien is here with him.]

Oops! he's finally letting himself notice at least a FRACTION of his actual feelings. oopsie daisy! oops!!! fucking finally. god.

[He shakes his head.

"I suppose... this is far superior a reason to have missed our duel than many others I fe- I could think of. Best not to find you fallen prematurely to some other, less deserving beast. Entirely unacceptable."]

MANY OTHERS I FEARED. Idiot lizard. He's cracking the door. Just an inch. He's offering just the LITTLEST bit of softness in Damien's direction. he's still framing it in their duels, because that's all he knows how to do at this point, but STILL.

[Damien laughs, a hint of bravado playing in the clear note of it. "I fear my standards are far too high for that, Lord Arum," he says warmly. "I would never fall before any other beast."]

This is a fuckign declaration and arum is so fucking stupid about it. that thing i said earlier about lots of damien's dialogue holding two meanings at once? this. this could ARGUABLY be speaking ONLY about combat, but. obviously. dissect somewhat. "I wouldn't fall for any other monster," which does not leave out Rilla, importantly. "I would fall for you. I could fall for you. I have fallen for you."

["Nor I to any other ridiculous little armor-clad buffoon," Arum mutters, glancing away.]

Arum manages to answer in kind without admitting a goddamn thing. While also being rather accurate to his future fate, lmao. Emotionally constipated, absolutely denial-buried idiot lizard monster. "I feel the same way," he says, refusing to actually think about how either of them feel.

#you got the name right don't worry. it's MY fault the name is OBNOXIOUSLY LONG #elle's fanfic meta #still need your teeth around my organs #asks #pinkpuffballdude

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emmarzhere · 3 years

Text

3am AU time: Sanders Sides Swap!!

Once again I can’t sleep due to my brain insisting it’s much more important to write down these ideas for a Light and Dark side swap AU than sleep, so 3AM TUMBLR RAMBLE IT IS BABYYYY!!!

So I wanted to try using traits already existing in each character to make their inverses, rather than just swapping traits or completely changing the character’s core values, and these are my initial late night ideas:

(Note: I saved this as a draft and revisited it in the morning / afternoon to make sure it all actually made sense and to add to it with a fresh mind)

(Extra note: I accidentally lost all my additions and the entirety of Patton’s and Virgil’s descriptions by refreshing the page, so it’ll now be written out again in a less formatted way. DAMN YOU TUMBLRRRR!!!!!!)

Roman:

My initial reaction was to make Roman “Pride”, and extend on his egocentric nature (like what is done with many Dark!Roman interpretations), however five minutes of laying in bed thinking about it later I found a trait I felt fit him better: Delusion.

This Roman could still be very much “Netflix kids and family”, living and trying to make Thomas live in a fantasy land where everything is always fine and dandy. This insistence of only seeing things through his figurative or not so figurative rose tinted glasses makes this Roman very naive and hard to get through to, and while on the surface appears very appealing to Thomas (when they first meet Thomas doesn’t understand why Roman counts as a dark side) can be very dangerous if Thomas leans too much into his ways of escaping reality, aka making Thomas a delusional person. The best part of this choice of trait for Roman is that I can still tie in his ego; delusions can be fuel people’s egos, and also to protect them from harsh realities, hence why Delusional works as a role for Roman.

While normally I see Dark Side Roman designed to be an evil prince or king, I decided to go for a more glamorous look which I think fitted my version more: Roman would wear a pristine black and red suit consisting of a red waistcoat, tie and trousers, a black button up shirt and black or red heeled boots. I also wanted his design to link to the white peacock (a rare type caused by a genetic mutation), so I topped off the outfit with either a vintage white shawl or a Cruella style coat (leaning towards Cruella because we know Roman and Disney!) with white peacock feathers attached (still trying to decide if I want Roman to have decorated the feathers with red and black accents or not), and a pair of literal rose tinted glasses to hide his white peacock eyes - pale blue with a glassy look to them which always gives the impression that he is far away, even when he’s not.

Finally his sword is replaced with a grandiose black walking stick with silver details, along with the handle being a silver peacock head (note: possibly detachable from the cane to reveal a silver knife?). I chose this as weapons like these in fiction are often used to appear innocent, only to reveal a hidden depth of skill and character; a description which I think applies well to Delusional Roman.

Extra note: Delusional Roman gets snappy, angry, or even threatening when people try to break him out of or correct him on his delusional ways, though he will often try to slip deeper into his fantasies than actually deal with emotional confrontations.

Extra extra note: Roman is incredibly jealous of his brother as he can’t understand why he’s been accepted despite Roman being the one who creates such wonderfully perfect worlds for Thomas to escape off into! He’s also jealous of how his brother doesn’t care what others think of his work and doesn’t seek validation from the others, not that Roman would ever admit that he does either of those things.

Patton:

So the 3 main aspects of Patton I felt would work best for a Dark Side are his destructive selflessness, his overly strong morale compass and how he encompasses many of Thomas’ more negative feelings.

I couldn’t decide whether to officially label him as “Denial” or “Repression”, but either way he holds a similar role: he represses his / Thomas’ negative feelings, as well as tries to push Thomas to do the morally right thing (as he still represents Morality, just not as his main trait) which almost always is the selfless option. It’s almost impossible to convince this Patton that his viewpoint is not necessarily the correct choice (he’s in denial that he as Morality can ever be in the wrong), and he becomes hostile when his views are continuously challenged.

The light sides see Patton as the main holder and cause of Thomas’ negative feelings (eg. makes Thomas act selfless and do things for others until he’s burnt out and depressed), and when Thomas is feeling these negative feelings Patton experiences them but more strongly to the point where the others have to force him out of bed (usually Logan) and take care of him until he and Thomas get out of the depressive slump. However once he’s out he will deny that he was the problem and begin pushing Thomas down the self-destructive path again.

While this Patton will deny his depression and many negative feelings, he is still not as upbeat as Happy-Pappy-Pal-Canon-Patton, matching more with how the side acts in more serious moments such as at the end of SvS redux. He will smile and comfort others, but laughter and puns are rarely seen.

Another thing about this dark side Patton is that he is very manipulative (a trait shifted from Janus to Patton), even if he doesn’t believe himself to be. He uses his role as “morale compass” to invalidate other’s opinions if they clash with his, and often emotionally hurts the sides he gets close to by caring for them and performing selfless acts for them to show his love (eg. makes breakfast for the other Darks sides every morning, goes out of his way to learn more about their interests so that they can have someone to talk to them about) followed by him simplifying complex morale dilemmas in a way that makes it appear that his option is the only correct one, making the others feel bad about their differing viewpoints (a bit like how Roman felt invalidated and morally wrong throughout SvSR as his views didn’t line up with Patton’s).

This Patton wears a worn out pale blue shirt with a fraying black jumper over the top, leaving only the collar of the shirt visible. He has frog features too; with blots of green skin scattered all over his body, slightly webbed hands and he croaks! The splodges grow larger the more emotion Patton represses. He also really doesnt like his frog features as they don’t align with the perfect image of himself that Patton has in his head, so he tries to cover them up as much as possible with his black jumper, pale blue gloves (leather ones as he tried woollen ones and his frog skin made them go sticky) and baggy trousers, although there isn’t much he can do to hide the blots on his face or his brown frog eyes....

(He’s also constantly worn out as frog-pops has no clue what self-care even means)

Extra note: Patton goes through a sort of alternate character development to canon Patton, where as he begins to be accepted by some of the Light Sides and Thomas they discuss how he doesn’t just represent Thomas’ negative feelings, but all of his feelings; a lot of them are just also accidentally repressed alongside the “bad” feelings. As time goes on Patton becomes more cheerful and goofy, even dropping the occasional dad joke, although never quite to the levels of canon Patton.

Extra extra note: The happier this Patton is, the less faded the blues on his clothes become (much like Virgil’s eyeshadow), until at moments of peak happiness his gloves and shirt are canon Patton blue (eg. when Thomas is with Nico, or when Janus and Thomas first accepted him). Cute blue embroidered designs also form on his black jumper at peak happiness, such as butterflies, simple cats, pawprints and frogs.

Logan:

So Logan is the only side I have decided to leave with the same official trait title: Logic, although he also has the orange trait Anger within him. He will also be taking the place of Virgil as the Dark Side who is prematurely accepted.

However Logan here is still different from canon Logan: he represses and denies his emotions even more than canon due to the other dark sides attitudes towards him (Delusional Roman in particular does not appreciate the truth bombs and logical reasoning the calculator watch drops), leading to more angry outbursts / orange showing through. This makes Logan a horribly unstable side, with him appearing completely apathetic to any sort of feeling for an undetermined period of time until he next reaches his limit and has an explosion of rage - he holds both Logic and Anger/Orange in him here, but the anger shows through a lot more due to his circumstances.

His clothes are always shredded and falling apart due to him tearing them when he’s angry + the rage can come out like an explosion that wrecks everything in his surrounding area, including the clothes on him. He sticks to plain black t shirts and trousers to start with as he claims he doesn’t see the point in putting effort into an outfit as he has no desire to please others.

However when Thomas starts making videos Logan can’t help but show up from time to time. He is unsure why as he could not care less what Thomas or the idiotic “Light Sides” think of him, though he figures while he’s there he might as well educate the buffoons so they can reach more informed, educated conclusions to their constant dilemmas.

At first the Lights don’t take his presence well, and more times than one he’d leave towards the end of an episode to explode in the privacy of his room. But surprisingly they eventually start listening to him, considering his inputs, and Logan leaves filming shoots satisfied, even popping into the Light Side’s area occasionally outside of filming days to talk to them.

However Logan notices a pattern as time goes on: the more he’s around the Light Sides, the less he goes Orange. He tests it by spending a week only hanging with the Lights and finds that his anger barely built up at all. Logan quickly reaches the conclusion that his orange trait isn’t actually uncontrollable, it’s how the others treated him that made it so hard to act civil. That is what leads to Logan hating the Dark Sides (much like canon Virgil does) and finally joining the lights.

Soon after being accepted Logan has an outfit change, where he goes from his burnt, tattered rags to his canon outfit, as he finally feels stable and appreciated enough to trust himself in not ruining a nice new Logic outfit. From then on his journey is about accepting that he has feelings and learning that they’re valid.

Extra note: Logan’s worst fear is the idea of going Orange in front of Thomas or the Light Sides - he finally has people who listen to him and if they see his orange side it might scare them off or they’ll lose any respect for him they had. Worst of all they could get hurt…

Extra extra note: Neither Thomas or any of the Light Sides apart from Janus are aware that Logan holds the Orange trait, believing that he only ever was Logic, just more apathetic to start with (and they actually all buy his reasoning of his old outfit being trashed due to him not caring enough about appearances to fix it, to Janus’s dismay but not disbelief - a bunch of himbos, the lot of them!).

Virgil:

Virgil still represents the “Fight or Flight” response in this AU, just without the excess Anxiety. His official title would be “Instinct”, and he would be more confident than canon Virgil. The decrease in anxiety would also make him better at making rational decisions, though he would still freak out and make not-so-great choices in stressful situations.

Rather than a spider, I decided to link this Virgil more strongly with a cat, with heightened senses, lightning reflexes and eyes that reflect light much like a cats. These additions also match with his change of aesthetic from patchwork emo to fantasy vigilante mixed with bright purple punk, plus the addition of purple eyeshadow applied actually correctly. I made this choice as both canon and this Virgil see themselves as a protector of Thomas, yet Virgil is still slightly more morally grey than the other 2 Light Sides (sort of like canon Logan) hence a darker design. Plus is it really Virgil at all if he doesn’t spend his free time listening to MCR?

Virgil also takes the role of canon Roman when it comes to Patton being accepted: he initially falls strongly for Patton’s caring qualities, with the Dark side helping sooth his anxious moments and suggesting that Thomas make other non-selfish options that don’t make Virgil feel as anxious as some of Janus’ options. So for Patton’s first few conflicts Virgil sticks up for him, claiming he’s not all bad. Then he witnesses how Patton’s selfless choices affect Thomas and realises he’s been manipulated; there was no reason to go all the way with Patton’s choice and hurt Thomas, yet Patton had convinced him that it was either his way or the wrong way, no compromises available.

So by the time Patton reveals his name Virgil really dislikes him and makes a snarky remark in which Patton replies with a jab at how he didn’t realise being Thomas’ protector meant that you could be as evil as you wanted with none of the consequences. Virgil’s equivalent line to Roman’s hero one could be something like “Don’t you trust me?” or “I thought I was your best friend?” - then again Roman’s hero line does work with this version of Virgil.

Janus:

This was one of the easiest traits to decide: with a lot of his more manipulative and deceitful traits being distributed between Patton and Roman, Janus is officially titled “Self-Preservation”, and while he doesn’t claim the father role like Patton does, he is still very much seen as a parental figure and guiding light for Thomas and the lights. He tries to be warm and welcoming to the Light sides (part of his role is to take care of Thomas, hence taking care of the parts that make Thomas), and they naturally gather around him as he gives off a safe aura.

However he is not quite as kind to the Darks - he still has the role of managing what truths Thomas can handle, so he controls which sides stay hidden from him. The darks being revealed tends to be down to him slipping up or the side finding a way around his defences more than by him deciding Thomas is ready to meet them, and each time it happens he beats himself up over it and tries to work harder to not let it happen again. The problem he doesn’t realise is that the slip ups tend to happen in the first place due to him overworking himself to make the others / Thomas happy - he doesn’t quite perform the self-care he preaches about.

I’m still not quite sure where I want to go with Janus’ outfit: the initial thought was to put him in a more Patton inspired attire, however this is still Janus, and he is still a theatrical boi. I ended up settling for a mainly cottage-core aesthetic with a flowy long sleeve yellow shirt made out of a light fabric, brown trousers and an overly large sunhat. He also drapes himself in bright patterned shawls and wraps (still predominantly yellow in colour) as while he doesn’t look as snake-like as he canonically does he still has certain snake traits, such as a weakness to the cold and a yellow tint to his left eye.

However snake features do begin to form later on into the AU as Thomas’ views on Lights and Darks alter over time: he begins to realise that despite how it appears Janus is not always in the right, such as how if it hadn’t been for mistakes Thomas would never have met the Darks and learnt to grow as a person - in fact if Self-Preservation got the say in everything he would likely do little growing whatsoever. He and in turn the other Lights begin to find Janus too stifling until SvSR happens where under the stress Janus becomes a true snake boi. The scales and proper snake eye don’t fade afterwards due to Thomas’ subconscious change in perspective, and while it is a big new insecurity at first over time Janus learns to accept these new changes to himself and the Mindscape, and begins adding a touch of darker mystical aesthetic to his look (slightly fantasy fortune teller based) to match his new look better - although cottage-core remains his go to!!

Extra note: In this AU Janus is definitely the side that would most likely be seen going around the Mindscape in a dress (Roman would also wear dresses on occasion but mainly only within his daydreams in the Imagination); he is all about taking care of yourself, and that includes wearing what makes you happy! Though I’m still kind of tempted to put him in a dress full time...

Extra extra note: while Janus is very much the “adult figure” in the Light Mindscape, he still has his goofy moments like in canon - in general he is more relaxed and jokey with the others...though he’s still a sarcastic shet.

(I struggled finding images that matched at all with the ideas in my head, so take these as very vague links to the actual design)

Remus:

Oh boy, Remus is a fun one...

So now that Roman is the twin known by a different title (like how canon Remus is referred to as “Intrusive Thoughts”), Remus now has claim to the Creativity role!! However Remus isn’t going to do a 180 personality wise - he’s still going to be a chaotic gremlin, just with a light side twist.

His design is purposely all over the place: his aesthetic is mainly pirate based with a long sleeve pirate shirt, loose black trousers and heeled black and silver pirate boots, alongside a dark green pirate jacket and slightly brighter bandana. However he has other seemingly random elements thrown in there, such as a white and green hero cape (fuck what Edna says) coming off the back of the coat, and random colourful potions in the green belt under his coat alongside a knight’s sword. This mismatched look is due to the type of imagination Remus provides: while he still represents and creates intrusive thoughts, he also creates adventure stories and life goals/dreams for Thomas, hence takes a form that has mixed elements from Thomas’ self-inserts and protagonists for said stories. While he personally loves his messy design (do you know how much fun can be had with magic potions, swords, tentacles, and a day in the Imagination? Remus sure does), it does cause some arguments between him and Logan over how illogical him and his ideas are (like canon Roman and Logan).

Roman makes this Remus....uncomfortable. Not necessarily because of his ideas (those are just dull and vomit-worthy in his opinion), but because of how he can’t separate dreams and reality - while Remus loves coming up with Imaginative stories for Thomas and setting slightly outlandish goals for the future, he has a level of awareness that Roman lacks in how he knows Thomas won’t ACTUALLY end up being a morally grey pirate travelling the seas to claim back the magical pendant of octopus powers (unless...). He’s also uneasy with how easily Thomas can fall for Roman’s delusions of grandeur and romance, in fact it opens up quite a major insecurity on how despite being the “good” twin his brother seems to succeed more as the creative role, eg. how Thomas will come up with a dream future career path, husband and even car in a matter of seconds yet Remus has to slave and hone in on decent ideas for weeks to reach his own standard.

This leads to another thing about Remus: while he doesn’t care what others think of his ideas (the trait I mentioned earlier that Roman was jealous of) he hold a high standard to himself and gets extremely happy when he perfects an idea. Besides he still wants his ideas to actually be used by Thomas as them being dismissed for not being good enough does hurt (a bit like how Remus got frustrated in the recent episode with how his “good” intrusive creations were being torn apart by Logan’s methods).

Extra note: The fact that Thomas doesn’t like or appreciate some of his darker ideas / intrusive thoughts doesn’t bother Remus too much as he tends to put less effort into them as he knows they won’t be liked - he just can’t help that they pop into his head and he has to get them out - repression is bad after all! However maybe there can be some episode drama about Remus wanting to be less stifled and have Thomas at least consider some of his more mature themes that he thinks would be good to expand upon.

Extra extra note: Just assuring the fact that Remus not caring what the others think about his work does not correlate with him not caring about the others. He loves his fellow Light Sides and Thomas - he’s just confident in his own craft and while appreciates advice and improvements from the others (he and Logan have a field day on creating biologically accurate gore together) he also is aware that HE is Creativity, and he understands his craft better than the others.

Extra extra EXTRA note: Wasn’t really sure how to put it in there but Remus still represents Thomas’ lust. Do with that what you want.

Thomas:

So all these changes to the sides....of course it has it’s effects on character!Thomas! However I’m getting REALLY tired now so this will be done in bullet points:

Not as Disney-centric as canon/real Thomas.

Has less issues with Anxiety, and more issues dealing with Depression

His morals start off a bit more flexible than canon due to always having we-live-in-a-society Janus as his guide

Still has intrusive thoughts, but not as debilitating with the lower levels of anxiety and the much better relationship with Remus.

Still overworks himself trying to help others (nice one Patton!)

Might have a different career due to Roman being more out the frame - maybe goes into writing instead with Remus’ more diverse form of creativity.

Does explore more diverse creative ideas and darker themes, but still out of habit sometimes puts down possibly good ideas as on surface level they appear too morally wrong.

However could possibly be in a non-creative career, and his major longing for a new career path could be what allows Roman through for the first time.

Less dad jokes but still incredibly goofy with both Remus and Janus being more present.

I think I’m going to wrap up there for now! I may make some art for this at some point, but I also want other’s opinions and ideas for this AU.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading!!

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halcified · 3 years

Text

the case of the butcher army

ive seen a lot of butcher army discourse so i decided id toss my two cents in! here are my thoughts on the whole situation :]

the whole dilemma of the butcher army stems from november 16th. nobody but phil, wilbur and techno knew that wilbur pressed the button unrelated to techno. but to everyone else, techno lashing out was what made wilbur blow up lmanburg. this distinction is absolutely vital to how the characters view techno after november 16th. immediately after this quackity and fundy want to go after techno, but tubbo refuses. tubbo decides that the price of peace is too great.

and then tubbo is forced to exile tommy. and quackity brings tubbo and fundy to the butchers army headquarters, and they decide to kill technoblade.

the point of the butcher army is that they are avenging themselves. tubbo lost a life to technoblade, and he (to his knowledge) lost wilbur and his home to him too. fundy lost his father and the place he was born. quackity lost his version of lmanburg, and the nation they could have had.

quackity’s insistence to kill technoblade does not start out of malice or pure evil. during the entirety of his stay on the server, quackity is taught that only the strong survive. he loses all of his things nearly on the daily, his home and builds are destroyed without remorse, and the person who became president because of him entirely ignored his insight and opinions. so the only sensible course of action in his mind is to become strong. tear down the people who tore him down and take their place. they never treated him fairly, so why should he?

fundy wants closure. he wants his father back, and even while he searches through philzas things, he doesnt want to damage his relationship with him. fundy is known for following whoever is in charge, in hopes of earning acceptance from them. but thats not the case with the butcher army. because with the butcher army, fundy wants his home and family back. its easy for quackity to sway him.

tubbo only agrees to the butcher army plan after hes forced to betray his best friend. at this point in time, tubbo has lost nearly everything. tommy, wilbur, his nation twice, his lives twice, and the respect of his cabinet. during the new l’manburg period tubbo is put under the most stress he’s ever been in. in-between grieving and losing his main support, he’s put under intense pressure to be a good president. better than schlatt. better than wilbur. in his eyes, he’s failed that. so why not? why not hunt the man who’s already killed him? tubbo doesn’t believe in “an eye for an eye” because he knows how it feels to lose both.

so why didn’t they set up a trial for technoblade? why didn’t they put him on trial, when he didn’t put their nation on trial, or when he didn’t put tubbo on trial? but it wouldnt be fair to say that the butcher army was entirely right and that techno completely deserved it. from technos perspective, the people he was fighting for betrayed him, so he caused a bit of chaos and then left. and when he was settled and distanced from the people who hurt him, he was hunted down. techno was being wrongfully accused of blowing up all of lmanburg (when in reality he only slightly added to the chaos). he was being used as a punching bag for the rest of lmanburgs grief and anger. him retiring was an entirely acceptable course of action. he was betrayed, but being upset wouldnt make him happy, so he tried to live peacefully. the main problem is that none of this was communicated. no one in lmanburg knew that techno wasnt what caused wilbur to set off the tnt. no one in lmanburg knew that techno was retired.

phil was dragged unnecessarily into the mess, which only angered techno further. the butchers army had no justifiable reason to go through phil’s things, and especially not put him under house arrest. they had no reason to make phil watch them kill his best friend. were either of them in the right? of course. both of them were. both parties had reasons to be upset. they angered each other more and more until the damage between lmanburg and techno was irreparable. you could absolutely say that tubbo in particular was right to hunt down techno, but you could also say that techno was right to be upset about the butcher army putting phil under house arrest. and thats the true tragedy of the dream smp, and specifically the butchers army vs. techno situation. no one is solely at fault. they all had reasons, justified in their own ways. they just happen to be cursed to never be able to communicate and work through their problems.

so yeah ! those r my thoughts :]

#dream smp #dsmp #dream smp meta #c!techno meta #c!tubbo meta #c!quackity meta #c!fundy meta #long post #text #discourse #but not rlly!#dream smp butcher army #dream smp butcher army meta

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class1akids · 4 years

Note

have you made a top 10 characters? If not, and if you want to of course, I'd be curious to know your top o^u^o

Wow, this is such a hard question - make me choose between all my precious babies - like in what way?

Because there are characters whose design I immensely enjoy, but would like to know more around them before I could make up my mind (looking at you Mirko!!!) or characters I find to be so cool, but the story just haven’t given them enough (Sero, Mina, a lot of the class a and b tbh), or those characters shrouded in mystery and intrigue, who could definitely make it on my top 10 once we learn more (Dabi). And then there are the characters who will always be on my top 10 list, because I just simp them that hard... So it could really change day by day, though my top 3 is pretty stable to be honest.

With all this, let’s start...

10. Shinsou Hitoshi - Love his story, with his villainous quirk and trying to fight an unfair system that puts little value on quirks like his. I love his relationship with Aizawa and cats. He’s one of the true underdogs of the story, and it’s really interesting to see him go from a one-trick pony to a hero, but also as he finds his way in, he becomes more open. I’m so looking forward to see him on the hero course (This was difficult to decide btw - other candidates for this slot were: Kirishima, Kaminari, Twice, Mina, Shigaraki)

9. Jirou Kyouka - She’s been a solid favourite of mine since the USJ arc. Just something about her design, personality, quirk that strikes a chord (pun intended) with me and I’m truly excited whenever she gets some panel time (sadly not enough). I love that she feels like one of the people who is not here by default, but because she chose it between two things she equally loved and was talented at. I really loved seeing her singing animated in S4 and it really delivered.

8. Endeavor. - I know. I know. He’s a jerk. But... his atonement arc is nothing short of spectacular, and I truly, honestly enjoyed every bit of the story focused on him since Kamino, even though I couldn’t stand him before. As he developed in understanding and started to let go of his pride, parts of his character hidden before started to shine through, like his intelligence and his dry sense of humour. Both the Todoroki-family plot and the post-All Might hero society have been fascinating to watch. His fight with the Nomu remains one of the most emotional fights in the manga for me.

7. Midoriya Izuku - In all honesty, it’s sad when the MC barely makes the top 10. The extra-quirk plotline kind of ruined much of my enjoyment of his character, which I used to like a lot. I think he’s become too OP too fast, and also having this one-man-army element took away those things I liked about him the most; his ability to improvise team combos, and his creativity to think around problems even when his quirk is not suited to something. It also doesn’t help that in terms of character development, nothing much happened in a long while. But I feel like this arc could be a turning point. His dynamics with Bakugou remains interesting and I really enjoyed him in the Endeavor internship arc. He’s also been great in Heroes Rising.

6. Tokoyami Fumikage - I’ve always liked his design and the duality of emotions / personality between Tokoyami and Dark Shadow, how they can feel different things. I think the extreme OP / weak point of his quirk, as well as the difficulties to control it make the character very interesting and unpredictable in fight situations. I was so glad to see more focus on him in the current arc and the OVA.

5. Yaoyorozou Momo - Best girl. I love her quirk potential. Teamwork is one of the best parts of the story for me, and with her in the mix, there is always an element of surprise - what will she pull out of her sleeves arms? Her intelligence, leadership qualities, and constant struggle with self-confidence also makes he special for me. If only Hori used her better and fixed her stupid costume.

4. Hawks - I’ve always liked his design and the irreverent vibe, but he jumped several rankings up in the current arc. What can I say? He just brings so much sass and cool intrigue into every scene. I love grey characters, a good ethical dilemma, an interesting backstory and I think that coming out of the current arc, Hawks has immense potential to stir the pot in directions that I’d love the story to explore. He’s also been a bright spot of S4 in the anime.

3. Aizawa Shouta - Aizawa has been one of my faves from the very start. He had a really interesting arc from hardass homeroom teacher with attachment issues to Dadzawa, who is growing into his role and embracing it with his entire being. His quirk is super-interesting with being both incredibly over- and underpowered depending on the situation, which is greatly highlighted in the current arc. His backstory, his friendship with Present Mic and Shirakumo has been a really big emotional driver of the story lately.

2. Bakugou Katsuki - The gremlin has been one of my solid favorites since the Sport Festival arc and his character development has been phenomenal (OK, he started pretty low). I love his energy, his fighting style, his stupid tsundere act, flashy design - really all of it. Though I have to add that I love the manga version of his character way more than the anime one, where he often becomes a caricature of himself, though he was blast in the Cultural Festival arc. And the glow-up of emotional growth is real.

1. Todoroki Shouto - Well, I mean that probably was not a surprise to anyone. After all, Shouto-simp is in the title. I really like his design, his quirk, his backstory, his personality, his obliviousness, his sense of humor, his character development of making friends for the first time in his life and it’s so pure and vivid. Plus the way he forges bonds with his mom and siblings and his complex relationship with his dad. His quest to find himself, all the emotional work he does to overcome his trauma and how it links to his growth as a hero is just really amazingly well done. It’s been great starting to see him smile in the anime and his growth in the Endeavor internship arc was great (and I’m still hoping we’ll get something good in the current arc).

#bnha #todoroki shouto #bakugou katsuki #aizawa shouta #hawks #yaoyorozou momo #tokoyami fumikage #midoriya izuku #endeavor #jirou kyouka #class1a lists #bnha top 10 #shinsou hitoshi

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shreddedleopard · 3 years

Text

Ackerman-Royal Bloodline and Levi’s choice with no regrets.

Let’s start with the question, why do I think the actual genes/bloodline of Historia’s child is important?

Okay. Well first, there’s this random Q+A Isayama decided to answer about the combination of Royal-Ackerman blood.

Okay, so we know that traits from both will be reflected. So if Ackermans can’t turn into titans, which has been previously foreshadowed, but the royal Rritz/Reiss bloodline stems from the original founder Ymir, does this mean that combining them would cancel the whole thing out? I don’t know. This makes my brain hurt and I can’t quite get it, but it seems like there’s potential there. Ackermans come from fiddling with titan science, so who knows what the extent of that experimentation was. It was enough to make the royal family fear them when their rule was opposed, anyway.

What about symbolism of a mixed bloodline between Ackermans and Royalty?

Remember Kenny and Uri’s conversations about ‘paradise’ and the ‘miracle between us’? And Kenny was never quite sure what Uri was cracking on about?

The phrase ‘the miracle of childbirth’ for some reason comes into my head. Uri tells Kenny that his memories will be passed to Rod’s children, so they will probably have a better idea of what Uri’s idea of paradise was. Either way, he felt the bond that had grown between him and Kenny was still going to be important, and the fact that for once in his life, Kenny did not choose violence. Will Levi make the same choice for Historia?

Then we got Frieda, and who did Frieda seek out? Historia. And what did she teach her? How to be a lady, how to be someone who cares about others, someone who people can love. She wipes her nose, making sure she knows how to keep herself clean and presentable. Lastly, she shows her a book, which at first glance looks like it’s a story of Ymir the founder. But it’s not; this girl is called Christa. And Christa presents an apple to a titan in a hooded cloak with a lantern.

Check out where the sunlight falls on the page, and who is shrouded in darkness. Levi is associated with the moon, and Historia the sun. But more on that later.

I’ve seen people say this represents Eren, but I think differently. It represents the Ackermans, or more specifically, Levi. Because titans don’t wear clothes. Dimo Reeves said so himself, in a really random manga only line. But Ackermans possess the power of the titans in human form. Levi is the monster in the cloak with the white eyes.

And Historia presents him with an apple, the symbol of fertility, sin, forbidden knowledge and bearing fruit. So we have a royal girl presenting fruit to an Ackerman. Bit of a stretch? Okay let me give you more symbolism.

Lets look at season 3 part 1 ending - Historia and Levi’s arc. The song Akatsuki no Requiem. Sound familiar? There was a great theory about the music video. Again, more on that later. Specifically, I want to look at the final credits before we got the break. And that glitch.

In the normal version, Historia is running through a field of flowers towards Frieda, who taught her how to be a lady. Along the way though, we get that weird drop of blood which seems random. It’s a symbol of the mixed bloodlines. The glitch just makes it much more explicit:

We flash straight to Levi’s face, just after Zeke called him a monster as Levi chased after him relentlessly to try and fulfil his vow, and when he’s about to make a huge choice with that serum Kenny gave him - back when Kenny told him he left because he wasn’t fit to be a dad. See how we’re coming in circles here?

We also get flashes of Eren’s season 1 dream, which holds some major foreshadowing, but we’ll come back to that.

This moment, for Levi, represents the first of his biggest choices in this manga. He chooses youth and the innocent dreams of the next generation over Erwin - over bringing back the devil, to paraphrase Floch’s words. There is major foreshadowing here, because his second choice is yet to come, but come it will, and soon. And he will do the same again.

Choose Erwin, and his vow for revenge, by trying to still kill Zeke, probably a suicide mission? Or choose the innocence and wonder of the next generation; choose love and family over hatred and return to Historia?

His future dilemma is literally seen in the season 3 part 2 opening. Towards the end, we have Historia turning and looking towards the sunlight, perhaps at dawn, and then we cut straight to this twighlight scene - with Erwin at the forefront, and the other dead comrades behind. The hearts that have been dedicated. Historia and her child are who Levi will dedicate them to.

Perhaps Isayama really has already told us who Levi will choose again. Because it’s Armin that will save humanity, we know. Armin and his brilliant mind, rather than Levi with his violence and blades.

He’s going to trust Armin, when Armin tells him to trust Zeke. He didn’t choose Erwin, he chose Armin. And that will lead him home to Historia, so that he can truly give meaning to the hearts that have been dedicated before.

He used Kenny’s serum wisely - because despite his own reservations, he is fit to be a dad.

AHHHHH I love it so much it’s so satisfying. Onwards: Levi’s Choice With No Regrets, Pt. 2

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cali-holland · 4 years

Text

The Only Exception- Harrison Osterfield One Shot

Pairing: Harrison Osterfield X Reader

Prompt: Being in love with your best friend is hard, but it’s even more difficult when he doesn’t believe in love (College AU)

Word Count: 4400

Warnings: Swearing; drinking; making out?? Haz being a bit of a fuckboy??

Masterlist Harrison Osterfield Masterlist

*Gif is not mine*

~~~

Harrison didn’t believe in love. He didn’t fall in love. He did a lot of things, but he didn’t fall in love.

Unlike you, his best friend.

You believed in love. You fell in love. A lot. And when you were in love, you were madly passionate about him.

Unlike Harrison because he simply didn’t fall in love.

“C’mon, just this once.” You begged, trying to get him to watch your all-time favorite movie, The Princess Bride.

“No way.” He laughed, shaking his head.

“Why not? You veto all of my movies.” You pouted. Harrison sat down beside you on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn in his hands. You moved the blanket so that it was covering both of you and he set the bowl down in his lap.

“I hate rom coms. True love? It’s just bullshit.” He said before shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth. It was the same argument every Thursday with him. For the past few years, you and Harrison would have regular movie nights on every Thursday night, and every Thursday (when it was your turn to choose) you would suggest a rom com. You only allowed him to veto the genre because you didn’t want him choosing any sort of horror movie.

“No, it’s not.” You shook your head, continuing to search Netflix for a good flick.

“It totally is. Look at you and Anthony. How long did that true love last?” He raised his eyebrows at you as he smirked.

“Eight months.” You grumbled. You turned to look at Harrison, “What about you and Lily?”

“Long term friends with benefits.” He corrected you. “We weren’t dating. We never even held hands.”

“Oh, right. Forgot about your ridiculous rules.” You rolled your eyes, looking back at the TV.

Harrison had three rules when it came to his “relationships”:

1. No holding hands because that’s “far too intimate”- you just liked to mock him for being scared of coodies.

2. No pet names because they create attachment. “Haz” was only acceptable in bed.

3. No cuddling because, again, it’s too intimate.

And you were the unspoken exception to all three of those rules, which was why you were technically cuddled up to him right now.

“They’re not ridiculous. They’re established boundaries.” He argued.

“Please, you only established those boundaries to keep yourself from falling in love.” You fired back.

“I like my rules, okay? They’re better than falling in love with every person that lays eyes on me.” He quipped.

“I do not.” You protested.

“Fourth rule. You can’t mock me for my lack of love life when you also don’t have a love life.” Harrison stated as he shoved some more popcorn in his mouth.

“You can’t involve me in your stupid rules.”

“Yes, I can. I just did.”

“Whatever.” You sighed, “How does ‘John Wick’ sound?”

“Completely unromantic, so I’ll take it.” He smiled, smugly. You shoved his shoulder as you started the movie.

“What are you doing Saturday?” You asked quietly. The movie played on in the background, but you weren’t paying much mind to it.

“Probably just going out.” Harrison shrugged. You knew exactly what that meant; he’d go out for drinks with Tom or any number of other friends and find some hot broad to hook up with for the night. “What’s up?’

“My sorority’s having a formal. Anthony was supposed to go with me, but,” You trailed off. You weren’t sure why you were so quiet about the subject; it’s not like Harrison hadn’t been your ‘date’ to events before. He was your prom date back in high school because your boyfriend had, of course, broken up with you just beforehand. Harrison stepped in to save the day like he always did; no matter which boy broke your heart, you always had Harrison by your side. He was the one who’d help you through a bad breakup- and you were the one who’d help him through a bad hangover.

“Do you want me to come?” He asked.

“Yes.” You admitted, “I just know everyone else has a date, but I don’t want to disrupt your boys’ night.”

“Of course I’ll go with you.” He replied with a soft smile. “I’ve got you.”

And so, just two days later, Harrison stood in his bedroom, unsure of which tie to wear for your formal. You had sent him a picture of your dress, but that wasn’t much help.

“You going somewhere?” Tom asked as Harrison came into the living room in his dress shirt and slacks.

“Which tie looks better?” Harrison held up the two ties by his neck.

“The one on the left.” He replied, still eyeing his roommate skeptically. Harrison tossed the back up tie on the couch and quickly began to tie the one Tom had chosen. “Where are you going? You don’t wear ties for dates.”

“Y/N’s got a formal.” He answered, looking in the mirror and checking his tie.

“Are you two dating yet?” Tom laughed from his spot on the sofa.

“Dating? No.” Harrison shook his head as if his friend had just said something blasphemous. “That’d be gross.”

“You’ve been friends for how long? You’re so into her, mate.”

“I’m not into her. Besides, I don’t do relationships and all Y/N does is relationships.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe you’re so afraid of commitment because you’re in love with your best friend, but you’re too scared to admit it?”

“Just because you’re seeing a psych major doesn’t mean you get to say shit like that. And I’m not in love with her!” Harrison shouted as he rushed back to his bedroom.

“Whipped.” Tom muttered. Harrison’s tie dilemma had set him back and now he was running late. He pulled on his shoes and grabbed his jacket, quickly putting it on. He checked his hair (and teeth) one last time in the mirror and sprayed one last thing of cologne before heading out the door.

“What took you so long?’ You huffed when he finally arrived at your place to pick you up.

“Couldn’t choose a tie.” Harrison explained as you reached over to straighten it.

“Well, I like this one. It brings out your eyes.” You said as he drove off towards the formal’s event center with a confident smile on his face.

~~~

A few weeks passed after your formal and Harrison found himself pondering on Tom’s words. Was his fear of commitment because he was into you? He refused to even consider the option that he was in love with you- that was ridiculous. Him being in love? With you? That’s the best joke he’s heard all year. Besides, there was no way you could possibly be in love with him.

“Haz? Harrison!” You snapped your fingers in front of his face, drawing him out of his deep thought- about you.

“Yeah?” He asked, blinking away his thoughts. His eyes hurt, but he was sure that was from pulling an all-night because here the two of you were, in the library’s 24-hour section, deep in midterm season. He removed his glasses to rub his eyes, groaning, “What’d I miss?”

“I was just asking if you had plans on Friday.” You said.

“I was going to go out. What’s up?”

“Well, my friend-”

“You’re not trying to set me up with anyone, are you?” Harrison peered at you questioningly.

“It’s just a double date.”

“A double what now?” He asked, not quite sure if he heard you right. He began to fiddle with the pages of his business textbook nervously.

“A double date.” You stated, “You know, a date where two people who like each other hang out alone, and it becomes a double date with a second couple there?” Harrison decided to ignore the fact that your description of a date was just the romantic version of anytime that he hangs out with you. “As I was saying, my friend, Maggie, knows this guy, and she wants to set me up with him. To avoid the whole awkward blind date thing because I hate that, Maggie suggested a double date.”

“So I’d be Maggie’s date?”

“Yes. You don’t have to actually be into her, but just- can you come along so I can just meet the other guy? He sounds like a great guy.” You pleaded, giving him your best puppy dog eyes.

“Y/N, you know I don’t-”

“Haz, please.” You pouted this time, putting your hands on top of his.

“Alright, but just for you.” He caved. “Yay!” You smiled as Harrison thought to himself ‘I could look at that smile for days’. He quickly shook those thoughts from his head, turning back to the book in front of him. He was absolutely not into you.

When Friday came around, Harrison told you he’d pick you up, just like for your formal. He stood in his bedroom, looking at himself shirtless in the mirror. He had three button-up shirts in his hands and he was trying to decide which one would look better on him. His room was trashed from him digging through his closet just to find the right jeans. He didn’t really go on double dates- in fact, he’s never been on one, so he didn’t know what he was expected to wear. He let out a sigh, looking over at his open door as Tom passed by his room with his eyes glued to his phone.

“Tom, come here for a second.” Harrison called out to him. Tom stood in the hallway, eyebrows raised at his friends’ condition. “I’ve narrowed it down to three shirts. Which one?”

“Middle one.” Tom replied almost immediately. Harrison had to admit, the other two were awful compared to the middle one, and he didn’t know why he had them as options. “Got a nice date?”

“Y/N wants to go on a double date.” He explained, pulling on the shirt and buttoning it up.

“You’re finally going on a date with her?” Tom asked in disbelief.

“No.” Harrison shook his head quickly. “Her friend is introducing her to this guy, and I’m going out with that friend tonight.”

“So you’re going to sit through Y/N being on a date?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, but you’re always a grump about it the next day and you’re always hungover the next day.”

“I gotta go or else I’ll be late.” Harrison said, shaking off his roommate. With one last check in the mirror, he was ready to go and practically bounded out the door to his car.

“You’re looking sharp.” You stated, getting into the passenger seat of his car when he pulled up to your house.

“You look good.” Harrison replied once he had taken in your outfit of a simple floral dress.

“We’re going to that pizza place downtown.” You told him and he drove off, heading for your destination.

“So what’s Maggie like?” He asked.

“She’s a total sweetheart. I met her in my econ class last semester.” You said and he hummed in acknowledgement, “You don’t have to like her.”

“Depends on the beer at the pizza place, maybe I’ll like her a lot.” Harrison joked, making you playfully punch him in the shoulder.

“She’s nice.”

“I don’t like nice girls. That’s all I’m saying.” He shrugged with a chuckle.

“Don’t get drunk on this date, for me?” You pleaded, already knowing where his mind was headed.

“Fine, I won’t.” He shook his head with a smile as he pulled into the parking lot.

Once he had parked, the two of you made your way inside, where you met up with Maggie and your date, James. You and James clicked right away, meanwhile Maggie would try to strike up a conversation with Harrison, who would seemingly try his hardest to not interact with her. You would sometimes kick him under the table as a way to say “start flirting or else” and he’d take the hint for the next few minutes.

After you all had finished your pizza and a first round of drinks, James suggested you all go down to the pub for real drinks. Harrison drove you again over to the pub, giving you the opportunity to talk to him.

“Really? You’re not even going to try with Maggie?” You asked when the two of you were finally alone in his car.

“I’m not feeling it.” Harrison shrugged, trying to brush it off.

“I’ve seen you flirty off your ass with a fever, don’t bullshit me with the “not feeling it” excuse.” You stated.

“I just-“ he sighed, “I really am not feeling it.”

“Just try? At least talk to her. For me?” You turned on your best puppy dog eyes for him.

“Okay.” He grumbled, giving in to your pleas.

Harrison had told you he wouldn’t get drunk and that he would at least try to talk to Maggie. But once you all ended up at the pub, he wasn’t sure if he could keep his end of the deal. Harrison couldn’t describe it, the annoying urge in his gut to physically take on James for talking to you. He was so focused on you and James flirting up a storm across the high table that he could barely hear Maggie talk. You excused yourself to go use the bathroom, and when you returned to the table, Harrison was gone.

“Where’d Harrison go?” You asked, eyeing his empty seat.

“He, uh, said something about the bar.” Maggie replied. You looked over and saw Harrison downing a couple drinks as he talked to the girl beside him.

“I’m sorry about him.” You apologized, “I had a great time tonight, but I really should get him home.” You quickly left off to where Harrison was.

“What do you say, you wanna come back to my place?” Harrison asked the blonde in front of him, his signature smile as charming as ever.

“Harrison!” You exclaimed, smacking him on the arm with your purse.

“Hey!” He yelped, turning to see you. You could tell by the glazed look in his eyes, he was absolutely gone.

“Is this your girlfriend?” The blonde asked, stepping back from Harrison.

“What? No.” You replied and the girl left. Harrison took another shot as you took the blonde’s spot in front of him. Snapping your fingers in front of him, you tried to draw his attention back to you, “Hey, quit it.”

“No, let me drink.” He whined. Before he could take another shot, you took it from his hands.

“You’re done, let’s go.” You said, grabbing his hands and leading him out of the bar. Harrison leaned on you until you managed to get him in the passenger seat of his car. He let out another whine once you got him situated and then got into the driver’s side.

“I’m sorry I’m drunk.” Harrison offered weakly, though it came out mostly slurred.

“Yeah, yeah,” You muttered.

You were thankful he didn’t say anything else on the drive back to his place; you were too annoyed by his actions to even try to talk about it. You dragged him up to his room, trying to keep him quiet so as to not bother Tom.

“I’m sorry.” Harrison whined, flopping onto his bed.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?” You said, turning away from him to get some pajama pants out for him and a shirt for you to borrow. When you shifted to face him again, he was standing lopsidedly leaning against the wall, trying to kick off his jeans. His shirt was abandoned on the floor next to him.

“God, Haz.” You sighed, moving quickly to help him before he fell over. You had one hand on his bare chest to keep him steady while you used the other to push him back onto the bed. Once he was laying down with his legs hanging off the bed, you pulled his jeans off his legs fully, leaving him in just his boxers.

“I’ve always wanted this.” Harrison mumbled, resting a hand on your face.

“Wanted what? To get shit faced on a double date?” You asked, trying to get him to move so he was actually in bed. He just grabbed your wrists in his hands.

“You.” He gave you the best drunk smile he could muster.

“Haz, you’re drunk.” You said, shaking his hands from your wrists.

“I want you, want you.” He clarified through another tired slur. You shook your head, helping him get into the bed fully.

“Go to sleep, Harrison.”

“I think,” He breathed out, struggling to stay awake as his sleepy blue eyes found yours, “I think I lo-“ He cut himself off with a giggle. “I almost said it, but I didn’t! That would’ve been embarrassing.” He hiccuped, “What a rom com trope that would be.”

“Good night.” You told him, finally getting him under the covers. You changed into one of his shirts and crawled into his bed next to him. He was passed out by the time you’d gotten there. You let out a small sigh as you watched his sleeping form.

“I want you too, Haz.” You whispered before turning around and drifting off to sleep.

The next day, Harrison let out a loud groan as he woke up. He blindly stretched his arms, not wanting to open his eyes yet. He rolled over to reach out for you and he opened his eyes curiously when he found an empty spot beside him. His memory was a bit spotty from last night, but he knew he made it home with you, which meant you would’ve been there in his bed with him, just as you always were whenever you brought him home after a night out.

“Y/N?” Harrison mumbled, slowly sitting up and looking around his room for you. The only trace that you had been there was a glass of water with a couple Motrin pills on the bedside table. He gratefully took the pain reliever and then checked his phone, only to find no new notifications from you.

‘Hey, where you at?’ He texted you, hopeful for a response. He waited a few moments, and when you still hadn’t responded, he decided it was probably time for him to go take care of his morning problem, something which happened a lot when he’d go to sleep wasted with you beside him.

Harrison kept checking his phone throughout the day, but nothing. You weren’t replying to any of his concerned texts, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He’d call you, but he knows you hate getting phone calls, claiming that they’re too awkward.

And so, to distract himself from his thoughts of you, Harrison did what he did best on a Saturday night- he went out with his friends to get shit faced and find a hookup. But with each drink he took back, he just thought of you.

He wasn’t even that drunk when he found a girl to hookup with, but she was flirty and had eyes like yours, so how could he say no when she invited him back to her place.

“Haz,” She moaned out as he kissed down her neck.

“Don’t- don’t call me that.” Harrison breathed out, pushing her back onto her bed.

“Harrison’s too much,” She whined, her hands in his hair as she tried to bring him back to kiss him on the mouth.

“Call me Harrison.” He said before continuing to kiss her passionately. She moaned in compliance, her hands finding their way down to his jeans, skipping his shirt altogether. She didn’t even get the button undone when Harrison pulled away from her.

“Harrison,” The girl huffed at the loss of his touch.

“I can’t do this.” Harrison climbed off her.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“You’re not her.” He shook his head before bolting out of her room and her apartment. Before Harrison could even process what he was doing, he ended up at your place.

Knocking on the door in an urgent manner, he was disappointed when your roommate opened the door.

“She’s not here.” Your roommate said.

“Where is she?” Harrison asked. He watched as your roommate paused for a moment to take in his current state. He shifted, realizing that maybe showing up slightly drunk at your doorstep with obvious hookup hair and swollen lips wasn’t the way to go.

“She’s studying at the library.” She replied.

“Thanks.” He nodded and hurried off to the library.

The whole journey over to the library, Harrison felt like he was losing his mind. Was he really about to go to confess his undying love for you like in some shitty rom com? Was he actually in love with you or was that the alcohol coursing through his veins?

He ran up the stairs of the library, already knowing where you’d be. He stopped when his eyes landed on you. You were sitting at your usual table, the table you always sat at with Harrison, but James was in his seat. And it was James making you throw your head back laughing. Harrison’s heart stopped at the scene.

As he hung his head low and began his walk back home, he knew why he didn’t fall in love. Because the heartbreak hurt too much.

~~~

The day after your double date, when you woke up in Harrison’s bed, he had his arms wrapped around you. It wasn’t the first time you’d stayed over in his bed, but it was the first time you’d woken up like that. You slowly moved yourself out of his embrace, not wanting to wake him. You gathered him some pain reliever and a glass of water, knowing he’d need it when he did eventually wake up. You let out a sigh when you set out this water and pills. He was so peaceful when he was asleep, and as attractive as he was when he was awake, his sleeping form was another level.

It was hard enough being in love with your best friend, but it was even harder when he didn’t believe in love. And somehow Harrison had managed to make it even harder by almost telling you he loved you when he was drunk last night. But he couldn’t have loved you, he was so adamantly against love; it just wasn’t Harrison.

You weren’t sure how much he’d remember when he woke up. You were scared to have that conversation with Harrison if he did remember what he said, or well what he almost said. You did what you’d never done before- you left.

All day, Harrison would text you, asking what happened and if you were alright, but you were at the library, trying to maintain your focus on your studies. Somehow, James had managed to find you in the library that evening. You offered him Harrison’s seat because, well, it was a Saturday night and you hadn’t spoken to Harrison all day- he was most likely off hooking up with a random girl.

But you almost wished you hadn’t invited James to sit with you. Sure, he made you laugh, but it wasn’t the same as with Harrison. You couldn’t focus on your studying with his not so subtle flirtatious jokes. After another small fit of laughter, you opened your eyes to see Harrison leaving the library. His back was to you and his shoulders were slumped in defeat. You sat on the edge of your seat; there was something wrong, he wouldn’t come here if everything was fine.

“Are you okay?” James asked, pulling you from your trance on where Harrison had once stood.

“I- I have to go.” You hurried to pack your things, shoving your notebooks and pens in your backpack carelessly. You ran off out of the library, chasing after Harrison.

“Haz!” You called out, running up to him under the moonlight. He jumped, turning around to face you.

“Y/N,” Harrison’s hands flew to your sides, steadying you as you stopped in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” You asked.

“I was just walking home. It’s nothing, go back to James.” He shook his head, trying to play it cool, but you noticed the tension in his voice.

“What are you really doing here?” You questioned again.

“There’s just-“ He sighed, “I want to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

Harrison sighed again, his fingers rubbing your waist nervously. When he realized what he was doing, he stepped back and dropped his hands from your sides. He looked anywhere, but in your eyes.

“Haz, you know you can tell me anything.” You said, reassuringly. Harrison took your hands in his, making you realize the gravity of what he so desperately needed to say- he was breaking another rule with you.

“I’m- I’m in,” He groaned, tripping over his words. You held back a soft smile, you’d never seen him like this. It took him another moment before he found his words and his blue eyes found yours.

“I’m in love with you, okay? I- I am so crazy about you and I love you. I love you.” Harrison repeated, nodding his head in affirmation, “I never believed in true love or any of that mushy shit, but you made me believe in that. You are the one that showed me love is real.” He paused, cringing a little, and you could tell he was still fighting the alcohol’s hold over him, “I’m not saying this just because I want to hook up with you. I mean I definitely want to, but I want to be your- your boyfriend first and foremost.” He tripped over his words as he said ‘boyfriend’ for the first time in ages when referring to himself, “Screw my stupid rules. I want to hold your hand, I want you to call me Haz whenever you want to, I want your cuddles, I just want you. You’re the only exception.” He paused when he realized you were quiet, “Please, say something. I feel like one of those guys in your romance mo-“ You cut him off by pressing a kiss to his lips.

“I love you too, Haz” You smiled, emphasizing the nickname, and Harrison just pulled you in for a longer, more passionate kiss. He let go of your hands and wrapped his arms around your waist, tugging you even closer to him.

He may not have believed in love before, but he certainly did now as he held you in his arms, kissing you underneath the moonlight.

You pulled away from kissing Harrison for a moment. “For the record, this is definitely a trope straight of a rom com.”

#harrison osterfield #harrison osterfield x you #harrison osterfield imagine #harrison osterfield x reader #harrison osterfield one shot #haz osterfield

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self-loving-vampire · 3 years

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Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)

Ultima 4 is a very historically-significant game, as well as being where the Ultima series cemented itself as something truly unique. Where the previous games in the series (as well as the RPG genre in general) often dealt with defeating some kind of evil overlord, Ultima 4 has no antagonist and instead calls on you to perfect yourself and embody a set of eight moral virtues.

Summary

You start the game by answering several moral dilemmas to determine your class and starting location. You are then transported to the fantasy land of Britannia to embark on a spiritual quest to become the Avatar of virtue and read the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom in the Abyss.

To do this, you must master eight virtues and understand the three principles involved in them.

The game has been widely ported but I will be reviewing the free version available from GOG.

Freedom

Ultima 4 is an extremely open game in many ways. There are eight possible classes and each is rather different, with a unique starting location. Most importantly, all of the many tasks the game asks you to complete prior to the final descent into the Abyss can be done in any order you desire.

You can maximize your virtues in any order, explore dungeons in any order, travel the world as you wish, find the runes in any order, and etc.

So all in all, this game is very non-linear when it comes to exploration and objective order.

Note, however, that due to the way this game is designed it is not actually very replayable. Even if the initial experience is different for each class and you can complete the game’s many objectives in any order, those objectives are still the same and they all do need to be completed by the end. There are no alternate ways to complete any objectives.

By the end of the game, you will be playing largely the same way regardless of what your initial class was or what order you did things in.

This is made worse by the fact that ranged weapons completely dominate the game. There is little reason to use melee if you have the option to use ranged weapons.

Character Creation/Customization

Besides your name, gender, and choice of class, you cannot really decide anything about your character. Once in-game, you also don’t have that many options for upgrading your party besides obtaining better equipment and finding magical orbs in dungeons.

That said, the game does get some points for the variety of classes and for how radically some of them can affect your experience, particularly in the early game.

The most striking example is the Shepherd class, which you get for having humility as your favored virtue during the character creation questions. Shepherds are terrible at everything. They can’t use magic at all (most other classes can to varying degrees) and are awful at combat, having a very limited selection of weapons and armor available. They also start in a ruined island populated by monsters. It is basically the game’s “hard mode.”

You can answer these same questions and find your class here (the link says Ultima VI but it’s really the same ones as far as I can tell, or at least close).

Story/Setting

The game world is reasonably large and memorable, but to be honest the setting of the Ultima games has always been on the more generic side, even if some of the games in the series are pretty immersive. The virtues introduced in this game are really the primary spice on the game world.

It is a medieval fantasy setting with all the staples: Fireballs, orcs, dragons, liches, skeletons, and so on. It does have a few less common creatures as well (like balrons and zorns).

A generic fantasy setting is not necessarily bad, but it is not particularly good either. It is just the baseline as far as I am concerned, and can be boring on its own if you are not drawn in by anything else a game offers.

In this case, the setting is not really the game’s selling point so much as its unique objective. It is also still a massive improvement over some of the earlier games in the series, which feature things like space travel and time travel.

Another point in favor is that the towns scattered throughout the land are not just generic fantasy towns, they are dedicated to specific virtues. Those virtues seem to be particularly alive in the minds of their inhabitants in this game as well. The virtues are so embedded in the setting for the rest of the series that it does give it more of an identity.

The story itself is, as previously mentioned, unique among all RPGs I know of. While there is a lot of combat and dungeons to explore, there is no big antagonist for you to defeat.

Your behavior is tracked from beginning to end. You will need to do things like donating money to the needy, donating blood at the healer, and letting non-evil creatures (generally animals) flee in order to become the avatar. I also do not recommend “grinding” out these virtues unless you really need to, as I found that as long as you know how to raise them you can easily achieve avatarhood in several of them just by playing the game normally, talking to everyone and visiting Hawkwind every time you’re in the castle.

In addition to maximizing your virtues and then meditating at the proper shrines, your quest will see you travel throughout the entire world to collect the artifacts you will need for your descent into the abyss.

You will need the eight stones of virtue (most of which are within dungeons), the Key of Three Parts, the three artifacts of the principles, the word of power, and more. You will also need to recruit seven party members to aid you in your quest, each representing one of the virtues (you are the representative of the eighth).

Immersion

I know it’s probably not that bad by the standards of its time, but I can’t say the game’s immersion is all that good. It does gain some points in some areas such as the way the manuals work and how you need to actually do things like keep track of the phases of the world’s two moons (clearly not something you’d see in our world!) to make proper use of moongates, but overall it is definitely not on the same level as other RPGs I have played. As was sadly the case for the technically-limited time period the game was made in, the world does not really react very much to your actions even though your virtues are tracked.

I do like the initial character creation questions, however. Trying to answer them honestly based on your own moral principles can be a good way to get started. It is also good that the whole virtue angle requires you to actually roleplay the quest of the avatar in order to win.

Gameplay

Playing the game is extremely simple as long as you reference your keys as needed and read the manuals (perhaps it is even too simple, with only one type of non-spell attack action and relatively few and uninteresting equipment options). Talking to every NPC you meet is also recommended, as they not only have a lot of advice but also several vital clues that you will need if you plan to complete the game without a walkthrough, as the whole thing is rather obscure about certain aspects of your quest.

The magic system is a mixed bag. You have to gather and mix reagents to cast spells. The reagents must be mixed ahead of time and are consumed. You must also know which reagents to mix. The spell manual that comes with the game explains most of the combinations, but there are some that you must discover on your own within the game, and they are for some of the most potent spells too (such as Resurrect).

On one hand, I like how the game invites you to actually learn its magic system in order to make use of it, with many reagents having consistent qualities that can let you guess what kinds of spells they may be used for. On the other, it can be a bit time-consuming to manually mix these reagents every single time you want to prepare a spell.

However, the thing that really kills the second half of the game is the combat.

The combat is initially a bit simple but functional. You can press one of the arrow keys to move in one of four directions, you can press A followed by a direction to attack in that direction, or you can press C to cast one of your prepared spells.

With such simplicity, combat in the early game doesn’t take very long, especially since as far as I can tell there are less/weaker enemies early on (though there’s enough encounters to make it a bit of a pain still). However, as you gather more companions (and you must have a party of 8 before venturing into the final dungeon and completing the game) combat starts to drag on as you have to manually command each of your eight party members.

It’s especially bad in that one party member in particular (Katrina the Shepherd) is, to put it bluntly, a complete burden on the party as you might expect from a shepherd. She will be missing every single attack against the stronger enemies that populate the late game, and not hitting very hard when she does hit due to the awful weapon selection shepherds get. I wish you did not need to recruit everyone.

This would have been a bit of a pain on its own, but not that bad. No, the real problem is one single spell: Sleep.

A handful of late game enemies (such as gazers, but especially reapers, and balrons) will spam this one spell without mercy, even if your entire party is already sleeping.

This is a spell that can incapacitate multiple characters, potentially half your party or more, for several turns. The Awaken spell is pointless as a counter to it, as it affects a single target and the enemy can spam Sleep every round while you will quickly run out of Awaken even if your spellcasters somehow manage to avoid the sleep themselves.

Your characters do not wake up if they take damage, and there seems to be no limit to how often the enemy can use Sleep.

This is still manageable when fighting only one or two of these enemies in reasonably open ground, but in tight spaces where sleeping characters can block the way for the rest of the party or in dungeons where you face half a dozen or more of these enemies in a single room it can make for an experience that is just painful.

It is not even that this makes the game difficult either, the enemies do very little damage even when they are not spending all their turns casting Sleep over and over again, but it does make some dungeon rooms feel like they exist merely to waste your time.

The single worst offender was this room at the bottom of the Abyss.

10 Balrons that you can’t even reach due to a wall of force (central blue square) in the way. They can Sleep half your party despite this, regardless of where anyone is in the room. I timed it and it literally took me about 20 minutes just to walk everyone east at this one turn. There are other rooms that have this same issue as well.

While there’s annoying things like that, the game is actually extremely easy in terms of combat, at least once you get over the initial hump.

Aesthetics

As noted in the setting section, the game is on the more generic side aesthetically. That said, the simple graphics are at least readable for the most part (magical fields and the like aside) and the unique main quest gives the game a very distinct feel.

Accessibility

Surprisingly high due to its simplicity. Combat is about as mindless as you could ask for in an RPG other than making it completely automatic like Ultima 7 did, and there are not actually that many keys to remember.

However, there are still a couple of things that modern players will have to adapt to. Chief among them are consulting the manuals throughout the game and taking notes.

The game has no quest log to record all the clues the game’s many, many NPCs provide you with. You have to actually write those things down together with things like the mantras for meditating at the shrines, the visions you get as you achieve partial avatarhoods, and etc.

Your knowledge of the virtues will be tested at the very end.

Conclusion

I would not blame anyone for jumping ship once the late game begins, as things become slow and repetitive at that point. However, I believe that this game is worth trying regardless (especially now that it is given out for free).

This is an RPG unlike any other I have seen, demanding its players to not only live up to heroic (and largely secular) moral principles but also encouraging them bring them out of the game and applying them to their lives and become better people.

While its combat can become a bit of a pain later on, the game’s ideas remain interesting at the very least. It is also possible to import one’s Ultima 4 save into Ultima 5, and then from that game to Ultima 6. Both of those games also have rather interesting premises that I will talk about in time.

In the end, I think you should at least try it if you are interested in the history of RPGs. This is the point where Ultima really “gets good” and ditches the nonsense that plagued the early games, though Ultima 7 is still likely a much better starting point for modern players.

The game ends with a call to action. The Quest of the Avatar is a lifelong journey that does not end with the game. You are told to return to your own world and put the virtues you have learned into practice and live as an example to your people, to truly be the avatar.

In the future, other games in the series will challenge and twist these ideals in various ways, but I like the heroic idealism on display here.

#vampire reviews rpgs #ultima 4 #quest of the avatar

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morelike-bi-light · 5 years

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As much as I love our meme culture where we romanticize or slam our favs, I do genuinely think there's really interesting flaws to explore with all of the Twilight vampires. It's not developed super well in the series, not front and center since whether we see main characters make mistakes with consequences largely depends on how Meyers personally feels about them and what they represent to her, but the complexity exists and there's a whole heap of potential to explore.

Like Carlisle's need to 'save' and how it conflicts with itself. There's that post that points out exactly how selfish his decision was, seeing as how he views vampirism as damnation, and yes! That makes it so much more interesting. What would he be without this conflict? A pretty one dimensional saint figure with a million PhDs. I love that Carlisle spent hundreds of years denying himself company and then crumbled beneath a single Chicago mother's plea to save her son, in my mind as an excuse to soothe his own crippling loneliness. And then when he had someone to exist beside, he just... he did it again, ostensibly because Esme deserved better. And again, this time for Edward. Then he did it for Rose. And then they picked up Alice and Jasper, and I wonder if he felt that much more guilty knowing that if he'd just waited a decade or so more, he might've found family anyways without having to 'damn' the others. Exploring how that interacts with his religious beliefs? Sign me up.

Then there's Rosalie's resentment. It's been covered in much better depth by other users, and I think I've reblogged those posts, but the validity of her anger and fear of losing the only things that give her comfort in a life she never chose bears repeating. Not to mention how this possibly affects her relationship with her coven - it's like when your child or spouse or sibling or best friend who has depression. How do you interact with a loved one who wishes they were dead? Who thinks life, even with you, whom they claim to love, is a prison? How do you interact with the man you believe to be your soulmate when you genuinely believe that you would be better off having died before meeting him? What does it say about her sense of self prior to death versus as an immortal?

Which leads perfectly into Edward's self-flagellation. He murders and feeds, because he's a monster who deserves to feel like one - but he's not the only one who suffers from that (though we give him some points for understanding that from the get-go and targeting people he thinks deserve it). But then he feels bad for acting like a monster and he has another reason to punish himself. He deprives himself of joy and distances himself from his family because how dare a monster like he ever find comfort in others like him, and how dare he enjoy a life that's so unnatural - but his family suffers alongside him. But then he feels guilty for being a dick to them, which gives him another reason to punish himself. He sends Bella mixed signals by alternating between caring, coldness, and cruelty, because he wants her to be happy but he also doesn't want himself to be happy - but Bella suffers because of this. Then he feels guilty about putting her safety at risk, which gives him another reason to punish himself. It goes on and on, and this line of thinking hinders his growth as a character through the entire series without being properly addressed.

Bella's bull-headedness. Jasper's survivalism. There is so, so much to be said here. Even with the three least developed of the coven, Alice has her impulsivity, Esme has her passivity, Emmett has his impatience.

On the flip side, we have the native characters, who are all either poorly developed or most characterized through off hand, arm's-length negativity, so as to make the vamps look better, and all I want for them is more content exploring all the good they have to offer.

Like, Jake's defining quality is his loyalty - Smeyer may have butchered his character, but I'm not talking about the bullshit she had him do in the last two books. I want to see more exploring how warm and good and patient and generous he is with his friends, no matter what it is he's up against, be it social conflict or an emotional crisis. I mean, in the books, we only ever get to see him really care about Bella. What about Embry and Quil? There's an entire foundation to their friendship that's hardly brushed by canon. I want to see his loyalty to his father and sisters and the memory of his mother. IT is interesting when loyalties conflict, preferably with greater nuance and weight than the Uley vs Cullen dilemma, but what's more satisfying is getting to see Jacob act in his element. I wanna see his other good traits explored too, the ones that exist outside of the necessity that he be a good friend/alternate LI for Bella - like the passion he has and his down to earth attitude.

And don't get me started on the Uley pack. Sam himself had so much potential to be a nuanced foil to Carlisle - I'm going to need to make an entire other post on it, it gets me so worked up, so keep an eye out for that! But also there's Paul, who is literally just an angry caricature version of Emmett, Emily whose entire characterization is built on a mess of racist and sexist tropes, and how many of the others even get characterized at all?

And Leah. Was she done the dirtiest of not only all the native characters, but also all the females? Arguably, yeah. I'd say so. Again, there was so, so much potential to explore her even in subtle ways through the later narrative and literally next to none of it was fulfilled. By the end of Breaking Dawn I was genuinely irritated, even as a kid, because it felt like Leah had been pointed out time and time again as being so special - only important native woman, only pack member to have been ostracized through the entire series, and the only female werewolf, hello - only for none of it to be relevant literally at all to the major plot. There wasn't even any follow up. Why is she the first female wolf? What does that mean for the future of the shapeshifters? (I'm absolutely thinking about this for my - probably shorter than planned - fic, jsyk.)

Thank God for Seth, I guess. We all love Seth, but still I think even he is basically just a puppy's personality given human form. It's as if Smeyer thinks that complexity is counter blank to goodness, friendliness, and openness. (And I think this is an issue with Emmett, Alice, Esme, and Angela, too, to be fair. It's just that where those four are just Defined by a trait - boisterous, fun, gentle, and nice in turn - Seth's behavior specifically plays into a... cutesy... paternalism? That makes me narrow my eyes a bit.) Anyways, I wouldve liked to see his feelings about Charlie and Sue, or about his sister's transformation and his father's death, or uh, any of the violence against the newborns many of whom were literally his age from Eclipse? And not just in an, oh, sad boy is sad kind of way. He's not a care bear - there's gotta be some conflict about what he's been through seeing as it's a LOT.

To be real, though? In some ways, I'm actually okay with it that Smeyer dropped the ball on so many of her characters, while still giving us what we have to work with - largely because it's actually so cool to think about all the potential buried in the content we have, waiting to be unearthed. It's why, regardless of when or why it started and how long it should've lasted, I don't see myself exiting the Twilight fandom for a long time. There's so much work to be done, you know, stuff to be said, and I think it's been and is and will be a beautiful conversation. This was just meant to be a long meta, but really, I have to take a moment and celebrate everyone in the fandom who has kept it alive and funny and interesting, whether you're a staple like @howlonghaveyoubeenseventeen and @shittytwilightaus or you're just here to reblog and enjoy. We all sort of rediscovered this thing we liked in our childhood and just collectively decided to fix it and make it something worth loving as the people we are, and it makes me proud to be here!

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neuxue · 4 years

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 8

Mat goes bar-hopping and contemplates obligations

Chapter 8: The Seven-Striped Lass

Oh it’s Mat. Well, enough people have told me Mat is better in this book than last, so if nothing else, confirmation bias alone should see me through.

(Though my indifference towards Mat extends further back than just last book, so… who knows).

He’s in a tavern, which should surprise absolutely no one, and thinking about how Aes Sedai are the bane of his existence, which… also should surprise absolutely no one.

Hey, now he and Thom can fidget with their Aes Sedai letters together. Safer than juggling knives in a world that doesn’t seem to have invented stress balls yet.

‘Master Crimson’? What is this, Cluedo?

And of course he’s not looking at women any more, definitely not noticing any of their, ahem, assets or anything, at least not for himself, you know, just keeping an eye out for his friends of course.

He’s also asking tavernkeepers for advice, because sometimes you just need a sounding board to convince yourself of what you already know. In this case, what to do about Verin’s letter and the conditions set on it. Which, to be fair, is a rather infuriating dilemma. When Verin plays games, she doesn’t fuck around.

“I could open it,” she continued to Mat, “and could tell you what’s inside.”

Bloody ashes! If she did that, he would have to do what it said. Whatever it bloody said. All he had to do was wait a few weeks, and he would be free. He could wait that long. Really, he could.

“It wouldn’t do,” Mat said

Aw, but wouldn’t it? I mean, Verin of all people would appreciate that kind of loophole.

“The woman who gave it to me was Aes Sedai, Melli. You don’t want to anger an Aes Sedai, do you?”

“Aes Sedai?” Melli suddenly looked eager. “I’ve always fancied going to Tar Valon, to see if they’ll let me join them.” She looked at the letter, as if more curious about its contents.

Light! The woman was daft.

Nah, she’s one of the rare sensible ones! Seriously, if I lived in a world with magic, in which there was a chance I could learn to do it, I would give approximately zero fucks about the reputation of the organisation that would enable me to learn it. (Yes, I know, it makes sense in this world that people are wary of Aes Sedai, but to me it’s one of those things like… oh, I don’t know, characters who decide they’re not actually interested in immortality because it would mean outliving their loved ones. Like okay, yeah, there’s a price, but magic. Immortality. I will never understand some fictional characters. Or maybe this just says something about me and which side I’d be on in these fictional worlds… but then, are we really surprised?)

“Can I trust you to keep your word?”

He gave her an exasperated look. “What was this whole bloody conversation about, Melli?”

‘Can I trust you to keep your word’ is kind of a… tautological question, though. And one that always amuses me, along with variations like ‘how can I trust you’ ‘I give you my word’. Because ultimately you’re still just left with the decision of whether or not you trust that person’s word. And no real way of knowing whether or not you should. Once again, I am perhaps exposing myself as not ideal hero material here.

I will say I’m impressed by Mat’s ability to not open the letter. Though I hope at some point we get to see what it says; Verin’s so good at this kind of thing it would be a shame not to see what game she set up here.

The bouncer doesn’t like Mat, which is kind of not surprising given that a bouncer’s job is to stop shit and the purpose of Mat’s entire existence is to start shit.

The paving stones were damp from a recent shower, though those clouds had passed by and—remarkably—left the sky open to the air.

I see what you did there.

Also I’m now trying to place this against everyone else’s timeline and it’s hurting my brain a little. The weather would suggest this is post-Dragonmount but I feel like Mat still had a bit of catch-up to do… ah well, I’m sure we’ll find out. For whatever reason timelines are something of an exception to my usual ability to retain details, probably because, weirdly enough, I often just… don’t care that much? In the sense that usually, when you actually need to know (or when it would be interesting or add something to the story to know), you’ll know.

Mat was not about any specific task tonight

Oh, wandering about at random are we? Which, if you’re Mat, means that regardless of how you started the night, you’ll almost certainly be about a certain task before you finish it. The Pattern has plans, after all.

Getting a feel for Caemlyn. A lot had changed since he had been here last.

Wow, okay, yeah, as the reader we’ve been in Caemlyn plenty over the past several books, but Mat was last here in book three. Damn.

A lot has changed since then. In Caemlyn, yes, but also Mat has changed quite a lot since then. It’s interesting, even in real life, going back to a place you either visited or knew well in the past. The sense of familiarity but at a slight distance, along with the memory of when you were there last, which can then serve to highlight how you’ve changed. And then all the things that aren’t familiar, though you can’t always be certain if that’s just because you’re seeing them differently…

Light, he had heard of paving stones attacking people.

What is this, the French Revolution?

Mat’s found a better tavern, by which I mean a worse tavern, but it’s all a matter of perspective and perspective is a funny thing at the tail end of a pub crawl, so let’s just not think too hard about it.

I’m suddenly very interested in the story of this woman with breeches and short hair dicing in a dodgy tavern with three dudes and not responding to any of Mat’s smiles, ahem. Yes I’m being pandered to, no I don’t care.

But Mat did not smile at girls that way anymore. Besides, she had not responded to any of his smiles anyway.

Alright, that’s much closer to Jordan’s Mat. The absolute lack of self-awareness in being able to think those sentences side-by-side, because hey, Mat, if you don’t smile at girls that way anymore, how do you know she’s not responding to them? (Plus the fact that Mat’s ‘best smile’ has, I’m pretty sure, not actually worked once this series when he’s actually thought about it).

From these first few pages in general, Mat does sound somewhat more how I would expect him to—the way his thoughts and actions contradict themselves, his tendency towards an absolute lack of self-awareness, the running joke of his ‘best smile’… though it also feels like it’s being laid on a little thick? Almost as if Sanderson has picked out a handful of things that work, or that have appeared elsewhere, and is studiously applying them and avoiding adding in too much else or deviating too much from those narrow bounds.

But that’s almost certainly me nitpicking and also looking specifically for this; it’s not really a complaint and at first glance this does seem better than the writing of Mat last book, so… fair enough. Point is, this is definitely not as jarring to read as that first chapter last book was. Still different, sure, but more within the parameters of the rest of the differences.

Mat’s more interested in the local gossip, which—ah.

“They found him dead this morning. Throat ripped clean out. Body was drained of blood, like a wineskin full of holes.”

The gholam’s back in town, then.

Well, in town, anyway; I suppose it hasn’t actually been to Caemlyn before, that we’ve seen. Hey, Elayne? Maybe listen to Birgitte and your bodyguards for a bit and actually take a break from your errands and adventures into the city alone for a bit.

Dice are landing on their corners and also starting up in Mat’s head, so looks like your night of aimless fun and tourism is coming to an end, Mat. Don’t forget to sign the guestbook on your way out.

It seemed impossible that [the gholam] could have gotten here this quickly. Of course, Mat had seen it squeeze through a hole not two handspans wide. The thing did not seem to have a right sense of what was possible and what was not possible.

Oh, well, in that case you two have something in common! Good, you won’t run out of things to say on your next date encounter.

Though on a less flippant note, I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but I like how Mat gets paired against or linked with opponents or entities who fall into the larger umbrella archetype of ‘trickster figure’ but in different or darker ways: the gholam, the Eelfinn and Aelfinn, arguably Fain/Mordeth… and then there’s Perrin, who is set against Trollocs (the darker side of a mix between animal and human) and Whitecloaks (who exist to force questions of morality). As if they’re both sometimes set against those who reflect a darker or warped version of some aspect of who they are.

It’s not a perfect like-to-like matching; they have other opponents who don’t fit that kind of classification quite as well (though I would still argue that just about any enemy they—and quite a few other characters—face highlight some aspect of themselves via contrast or by presenting a warped kind of mirror), but it’s just a little… random thing I quite like. Particularly Mat set against other types of trickster, because it fits with the very definition or idea of what a trickster figure is in the first place. This idea of looking into a kaleidoscope of mirrors and seeing theme and variation until they flicker at the edges.

He had sent word to [Elayne], but had not gotten a reply. How was that for gratitude? By his count, he had saved her life twice.

Sigh. I sort of thought they had reached an understanding as far as the accounting between them last time they spoke, but I guess we’re still doing this. Which, okay, before everyone comes for me on this, yes he has saved her life multiple times, and no she has not always responded immediately with gratitude, but specifically in the last instance she very much did, and it was a rather lovely moment where they both saw more in each other than they had before. Where they each realised that their previous (first) impressions were not necessarily the full truth, and that there was someone to like beneath that. A friend, even.

And I liked that; I absolutely have a soft spot for the friendship between Mat and Elayne, in part because they’re actually quite similar in a lot of ways. And so for both of them to start to see beneath the surface, to see more than just what they expect to see, was a nice moment of character growth for both of them.

Anyway, leaving the gratitude thing aside, it’s a shame Elayne hasn’t replied, if only because I wouldn’t mind seeing those two interact again. I just like their weird relationship. I like weird friendships between characters in general, really; it’s a good way to get to see a character from an ever-so-slightly different angle, or throw them into a slightly different kind of light. (In all honesty there’s a small part of me that would have been very open to an Elayne/Mat relationship rather than Elayne/Rand and Mat/Tuon, but mostly I just like them as friends who sort of… force each other to take a second look at things, and in doing so to realise some things about themselves).

For once, there had been a battle and he had missed it. Remembering that lightened his mood somewhat. An entire war had been fought over the Lion Throne, and not one arrow, blade, or spear had entered the conflict seeking Matrim Cauthon’s heart.

Yeah, well, don’t jinx it.

Also Mat you were sort of in the middle of some of your own battles and while you’re pretty good, you’re not quite good enough to be in two places at once. Still, can’t fault him for looking on the bright side, I suppose. Especially because there’s a rather large battle headed his way any day now.

Three inns in one night. Making a proper pub crawl of it, I see.

Though Thom’s more in the mood to play sad flute music, presumably over Moiraine. I mean fair; I, too, would probably play several laments for her sake. Bring her back already.

Caemlyn was seen as one of the few places where one could be safe from both the Seanchan and the Dragon.

Oh no doubt it’ll stay that way. What could possibly go wrong in this beautiful Camelot that’s been held up since Book 1 as an example of beauty and (relative) stability?

I’m pretty sure one of the first things I said upon seeing Caemlyn back in EotW was ‘that’s a nice city you have there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it’ and, twelve books later, I stand by that.

Mat tries to get Thom’s attention by snagging his coins, and Thom just tosses a knife through his sleeve without interrupting his playing. Respect.

***

Oh hey a mid-chapter break without a POV change. That’s unusual.

It’s something of a location change, though, because Mat’s back at the Band’s camp now, considering the pros and cons of horse meat. Well, mostly cons in his opinion but I would like to state for the record that horse is actually quite tasty. No of course I don’t know this from experience what are you talking about.

The gholam of course has an even less discriminating palate—or I suppose technically more discriminating, just less socially acceptable.

But Mat and Thom have moved on to planning for their fieldtrip to the Tower of Ghenjei, because, you know, these characters have it easy: just one thing at a time, all easily dealt with, no piling on of way too many problems and decisions and things or people out to kill them…

“Maybe Verin will come back and release me from this bloody oath.”

Unfortunately she had to take some rather drastic measures to release herself from a different bloody oath, so uh… sorry, Mat, you’re out of luck on that one.

“Best that one stays away,” Thom said. “I don’t trust her. There’s something off about that one.”

I mean, you’re not wrong. But you’re also not exactly right. Man, I’m going to miss Verin. She’s one I very much look forward to seeing on a reread: there was always something about her and it was great fun to speculate and try to work out exactly what her deal was, but it’s different when you know. And we got so very little time with her once that was revealed—it was a hell of a way to go out, of course, but I’m definitely excited to see how she reads when you know from the beginning.

“Either way,” Thom said, “we should probably start sending guards with you when you visit the city.”

“Guards won’t help against the gholam.”

“No, but what of the thugs who jumped you on your way back to camp three nights back?”

You know what this reminds me of? Birgitte scolding Elayne when Elayne tries to go out on her own. It’s far from the only thing Elayne and Mat have in common, but it does amuse me.

Talking to that clerk meant Elayne knew Mat was here. She had to. But she had sent no greetings, no acknowledgement that she owed Mat her skin.

Maybe because she acknowledged it last time the two of you spoke? Or have you forgotten? I think that’s what irks me here: they’ve already had that conversation. It made sense (more or less) for Mat to be annoyed about Tear, before Elayne and Nynaeve gave him their thanks and apologies, but after that fight with the gholam in the Rahad, Elayne and Mat seemed to clear the air between them, so it’s just… kind of weird and a bit annoying to have this dragged out again. It seems like it would make more sense at this stage for him to just be annoyed at her for ignoring him, rather than for not thanking him for… something she’s already thanked him for.

He does shift after that to wondering how to get her to set all her foundries to making Aludra’s dragons, which is a much more pertinent question. I now kind of want Elayne and Aludra to meet. I feel like that could be entertaining.

Teslyn Baradon was not a pretty woman, though she might have made a passable paperbark tree

This should sound insulting but for whatever reason I find it hilarious. Why is this so funny.

Maybe this is why we were getting Mat’s grumbling about Elayne not thanking him (again) for saving her life: because thanks are the first thing Teslyn, an Aes Sedai of the Red Ajah, offers Mat unprompted. That would more or less fit with how these things are usually set up in Mat’s narrative, I suppose.

Though Sanderson doesn’t quite seem to have the hang of the Illian dialect; it’s close but some of the phrasing is just a bit off. But that’s me nitpicking again.

“It do be important to maintain some illusions with yourself, would you not say?”

Wiser words than you may even realise, Teslyn, given who you’re talking to. Though I think she does realise this; she’s quite perceptive, and she’s spent a fair bit of time with Mat now, and I think she very likely does see his tendency towards… perhaps not quite denial anymore, at least not as strong as it once was, but a degree of self-deception (and total lack of self-awareness, of course).

She nodded to him. A respectful nod. Almost a bow. Mat released her hand, feeling as unsettled as if someone had kicked his legs out from underneath him.

Yeah, this is what you’d expect from Mat. This is what he does: grumbles to himself about lack of gratitude, or Aes Sedai causing problems and having no respect… but then as soon as that gratitude or respect is shown, he doesn’t quite know how to deal with it. Because he’s not actually arrogant enough to accept it with haughty disdain, but nor is he self-effacing enough to truly not care about getting praise and credit. So you end up in this awkward in-between state that is, I think, actually quite common amongst people in general. It’s definitely something I see play out in the workplace, at least.

And so he offers her the horses that, last book, he refused Joline. Because she’s shown him respect and so he will return the favour. Because they’re treating each other as people, and Mat may push for what he feels is his due, but he won’t just take it without giving something in return. He’s better than he likes to think he is, as Thom once pointed out.

“I did not come to you tonight to manipulate you into giving me horses,” Teslyn said. “I do be sincere.”

“So I figured,” Mat said, turning and lifting up the flap to his tent. “That’s why I made the offer.”

And that’s it, really. It’s amazing what open and honest communication can get you, sometimes. It’s almost like that’s a running thing in this series.

There, he froze. That scent…

Blood.

Mmmm, dinner.

Next (ToM ch 9) Previous (ToM ch 7)

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btsandvmin · 3 years

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BTSandVMIN update: On “Spring Day analysis”, making videos and creating a Patreon

There are a few things I would like to talk to you all about, and things I have been thinking about for a while. I thought it was time to give you all a bit of an update on the things I am doing, want to do and how I might have to do them.

Ok, so first of all, as you know I have been working on the Spring Day analysis for quite some time now. In fact I have been working on it for so long it has long since stopped being just about Spring Day. Rather than being about Spring Day and Vmin it has become a collection post where I go through many similarities in Vmin’s (in particular Taehyung’s) songs and discuss themes and topics with Spring Day simply as the main foundation of inspiration.

The text kept getting longer and currently it is around 24 000 words long + images (130+ pages in google docs). I honestly don’t think Tumblr will be able to handle it. I have been thinking about what to do with longer posts for a while, especially after the Vmin analysis - 4 o’clock which didn’t show up in the tag, loaded very slowly, took a long time to re-make in tumblr format and also didn’t get that many notes. You all know I have struggled and complained about longer posts here on tumblr many times. Thus I have wondered what to do if I want to keep making them in a way that works. In particular even longer pieces like this “Spring Day analysis” or my even longer “Big Vmin analysis”, which might be very difficult to make here on tumblr in a way that you can all read properly. (Several of you have even told me about your app crashing when trying to read some of my posts and honestly Tumblr just isn’t made for very longs posts with many images.)

After looking into it a bit I decided to make a Patreon just to try, and I could literally copypaste the whole post with images and all in just a few seconds. (WHY IS IT SO HARD TUMBLR?)

Another reason I finally decided to make a Patreon is so that I could create a small community space for me and you; a discord. Through Patreon you get access and I can talk to you guys more freely, and you can also simply use the discord as your own place to enjoy and discuss BTS and Vmin with other Vminies that join my Patreon. I thought this seemed like a fun idea since I can’t properly talk to you all in more conversational ways here (even less so since this is a side-blog), and by having it through Patreon it also limits the discussions from possible toxic outsiders. Basically a safe space away from the haters and antis.

There were also the reactions I got after making my first Vmin video. I talked about that a lot, in many posts:

A personal dilemma What kind of power to influence shippers into becoming delusional do I really have? I don’t know what to do… Making videos…

The concerns I got about me making Vmin videos made me question what to do, and if I should stop making analysis all together if people really worried about what it might lead to. I want to do more good than bad, for the community and for BTS. I am hoping having this space and the discord might make it feel easier for me to keep doing this more comfortably.

I also got some really really sweet messages from so many of you that honestly warmed my heart so much. I mean, there is little I can say to truly let you know what those messages mean to me. Just as one example:

Thank you, to every single one of you for not only sending me love but also understanding and respecting my worries. It means more to me than you will ever know. 💜

The thing is that I don’t want to stop. I still very much enjoy writing and gushing about Vmin, and I also really kind of want to try making videos. So back when this all happened a few of you suggested Patreon, as a way to limit who sees my videos. And after thinking about it I decided to make one, for several reasons.

It might help me to have longer analysis. It keeps away unwanted attention and hate. I can moderate more and have better control. We can talk with each other more freely. I can post things I feel a bit unsure about sharing to the general audience. I could do videos without worrying too much. (And it might also help me with an extra income?)

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t stop posting things here for free, but I think I will post longer posts and perhaps more “analysing” types of videos if I ever get to that point on Patreon. Likely I will post shorter versions that Tumblr can handle, or divide posts into parts here, but keep longer versions intact on Patreon. So the idea is not to stop doing things here but rather to add some other things and extra stuff on Patreon (basically some bonus material, maybe some behind the scenes, sneak peaks and polls).

Right now my Patreon only has one tier “I purple you”, but if things go well the plan is to create a second tier if I ever decide to make videos more frequently and perhaps add some bonus material like Q&A videos where you can ask questions and I talk about them. (I am not sure yet, I don’t even know if videos is something that people will like.)

I’ve set the price at 15 SEK, which is a bit less than 2 US dollars/month. I don’t know what I might do further ahead, but for now basically it will mostly be some bonus stuff, a way to read longer texts in full (because I will have to divide it into parts here on Tumblr) and a community platform (and of course also a way to support me).

I hope you will check it out and join me! I am especially excited about the discord and getting to talk to you all in a new more casual way!

https://www.patreon.com/btsandvmin

Right now I have the Spring Day analysis posted (I will post it here too, but I need to figure out how to divide it in parts in a good way.) and I also have 2 chapters of my Vmin fanfiction “The last color is our spring”. (Seriously, I suck at naming fics, it’s honestly one of the hardest parts.) Again, I do plan to post some updates, and basically “first edits” of posts or things I feel a bit unsure about talking about here (like more analytical videos), but for now mostly it’s a way to support me and join the discord so we can share our love for Vmin together. 💜

Also, even if you don’t join I will still appriciate you all and the love you give me here. Seriously, this is mostly meant for you, and only if you want it and like it will there be any point to have it. I feel it is worth giving it a try.

Become a Patron!

#btsandvmin #btsandvmin update #vmin analysis #this blog #my post

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