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umbry-fic · 3 years

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A Palette Full of You (2)

Summary: Glimpses into Colette and Lloyd's lives as they grow up together, learn who they are, and fall in love with each other.

(Written for Colloyd Week 2021)

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Lloyd Irving, Colette Brunel Relationships: Colette Brunel & Lloyd Irving, Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving Rating: G Chapter: 2 of 6 Word Count: 4212 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 10/06/2021

Chapter Title: Save the Children!

Chapter Summary: Lloyd and Colette take a break from studying and decide to play a video game. Colette starts to ruminate a little on how she's different from the rest of her classmates...

(Colloyd Week Day 2: Sidequest)

Notes+Warnings: Chapter 2 of my multi-chapter Colloyd week fic! Colette and Lloyd play a bunch of Kameo: Elements of Power. Lloyd is bisexual. This chapter might have a bit of internalised acephobia so beware.

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~~~

12-years-old

"There! Over there!" Colette shouted, dropping the Xbox controller onto her lap and gesturing frantically towards a corner of the television screen. In her frantic excitement, she completely forgot that Lloyd was sitting right next to her on the sofa, her elbow banging straight into Lloyd's arm.

Lloyd, startled, pitched to the side and pushed the joystick on his Xbox controller in the same direction.

Major Ruin, who Lloyd had been controlling to charge up a Bolder Rush, executed the move at this exact moment as Lloyd let go of the right trigger.

And so Major Ruin careened right off the edge of the platform, as per the directions Lloyd had just inputted into the game. The tragic end to a glorious adventure. Kameo would never rescue her father from her sister’s evil clutches, for she had fallen to her death from a high height... by complete accident. Or maybe it would be better to class this as incompetence?

Oops.

"Oh, no," they both muttered at the same time, staring with their mouths open in horror. Colette reached out uselessly towards the TV, as if she could reach into the game and stop Major Ruin’s fall.

As if.

The armadillo look-alike Earth elemental (except a lot spikier) continued to fall while flailing their stubby limbs uselessly, eventually hitting the ground with the familiar and resonant "thud", accompanied with the dreaded snapping sound that had populated much of their playtime in the Snow-top Village. The thin and winding ice paths throughout that area had led to many a death from fall damage as they had tried to get their hands on the elemental fruits hidden away among various corners. Now that they were in the Ancient Tower, with its dark, foreboding, narrow stone corridors lit only by the sparest of torches sitting in sconces, where there was only one path forward and they were caged in by walls, Colette thought their falling episodes would be over. It was a bit claustrophobic, really.

It appeared that was not the case. Fall damage was eternal, and it would haunt them always, following them everywhere and showing its face at the most inopportune of moments.

Major Ruin morphed back into Kameo's petite, winged form, collapsing to the ground with a pained groan. Lloyd's side of the screen faded to black before he respawned at the last checkpoint, erasing a full 20 minutes of progress. The Kameo that Colette controlled was now completely alone in the chamber, performing her idle animations as Colette’s controller went untouched. Lloyd dropped his Xbox controller into his lap as well, leaning back against the sofa as he let out a groan of his own.

There was no sound apart from the whirring coming from the Xbox under the TV, the game music, and the "whup-whup" of the blades of the ancient standing fan in the corner of the living room, struggling in its job to blow "cool" air at them and combat the viciously hot weather.

Lloyd had every right to be frustrated with her; she had a tendency to kill him in-game. It wasn't murder, just manslaughter: knocking him off the cliff, setting both of them on fire, or startling him in general. It wasn't just in Kameo. Her clumsiness and butterfingers translated to every genre. No matter the game - Mario, Minecraft, Maplestory - she always found some way to cause a game over.

But he'd never directed any frustration or anger towards her. These are just silly games, he said every time. Much easier to laugh over the mirthful consequences together than get mad. Whenever they had the time to play video games together, the air was filled with nothing but laughter, a few frustrated grumbles from when they were struggling at a particular level, and the occasional rib from Lloyd’s end when she messed up. That's what made it incredibly fun. What the two of them had termed "game-time" never failed to put a smile on their faces.

And it was an effective destresser! It was a great relief to be able to channel all the stress from studying for PSLE into beating up trolls in Kameo. That appeared to be Lloyd's favourite part of the game - racking up combos with his favourite character Pummel Weed. Though she had to say her favourite part of the game so far was watching the cutscenes that played after rescuing the baby elementals from the prisons created by the nefarious shadow trolls. The wacky transformation from adorable blob to full-fledged elemental, complete with the blob sprouting arms and growing claws or shells, was… interesting to witness.

"Sorry," she sheepishly said, still feeling the need to apologise as she patted his hand. "Didn't mean to startle you. It's just that I found the last child!"

"Oh, really? Where?” Lloyd asked eagerly, attention turning back to the TV. “I couldn't see anything. It's all so dark."

"Over there." More calmly this time, Colette pointed out the child encased in a translucent ice crystal, tucked away in a corner of the platform hidden in shadow. She’d forgotten the name of this species, and could only describe them as cuttlefish that had taken human form. What were they were doing so far from the Mountain Falls? Weren't they native to that location? "We need to free them quickly! This is the last child."

“The last - you’ve been keeping count?!” Lloyd asked, voice rising in volume and shock written clearly across his face.

“Yeah! The mother said there were three, and we’ve rescued two. She must have been really worried, or she wouldn’t have begged us to save her children. I want to reunite them as soon as possible!”

"Alright. Ice, huh? It'd be similar to the other crystals we got rid of in the snow area. So just turn into Ash!" Lloyd suggested.

"Oh, you're right! Thanks for the reminder!" Colette opened the transformation wheel with a quick press of a button and proceeded to fumble with the joystick for a full minute while Lloyd slowly crawled his way back up the tower. She kept pushing too far to the right and overshooting Ash's dragon head on the wheel to land on Thermite, before overcorrecting to the left and landing on 40 Below. Frustration slowly piled up until she groaned, burying her head in her lap. This was embarrassing. She couldn't even navigate a simple menu like this, even after months of playing this game. Butterfingers, once again.

"Lloyd, can you open the main menu? I'll just pick Ash from there."

"Nah, we don't need to open Wotnot. Let's give Ortho a break for now," Lloyd replied. She knew that wasn't the real reason. Lloyd just didn’t want to hear from the eccentric wizard trapped within the paperback book that doubled as the main menu. "Here, let me help. But you need to get up first!" She straightened up, still sulking as he smiled at her, looking like he was holding back laughter at her predicament.

Lloyd stretched out his hand and placed his index finger over her thumb, gently guiding her thumb on the joystick so that the selection square landed right on Ash's head. Colette watched as Kameo hunched over and transformed into the red, clawed, scaly dragon that was the fire elemental Ash, tail slowly swaying from side-to-side as his wings flapped.

"You're so good at this..." she muttered, glancing down at her controller where Lloyd's hand was still placed over hers. They were only 12, but his hands were already slightly bigger than hers. He'd gotten his growth spurt in the earlier part of this year and shot up in height; now half a head taller than her. It was a slightly startling change after being the same height for the six years they'd known each other. He would likely only grow taller as time went on. As for herself... Maybe she'd gain another 5 centimetres by the time she was 18, if she was lucky. Given the actual state of her luck, she'd probably stagnate at her current height. Tallness was just not in the cards for her.

Not that she minded. The added height made him rather comfortable to lie on. If he gained just a few more centimetres, his shoulder would be the perfect height to rest her head on… That would make movie nights all the more comfortable.

Plus, the height change was just that. A physical change. Inside, Lloyd was still the same person - the boy who loved playing with Noishe but hated doing his homework, and would do everything in the world to avoid it. He hadn't changed. Not a single bit.

"Don’t sweat it. There are so many things you’re good at too! If it weren’t for your keen eye, I would’ve missed the kid entirely… So don’t be too bothered!” Lloyd gave her hand one squeeze before removing his hand, returning to his quest of returning to Colette's location. "Now, melt the ice!”

Colette did exactly that, leading the lumbering Ash over to the entrapped child and unleashing his fire breath. She watched with bated breath as the ice slowly melted, causing more of the child to be exposed to the air. They had previously used this exact same technique to unearth elemental fruits in the icy caverns filled with those icky bugs that exploded when defeated and obscured the screen with blue juice. It had been exciting then, to stumble upon secrets because of their penchant for exploration. But watching the child slowly be freed, watching their tentacles slowly start to move as they came into contact with warm air, was an entirely different experience, one that filled her with joy.

When was the last time the two of them completed a side objective like this, one that had direct effects on a citizen of this magical world? Casting her mind back informed her that that would be the starting town, when they returned to water the farmer’s crops with Deep Blue.

Now that the last child had been fully freed, all the children went running back to their worried mother, who proceeded to pull them into a giant group hug. Colette dropped her controller, clapping her hands together at such a sweet sight. Lloyd did laugh, then, a chuckle that she could feel rumble through her as well from where their shoulders touched. "What are you so excited about?" he asked.

"We did it! We saved all the children!" she exclaimed, watching the mother pull out one of the large elemental fruit in thanks. "Doesn't that make you happy? That we were able to help someone... That's what makes these side objectives fulfilling, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. It's just like you to get like this over a video game,” Lloyd replied, watching Kameo hoist the elemental fruit into the air, where it magically shrunk in size to fit in her bag. Colette wondered how Kameo’s bag even worked - how did it store Wotnot and dozens of elemental fruits? It was like a black hole. Just like Noishe's stomach.

“Though..." Lloyd frowned, staring up at the clock that hung on the wall, whose hands indicated that it was 2 pm. "Time’s up. We should get back to revising before Mom gets home from the vet with Noishe."

"Oh, you're right..." That was a downer. Time had flown so fast; their 20 minutes were up already!

The moment had come to return to the dining table and the assessment books that sat open on it. Studying was never fun, but it just had to be math today, and the chapter just had to be nets. Her most hated subject, combined with the topic she hated most. It was a headache all around.

But Lloyd was surprisingly good at nets, and he'd been a great help the whole day. Even if he still hated math with a passion and always got stuck on algebra questions, where it was her turn to assist him. That was why studying together was effective! They could fill in the gaps for each other, and motivate each other to keep going. Just three months left to go until it was all over! They could do this, and they would get through it. Together, just as they would every predicament that came to pass in the future.

"Um, and before you go home today, could you help me with something else?"

"What is it?" Colette asked, reaching for the TV remote on the coffee table. Lloyd was staring at the carpet, his hand absent-mindedly pulling at the hem of his singlet, separating the fabric from sweaty skin.

“Ellum’s birthday present,” Lloyd muttered, his voice getting softer with each word he spoke, until she could barely make out the words. “His birthday is in two weeks, and I…”

Ohhh.

They had a habit of telling each other almost everything, for any secret was always safe with the other. So she knew why Lloyd was clamming up. Ellum was his current crush, after all.

“Say no more. Of course I’ll help you! We can do whatever you want!” she replied with enthusiasm. She'd be happy to help.

"Thank you," Lloyd replied, meeting her gaze again with a tiny smile lighting up his face. "Now, let's get back to studying."

They made the short walk to the dining table, taking their seats across from each other. Lloyd's face was already starting to twist into a grimace, resigning himself to another few hours of torture at the hands of the twisted people who made their livelihood setting math questions.

Clearing away the Kit Kat wrappers on her assessment book, she glanced down at a question about nets she'd been working on before the break. Yet not a single word on the page was being absorbed. They were all running away from her.

The downside of Lloyd confiding in her for all of his crushes was that it was a stark reminder that she hadn't had her first one yet. And then, inevitably, her mind would drift further to all the little ways she stood out from her classmates.

It was like everyone around her had changed drastically overnight at some unknown point in time. The jokesters of the class had just started making dirty jokes one day, prompting scandalised glares from the rest of the class but also prompting snickers. She herself didn't get the joke half the time, just laughed to go along with everyone else.

Then there was the shift in daily conversation. Instead of discussing their favourite Pokémon, more often than not the other girls would now discuss in hushed voices while giggling which celebrity was the most attractive. She herself would sit quietly, trying to melt into the wall as she observed without interjecting, half fascinated and half horrified. Weren't they all too young for this?

Things got even more awkward when she was forcibly pulled into the conversation when someone directed a question at her. She had no idea what to say whenever someone showed her a picture of a celebrity and asked her to rate them. The only thing she ever managed to stutter out was that their eyes were a nice colour, and so was their hair. That... was how you judged a person on how attractive they were, right? Everyone else, though, seemed to think she was weird. But how was she supposed to be feeling? No one had ever taught her. It felt like everyone was keeping a secret from her on how these things were supposed to work, then making fun of her for not getting it.

She only got more confused every time something like that happened. All she wanted to do was go back to talking about her favourite cartoons, but that didn't seem to be an option. Lloyd wasn't in the same class as her, so she couldn't even sit with him and ignore everyone else. The only time she could meet up with him during school hours was at recess. She didn't know what Lloyd talked about with the rest of his friends. Maybe the same stuff. But she didn't really care, because, with him, she could just be herself. There was no need for tiring pretence.

All she could do when the girls were in a mood to discuss celebrities again was sit a little outside of their circle, counting down the seconds remaining for class to start while she tried to look as occupied as possible. She couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief every time the topic of conversation turned back to something a little easier to understand, like video games.

But surely, someday, she would understand.

She was waiting. For that day. For her to finally catch up to everyone else in the race she hadn’t even known she’d entered until everyone had left her in the dust, still standing with her mouth agape at the starting line. To finally be like everyone else, to be able to fit in seamlessly. But there was no use getting down about it!

She just had to meet The One. Then everything would change, everything would fix itself. That's what happened in all the stories, the shows, the movies, after all.

Because everyone, in the end, learned to feel the same way, right?

~~~

19-years-old

"Right! I think that’s enough for now.” Colette’s voice shattered the serenity of her room from where she was sitting on the bed with her laptop balanced in her lap, cutting through the sleepy fog that was starting to fill Lloyd’s head. The peaceful Ghibli tunes that had been filling the room cut off abruptly as she shut her laptop screen, reaching a hand up to undo her messy hair bun.

Lloyd yawned, rubbing his eyes and hoping that would make his eyelids feel less heavy. Pushing himself up from his belly-down position on the bed, he caught one last glance of the back of Colette's neck before her hair covered it again. Doing prep for uni was not the most exciting way to pass the afternoon, and it certainly wasn't normal fare for a date. But it had to be done, so they might as well do it together, as they did all things.

Though he'd gotten distracted and started scrolling through YouTube about an hour ago.

"Are you going to change out of pyjamas?” Lloyd asked, stretching, his shirt hiking up slightly. He’d taken the lift down the three floors that separated his apartment and hers in the old HDB block that they’d stayed in all their lives, rang the doorbell while staring at the Chinese New Year decorations that were still hung up despite the month now being April, and waited for Colette to open the door… Only to be met with the sight of Colette in her favourite doggie pyjamas, the baby blue button-up ones that covered every inch of her skin. She'd shrugged and said it was cold from the non-stop rain, but he knew the real reason was the lazy post-A-levels haze, that affected him as well. These days, sleeping in until noon was the norm. Or sleeping in until one of his parents came into his bedroom to knock him awake.

“Yeah,” she replied, grabbing a towel and a few articles of clothing from the open wardrobe and heading towards the doorway.

“Alright.”

Lloyd closed his laptop slowly, not wanting a repeat of the time in Secondary 3 he’d shattered the screen because Zelos had sneaked up on him and caught him unawares. He rolled off the bed, making the small trip of barely a few steps to the study table, passing the various objects Colette had up on the walls - the Disney posters she’d gotten ages ago, and the random stickers she’d amassed over the years from school club sales and donations - and the bay window filled to the brim with cute and huggable soft toys, a familiar Siberian Husky that showed the signs of being well-loved sitting atop the pile.

Lying on the study table was Colette’s Nintendo Switch, plugged into a socket to charge. Right next to it was a jar holding paintbrushes of all sizes, all of them as clean of paint as possible, for he knew Colette took extremely good care of her art supplies. The sketchbook no one was allowed to peek into was sticking out of the table’s drawer, half-used pads of foolscap and sheets of paper with pencils rolling in them visible within. Files that he’d nearly kicked, containing lecture notes and worksheets, were shoved into messy piles under the table, unneeded after the conclusion of examinations but having no convenient place to be stored. The tiny shelf sitting on the table still had her Junior College badge housed on one of the layers, silver in colour and reflecting the light from the windows, despite her having no use for it ever since they had graduated in November. (Perhaps she liked looking at it? She was something of a magpie sometimes.) He could spot a familiar conch shell, placed among other knick-knacks, mostly birthday presents.

Picking up the handheld (with its lime green and cyan JoyCons firmly attached), he unplugged the charger and watched the screen light up - and frowned at what it showed him.

"Hey, Colette!" he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. He hoped he could catch her before she entered the bathroom. Uncle Frank was working in the master bedroom no more than five metres away and had been nothing less than incredibly nice, as he always was, providing tons of refreshments and snacks. Lloyd would like to prevent a shouting relay if possible.

If Colette had been walking, she shouldn't have reached the bathroom yet...

The fast pitter-patter of bare feet against the floor informed him that he was right. "What is it, Lloyd?" Colette's head poked its way into the doorframe, her golden hair reaching down towards the floor, her blue eyes wide and questioning.

"You left Animal Crossing on," he answered, waving the Switch in the air.

Her eyes lit up in understanding. "Oh. You know what to do, right?"

Control the playable character and put her to sleep, then save the game. He'd done it before.

"Yeah, but, I was thinking... I haven't taken a walk on your island since last year. How about I take another tour while you're in the bathroom? If you're okay with it, of course."

"Oh, sure! I trust you." Colette smiled sweetly, turning to leave before pausing and turning back. "But remember -"

"- remember not to step on the flowers." Lloyd finished her sentence easily, stating that fact very seriously. He knew about Colette's concerns about her precious flowers, which she’d spent hours arranging around her little island until they were in just the right spot - fields of rainbows to welcome any guests and guide them around. He hadn't known that the stems of the flowers could break from being trampled multiple times when he first explored her quaint world - the fictional flowers were just as fragile as their real-life counterparts. He’d kept that in mind ever since, adding it to the many rules to follow to ensure no harm came to all the hard work Colette had put in to make her island perfect.

"Yep. Um…” Colette wrung her hands together, bowing her head so her hair formed a veil over her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a step towards her.

“No, nothing’s wrong!” Colette hurriedly replied, lifting her head again. She screwed her eyes shut, hands clenching into fists. “I - uh, just wanted to say… I love you!”

The last three words came out in a shout, so quick that he almost didn’t catch them.

Lloyd froze, trying to process what he’d just heard - and before he could reply, Colette was already gone, having fled down the corridor and out of sight.

He slowly shut his mouth, which he hadn’t even realised was open.

This was the first time she’d said those coveted three words since they'd started dating. Her voice had been dripping with uncertainty, her posture betraying her shyness, but no matter how contradictory, she’d said it with sincerity, with all her heart. And even though he didn't need to hear them from her to know she loved him, for it was actions that counted, and certainly didn't need to hear them from her for him to love her, it still made him smile, his whole soul filled with a light warmth.

They’d travelled such a long way from all the checkpoints in life that they'd passed together. They still had a long way to go, but they’d do it together. As they always had.

"I love you too, silly," he said into empty space, knowing Colette couldn't hear him but wanting to say it anyway.

Lloyd unlocked the Switch screen, staring down at Colette's intricate creation. Flowers filled the screen, black, grey, white, purple, that he found familiar but couldn't put a name to. Oh, well. He would just tour the island and check out any new changes while he walked to the living room and waited for Colette to come back. Maybe he'd visit the town centre as well.

The most vital question to be answered was... Had Colette gotten those froggy chairs that she wanted for the townspeople?

~~~

Next chapter

#fanfiction #multi chapter #lloyd irving #colette brunel #colloyd #colloydweek2021 #day 2: sidequest #tales of symphonia

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nekoabiwrites · 5 years

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Comfort in Music

Another prompt thing for @thesquirtlesquadwrites! This time, instead of a particular sentence prompt, we decided to just use an AU prompt and this one was Soulmate AU where your soulmate(s) can hear what music you hear.

Once again, my titles suck... And this idea with these exact songs mentioned has been in my head for like... almost two years now and I’m so happy to have written it out!

Read the rest of the fics here on the masterlist for this prompt: https://thesquirtlesquadwrites.tumblr.com/post/187333342346/soulmate-au-hearing-the-music-your-soulmates

AU: College AU Pairing: LAMP Words: 3269 Warnings: Many awkward and bad things happen to Virgil, mention of depression and insomnia, mention of car crashes, very lightly implied use of self harm, very lightly implied thoughts of death (The last three are from the song used). Anything else, please let me know.

Summary: Virgil is having a very very bad day and uses music to cope. But, he underestimates just what would happen when they all heard it.

---

Today had been pure hell for Virgil.

Firstly, he’d had an awful night’s sleep. His insomnia had hit hard the night before as well as this one, leaving him painfully awake at what he could only guess to be close to 6am. Not only that, but he’d been having a really bad down period with his depression and it was only adding to his mood, if he could even describe the lack of feeling as a ‘mood’ – one of his housemate’s would definitely say it counted. Eventually, he’d been granted some reprieve from it, but had then slept through his alarm, making him late for his 10am class. He’d had to walk in during a particularly quiet part of the class too, heaving breaths being awkwardly supressed as Virgil had ran all the way there.

“Nice of you to join us, Virgil.” His teacher had quipped jokingly. Several of the class had smirked, snorted or smiled in response, which had Virgil’s stomach dropping and his mind screeching. He’d taken his seat quickly and kept his head down for the entire lesson.

Then the teacher had thrown them a surprise quiz. Virgil was wholly unprepared for it and fought to control his anxiety. He was able to get through it. It was thankfully short and actually fairly easy.

Of course, the rule of three had to be completed. His English teacher just had to add that extra layer of insult to it all. Virgil had been called upon by the teacher, completely without warning. He had no time to prepare himself for it. He’d been unable to answer, instead just using a string of filler words and incomplete stutters. When his teacher had given him a look that just screamed disappointed and several other students glanced in his direction, Virgil felt like he might just break down into tears then and there with how bad he felt.

They were eventually let free. Virgil couldn’t decide whether being out first or lingering back to leave last would help him. He fretted about it for a moment but ended up just heading out in the pack of students as they all left. After getting out of the building, Virgil diverted away from the rest of his class and moved towards the opposite side of campus. He didn’t have another class for a couple of hours and knew he still had some assignments to work on, so he decided to attempt something akin to productivity in the campus library.

In the quiet building, Virgil realised that he just didn’t have the focus for anything remotely productive. He spent the two hours staring at the document, trying his hardest to read it and add to it in a meaningful way. All he ended up being able to do was add a couple hundred words, none of which he wasn’t happy with.

Then came his next class. With one of the worst surprises of the day.

“It is time for you all to split into groups to work on a short presentation about…” Virgil stopped listening after that. He knew practically no one in this class, everyone else seemed to have at least one friend in here and – to top it off – he was going to have to present something with these strangers?! His mind was racing once more. Then, he finally clocked back into the teacher’s instructions.

“So, these are the groups I’ve picked.” She clicked to the next slide to show all of their names grouped up.

Virgil almost succumbed to his panic right then and there. But, the rest of the lesson went by quickly. The group wasn’t so bad, they were just as awkward as him, and the presentations were thankfully short. He didn’t have to do much. By the time he left, Virgil was ready to grab a drink from the campus shop on his way out to the house.

The universe wasn’t done with him yet.

Just as Virgil got out of the building, his foot caught on the heel of his other and he went down onto the concrete. In front of all of his classmates. And the incoming students. And several faculty. And a visiting tour group. He hissed silently in pain as he stood up, thanking the couple of people who went to help him to his feet. His cheeks were burning with embarrassment. But then he tried to casually walk away.

A sharp sting of pain came from his knee and Virgil winced involuntarily. He moved to the side of the door, assuring everyone who asked him if he was okay that he was, and checked his knee. It was grazed and pretty badly too. It was bleeding a little, but it was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

“Fuck these jeans.” He muttered to himself, looking at the wound that was perfectly shaped to the hole in his jeans. After letting his body get accustomed to the pain, Virgil headed towards the shop. He prayed silently that any interaction he would have in there would go well, and it did. Except he was stopped multiple times before he got there by people asking if he was okay. Each time that question was asked, Virgil was closer and closer to losing it. Tears pricked the back of his eyes. This day could not get worse.

Then his drink practically exploded on him as he opened it.

Virgil thanked every deity he could that he was down away from campus and that no one was around. A couple of silent tears slid down his cheeks as everything that had been piling up all day was starting to weigh him down a little too much. He just wanted to go home, curl up in his blankets and sleep. Just sleep forever.

In order to do that, however, Virgil had to walk back to the house he shared with some other students. There was only one thing that was going to hold him together until he got there.

Virgil quickly pulled out his headphones, plugged them into his phone and scrolled to find his playlist. He’d always had this playlist, ever since he’d gotten this phone. It was what he needed for days like this, for days when everything in the world was too much and he just couldn’t handle it, for days when…

He tapped the playlist titled ‘When The Depression Hits’ with a wry smile at the title. The volume was turned up to its loudest and Virgil let the music wash over him. The slow introduction of the song ‘Justified’ had him breathing in deep and breathing out slow. Sure, it may be bad for him to listen to stuff like this so loud, but it was the only thing keeping him from breaking down right now. Ever so slowly, Virgil began his walk home.

Several songs passed by as he wandered the pavements he’d walked along so many times. All of them fit his mood so perfectly. Each one of them had at least some lyrics that resonated with his current state so fantastically, summed up everything he wanted to scream to the sky but he just couldn’t find the words for. Somehow, all of the loud guitar and piercing vocals calmed Virgil. It didn’t get rid of the voice screaming at him, it didn’t make him feel better about all the things that had happened. It just calmed him enough to keep him from crying openly.

He was just turning into the larger street that his veered off from when he paused at the edge of it to scroll for a particular song. When he found it, Virgil hesitated for a second.

‘What if they can…’ He thought to himself. Virgil physically shook his head to rid himself of the thought, ‘No, they can’t. It’s fine. Probably busy doing their own things…’

Virgil hit play before another thought could cross his mind and stop him.

“I’m wide awake and so alive. Ringing like a bell…”

The song began and Virgil immediately felt a ball of tension in his stomach. He continued on his journey, speeding up a little.

He knew this was stupid. To listen to a song that hurt him a little, that gave him thoughts that he was ashamed to admit he thought. Virgil knew they’d all be disappointed in him for it, but this song was his emotional release.

When the chorus hit, Virgil couldn’t help but mouth the words alongside the singer.

“I wanna feel a car crash. I wanna feel a capsize. I wanna feel a bomb drop, the earth stop, til I’m satisfied. I wanna feel a car crash. ‘Cause I’m dying on the inside. I wanna let go and know that, I’ll be alright. Alright.”

To Virgil, that was his emotional release. That was what he wanted to happen. He wanted all of those things. Just to know he could feel. That slight sting in his knee was reminding him that he was really a human, really alive. That he could feel things. That he wasn’t hollow and empty.

Virgil set the song to repeat itself continuously. He began singing quietly under his breath, each and every word piercing his soul and mind.

The view of the front door of his rented house had Virgil digging his phone out from his bag. He turned the music off and slid his headphones from their place over his ears. He dropped both of them into his bag while he dug around for his key.

It took a single step into the house for Virgil to be accosted by something just the tiniest bit shorter than himself. He’d not even been able to pull his key out of the lock.

After getting over the shock, Virgil looked down ever so slightly to see the soft brown hair of his housemate who’d buried his head against Virgil’s chest. “Uh, Patton? Could I… close the door?”

Patton pulled away with a soft pout and a concerned look in his furrowed eyebrows and large eyes behind even larger glasses. Virgil felt his every move being scrutinized. That wasn’t normally Patton’s thing. But it seemed to be just how today was going. Things that didn’t normally happen happening to Virgil just to make his day more and more uncomfortable and upsetting. His mind ran wild with assumptions and ideas that Virgil had somehow upset his usually smiley housemate.

However, all of that was dispersed once Virgil had shut the door and taken off his shoes – which had been rubbing at his heels too as their insides had been peeling off for months now, only adding to Virgil’s pain. Patton had immediately thrown himself back into Virgil, cuddling up close. Only then did Patton’s eyebrows return to their natural position and he relaxed.

Virgil was a little confused. He returned the hug and the two of them sat there on the stairs in the embrace for a moment. Virgil even closed his eyes, relaxing into the warmth of Patton’s hug.

All of his housemates had agreed that Patton’s arms and hugs had some kind of magical relaxing healing power – well, he and one other had agreed, their final housemate had then begun a lecture on the scientific benefits of physical comfort.

Speaking of, a familiar clearing of the throat had Virgil’s eyes snapping open to look up into yet more eyes behind glasses. He went to apologise, but the other cut him off.

“I think we are all expected upstairs, Patton.”

Patton immediately shot up, “Oh, Logan! Right! I forgot!” He then grasped Virgil’s arm and dragged him upstairs, the movement being a little difficult for the one being hauled along behind as he had to keep up with Patton’s fast pace.

Virgil followed his housemate through the hallway, expecting to be taken to Patton’s room. But, then they passed that door and went into Virgil’s.

The injured student was finally let go and he stood in the doorway for a moment, while Patton moved to take up a space on the end of his bed.

Virgil’s room had always had soft purple string lights surrounding his room and all of them were on currently, even though it was still light outside. The blinds had been pulled all the way down and candles had been lit, all of them sitting around his TV in a decorative manner. Speaking of, the TV in question was already showing a shot from his favourite movie, clearly having been paused where he last left it off. When Virgil looked back over to the bed, he noticed that it was absolutely covered in pillows and blankets and duvets and soft toys. Some of the blankets had even been pinned to the walls, creating a bit of a blanket fort vibe. One of the large plastic containers Virgil had used to move his stuff in was sat in between the edge of the bed and the chest of drawers where the TV sat, taking up most of that thin space. And, sat already in the corner, was his final housemate, who had a controller in his hand.

A gentle hand grasped his wrist and Virgil found himself being coaxed – by Patton – towards the bed. Virgil crawled up onto it a little clumsily, trying not to disturb the state of the pillows. Instinctively, his other housemate moved his arm, an obvious invitation for Virgil to rest himself against him, which he did cautiously. The raised arm came to rest around his back, holding Virgil securely with its strength.

Patton cuddled up on the other side of Virgil. He began to quietly ramble, dispersing the remaining silence in the room that wasn’t already gone by the whirring of Virgil’s game console that was whirring away below the TV, as the movie was rewinded back the beginning, “Isn’t this so cool? Roman came up with this and set it all up, saying we could all use a hangout night. I could only help by carrying all the blankets and pillows in so Ro could set them all up perfectly like this. We all know I’m terrible at all this careful stuff, so I turned on the lights and left to help Lo!”

Virgil shot a quick glance up at Roman, who had a very small prideful smile on his lips at Patton’s praise. He could see that Roman was seemingly biting at the inside of his mouth, a small thing he did to keep himself from talking when it was necessary. Virgil was about to call him out on it, but Patton continued.

“Oh, and Logan did all of the snacks! He thought about what we had, what we didn’t, what each of us likes! Then he went out and got all the stuff we needed and the drinks too! I helped carry them back, though. There’s so much and it’s all so good!”

Just then, Virgil noticed that Logan had slipped silently into the room and was placing down bowls of snacks. In opposition to Roman’s smile, Logan’s cheeks had flushed a soft pink at Patton’s kind words.

“And I suggested watching movies! I thought it would be nice, we haven’t done it in a while! We all picked a movie each and we decided to have your favourite one to start, because you weren’t able to be here to pick because of classes. I hope that’s okay, Virgil!”

Virgil had long since given up holding tears back. He buried his face in Roman’s chest to avoid showing that tears were rolling down his cheeks. Thankfully, none of them said anything about it. The only acknowledgement they gave were physical ones. Roman’s arm tightened for a moment, and Patton squeezed him tighter too; simple actions that let Virgil know they cared. Logan, after placing their respective cups and drinks down and taking a seat on the bed himself, reached past Patton and grabbed a hold of Virgil’s hand gently.

Roman started the movie and placed the controller down, freeing up a hand that was quickly grabbed by Patton. Virgil was surrounded by arms and warmth and love, and it broke him. He sobbed silently, his body quivering and shaking as he tried to not let out a sound.

He knew they’d have heard it when he was walking home. They were his soulmates after all. Of course, they’d hear his music. That was how it worked. It was how they’d all found each other in the first place.

Roman listening to the same section of a song from the musical he’d been cast in to get the lyrics down had led all three of them to seeing said musical and approaching Roman at the end of the show. Though, of course, life wasn’t going to be so easy on them all, and they just had to go and see it on different nights, confusing Roman. It was so unlikely to have multiple soulmates, yet it seemed like he did have them. He’d never met any of the three who’d approached him, so it was highly unlikely they would be playing a prank on him… He had a lot to think about.

Patton listened to children singing nursery rhymes frequently due to his volunteering at the university’s child care centre. This had Virgil passing by with the hopes he could maybe get an idea of who it could be. When he saw Logan, Roman and Patton exiting one day, all smiling in their own ways, Virgil had written it off and barely thought about it. He didn’t even consider that the three of them were soulmates, let alone his. But the three of them had found each other.

And then the trio had needed a fourth person to live in their house with them. They put out a call on the university facebook page and – by some miracle of self-confidence – Virgil had answered. Things had been easy going for the first few weeks; Virgil found out that the three of them were soulmates and he was the odd one out, nothing really new there for him. But then, the oddest thing happened when Virgil skipped out on watching a movie. He’d decided to try and drown out the sound of his housemates bonding with his own music. And then Roman had burst through his door and picked Virgil from his chair into a spinning, spine-crushing hug.

It took some explanation and several assurances that they were not confused nor playing a cruel and unusual joke on him, but Virgil had – eventually - accepted that he’d been rooming with his soulmates this whole time. And everything fell into place. Things became easier, calmer, nicer.

Virgil had opened up to them a little. He explained to them that he was sorry about the almost constant music from him but that it was a form of comfort, that he had playlists and songs for almost every mood. He’d shown them, and played, his entire depression playlist one day.

Back in the present, Virgil let out a snort of a laugh as he remembered that. Once again, his soulmates didn’t acknowledge it, knowing that if they did, it would only make things worse. They all knew to wait for Virgil to open up to them about it, if he ever wanted to. Virgil moved his face from Roman’s chest, turning so he could see the screen. He used his free hand to wipe away from of the tears before he relaxed fully. He was already feeling far better. It wasn’t a cure-all, everything wasn’t magically fine, but it was better and that was all Virgil could ask for.

---

My other stuff: http://nekoabi.tumblr.com/myworks Mobile Accessible Masterlist: http://nekoabi.tumblr.com/post/181954641376/fic-masterlist

General Tag List: @not-so-innocent-bi-sander @didsomeonesayprince @llamaly @justanotherpurplebutterfly @iaminmultiplefandoms @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @lowkeyvirgilobsessed @louisthewarlock @fangsandrainbows @xxladystarlightxx @sleepyssnail @ao-koshka @notalwaysthevillian @pumpkinminette @doces-e--tuga @coloursintheblur @safesandersides

#Sanders Sides #Fanfiction #Virgil Sanders #Patton Sanders #Logan Sanders #Roman Sanders #Anxiety Sanders #Morality Sanders #Logic Sanders #Creativity Sanders #LAMP #College AU #This is def a little self-indulgent

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argylemnwrites · 5 years

Text

Mortality Rate

Pairing: Bryce Lahela x MC (Cassie Vanderfield)

Book: Open Heart (sometime just after Chapter 10 of Book 1)

Word Count: ~2000

Rating: PG-13 (language)

Summary: Bryce finds an unexpected comfort in a friend after a very rough day.

Author’s Note: Written for Day 3 of the my Autumn writing prompt list (prompt - Falling Leaves) as requested by @andi-the-cat! This started off being inspired by the sight of fallen leaves on the sidewalk, but it kind of took on a life of its own somewhere along the way.

Trigger warning for mentions of blood and death.

Bryce sighed heavily, wrapping his jacket around him more tightly. He didn’t like that it was only October and he was contemplating pulling out his heaviest coat. It did not bode well for him tolerating winter in Boston, that was for sure.

Orange, yellow, and brown leaves coated the sidewalk and crunched beneath his feet as he made his way back to his apartment. Bryce could imagine that for people who grew up with Fall and changing leaves, this was just part of the season. That it seemed like a natural, normal event. But for him, all they did was remind him of death and decay, with their crumbling edges and black and brown rotten holes. The bare branches above him were a similar vision, empty and bleak. All in all, it served as a fitting representation of his day.

It had been a bad case from the start. Ruptured aortic aneurysms carry about a 50% mortality rate… if they are lucky enough to make it to the OR. Bryce knew that as a fact when he scrubbed in. But this one felt different. The time from collapse to ED to OR was quick. They established vascular access quickly. He really thought Mr. Hendricks was gonna beat the odds.

But the stent occluded the renal arteries and Telana just couldn’t get it repositioned. So they’d had to open him up and recannulate the kidneys with bypass grafts, but his tissue just wouldn’t hold the stitches. It was a bloody mess, culminating in cardiac arrest. V. fib due to loss of blood volume. Bryce had done compressions for 16 minutes before Telana called it. His arms still were sore and burning. The pain made it hard to forget the sheer mess that was the case.

Bryce didn’t know why this one was affecting him so much. He’d had plenty of patients die on him. And it’s not like Mr. Hendricks was a particularly young man or that the outcome was unanticipated given his presentation. But this one stuck with him. Maybe it was the fact that he’d been scheduled for repair next week. Bryce remembered him from clinic, signing the consent forms, telling Bryce that he was looking forward to seeing his grandkids in their Halloween costumes prior to his surgery. He’d probably been walking around with this aneurysm for years, and his aorta couldn’t hold out for eight more days? What shitty luck.

He’d contemplated heading to Donahue’s, but he hadn’t really wanted to plaster on a happy face when he inevitably ran into some other residents. So he was headed home. Alone. Listening to the crunching sound of death and decay surrounding him every step of the way.

A new sound joined the crackle of the leaves beneath his feet as his phone vibrated twice in his pocket. He pulled it out, checking to see who was texting him. He sighed. It was Cassie.

Turns out the walls here are hella thin and sienna and wayne have decided to have a massive fight.

You interested in some company tonight? 😉

Bryce shoved his phone back in his pocket. As much as he liked Cassie, he was definitely not feeling up for that tonight. But not two minutes later, he felt his phone start buzzing again.

Plz so desperate here.

I will make pancakes for bfast tomorrow for our day off.

They are so loud, just help a girl out.

Bryce sighed, digging in his other pocket for his keys, trying to think up an excuse for Cassie. After a few seconds of searching, not only in his jeans, but also in his jacket, he realized it was all a moot point. He must have left his keys in his locker. Hard to host when even he was locked out.

Pulling out his phone, he shot Cassie a quick reply. Sorry, real shit day and just realized my keys are in my locker. Rain check?

He had just taken a few steps back towards Edenbrook when his pocket buzzed again.

How shit are we talking? I got pimped in the OR and didn’t know the answer or I had to hide out in a supply closet?

Bryce paused and sighed. The latter. I’m just gonna head back to grab my keys then crash.

I’ll go grab em. Edenbrook is basically right in between our places.

Her response caught him off guard. His first instinct was to call her up, insist that he was alright and that she didn’t need to go get his keys, that he would be fine on his own. But he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to keep his voice calm enough to convince her he was okay. And now that she had this plan, a text from him was not going to be enough to stop her. That was something they had in common; they both preferred action over pacivity. If he were in her shoes, he would be the same way.

So instead, he sank down on the steps of his building, huddled in his jacket, thinking about Mr. Hendricks as he watched the leaves fall and swirl around on the sidewalk, some orange like the light on the bovie, some yellow like Telana’s mask, some red like the arterial blood spilling into the abdomen, all constant reminders that everything dies, and at the end of the day, the mortality rate is always 100%.

He waited there, going over the case in his mind again and again. It could have been 10 minutes, it could have been 110 minutes, Bryce wasn’t really sure, but eventually he saw her pale skin and dark hair out of the corner of his eye, striding briskly down the sidewalk. She had a cardboard tray with to-go cups in phone hand, her other shoved in the pocket of her jacket.

“Hey, Cassie. You find my keys okay?” He called out, hoping his voice sounded lighter than he felt.

“Yeah, they were right there in your locker. Good thing I found them before some envious surgical resident,” she teased as she tossed him the keys. He plastered on a smile as he caught them, but it must have been a poor imitation, because Cassie stared at him deeply and frowned before joining him as he unlocked the front door.

She stayed silent with him as they climbed the steps to his third floor apartment, and didn’t say anything at first when they entered. Instead, she placed the coffees on his table before she spoke again.

“Alright, another resident, attending, or patient? And do we need this?” she asked as she pulled a flask out of her bag.

“Patient and no,” Bryce replied, actually smiling slightly as she shrugged, shoving the flask back in her bag.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked as she handed him one of the coffees before taking hers and moving to his couch.

Bryce took a sip of the coffee, letting the warmth seep into him. He wasn’t sure whether talking about it would be helpful or not. But Cassie took his prolonged silence into her own hands.

“The fact that you are debating telling me what happened for this long probably means you need to talk about it.”

He nodded tentatively as he walked over and sat next to her on the couch. He allowed himself one more sip of his coffee before he purged his soul, telling her about Mr. Hendricks and the surgery. About meeting him in clinic. About how he was one week away from having the aneurysm electively repaired until fate got in the way today. About how he never would get to see his grandkids Halloween costumes. She didn’t say anything, just let him keep talking, but at some point she reached over and grabbed his hand, running her thumb over his knuckles as he poured his heart out. Eventually he reached the end, and simultaneously relieved and embarrassed. “So yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Bryce, you have nothing to be sorry about. This job can be hard. I would know.”

“Yeah, exactly. You have your own horror stories to deal with. You don’t need mine as well.”

Cassie just shook her head. “We gotta look out for each other, Bryce. Otherwise, we’re all gonna burn out.”

He sighed, contemplating her words. He knew there was wisdom to what she said, he understood that intellectually. Hell, he’d listened to other residents vent on numerous occasions, understanding the importance of talking about the disturbing shit they saw. It still just felt wrong to be the one unloading on someone else. “I just don’t know why this case is hitting me like this,” he said, pulling his hand free from hers and running it through his hair.

“Because you’re human.”

“But they don’t all affect me so much.”

Cassie ran her fingers along the lid of her coffee before she spoke. “In M1 anatomy lab, I was completely fine with our cadaver for weeks. Nothing about dissecting it affected me until we got to the leg. The toe nails were painted bright pink, and I don’t know, something about seeing that visual reminder of a choice that had been made, a mark of self-expression that was still there long after death, I don’t know. It just messed with me.

“It’s hard to know which patient or which event is going to resonate with you, but sometimes they do. And that’s okay, Bryce. It doesn’t mean you aren’t a good doctor.”

“That’s easy for you to say. It’s different when you’re in the OR. I have to maintain some sense of-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Cassie said, her voice slightly firmer than it had been earlier. “First, we all have to be objective in the moment, so believe it or not, I do understand. Second, were you overcome by emotions in the OR, or were you able to compartmentalize in that moment?”

“I was just focused on what needed to happen; I was visualizing the next steps.”

“Then your emotional response was fine. You’re allowed to feel things after the fact. It doesn’t make you weak or anything.”

Bryce nodded. “I know. It just doesn’t make it easy.”

“If being a doctor were easy, everyone would do it. It’s the best job in the world.”

He looked her in the eye and gave her a smile. She was right. About all of it. But processing the shit they saw was something he was still working on, and quick frankly, he’d had enough of it for one night.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What kind of liquor does Cassie Vanderfield carry around with her?”

If Cassie was thrown by his shift in conversation topics, she didn’t show it, instead smiling and shaking her head. “It’s not always in my bag,” she said with an eye roll. “I meant to bring whiskey for Irish coffees, but it turns out Jackie finished off our whiskey at our last party, so I had to substitute tequila.”

Bryce grimaced, “God, I’m glad I didn’t say yes to the booze. That sounds completely disgusting, Cassie!”

“I know, but it was either that or Sienna’s blue raspberry vodka, which I think we can agree sounds even worse,” she said with a chuckle, leaning her head to the side as she rubbed her face. A flash of red caught Bryce’s eye. There, caught in the side of her bun was a leaf. So, he reached over and grabbed it, showing it to Cassie before dropping it on the coffee table.

“Oh my God; that was stuck in my hair?”

Bryce grinned at her, then grabbed his coffee from right next to the leaf. The crumbling red and brown still reminded him of death, but somehow it didn’t feel as morbid as it did 30 minutes ago. Sitting there, with an actual friend, well it took the edge off in a way that whiskey, tequila, or blue raspberry vodka never could.

Tags: @mfackenthal @lilyofchoices @thequeenchoices @octobereighth @feartheendlesssummer @tallulahshh @fortunatelywaywardsandwich @dreaming-of-movies @choicesarehard @universallypizzataco @omgjasminesimone @srta-give-me-my-jax-rl

#bryce lahela #bryce x mc #open heart #open heart fanfiction #oh fanfic #choices open heart #choices oh #choices fanfiction #prompt request #choices #playchoices #choices stories you play #tw: blood #tw: death

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the-gemini-cores · 4 years

Text

Blue Sky Analysis (Wheatley Redemption and Sky Motif)

Let me start off by saying:

The summer solstice took place during the week of Blue Sky.

In Chapter 1 of Blue Sky is the following quote:

“It was a spring morning, just before dawn, fresh and mild.”

Later on, Waffles wrote a short story in response to one of @oodlesodoodles drawings of Eaden’s journey back from Aperture. You can read it here.

She wrote the following:

“Most of the town settled down to sleep in the long grass by the road, wrapped in the thin blankets they’d gathered from the Relaxation Units, thankful for the warm breezy summer night.”

Kind of interesting, no? For the start of Blue Sky it’s spring, and not long after Chapter 15 it’s summer.

So, in the U.S…

So it definitely took place near the end of June for that year. Ironically, the turning from spring into summer is called “midsummer,” as it’s when the summer solstice occurs.

(As said above, these are specific to 2020 - the solstice’s average date is the 21st. Although we can’t be certain of the exact dates in Blue Sky, the change in seasons clearly demonstrates a solstice was present.)

I’m not sure if the turn into summer was written intentionally, but I like to think that it was for purposes of symbolism.

Cue the analysis!!

The summer solstice is when the sun reaches its highest point. In Waffles’ writing, Wheatley has likened both GLaDOS and Chell to the sun:

“Then there was the sun…up here in space without the protection of all that white wispy stuff around the Earth it was an intense, cold-yellow glare…Harsh, pitiless, and unblinking; it reminded him too much of Her.” (Chapter 1)

“Her whole face came alive when she laughed; not in a scary brilliant, born-puzzle-solver-and-stuff-breaker sort of way, no, this was a different thing altogether. It was like sunlight in the facility, like suddenly seeing a patch of bright blue sky clear through a gap in the cage of panels and realizing you were much, much closer to it than you’d thought.” (Chapter 6)

So, what’s the connection? Why are they each compared to the sun?

Well, I think it’s safe to say at this point in his story that Wheatley sees both GLaDOS and Chell as powerful, near-infallible figures that would/could definitely crush him if he made a wrong move. They are constant, immovable, major influencers who play at odds but on a similar field.

Take GLaDOS, for instance. Wheatley is quite obviously fearful of Her and what She can do to him, which is consistently portrayed through his dialogue in-game when he’s not attached to the chassis. In Blue Sky, his fear appears from the moment Her voice is heard while falling to earth-

“That Voice. The dread of it- the dread of Her- was hard-coded into his artificial heart-roots…his emotional processor found room for another sour jerk of sick fear.” (Chapter 1)

-and amplifies as She holds him captive. Even after Chell rescues him and he is far from Aperture, Wheatley has trouble just talking about Her to Aaron on Chell’s behalf in Chapter 5. As if uttering Her being is wont to get one into trouble…In a way, it’s almost like fearing “God”, as GLaDOS is referred to in Chapter 1. And She sort of is, with the power She holds over the subjects and cores in that facility, and also the inferiority complex She’s contributed with dragging Wheatley into.

“‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ ‘Oh, I believe you.’ More jointed arms folded around him from below, their connectors finding the docking ports on his sides, locking him firmly into their grip. ‘I just don’t care. This isn’t about revenge, metal ball. We both know you are a pointless, insignificant little moron who has never done anything right.’” (Chapter 1)

Basically, Wheatley does not feel that he is on a level playing field with GLaDOS. Instead, he is taught to tread lightly around Her because She constantly exercises Her power over him, making him feel so much smaller.

The case is not entirely different with how Wheatley perceives Chell. Granted, it is a LOT different - Wheatley trusts Chell and eventually comes to realize how she genuinely wants to help him grow - but until he gets to learn her better, Wheatley views her by what he knows: Chell is an incredible test subject who has a knack for taking down power-mad AIs. Wheatley may not see himself on GLaDOS’ level, but he does see Chell there. And until he can better understand her motives, Wheatley perceives Chell, like GLaDOS, as a force that best not be messed with.

“Just speaking about the facility, about Her, hearing his own voice shakily describing everything he’d tried so hard to escape was nearly as bad as actually being back there. He wanted to stop, but he simply didn’t have the nerve- not while she was still glaring at him like that, as if daring him to make another objection.” (Chapter 5)

She can command him with a look and anchor him by just being there. In a way, Chell terrifies Wheatley, as described in the aforementioned quote that conveyed her “scary brilliant, born-puzzle-solver-and-stuff-breaker sort of” look. It’s also illustrated in how Wheatley thinks of Chell as a kind of superhuman.

“You’re not afraid of anything!’ She looked up, sharply. She might have suspected mockery, or even flattery, but Wheatley hadn’t intended either- hadn’t intended anything, other than a plain, admiring statement of fact- and it showed.” (Chapter 6)

What I’m getting at is Wheatley sees both GLaDOS and Chell almost as superior to him. Like they’re on a whole other level that he can’t quite reach - huge, celestial, god-like stars. He’d tried making his way to that level once, in the chassis, but he couldn’t handle it, and that truth resonates with him now as it did in space. He couldn’t manage the position of power that GLaDOS occupies and, in his eyes, Wheatley couldn’t stand up to GLaDOS like Chell could.

“‘Chell here is the only human that ever managed to get one over Her, and she only managed it because- because- I-I don’t actually even know how she managed it, to be honest, but it probably involved a lot of explosions. (Chapter 5)

Clearly a reference to how Chell had freed Wheatley from GLaDOS, when he was completely helpless and relied on her nearly the whole way through. He thinks of Chell as objectively capable.

Wheatley has worked himself into the idea that he is incompetent and relatively inferior to these two characters - that he’s designed to be a moron, that he can only come up with terrible ideas and there’s nothing he can do to counter that.

Until he proves himself.

You see, the sun is used to describe GLaDOS and Chell when it’s being told through Wheatley’s eyes. But when the omniscient narrator is speaking, the sun reflects Wheatley on multiple occasions, suggesting that he has the potential to join these two.

“By the time the sun had made its first uncertain, deep-orange-red appearance over the horizon, a small crowd of curious people had gathered…Wheatley swallowed. His enthusiasm had lasted right up until the moment when he’d realized exactly what Garret wanted him to do, at which point it had evaporated like sodium dropped into water, leaving stark terror in its place.” (Chapter 10)

Here, Wheatley is met with a task, a challenge that dangles over his head. And as we know, this is the day when Wheatley takes that first major step into his own. The day he gets Foxglove working, takes a chance with everyone watching, and he succeeds. He receives praise-

“Their overwhelming unconditional approval was very nearly too much for him to process, and for a choked, confused moment he found himself really wishing he could take his glasses off properly.” (Chapter 10)

Wheatley is validated not only by the masses, by faceless figures who he might see as on his level, but also by people he perceives as being greater than he, including Chell and Aaron.

“It was a look just for him, warm and open and a little wry and simply- proud.” (Chapter 10)

“Wheatley, who found it very hard to believe that a look like that from somebody In Charge could possibly be aimed at him, found it as staggering as it was unmistakable. Good job.” (Chapter 10)

Wheatley isn’t used to being nodded at from the higher-ups. He doesn’t expect such treatment from them, and yet they give it. This is a glimpse into what could be, if Wheatley continues to make steps in the right direction.

But things go awry that night. The townspeople get captured, and Chell goes off after them while Wheatley stays behind. For a very long time, he sits and laments in the dark, but then…

“It was nearly dawn.” (Chapter 13)

The sun returns. And that’s when he resolves to be brave.

Wheatley puts aside his fears and reservations, and he joins the effort, willing to sacrifice himself to keep these people safe.

I like to believe that the summer solstice took place on the day Wheatley saved Eaden.

I think it represents his ascension - profound if not permanent - in joining GLaDOS and Chell on their respective level, especially by his own perspective. Participating in the fight, becoming a real force to be reckoned with and handling his influence over GLaDOS and the facility. Doing something right.

Once in Aperture, Wheatley is no longer submissive to GLaDOS, and he is taking initiative to be by Chell’s side, choosing to aid her at his own risk. He is redeeming himself, forging his way through the panels and clouds and establishing his path into that bright blue sky, of which his residence will be permanent.

If we continue with the sky motif, we understand that it was Chell who showed him the path to redemption - the blue sky - despite his inhibitions brought about by Aperture:

“It was like sunlight in the facility, like suddenly seeing a patch of bright blue sky clear through a gap in the cage of panels and realizing you were much, much closer to it than you’d thought.”

And beyond the fears drilled into his head because of what the scientists had done, the idea that he’s not good enough, that he can only come up with terrible ideas and can never escape that truth, there is fear of Her specifically. Upon returning to Earth and leaving Aperture, Wheatley had expected a newfound border to be drawn between him and GLaDOS, as seen by the skyline and cloud cover that he thought would shield him from Her glare. Yet he was wrong about how real these borders would be, whether meant for protection from Her vicinity or reaffirming their disparity.

“Then there was the sun…up here in space without the protection of all that white wispy stuff around the Earth it was an intense, cold-yellow glare.”

“…[T]he sun…During his time in space he’d guessed that the sunlight would be less intense down here beneath the blanket of the sky, but he’d been wrong. It was warmer, but no easier to bear.” (Chapter 4)

Atmosphere could be broken. Clouds could be pierced. On the day he overcomes his fears, the sky is cloud-covered before Foxglove sends Wheatley to Aperture and clearer after Eaden is brought to the surface.

“The sky was brightening, but the day was dull and overcast.” (Chapter 13)

“Sunlight. She could feel it, warm on her face…saw a sliver of brightest blue, a hazy sunbeam falling directly across the buckled floor, through a shattered hole in the musty little window above her.” (Chapter 14)

Makes me wonder if, in this moment, Wheatley was the sunbeam through the shattered hole guiding Chell from Aperture once again, as he had 4 years ago, and just as she had been guiding him out of Aperture’s weight over the past week with her own sunlight through the panels.

Okay. So:

The summer solstice occurred sometime over the week of Blue Sky, and I’d like to say it was the day Wheatley redeemed himself. Wheatley compares both GLaDOS and Chell to the sun, signifying how he sees them on a similar plane as major influencers. He manages to find ground with them by kicking his fears - the panels and skyline and cloud cover - in the teeth and making a place for himself in blue sky using the light that Chell provides for him, and that he gives in turn when the time comes.

Nice, very nice. Very fitting with Mr. Blue Sky’s lyrics as well. Now please excuse me while I go cry.

#c's posts #blue sky #blue sky portal #portal #portal 2 #wheatley #chell #glados #a portal for your thoughts #chelley

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ask-the-guiding-light-cast · 5 years

Text

Guiding Light turns two years old today!

It’s crazy to think this all began only a couple of years back... and also hilarious it falls on the same day as “International Mystery Dungeon Day” over on Twitter. More after the cut. This is gonna be a long one, so I appreciate anyone willing to read this. ^^

For a long time, I had been a casual consumer of fan fics. It started in the late 2000s when I was in a Spyro craze thanks to the more story-driven Legend of Spyro trilogy. I had an itch that I needed scratched and FFN fulfilled that to some extent. I also looked at some Mario fics, including Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun, which I greatly enjoyed and thought did a good job adapting the formula that made Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so beloved and putting a unique spin on things.

But it was until the early 2010s that I actually started getting back into Pokémon games with Gen V. After Emerald, I fell out of touch with Pokémon for a time. When Gen VI came around, I dipped my toe into the fandom through Twitch livestreams, but also through reading a few anime-based fics that are very long and still going, even now.

At the same time, I ended up buying PMD: Explorers of Sky... and damaged my cartridge before I could properly finish the game with my Vulpix/Riolu team. So, I watched cutscenes for what I missed on YouTube, then got Gates to Infinity and, later, Super Mystery Dungeon and had fun with both of them... though more for the stories and characters than the actual gameplay. Truth be told, I don’t care much for roguelikes at all.

It was during the gap in time between Super’s release and the first official footage of Sun & Moon in mid-2016 that I found myself hit with a recurring thought: “What if someone made a PMD story where the hero and the partner are forced to fight one another with the fate of the world at stake?” I wound up (loosely) brainstorming an idea for a PMD story revolving around an antagonistic Hoopa character who would use its ring portals to collect entire communities, including the Pokémon living in them... all so that he would never be bored. This would lead him to “collect” the partner to add to his “toys,” so when the hero shows up, he’d sic the partner on them.

But that was as far as I got with the idea. I ended up graduating college and took a job with late evening hours. It left me pretty tired and exhausted and unmotivated to do much of anything. I withdrew from the parts of the Pokémon community I was involved in.

Then the Generation VII games came out and, while divisive in the fandom, I found myself really liking some of the concepts. There were so many times when I thought, “Gee, I wonder what this would be like if it were in a PMD game?” For example, one of the ideas I had was a sort of edgy rival rescue team akin to Gladion, which would have a Midnight Lycanroc, a Zoroark, and a Type: Null character in it.

So, toward the end of 2016 and early 2017, I started creating an idea for a Choose Your Own Adventure story with the intent of putting it on this really small forum I was a part of. It would be a Gen VII-themed PMD story, but because I didn’t think that sounded interesting enough, I decided that, not only would the human keep their memories, but they would be from the real world and be a major Pokémon nerd. The idea was that the choices the readers made would affect the relationship between the human and partner. I even came up with a point system. The more points the readers earned for their choices, the “closer” the relationship the hero and partner would have and the happier an ending the story would get. If the hero and partner couldn’t stand each other, one of them would likely end up working with the bad guy and winning. If they became steadfast friends, they’d work together to save the world.

Unfortunately, the forum shut down before I got too far into planning it, so I shelved the idea and continued focusing on my job. And things stayed that way for several months, until I ended up getting into med school and scrambling to move.

During the downtime I had when I wasn’t doing moving related stuff, I decided to look at FFN again and found Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Defenders of Warmth. I wound up reading through the entirety of the story quite quickly. I guess you could say it sparked something in my head. The fic itself focuses on what, at the time, was the newest Gen (Gen V). It also has multiple humans and is set on a continent separate from the canon locations (which were just the Air and Grass Continents, since Gates and Super didn’t exist when the fic was written). In short, it renewed my desire to pursue my idea of a Gen VII-flavored PMD story.

So, I set about creating my story outline. It is so... so much different from the actual story, though I’ve gone into that in previous posts (search for #amby answers). Originally, I used Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the framework for the fic: an alien invasion in a colorful, comedic world. I took more specific cues, too. Zero was meant to be a (mostly) silent antagonist a la Princess Shroob, for example.

The problem was, I really didn’t have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I’d like to say I was writing for myself, but I really did want validation, too. I think any author is lying to themselves if they say they don’t feel this way at some point. Because of this, I figured if I put the fic on FFN, it would get ignored. The site’s huge! There were, at the time, around 85k fics in the Pokémon section alone. (That number’s since gone up to over 90k!)

Given I had experience with forums, I decided to post it to Serebii, because the fic community seemed much smaller and more open to giving feedback to one another. In an effort to try and, y’know, establish some connections, I actually read other pieces and reviewed them before posting any stories. This also helped me build up a backlog of chapters and prove to myself I enjoyed writing this enough to keep going.

When I finally did post the fic, it was a bumpy start, for sure. I do think I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate, including uploading chapters way too quickly for readers on Serebii to (reasonably) try to keep pace. That probably cost me a few potential readers... or made them silent readers who I never ended up hearing from. Which is why I’m especially thankful to @girl-like-substance (who I can seem to tag, drat) for all of the well-thought-out feedback given throughout the fic’s run. I don’t think I would’ve made such significant strides in my writing otherwise... and there are plenty of long-running fics where the quality tends to stagnate.

In any case... it was thanks to a request from @deliriousabsol to put the fic somewhere more mobile-friendly that I chose to mirror Guiding Light on FFN starting in October 2017. I would’ve kept going on Serebii had she not asked so nicely, so she’s the one you can thank for it showing up there! (She’s a fellow author who does cyberpunk-themed fics and art and her characters have cameoed in the fic.)

And, honestly, I’m just... beyond shocked at what wound up happening to the fic once it hit FFN. Well, actually, for the first several months I was lucky if I even got a comment when I put up a chapter. I’m not sure any of the people who first commented on FFN still follow the fic anymore. I haven’t seen/heard from them at all, so I assumed they moved on with their lives.

In any case, around March of 2018, the word count on FFN passed 300k and... somehow, the fic starting getting more attention. Like, a lot more attention. This was... not really something I was even remotely prepared for.

(Yes, this means there’s gonna be a giveaway. More on that later.) I never would’ve thought I’d reach a number like this. I never imagined I’d meet another PMD author who’d be willing to do a fun collab (thanks @virgil134, Spiteful Murkrow, and Namohysip). I really did not imagine that I’d ever get fanart of characters that I wrote (huge thanks @thebreak-ofdawn, @ask-nicky-and-others, and @cresselia92). I mean, above everything, I not expect the fic or characters to resonate with anybody the way it wound up.

A part of me feels like I don’t really deserve it. I’ve made a lot of serious gaffes with writing this. When initial Serebii feedback had people intrigued by Shane’s jerkass attitude (when I didn’t actually intend for him to come off as a jerk), I dialed things up in the hopes I’d keep their attention. It probably cost me readers. Then there’s the slow pacing of the early episodes and the mistake of making Special Episode 3 as long as it was... which my speaks to my (bad) tendency to give into some of my strongest impulses even though I had an outline I was trying to stick to.

And, I mean, there’s also some of the “shamlessly shameful” stuff I’ve done with the fic. I’m not fooling myself. Guiding Light has grown progressively more furry and, uh, probably fanservicey, too. All the big furbait (and some scalebait) ‘mons are accounted for. There’s a lot more sexual humor when I initially promised myself I would stay away from romance and keep everything platonic. I practically turned Xerneas into waifu bait, if some of these asks are anything to go by. This blog certainly didn’t help in that regard. Maybe I’m just being my usual nervous self?

I am worried that this fic’s performance has, somehow, affected my thoughts and behavior. There are very popular fic authors who let their popularity get to their head... or chose to open up Patreons (something that makes me uncomfortable) or start doing things like taking commissions for written pieces, which is understandable... though I think it’s an easy way to lose your passion for writing. I guess some of that worry stems from a debacle I learned about on a Discord server I’m in, but that’s not something I’m comfortable discussing publicly.

And I haven’t even talked much about the blog itself. Like, it somehow passed 100 followers? Where? When? How? I don’t actually draw stuff like many other Pokéasks. And, like, for a lot of folks, I have no idea if they’ve actually read the fic or just check in on the blog. It’s the same with the fic, I suppose. If you’re a silent reader/follower, I would really love to hear from you! I promise... I don’t bite or anything. I’d love to know what (if anything) you’re thinking. And if you’re a blog that’s following this one and we haven’t interacted, please feel free to reach out! It’s honestly hard to tell if people like what I’m doing, so any feedback is always appreciated.

In any case, if I haven’t lost you by now, I guess all I can say is... thank you. Thank you all so much for all of the support... whether it’s on the fic, the blog, or both of them. I really do hope this final episode can meet your expectations. I’ll try my very best to make this an ending to remember. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you guys enjoy it and feel it does justice to the PMD series.

Sorry for all the rambling. The inbox is open again if you’d like to send any messages for the ficaversary. Again, thank you all so much! You’re the best!

#ooc #long post #fic anniversary

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britneyshakespeare · 5 years

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1, 2, 4, 15, and 16 for the 'identity asks'.

Thanks Helena! Hope you’re having a wonderful expedition

1. if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

i’ve actually been thinking of a similar concept in my mind a lot lately, for whatever reason. pieces of art/media that i admire a lot, and am always thinking about at least subconsciously

lady windermere’s fan and the ballad of reading gaol by oscar wilde

sense and sensibility by jane austen

a midsummer night’s dream by william shakespeare (and also probably the tempest if we’re being fair)

buffy the vampire slayer (1997-2003) and its spin-off angel (1999-2004)

the spider-man trilogy by sam raimi (2002-2007)

any poem collected in w. b. yeats’ 1921 volume michael robartes and the dancer

the white album by the beatles (and also probably revolver)

absolutely anything ever written by emily dickinson

rebel without a cause dir. nicholas ray

anything ever recorded by marianne faithfull

brian jones. just his life itself was art.

a fever you can’t sweat out and pretty. odd. by panic! at the disco

i probably should’ve stopped before i got to #13 but i could go on. a bunch of various albums and books and plays and movies that have had an impact on me. things i could passionately go off about at any moment.

2. have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? if so, who?

i think the reason i consider shakespeare, dickinson, and wilde as my favorite writers (in english at least) is because there’s sort of an affinity i’ve had for each of them at one point or another. shakespeare’s very layered and archaic, metaphoric writing style always resonated with me. when i read shakespeare i think “this is what i’d like to write if i could live up to my full potential as a writer.” with dickinson, i have too much in common, biographically, not to relate to her. and i love her simplicity and use of metaphor so much. she really was a wonderful amateur, in such an inspiring way. her plain, uncut, unedited poems are just “primitive” as some critics have noted, in such a pure, uncut poetical energy sort of sense. and with wilde, what can i say there? probably the first “serious” writer i can say i discovered on my own (technically i discovered dickinson by myself in fifth grade through the book feathers by jacqueline woodson, and the poem stuck with me, but i just didn’t connect to her so much at that age) when i was a sophomore in high school. and i just felt so much oneness with the contradictory, constantly ironic and paradoxical wit of his. i don’t really know what i could say i have in common with oscar wilde, personally, but whenever i read his works they just feel instantly relatable.

4. do you like your name? is there another name you think would fit you better?

i do, i do like my name. although i don’t necessarily know if i’d say it “fits” me. what name fits anyone, really?

“diana” always felt so pretty and elegant to me, which i am very much not. my dad wanted to name me jacqueline and call me jackie but my mom thought that sounded “hideous! and matt, we’re not the kennedys!”

i like my last name, though. short and sweet, semi-common but not, like, smith common, and close to the beginning of the alphabet. before i knew i was aroace, i always thought if i got married, i’d keep my last name (and this goes back to when i was like, 10, so, way before i had any comprehension of any feminist reason to do so). and if i ever had kids, they’d all get my name.

15. five most influential books over your lifetime?

hmmm. i already named some with #1 but i’ll try and be a little different because this is a slightly different question.

feathers by jacqueline woodson, even though i haven’t read it since middle school at latest. and maybe also yankee girl by mary ann rodman. for some reason when i was in late elementary school i had this phase where i’d read all these historical fiction books about civil rights and racism. i don’t really know why! i was a little white girl in a 97% white suburban town of only a couple thousand people. with yankee girl it was because my friend read it, it was set in the 60s, and they made a bunch of references to the beatles which made me all excited. and then i just happened upon feathers the next year. but i think a first-person perspective through books, gave me a sort of understanding of american history as it affects people who are not me. that was good for me to read at that age. i went off too much about that.

the picture of dorian gray, probably. what can i say about wilde that i haven’t already said? hmm… i don’t know, but it’s a great novel.

spider-man comics in general, but especially the more human-centric storylines, behind the mask and all that. if i were to put one specific book it’d probably be death of the stacys with an honorable mention for the early 2000s miniseries spider-man: blue. but blue can’t really be read without the understanding of the death of the stacys. and also that was the first graphic novel i ever bought (well, it was a birthday present actually). but yes. the tragedy of gwen stacy especially is still a touchy subject for me.

american psycho by bret easton ellis. if for nothing else than i quote it (the novel and the superb movie adaptation directed by mary herron) with my sister constantly. but it really is top-notch 80s satire. if you haven’t read it, helena, i so recommend it. in many ways it’s a century-later update of the picture of dorian gray, but without the portrait and instead with constant psychological tumult. it’s gripping as hell.

hmmmm. this is hard. i probably answered too many for #1. i guess i’ll say the complete poems of w. b. yeats edited by richard finneran. it was one of the first volumes of poetry i ever bought for myself, i used to just read online or in the library. but it’s my constant companion, i bring it with me everywhere. and i knew a decent amount about poetry before yeats, but i still learned a lot from yeats. it was (and still often is) a challenge to get the most out of a yeats poem, but it’s always a reward to read and reread them.

16. if you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?

god no! i don’t know what i WOULD be like in any other circumstance, but i’ve had way too extravagantly odd of a life to think this shit didn’t shape me into one extravagantly odd bitch. but in the personal tragedies department, i wouldn’t really change anything. i like who i am, scars and all.

but with basic background details, everybody in my dad’s family has the exact same sense of humor, myself included. i have way too many aunts and uncles and cousins on that side, most of whom i hardly know and only see a couple of times a year at most, but through circumstances recently i’ve been in contact with a few of them that i didn’t normally talk to growing up, and it’s just fucking uncanny. like, just imagine the kind of self-deprecating and absurd personal posts i make, but imagine them being regurgitated by dozens of people older than me around a thanksgiving table (or, a couple of large tables pushed together), and most of them are male. none of us take ourselves very seriously, and it’s quite the opposite on my mother’s side. i don’t think i resemble either of my parents much in temperament, but as far as the culture they both grew up in, my influences only get clearer and clearer every day.

identity ask………oh shit

#shit this is so fucking long #love you helena #long post #shecomesincolors #dianswered

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canvaswolfdoll · 6 years

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CanvasWatches: The Dragon Prince

Netflix is making a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series.

Just… no? I realize time and development has been put into this. People are employed. But… the first series was magic, stop trying to recapture it.

Netflix has this problem where they want to propel themselves forward with original content, but that content is very mediocre. They try reviving old series and produce productions that disappoint.[1] The original concepts mostly fade into obscurity, are Stranger Things (which had one pretty good season, and then a mediocre second season), or is BoJack Horseman which I haven’t watched but haven’t heard a bad word about.

Then there’s their irritating handling of Anime.[2]

Netflix is willing to experiment and let creators do what they want. I admire that. But (and trust me, I hate to say this), they need focus testing. They need a stricter format. Edges for creators to bump up against and work around.

A standard season length, for one. An allotted time per episode maybe. Make production a puzzle to solve.

Instead they say ‘Let’s do the live-action Avatar series no one asked for, and is a passive insult to the original!’[3]

Which drags us into The Dragon Prince.

Spoilers! You might want to watch it for yourself (it’s nine episodes), but if you don’t mind spoilers, go ahead. I’m not the City Watch.

So, I think we’ve finally figured it out. We had Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was great. Then we distilled the creative staff, ran experiments and isolated elements.

Legend of Korra was good. Had the creators produce it, but not the head writer. The world was the same, but evolved in interesting ways. Good character concepts and real heart, but still missing the magic and character relationships that resonated so well in the first series.

Now, with The Dragon Prince, we get to see what happens when you isolate AtLA’s head writer, Aaron Ehasz.

You get a cliche fantasy setting, weak main plot, and a lot of cheap AtLA mimicry. But you also get some super charming child characters, intriguing (if not currently complex) villains, and small details that could build up to something great.

Which is to say: go to Bryke for the world and myth arc, go to Ehasz for the character interactions.

There it is! The ultimate break down! Let’s pack this up and…

Okay, fine. You want to hear my opinions on The Dragon Prince. That’s… fair, I guess.

So, in this setting, magic comes from six source: The sun! The moon! The Stars! The Ocean! The Earth! I think the sky?[4]

However, then humanity created a seventh magic! Dark Magic! Ooo, so evil, so dastardly!

Sigh.

Just once, I’d like dark magic to just be misunderstood. If they called it Life Magic, they’d probably have better PR.

Anyways, humanity went to war with the elves, but the Dragon King got sick of the fighting, so he sent the humans west, elves to the east, and divided the continent in half with a lava river.

Humanity didn’t really like this, so they killed the dragon king and his egg. So that’s vengeance.

Except this upset the elves because, y’know, murder’s bad. So they send a party from the assassin elf faction: The Moon Shadow Elves! They turn invisible under moonlight![5]

They’re gonna kill the Human king and his son to make things even. Because suddenly murder’s not so bad?

However, a member of the group is a child who couldn’t will herself to kill.

Basically, that cool and exciting setting you created when you were fourteen? Good news, it’s a Netflix Show now! Yay!

Also, the first season is Book 1: Moon.

And the title card is formatted exactly like Avatar, but with white text on a black background.

So the world isn’t special, and they’re deliberately aping some Avatar trappings. But that’s fine, there’s still the characters and plot. We could bicycle this!

So, what do we have with the humans? A beloved king with a dead wife and two children? Okay… both are sons,[6] so at least it’s not the usual nuclear structure. And, hey, the eldest prince is the king’s step son! Nice change.

Who else? King has an advisor that uses dark magic, suggested killing the dragon king and the egg, and talks above his station. But, hey, Lord Viren has two charming children, and he seems genuinely concerned about his king’s survival and the good of…

Oh, he gets a magic makeover in the final episode to make him look more inhuman, and spends the season plotting to take the throne.

Ugh. Of course.

Well, what about Viren’s children? Claudia is a mage like her dad, and is a cloudcuckoolander. Good choice. And she doesn’t do much that’s actively evil. We’ve got Ty Lee in Zuko’s role. I’m game.

Soren is… well, he’s going to be Azula. He doesn’t have her sadistic streak, but he’s been given the job of eliminating claims to the throne, is a competent combatant, and Viren motivates him with being in line for the throne.

He could turn, but my money’s on just being Azula.

Now, to be clear, Viren wasn’t obviously evil. There were plenty of early moments that hinted that he could be sympathetic and non-evil. However, he does spiral into torture and deceit, so once the season is over, there’s no ambiguity. Sorry.

Hey, what about the main cast?

Prince Callum is voiced by Sokka! Awesome! Jack De Sena needs more work. This time, he gets magic and impressive artistic skills! But he had to give up his sword abilities, and kept the daddy issues. But there’s still that snarky edge and loving brother personality, though the weight of them have been swapped.

He’s the half brother of Prince Ezran, who is the heir apparent of the kingdom. He’s… a goofy young boy. I dunno. Aang light. No overt talents. He’s fine.

So those two are hanging out at the castle, when suddenly their father tries to send them off to the winter cabin, despite it being not winter. He suggests made making a dirt man or going mud sledding.

Callum finds this suspect, and eventually logics out that King Harrow expects to be assassinated and wants to get his sons a safe distance away.

Meanwhile, the Moon Shadow Elves are planning their assassination, making a vow on a magic ribbon that will amputate a limb if they fail. Two targets: King Harrow and Prince Ezran to make up for killing the Dragon King and his egg. Even, you know?

Of course, they dragged a literal child along and had her make the same oath with the same ribbon, so screw ‘em. Child soldiers are bad.

This girl is Rayla. She’ll be the rogue of the main cast! Yay![7]

However, after making this promise, they find out she let a guard go so the humans know they’re coming. You’re off the mission Rayla! Turn in your fancy switchblades and ribbon!

Except the ribbon is magic and won’t come off until the job is done, so keep that I guess. And it’d be mean to take away your knives, so… look, stay at camp while the five adults go murder a dude and an actual kid.

Please remember, these jerks wanted to murder an innocent child.

Rayla decides to redeem herself, and sneaks into the castle. She finds the two princes, Callum attempts to martyr himself for Ezran, shenanigans occur in secret tunnels, and… oh, look, it’s the Dragon King’s Egg. Guess they didn’t actually kill that?

Well, let’s call the whole thing off!

Oh, nevermind. Rayla’s Uncle still wants to kill the king and prince. What a jerk.

So our three heroes escape the castle with the egg, planning on returning to the Dragon Queen. We got our mission!

Oh, and the elves killed King Harrow. So… that’s fun.

To be honest, I wouldn’t discount Lord Viren using dark magic to sidestep this. But he’s also trying to claim the throne, so maybe the king is actually dead.

Could go either way.

The kids head off to the royal cottage, where they stumble onto Callum’s aunt. She’s mute! (Maybe deaf, not one hundred percent on that, since lip reading was referenced but also some ambiguity…)

She’s a military General, fights with a shield, is super awesome, and I’m sad how Callum didn’t bring her into the scheme.

Like, yes, for the plot to work, Lord Viren needs to know the princes are alive and the boys have to be careful and having General Amaya know and supporting the boys would’ve caused other troubles.

But… c’mon Callum, literally signing to Amaya that Rayla is a monster and forcing the elf to do a Blue Spirit act is terrible. Like… they’ve established a sweet way for Callum to communicate a secret past her soldiers, and they didn’t use it for a sweet twist?

Ugh. Intentional miscommunication and unnecessary secrets. They are hitting a bunch of my hated tropes.[8]

The children run off and… don’t really do anything very interesting for a couple episodes.

The villain side of things is where the real fun is! General Amaya goes to the castle to report on the survival of the princes and stop Lord Viren from taking the throne.

However, Lord Viren offers her the throne. Again, how the scene is written and acted, I still found myself doubting what role Viren’s supposed to take. He seems genuinely concerned for the general populace, and offers compromises at every turn, and communicates honestly and…

I want Lord Viren to be a misunderstood good guy. I really want Dark Magic to not be an irredeemable evil. A story without a Big Bad, just factions with cross purposes would be great. There’s so many good escape routes for a more interesting story.

Then Lord Viren throws the man Amaya chose (her interpreter, Gren. He’s neat! I like him!) to lead the Prince Recovery Team into a dungeon, where he can watch Viren torture Rayla’s uncle for information.

Yeah… this is who our villain is.

In Gren’s place, Viren sends his children. Soren is given secret instructions to insure the princes don’t make it home alive, and Claudia is given secret instructions to prioritize the safety of the egg. So that’s our Zuko and Azula doing the Avatar hunt.

They have a fun dynamic as Soren doesn’t put much stock in magic and Claudia is an adorable dark magician girl![10] I look forward to more of them.

Now, back to the D&D campaign of the kids: Callum is trying to learn magic after stealing Claudia’s storm magic orb, and he’s pretty good at it. Rayla is worried about the ribbon cutting off her circulation and is an awesome rogue. Ezran… needs to learn healing magic so we can have a Cleric.

They accidentally drop the egg into a frozen lake and are afraid the baby dragon within is dying, so they head off to get help at a town. There’s a fun kid moment with Rayla turning a snowman into a snow-elf (it was a cute moment and Rayla needs more).

Then the group picks up a girl, Ellis, so abruptly that she might as well have been a player that joined between sessions. Ellis rides a giant puppy named Ava, so we’ve got a beast-master fighter!

Ellis tells the boys about a magic healer on the top of a scary mountain filled with scary monsters. With no options, the four go to the mountain.

They fight one monster, have some self reflection, get to the mountain, learn Ezran can talk to animals,[11] and the monsters there are illusions.

They get to where to where the healer is, only to learn that, nah, she’s just a powerful illusionist and Ava only has three legs.

The only way to save the egg is to hatch it. But they need a storm to do so.

Thus, Callum shatters his magic orb to release a storm, the egg hatches, and the titular Dragon Prince is able to gently bite off the magic ribbon Rayla couldn’t cut off with a magic sun knife.

(Either the dragon is magic enough, or saving the baby dragon was considered equal to assassinating Ezran).

Soren and Claudia use a spell to pinpoint the group!

Lord Viren inprisons Rayla’s uncle in a coin and transforms into an eviller looking form!

Also, there’s some mystery with a magic mirror? Cliffhanger stuff.

So… The Dragon Prince is not amazing. The dialogue and character interactions and relationships are great, but the story and world is paint by numbers.

The next season has plenty of room for subversions and interesting experiments, but… until I see it, I honestly think the show’s skippable in its current form. Filler episodes to build the world and characters would do a lot to help, and committing to nuances hinted at for Lord Viren would be great.

Also, hopefully they improve the animation. I’m not normally one to care about frame rates, but boy did the animation stutter a lot for a finished product.

It’s average.

Thanks for reading this review! Consider checking out my other writings, sending me comments and questions, check out my webcomic or RPG Blog, or whatever. Next time, Netflix is releasing an Anime I’ve been excited for nearer the end of the month. Keep an eye out for that, which will post to my Patreon first. I’m also slowly rolling out a Review of Digimon there!

Until we go flying with dragons,

Kataal kataal.

[1] Admittedly, modern fandom is filled with loud obnoxious people, but I haven’t heard anything good about Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, even from my less frothy-mouthed sisters. [2] If you’re gonna simuldub series in Canada, you can do it in the US, you jerks! [3] Everything can be improved. But actually remaking something just says the original wasn’t good enough. That’s why people hate reboots. [4] Can’t remember if that’s under the purview of the stars or not… [5] Which is Warcraft, Ehasz. [6] Unless there’s a spoiler with Ezran’s voice cast. [7] Canvas likes playing rogues. [8] Let’s see if season two can get inappropriate student-teacher relationship![9] Then they can get a free sandwich. And my eternal ire. [9] For the record: when Claudia inevitably defects and starts teaching Callum magic, that’s not going to count. The two are close in age and it’s not an institutional power imbalance. [10] I want a show about Claudia, Rayla, and Amaya on awesome adventures. [11] He’s a druid! Learn to heal, nerd.

#CanvasReviews #the dragon prince #dragon prince #atla #CanvasWatches

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realmonstersrp · 6 years

Photo

INTRODUCING MIN JIWOO, OUR NEWEST STUDENT WITH THE POWER OF AGROKINESIS

WELCOME TO GUMI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE POWERED.

WHO ARE THEY?

PERSONALITY

(+) PERCEPTIVE jiwoo is a highly perceptive person and once she knows someone well enough, it can be very hard to fool her. she tends to remember everything people say to her, even the smallest things. INTELLIGENT her high levels of intelligence are something that she inherited from her scientist father, perhaps the only good thing he ever gave her. she’s good at analysing situations and coming up with a good attack plan for just about anything. COMPASSIONATE despite being closed off, to put it bluntly, jiwoo still can’t seem to ignore her instinct to help others, even after all the wrong that has been done to her by the man she was supposed to love them most. (–) ECCENTRIC despite being classified as an introverted by the many personality type quizzes she’s taken thanks to the fact that she’s often off in fairy land, jiwoo can come across as a rather eccentric thanks to the way she acts, especially ( if not solely ) because of the fact that she tends to talk to the plants on campus more than the people. CLOSED OFF after what happened with her father, jiwoo has become rather distrustful of people. despite still having a good heart and wanting to see the best in all people, she can’t find it in herself to do it so she tends to keep people at an arms length. BLUNT she has a habit of stating the facts, sometimes brutally even, and it can be a tad uncomfortable for those around her.

BACKGROUND

tw; death, murder, torture, abuse

SCENE I, PART I the sound of something breaking, i awake from my dreams

this is how the world ends… not with a bang, but with a whimper.

it’d been the author t.s. elliot who had written those immortal words in his book of poems entitled ‘the hollow men’ and it was times like this, as her lithe fingers moved over said words in the aforementioned poem book, that jiwoo couldn’t help but ponder their meaning.

she was far too young to be reading books this grim, her caretaker, aurora, had stated sadly once upon a time. she had said that jiwoo was supposed to be playing in the gardens of her parent’s manor, making friends and scraping her knees, reading books about fairy tales and running from boys and their supposed cooties — not sat locked away in her room with her eyes glued to a book and her ears covered with earphones while her father did his experience and her mother was out shopping.

she shopped a lot, or at least that’s what jiwoo gathered each time her father would brush of her questions of her mother’s location before he shoved her into her room and ordered to keep her earphones on.

thinking back on it now, now that she was older and knew about what kind of a man her father had been, she truly wondered just why she had so blindly trusted in him.

SCENE I, PART II

the sound is full of unfamiliarity, so i try to cover my ears and go back to sleep

min jiwoo hadn’t been born a mutant, no. she’d just been born an ordinary human, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about her, really. well… except maybe her chipmunk like cheeks. born to a scientist for a father and a former nurse as a mother in a manor brought with her father’s extensive amounts of money in the new zealand countryside, jiwoo spent the majority of her childhood alone; her father was always in the basement of the manor working on his experiments and her mother… well, she was never around much either.

her father had always had an unhealthy obsession with mutants, all his paperwork that jiwoo had read in secret had alwaysalwaysalways been about mutants and what made them tick. he had always been determined to make a mutant out of an ordinary human, and that should have been her first red flag, but no… jiwoo had always just thought it was an innocent obsession just like her obsession with plants, she never thought that he’d ever actually try and do what he dreamed.

and that was where she had gone wrong.

jiwoo had been ten years old when she first made the mistake of removing her earphones in the dead of night, irritated by the way they were pressed against her skull as she laid against her pillow. it’d been the first and only time that jiwoo would hear the screams resonating from the basement of the manor, the basement that she was forbidden from entering without her father by her side. but she had been too scared to even move, the high pitched screams seeming to rattle jiwoo’s very bones and all the young child could do was roll over, plug her ears up with her earphone again, and pull the covers up over her head.

that was all she could do… right? right.

SCENE I, PART III

the pain in my throat is getting worse, but i’ll try and hide it

her mother died on the 10th of december, 2007 and jiwoo could still remember the day that she woke up to find her father sobbing hysterically over the woman’s cold corpse.

she’d died of a heart attack according to both her father and the coroner, but it still left ten year old jiwoo dumbfounded. how could her mother have died so suddenly when she had been perfectly fine the day before? she and jiwoo had played soccer together and danced to her mother’s favourite song, they’d laughed and had fun and jiwoo had felt loved again for the first time in a long time… how could that be ruined so quickly?

the last jiwoo had seen of her mother that night had been when she had spotted the woman and her father entering the basement of their manor.

…those screams that she had heard the night of her mother’s death… they couldn’t have been her… right?

jiwoo could remember shaking her head free of those thoughts, not wanting to even think about what it meant if those screams had been coming from her mother.

the funeral had been a private event, hosted on the grounds of the family manor (which, in itself, felt wrong because jiwoo knew how much her mother hated how closed off from the world they were on the manor grounds) with close family and friends. her mother’s grandparents had been enraged at the sight of of jiwoo staring soullessly at her mother’s casket, but they didn’t understand.

no one did, no one ever would.

SCENE II, PART I

again, i don’t have a voice. today, i hear the sound again

when she was seventeen, her father would miraculously pull himself out of the slump that he had been in for the past seven years. after her mother’s death, her father had completely given up on his love for science, he’d stopped going down to the basement as much as he once had, and, honestly? jiwoo was beginning to believe that he had been more depressed over his failed experiments than the death of her mother, his wife.

when her father started spending more time with her in her garden, something that her mother had helped her to grow because her mother had known just how much jiwoo loved plants and all things related to them, jiwoo knew she should have been worried. but no, she’d ignored her gut feeling (for what was perhaps the upteenth time in her life) she welcomed him back into her life with open arms.

that night, when she went to bed, she heard the basement generator turn on for the first time in months.

SCENE II, PART II

it’s ringing again, that sound. a crack has appeared on the frozen lack

the first time jiwoo ever entered her father’s basement was on her 18th birthday, a promise to show her around the room that she had never seen in her life to honour her becoming a woman.

the things that happened in the following moments had been etched into jiwoo’s memory for eternity; the memory of her father playfully asking her to lay down on the metal slab in the middle of the room and the feeling of anxiety that had rushed through her veins when he had strapped her ankles and wrists to the metal with the leather restraints was something that jiwoo would never forget. he’d just been playing around… he would never do anything to harm her right?

wrong.

it was with her dark eyes following the man as she anxiously pleaded with him to remove the restraints and let her go that she watched him turn on the multiple computers that sat atop on of the many desks in the room. but her pleads would fall on empty ears as her father turned around, looking at her with such a look that jiwoo was left wondering just where the hell her father had gone.

“your mother was a failure, but maybe you will make my dreams come true, my darling briar rose.”

SCENE II, PART III

i dumped myself into that lake, i killed my voice for you

the things that jiwoo had been forced to endear over the following months in that cursed basement was something that she would never wish on even her worst enemies. in those months, she had been forced to all different forms of torture; oxygen deprivation, abuse, if you could name it, she had probably been through it.

all in order for her supposed mutant gene to awaken.

in those months, jiwoo finally put two and two together. her father’s obsession had never been an innocent thing, it was a deadly thing that had torn their family apart, something that had killed her mother who, like jiwoo, had been subjected to the torture that would supposedly set of the mutant gene that lay dormant in all humans. “she gave herself over to me in order to save you,” her father had told her from the other side of the basement door. “that stupid woman. if she had just let me at you, she would still be alive now.”

that had been the first time jiwoo would cry over her mother’s death, she had cried herself to sleep that night. the truth of her mother’s death weighing too heavily on her young mind, the truth of what her mother had done for her.

it had all been too much.

SCENE II, PART IV

over the winter lake where i drowned, a thick ice has formed

it was on the 27th of september that her father’s dreams finally came true, on the same day that he died.

after months, weeks, days, hours and minutes of torture, jiwoo’s mind finally snapped. the sound that her father had let out when the computer let out a piercing beep, alerting him to a sudden change in his daughter’s very DNA, was another thing that would haunt jiwoo’s sleepless nights but his elation hadn’t last long, not long at all. for at the exact moment that the alarm set off, the very ground rumbled with jiwoo’s anger, resentment and pure, unadulterated hurt.

he hadn’t even looked scared as vines from her beloved garden broke through the basement walls to strangle him, to steal his breath from him just like he had her mother. he had laughed, screamed that his calculations about there always being an active mutant gene in third generation children being true, he had looked insane… more insane than he ever had in the past months.

he had laughed up until the moment he couldn’t laugh no more, up until the moment where his neck snapped and his body went limp in the vines that obeyed jiwoo’s ever command.

SCENE IV, PART I

even in my dreams, my pain is the same

she was eighteen when she moved to south korea to live with her grandparents, a few months after her families manor had burnt down in a ‘supposed arson attack’ and her father’s body was found burnt to the crisp.

nobody would ever know that she had set it on fire in fear of people finding out what she had done… what she become.

she felt so many new things, she could feel everything the plants around her felt, she could feel death when the plants in her grandparents house were being ignored, she felt it all…. and it scared her.

it didn’t take jiwoo long to hear about gumi international, she’d heard whispers other mutants that could be found if you knew where to look. her grandmother had been the one to tell her about it, tell her that it was a school in incheon for gifted children to go and hone their talents, she had told her of the mutants that went there and their abilities that scared some and frightened others. and god, how jiwoo wanted to be amongst them.

but the question is… would they accept her? someone who hadn’t been born a mutant but had had her abilities forced on her.

it was then that jiwoo would decide to fabricate a new life for her own. one that would completely cover up her old one and the trauma that she had been through.

one that would, hopefully, never be questioned.

SCENE IV, PART II

have i lost myself or have i gained you?

her name was briar rose min, she was twenty one, and student at gumi international while working a job as a florist on the side.

as far as the other students knew, briar rose had never had a family, she’d been raised in an orphanage in new zealand and moved to seoul when she was 15 after being adopted by an elderly couple and had gotten into gumi on a scholarship for photography, placing her in hellion.

min jiwoo was no more, she only returned when it was just her and the plants. the plants who knew everything, the plants who were jiwoo’s only true self.

or when it was late at night and she was, yet again, forced to face her demons. but that she could deal with personally and on her own, just like she did everything.

________

this is how the world ends… not with a bang, but with a whimper.

…let’s test that theory, shall we?

WHAT CAN THEY DO?

DEFINITION

POWER: agrokinesis (plant manipulation) DESCRIPTION: also known as botanokinesis or just plant manipulation, agrokinesis is the ability that allows holders to grow, destroy or just plain manipulate any and all plants, as the name suggests.

BOTANICAL COMMUNICATION: the user can communicate with all plant life either telepathically, through verbal speech, or through touching the plant physical. through her telepathic communication with plants, jiwoo is also able to order plants to physically move if she so desires.

PLANT EMPATHY: the ability to sense the overall well being and conditions of plants.

PLANT GENERATION: the holder can generate plants whether by drawing them from already existing plants or by manifesting them anywhere they want.

PLANT GROWTH: the user can influence and accelerate the growth of plants.

CHLOROKINETIC COMBAT: the user can utilize plant manipulation with their physical combat. can also use plants as a means of defence in combat, as well as being able to move plants through her plant telepathy.

WEAKNESSES

POWERLESS in areas devoid of plant life

highly susceptible to mutants with FIRE or ICE MANIPULATION mutations.

TIME LIMIT: jiwoo can only use her mutation in physical combat for a total of twenty minutes before she becomes physically and mentally fatigued from controlling the plant matter.

WEAKNESS: along with being susceptible to the elements of fire and ice, ordering plants to move telepathically is extremely mentally taxing and causes jiwoo to be rendered defenceless quicker than she would like to admit.

RANGE: jiwoo is only able to control and use plants within a 30 foot radius whilst in combat. outside of combat, she is only able to communicate and empathize with plants within a ten foot radius of her.

DID YOU KNOW?

jiwoo was not born a mutant, it was through tortorous experiments that she became one.

#rmaccepted #jiwoorm #hellion #park chaeyoung #rose park #blackpink

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arsenicolada · 7 years

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I have seen that 'story' go around a lot and I still don't know what it is. WHAT is My Immortal??

Ok buddy get yourself comfortable cause this is gonna be a long one:

Let’s go all the way back to 2006, when the internet was just becoming a thing to young people. Back when a majority of the websites we know today were either just starting out or just starting to pick up in popularity, including fanfiction.net. A lot of fanfictions had already filled the archives, both bad and good, but one fanfiction in particular caught people’s attention almost immediately. And it was ‘My Immortal’ by “Tara Gilesbie”, or ‘XXXbloodyrists666XXX’ as was her username on the website. Supposedly taking place in the world of Harry Potter, this particular fanfic gets to a point where, had it not been for the actual characters’ names being present, you can’t really tell what it’s supposed to be referencing as it has very little acknowledgement of the source material’s canon. The story’s main focus is “Tara’s” self-insert OC, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way. Also known as Enoby, Egogy, Evony, Ibony, or just Tara. To anyone who has only heard of ‘My Immortal’, it just sounds like your typical run of the mill “mary sue” fanfiction. But what made ‘My Immortal’ stand above the rest were three things: the butchered grammar, the author’s seemingly obsession with the gothic subculture, and the mary sue herself.

The grammar is terrible, there is just no other way to put it. “Tara” had a very distinct way of writing, which was better exemplified in her ‘author’s notes’, her little thoughts that she always puts at the very beginning of each chapter or sometimes at the end. And other times in the middle of her story, to either talk back to the ‘flamerz’, go on about how much she loves a band she mentioned, or point out a pun she made. And it all greatly resembles someone sending a text message:

“AN: STOP flaming! if u flam it menz ur a prep or a posr! Da only reson Dumbledeor swor is coz he had a hedache ok an on tup of dat he wuz mad at dem 4 having sexx! PS im nut updating umtil I get five good revoiws!”

That kind of style is present throughout the whole story. Granted the actual chapters have better spelling, but the way it’s put together is all the same. And it actually worsens the further it goes to the near point of illegibility. In fact, legend has it that the story’s grammar was apparently so bad that fanfiction.net deleted it due to the sudden drop of intelligence on the site. No one knows if that’s true, most likely not as that seems like quite a stretch. However, it was actually deleted, perhaps by Tara herself, though she later reposted it.

But the real kicker is exactly how the fanfic interprets the source material. Hogwarts is no longer a school of wizardry divided by bestowed houses, but is now a more high school-based setting where everyone is divided by cliques, though only three are present. Goths, preps, and posers:

•Goths are the good kids. They’re the only ones who understand this dark and depressing world better than anyone else, and shows their individuality by shopping at Hot Topic together and listening to the same exact bands. They’re also half vampires for some reason. And they’re all part of Slytherin even if they’re originally from another house in the actual story.

•Preps are the mean kids. They just like, totally don’t understand goths so they’re like so mean to them and call them scary and stuff. They’re all just bitchy and are like totally jealous of the goths and only shop at stores like American Eagle and only listen to crappy music like Hilary Duff. And all those stupid preps are in Gryffindor.

•Posers are just goth wannabes who listen to Avril Lavigne and probably don’t even know who Good Charlotte is. What houses are they even in, no one knows and no one gives a shit. They’re mostly there just to show the reader what being goth is really all about.

And above them all is the only true goth, the queen of Mary Sues herself, Ebony. Now the definition of what makes a “mary sue” has been drastically skewed over the years, and probably shouldn’t even be relevant anymore, but if you at the very least want a true-to-heart example, Ebony is the way to go. Tara’s obsession with being goth is greatly reflected in this character. She loves bands like My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Evanescence (who wrote the song ‘My Immortal’ which this fanfic is named after). She shops at Hot Topic and wears the type of clothing that any 13 year old goth wishes they could. In fact, Ebony’s outfits are always described in great detail and takes up to almost paragraphs in every chapter:

“For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow.”

And trust me when I say they only get longer. It isn’t just the outfit descriptions though, the whole entire story is written in Ebony’s favor. Like a Hot Topic being in Hogsmede despite it being a nonmagical store (not to mention being an american chain) and a club where Ebony’s favorite bands just happen to be playing concerts in despite being muggle bands. And how cutting, underage drinking, and smoking is glamorized as being “dark” and “beautiful” and has no repercussions whatsoever. And how there’s no uniforms so Ebony can show off her over the top wardrobe.

Since Ebony is the main character and this is a fanfiction, all of Tara’s favorite characters from the Harry Potter world are Ebony’s gothic friends and accompany her in Slytherin, even if they’re canonly in other houses as I’ve mentioned previously. And all of Tara’s hated characters are Ebony’s enemies, and are depicted as either nasty preps or a bunch of posers that belong in Gryffindor. It doesn’t stop there though, as all the male characters have a thing for Ebony because she is just so sexy and looks exactly like Amy Lee. But Ebony only focuses on her two main love interests, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, who now goes by Vampire Potter because he likes the taste of human blood.

This is all just the very basics of the fanfiction, there are plenty of more absurdities you’ll stumble upon the further you read. Like Voldemort and the Death Eaters disguising themselves as My Chemical Romance, Snape video taping Ebony taking a bath, characters from different sources making cameos like Marty Mcfly, the list goes on.

But what truly, TRULY made ‘My Immortal’ such a phenomenon is that no one knew if it was legit. There were two sides to how people felt about it, those who thought it was a real story and Tara at the time was another young angsty teen who had just been introduced to the internet (which would explain the terrible grammar and botched sex scenes), and those who thought the story was one big joke written by a genius troll who made Tara up as a persona, which was extremely plausible since everything about the story was so wrong and completely blown out of proportion that there was no possible way someone could’ve come up with it and been completely serious. But people on the other side have argued that they’d have a very, VERY dedicated troll.

One of the biggest factors to their argument was Tara’s friend Raven, who not only had her own OC named Willow that was featured in the story, but also had a helping hand in writing it. She even had her own fanfiction.net account called ‘bloodytearz666’. Raven was Tara’s creative filter, as she was in charge of spelling and grammar and came up with some plot points in the story. At least until chapter 16 when the two apparently had a falling out and Tara killed off Willow, but later brought Willow back as an apology. So this troll would’ve had to not only make Tara, but also make Raven as a means to support their persona, unless Raven was created by a second troll. But both of those trolls would’ve had to write other stories pre and post ‘My Immortal’, as well as manage several social media accounts, which is a whole lot of effort just for the sake of making a joke.

Since the story was made, many people have come forward claiming they are the mysterious Tara, with promises of more material and continuations of the infamous story. So no one knew for sure who Tara is or her whereabouts. Until now.

After years and years of shrouded mystery, “Tara” has finally logged back into her more than decade old account and revealed herself to be Rose Christo. As it turns out, she co-wrote ‘My Immortal’ with Raven, who was actually a real person and her friend, during a very hard time in her life. And it wasn’t for a reason most might have thought. She revealed that she purposely made it as bad as possible so she could gain enough publicity to find her younger brother that she had been separated from.

She even wrote a memoir about it that is set to be published in 2018, which you can read about here.

You can also read the fanfiction itself if you’re interested here. Even if it did turn out to be a fake, it’s still a very humorous read, and very interesting since we now know its backstory.

EDIT: So as it turns out the whole thing with Rose was a hoax and the real Tara is still out there. Waiting, longing, in a dark alley with her hand stretched out so that I may one day shake it.

#bunny-carrothunter #pirate fabbles #my immortal

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storiesbyaya · 5 years

Text

Story of A Hero- 23

{First}{Previous}{Mobile}{Next} Jazz was sitting on Will and the twins’ table monday at Lunch. She held a mysterious cardboard box on her lap and, for a moment, Will was confused…

Until he saw the familiar green lightning bolt logo. Instead of confused, he became excited, and nearly bounded over to the box. Jazz grinned at him, but continued to hold it close even as he approached. “So… Weird thing, but my sister came outta her room this morning. She gave me this. Made me promise not to let anyone but you touch what’s in it. And then, she ate breakfast with me and walked me to the bus. I don’t know what this thing is, and I don’t care. But I know you did something, and because of it, I got to see my sister, and hear her laugh and stuff. So whatever this is? You take good care of it.” She spoke with a serious tone, yet also seemed happy. Will was happy for her.

He nodded. “I know you said you don’t care to know, but… that box likely has my parents’ research,” he explained. “Oh,” Jazz said, understanding blooming on her face. She gave him a cheerful smile. “Explains why it’s so important… And why she’d only trust you with it.” Even though she didn’t know Will, as far as Jazz was aware. He held the box with the same care she had. “She trusted you with it, too. I think that’s a good thing?” “I think so too.” Their conversation ended when Percy and Lily arrived. She rejoined her table, and they ate together. It was hard to concentrate through the rest of the day, with the anticipation and fear all welling up at once. What could it contain?

-x-x-x

The box contained an external harddrive, as well as a note, written in green glitter pen. William decided to start with that first.

“Fun fact,” it read “A friend of mine has ‘Anaesthesia Awareness’. Waking up during the herein described procedures caused damage to his Adex. (Read up on subject KX-023) This break is what allowed us to break free.

I believe in you, William. Let the mistakes of our past become the tools to build a better future.

Tessa Nickols (xxx-xxx-xxxx. Let me know if you need any more help. Give my number to Kat too. I miss that brat.)

PS- For privacy reasons, many names and faces have been redacted. Hope you understand.

PPS- Hard drive password is your sister’s middle name.”

Diana. The password was Diana. William wondered if that was done by Tessa or by his parents, but he only wondered briefly.

The amount of stuff here was… Intimidating. He didn’t even know where to start. He had to take a deep breath and center himself to even try to tackle this. Maybe… weed out the unnecessary stuff? Grant applications. Letters to investors. A bunch of other money related things. That was irrelevant to his studies. It went into a special folder. Just in case. Facility descriptions… As the document began with nothing but maps of the facility, William was going to ignore it, until he noticed that there were several pages. The building only had four floors, if he remembered correctly. There should only be four pages, if it was nothing but maps.

“As this is a foreign field of research, much of our equipment has required upgrades, and some custom equipment has been needed to advance our research.”

The section below the maps continued on, describing what kind of upgrades and changes had been made to existing equipment. It was all incredibly fascinating to William, but one very specific section caught his attention.

It described, in great detail, a special instrument created to measure and observe resonance.

“Tests have revealed that Adex exude a special energy. It has been named “resonance” due to the way it reacts within human subjects. With this, resonance can be observed and measured. This advance has increased the success rate of forced symbiosis to 98.7% Forcing symbiosis with two subjects who’s resonances do not match almost always results in MEIR-Type entities, and/or loss of one or both subjects. Forcing symbiosis with a subject that exudes no resonance at all results in failure 100% of the time.”

“So resonance has… types. And this thing they made shows them in different colors,” he said to himself, and scribbled this fact into a notebook. To his surprise, Imshael hopped onto his desk. “Hello,” they greeted, before curling into a ball near the keyboard. “I want to help.” “You… want to… help?” William repeated, confused. The words themselves were not confusing, but rather the ‘who’ they were spoken by. Even after the first time he’d heard Imshael during training, they’d still stayed so quiet Will almost forgot they COULD speak. “Well, yes. Bayesh and I feel I may have answers to questions you might have. I am, after all, an Adex. You’d assume I would know a few things about myself.” “I think assuming that would be kind of silly. Humans have to learn about their bodies, I’m sure you guys do, too. But...unlike us, there is no school for adex.” “True,” they said, swishing their tail to and fro, “But you learn things with age. Like the fact that resonance’s color matches the color of the adex itself. The color of the thing within you. It also tends to dictate what kind of abilities we will grant. I’ve come to notice white adex mean white light, for instance.” William scribbled that down, and gave her a few small pets as thanks.

Then, he continued to read.

None of it was nearly as interesting as the resonance testing equipment, and most of it made him grumble in disgust. The schematics for Meir containment cells. The dampeners that kept the ‘subjects’ from using their powers. All kinds of resonance sapping weaponry.

“Oh. Hey, maybe that could be useful for… I don’t know, fighting bad guys?” Harley suggested. For a moment, William considered keeping the documents and then sending them to Angel. She’d know what to do with them, and how to make them into weapons that could be used to fight metahumans and meirs without the need for HeroNet. But William turned to Tessa’s letter once more, and sighed. “We promised we’d never let anyone else see this research, Harley. I’m not going to betray Tess’ trust…” William reminded her. Harley looked down, and would probably frown if her muzzle would allow. “Oh. My apologies. Shall I leave?” Imshael asked. William looked down to them, then back to the screen, and then to Harley. “Immy’s technically not another person… They’re an Adex.” While true, William gave a sigh. Technicalities didn’t sit well with him. But he had Tessa’s number, so he decided to ask her.

[Will] Hi Tessa, this is William Kray. We received the hard drive safely, but my father’s Adex wants to help. You said not to let anyone else see what’s on this drive.

[Peony] Oh! A wild Will! Right down to business, I see. Call me Peony, kay? Wow. She answered pretty fast. But Jazz did say that she never left her room, so she likely always had her phone.

[Peony] Would Kat trust this Adex? Knowing who your parents are, I would say there’s no one more trustworthy. But ultimately, I kept this stuff safe FOR your sister.

[Will] Right. Thank you, Peony.

Kat… She wouldn’t be angry if William let Imshael see the data. But she WOULD be angry if it was used to hurt anyone. So, ultimately, Wiliam chose to put a pin in it and continue to read.

He moved on to the folder that contained actual test results.

“KY subjects?” William read out loud. There were twenty entries, but no indication what the KY stood for. William had to examine them, and after a few, he noticed the pattern.

“These are… Older than me. The subjects were all adults… This must be the initial testing for forced symbiosis… Look, this person is deceased,” he pointed out. The other four sets of eyes looked to where he was pointing.

“Of course. Adults can’t fuse with us. The necessary changes can not be done to an already fully formed body. That it took them twenty people to notice,” Imshael grumbled. “Well… I guess… The good news is that they only resorted to using children because nothing else would work… Granted they could have just… Not continued their research on forced fusion.” “Not every question needs to be answered,” Harley agreed. “Like… I don’t actually want to know how many bugs I can fit in my mouth?” While Imshael and Harley continued to list off examples of things they did not need to know the answer to, William skimmed through the rest of the KY files, but they were ultimately more of the same.

He moved on to the KX subjects. Those he knew. “Kx-01 subject. 12 year old female. Volunteer, informed consent (See risk waiver) blah blah…” William read out loud, frowning. “This girl became their first Meir… But they ‘learned a great deal about Meirs, how to contain them, and how to destroy them’ thanks to her… I… Don’t…” William had to step away for a moment. Destroy. They meant kill. Murder. End a life, maybe even two. He couldn’t bear to read about the tests they did on the meir. He closed the file and moved on. More Meirs. More deaths. Some children saved at the cost of their Adex being destroyed. Few successes, until... “This one’s different. KX-14,” Will eventually said, his brow relaxing from the ever deepening frown he’d had previously. “Different how?” Imshael asked. “Successful symbiosis with ANB72… Result, the ability to mimic the abilities of other Adex. KX14’s ability has allowed us to predict the type of abilities an adex will have-”...Basically, this says she’s the reason we know Adex colors correspond to what kind of power they’ll give. She also… ‘claims to see a faint colorful glow’ coming from the Adex.’... She could… See resonance?” Though Harley was wagging her tail enthusiastically, Imshael showed no sign of interest. Their tail just… swished lazily. “Immy, there’s people who can see Resonance! Isn’t that cool?” he asked, putting his hands near them, but they didn’t move. “I suppose?” they said. William frowned. “You knew already.” “Yes. Sorry. I see you’re excited. I do not mean to detract from your excitement.” Imshael’s apathy aside, William continued, noticing that there was a small note at the end of kx-14’s file. They weren’t the only person to see Resonance, but it took until subject 19 to realize that this phenomena was a real thing and not a stress induced hallucination or something of the sort. From there, there was a lot more successes. 22, however, was an outlier.

Succesful at first, the stress and isolation turned them into a Meir. “Dr. Evergarden decided to use the Meir to test out the powers of successful subjects, beginning project Nightmeir.” It linked to the project, but this William refused to click. He continued.

Kx-023. William picked up Peony’s note and looked again. She’s mentioned this subject, told him to look.

“Subject awoke during procedure. Panic caused a small scuffle until he could be sedated again. No lives lost, but Adex suffered damage. See Incident reports.” And dated later, a note had been added stating :”Subject releases small amounts of Resonance even with Dampeners. Without dampeners, subject can not control his ability and destroys anything he touches. (Re: Request- Wall repair in B2-B wing,)” And a little later still, “Subject experiences blackening of veins in hands (What??) Sent to medical examination immediately, but no medical reasons have been found. He is perfectly healthy. Maybe this is caused by the Adex damage? Continue monitoring.”

William looked back to the floor plan, on an inkling that this wall that needed repairs might be one that resulted in the collapse.

Unfortunately, he realized that he was not an architect and couldn’t really figure it out, so he returned to his reading.

There were few deviations. Meirs, successes… He could tell that it was around there that they’d managed to get the Resonance measuring machine working. Hell, even the number of consenting subjects rose the closer he got to his sister’s number.

There wasn’t much to learn, but he did notice a naming pattern for the Adex, and understood they were named by their color. From there, he compiled a list of Adex colors and their abilities… But there was one strange code he didn’t understand. Some adex codes started with an “A”, but they were few. 14, 24,72…

Wait.

72? 72 was…

Kat!

#SOAH 23 #Story of a hero 23 #SOAH #Story of hero

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old-long-john · 7 years

Text

Jonathan Steinberg’s Fathoms Deep Interview

I’ve written up the whole of Jon’s interview here. It’s summarised, but I tried to keep the wording as close to what he actually said as I could where it made sense in this format. It’s loooong, so buckle up kids.

Jon said he’s very proud of the show and he misses the people involved terribly. He thinks that if judged by the idea of in 6 or 7 years watching the show back and wondering whether they’d feel they did right by it, they would feel that way. This was the show they wanted to make, which not a lot of people get to feel.

Liz said a lot of the actors they’ve spoken to feel the same way, which Jon said makes him feel good, because the actors are in a very specific position with respect to the story (being both inside and outside of it), so their opinions are important to him as a section of the audience.

They talked about the long list of titles he has (co-creator, writer, producer, wrangler of pirates, ‘the grim reaper’ - for those ‘your character’s dead, sorry’ phonecalls) and how he’s now also a director after 4x10, and how that was for him?

He said it was a weird process to go from writer and showrunner to director. He talked about how there’s so much you’re trying to control from one point of view, but there’s so much that happens after the fact with all the visual effects, and he wasn’t sure how much he was ready for and how much he didn’t know he didn’t know. The speed and complexity was difficult, because the last week they spent shooting two simultaneous units for the ship battle, that even the more experienced people thought was a lot to juggle. Ultimately he felt it gave him a lot of control over making things either work or not work, throughout the entire process from conception to finished product, and he enjoyed it.

His favourite part to direct was the forest scene with Toby and Luke, because a lot of the technical mishigas falls away and it’s just storytelling and performance. It was great to work with the two of them in a scene that felt like it was working. He said they were both exhausted, but they were really willing to just go with it.

The first day they shot the final library scene with Schmitz, and JPK, and Harriet Walters, which was daunting, because Harriet Walters is a pretty big name to be the first person you’re trying to direct. He said it took him about 8 hours to film something that should probably only have taken 4, but everyone was very forgiving.

Then they talked about the Dragon Speech. They thanked him for it and said how much it’s meant to a lot of people, and that they’ve had a lot of correspondence about that.

Daphne said they’ve seen Flint go through a lot, and they asked Jon where he thought Flint was in season 4, because they thought he’d transformed to a point where all of his parts felt integrated, and while he wasn’t necessarily in a ‘good’ place, he was in a healthier one.

Jon agreed, and said where he understood him to be was as a guy who had run all but the last 100 yards of a marathon and could see the finish line, and every step he took got exponentially harder, and it was just an onslaught of obstacles and traps and problems that were trying to prevent him for getting there. He could figure out a way to get through every one of them, but it was his best friend who would be the one he couldn’t get past, which felt right. That was the core of the story they were trying to tell, and so they felt like they could build the details from there and even if some of them missed, at least they were still telling the right story at its core.

He does think it’s very different from the first 3 seasons, because in a sense the big dramatic question isn’t Flint’s. It had been, but in season 4 the big dramatic question was Silver’s, which was always going to happen in some respect. He doesn’t think that backgrounds Flint, because if anything he’s finally the guy we’re fully rooting for, but there’s a clarity to it that makes it feel different.

On the idea of Flint being fully integrated with himself, they asked whether Jon feels like Silver truly sees Flint at the end, or is he seeing an older version of Flint. Because Flint gives that speech and then Silver brings it back to rage. Jon thinks this has always been two narratives interacting with each other, finding ways to embrace each other and appear as one story: one Silver’s, one Flint’s. In that moment they are in some respects as close as they’ve ever been, and in some the most opaque they’ve ever been to each other, depending on whose story you’re watching in that moment.

He talked about the classics and how a professor distilled The Odyssey and The Iliad into two ideas: that Achilles is a character for whom glory and glory seeking is the ultimate end, and Odysseus is a character who just wants to get home, and in the tension of that is in some respects all of drama. That’s always been buried into the show. What clarifies that conversation they’re having is that it is the most distilled version of that. There’s the guy who you can tell all you want to about government and cause and good, but he has a really good argument that he loves his wife and just wants to go home, and nothing you can say will make that not true. And the guy sitting across from him can see a coward and a guy who’s giving away the world, and nothing you could tell him would make that not true. For two people who are almost indistinguishable at this point, to have this space where they’re disconnected be the thing that separates them felt right, and like the story was resonating with itself in all the right ways.

He said in some ways the whole season was very deliberately working towards that scene, and at any points at which they were confused they were always looking forward to this place they were trying to get to and which they knew how they wanted to feel.

Talking about knowing the ending from early on, at the beginning they knew it was a story about a guy standing on a rock in the middle of the ocean and shaking his fist at civilisation, and eventually he started to make that mean something and terrify them and win, and that he would be undone by the least likely complication. A guy who could take on an empire and could change the world is undone by nobody. That’s why it was always important to him that they didn’t know where Silver came from, because it made him nobody, and not important. There’s no twist to how he’s connected to the story, he’s just a guy.

Daphne said that except he’s everybody for Flint, which Jon agreed with. There’s a strange catalytic reaction between them, but to us and the story he’s just a guy who was the undoing of a giant. And they felt like that was somehow baked into the story of Treasure Island too. And thinking about it that way made the forest scene feel right.

Daphne said she’d had a conversation with someone, that also connected back to Vane, that Flint could fight an empire and civilisation, but the one thing in the world that brought him down is something that we all have: this sense of ‘I want to protect my people’, and that was the thing that brings down the revolution, rather than the large scary things.

Jon said the conflict between Flint and Silver was extremely internal. We’re watching Silver become Flint, so that Flint can have a version of himself that he can have this conflict with and finally reach some conclusion with. That also felt right that ‘just a guy’ was also a human being and that in order for that conflict within Flint to be resolved all of the complications need to get stripped away until he’s staring at himself in a mirror, and the one thing that’s different is just this one awful traumatic event that isn’t there and it creates this massively different outcome.

He said that if the mechanics of it are working properly then there should be a lot of different ways to look at it and hopefully it does have facets and is open to be interpreted.

Daphne said she thinks that’s true and they succeeded in that, because a lot of viewers have both analysed it intellectually, but have also on a personal level experienced that conversation in different ways.

Jon said he would argue that it is universal to feel disenfranchised to some extent, and there is no perfect citizen, and that that feeling, whether big or small or defining or not, is there and a component of being a human being. That’s something that he felt was an important aspect of telling the right story, when you can reduce it back to something that should be relatable to anyone. They wanted that last episode to be something of a closing statement to the argument, and they knew before they wrote it that that would be the meat of it, of trying to put a period at the end of the sentence.

Daphne said it feels like the launching pad for the torture Silver will have that we won’t see in BS, but is the beginning of an experience that might lead to him feeling compelled to go looking for the treasure in TI.

Jon said that the idea that the treasure was cursed in the book was something he’d forgotten and which snuck up on him, and in the process of constructing that scene became the clearest thing in the world, that that was Flint’s curse. The curse was ‘you think you’ve figured this thing out, but you haven’t, and at some point you will feel unfulfilled by shutting the world out and by choosing to make domesticity the only priority you will feel unfulfilled and then you will come back looking for this thing’. So Flint has the last word in that moment, and that curse is now meaningful; it isn’t ghosts and skeletons, it’s a different spin. On a show about domesticity, it is a bit dark, but also something that suggests what Silver’s story is going forward, which is that he’s happy until he’s not, and eventually he knows why he’s not happy and he’ll always remember the moment that he made that choice. And now the book is a different book.

Daphne then segued from that into a question about reusing terminology, and how much that’s specific and deliberate. Particularly ‘mattering’. When Flint talked about mattering she was immediately reminded of season 2 when Flint said ‘where else would you wake up in the morning and matter?’. And so we go into this scene already knowing that that’s important to Silver on some level, whether he understands it or not.

Jon said the hope and dream when creating this is that it was music, and that even if it’s not always thought through in that way it should feel right and sound right. And what that frequently means is repetition, and just a feeling of ‘I’ve heard this before but now it means something different’. Sometimes it’s very specifically intended to tie itself back to an earlier conversation, but sometimes it’s not.

He said that it’s so gratifying when people notice those things, because he often has that feeling of ‘you’re working too hard, nobody’s going to notice that’, so when they do and find other pieces he didn’t even know were there it’s very fun. As a way of understanding authorship, sometimes you’re aware of the things you’re authoring and sometimes you’re not, and sometimes it takes an audience or a reader to put it all together, which makes it a communal experience. He finds it fascinating the things your head will put together without you knowing it, and when people ask if it was on purpose he knows he wasn’t consciously aware of it, but he doesn’t know that it was an accident either, and he thinks it’s hard to write without that, without things just coming out of the ether. He thinks great writers are more aware of that though, and he sometimes feels like it’s scary because if you don’t know where it comes from then it’s hard to make it happen, and it’s hard to go through a process that you feel like at any point might just go away.

Daphne asked about categories of things that have been in the story from the beginning, that have many layers to them and season 4 brought new layers to. In particular, darkness. They brought up in the roundtable podcast the use of it in the dragons speech, and that it was interesting in a story that talks so much about the duality within people of darkness and light that they almost got flipped in the dragons speech. That when Flint says that in the darkness there is discovery and possibility and freedom, it felt like a reframing of the idea of darkness and how it relates to people (though it’s not always been dark is bad and light is good in this story before that point).

Jon said in the exercise of hindsight, of looking at what those last few episodes are, there are at least a couple of times where the same word is used in different contexts to mean very different things. He noticed it first in the ending where Rackham talked about ‘truth’, which at first felt like a mistake in post-production, because it sounded like ‘it doesn’t matter if the story’s true, but it matters if the story’s true in the end’. But after thinking about it he doesn’t think that was a mistake, because what Rackham’s talking about is that truth in storytelling in terms of historical verifiability is different from truth in art, and the use of the word in two different contexts is meaningful.

When Flint is talking about ‘darkness’ in season 3 in general, he’s talking the thing that is a part of a person’s psyche that will force you to do things or tempt you to do things that your best self would not want to do, and that that is a danger inherent to the human condition. When he’s talking about darkness with Silver in the end he is talking about it in the artificial sense. Very specifically he’s talking about the casting of shadows, which is not darkness, it’s the absence of light. His very specific construction of it as a thing created by people to achieve an end and to create the appearance of something that is bad or something that is to be avoided, when in reality there should be light shining there, is different.

He said is is potentially confusing, but at this point he thinks they’ve hopefully earned the right a little bit to have some of those themes that are developing get complicated and to embrace the contradictions. He felt that early in the season as a storyteller he could feel these contradictions piling up, and he thought if you were Flint and you were aware of narrative, you would be aware of it too. The closer you get to destination, the more the contradictions pile up, and that’s how you know that the rhythm is building to something. Daphne pointed out that that’s exactly what Flint said to Silver.

Jon said that he thinks the definitions of ‘darkness’ is one of these things, and he thinks they’re distinguishable in a meaningful way, and in the distinction between them there is story and more content to what he’s saying.

Daphne said it felt to her like the difference between internal reality and the story that is told by someone. That internal darkness is a thing that you struggle with, and the casting of shadows is the not true story that civilisation is telling. Jon then said that, to clean it up a little bit, the absence of light is different from the obstruction of light. That there should be light there and there wants to be light there, but someone is standing in the way. That’s different than a place in which there never was light, and that’s partly the distinction Flint is trying to draw. That there are things that are not inherent to human nature that are portrayed as dark, but they don’t have to be.

Daphne said that one of her favourite things about season 4 is the way Flint arrived at a point where he managed to take his own pain and anger and generalise it in that way, where it encompassed even the people being told to be afraid of the dragons. That he had reached a stage where he had a generosity even to the people who are part of civilisation, who were also being controlled by the casting of shadows.

Jon said it’s the closest thing to an explicit acknowledgement that everyone there, despite their differences and different agendas and circumstances, shares some common experience, which is having felt like they were in that space, and that was a component of the full stop they were trying to create at the end of the argument.

Daphne then talked about backstories, and people coming to terms with their inciting traumas and their legends, and they way some characters build those legends and some decidedly don’t, and Silver’s a case where the legend is built for him. She asked how Jon felt that related to Silver and his lack of backstory.

Jon said that obviously he must have one, because everyone does, and that when he watches it the clear implication is that Silver’s is awful, and if the story’s going out of its way to suggest it’s unspeakable, considering the things we have spoken about, he as an audience member is willing to take Silver’s word for it. If you’re invested in that character and you understand where all the norms are set for the show, for someone to say ‘I can’t say it out loud’ suggests that it really is awful. They played with versions of what it could be, but the moment it’s named it becomes less scary, and there might be an instinct to explain it and rationalise it or suggest it was his fault or someone else’s fault or that ‘it could never happen to me’. It was the ‘it could never happen to me’ that’s the most destructive to the story. It had to feel like he was everyone, and that required him to be no-one at the same time. You can see in him what you need to.

He said that from the first frame of season 4 there is a point at which these two guys aren’t connected, and it’s clearly Flint’s concern, and on some level Silver’s awareness. Jon felt it was meta and interesting that the point at which they were not connected is how they feel about story and how they feel about their obligations to it, their place in it, the burden of it. They just don’t agree that there is some need to create stories to explain things, and that ultimately is the death of their relationship. Because they have that discontinuity between them, that is the thread that unravels the sweater. They felt like they were naming the thing you didn’t know you were looking for a name for, which was the space between them and not specifically who did what to Silver when he was a kid.

Daphne said that she’s said in podcasts before that if the show says ‘horror’ and ‘I’m not gonna tell you any more’ that she’s going to go to all sorts of dark horrible places in her imagination with that, especially if it’s a backstory so it possibly involves a childhood. It brings out all of her personal fears about what people can do to each other. Jon said that it almost has to be that, when you stare into it. If anything specific comes out of that it starts to diminish its impact, because then you can’t assign your own fears to it, which are always going to be scarier than anything he could create.

They then talked about the concept of introspection and how Silver of all people, who is so good at understanding others, is the only one who can’t do it. All the characters have their own way of relating to and telling their backstories, but he’s the only one who can’t do it. Jon said it suggests the horror from another direction. That whatever happened was so horrible that it broke his ability to exist within his story. There is something therapeutic about existing within a story, and something that is normal and part of the human condition to find a place within a story where you feel like you make sense, and whatever it was that happened to him that made him incapable of reconciling that, that is his trauma; his backstory was that he was removed from his own story. Then his curse is that he is stuck in someone else’s story, that he never wanted to be in, but can’t get out of.

Then they moved on to Max. Daphne said Jon had asked her a while ago if she was suggesting that Max is the secret protagonist of Black Sails, so she asked him the same question (mostly joking). Jon said there were a number of narratives, like they’d been talking about with Flint and Silver, and so to look for ‘a protagonist’ was maybe to miss a piece of the engineering. He said that when various people appear to be protagonists, it’s because they’re not following the same narrative within the show. To him, if there is another fully coherent narrative of a show he would watch that feels complete and meaningful, it’s Max’s.

He thinks she is the only one throughout who refused to allow violence to be an answer applied to an unsolvable problem. It’s been applied to her, but never by her. To have her be where she is by the end is meaningful in that sense, because there is a sense that she has in some way figured out an answer that no-one else can see. It’s baked into that ‘drowning the cat’ scene, that there’s a riddle being put to her, hiding inside what appears to be her being messed with, and she gets it right away. He thinks a lot of season 4 rests on that scene. To be put to a false choice of which part of a cycle are you, and for Max to figure out that there is a secret protagonist in that story (Marion) and that a woman who was tired of seeing her son being abused did one awful thing to be able to break that chain, and it was too late and for nothing and awful, but he liked Max being able to see the secret protagonist. And there is something happening that is applicable in the bigger story, that she is the one who is able to essentially figure out the way to get the show to end and to get everybody out of there.

He said it’s a constant recurring theme from everyone that they’re in these situations they don’t want to be in and if everyone is in a situation they don’t want to be in, it requires someone to step out of it, almost to step off the stage and see all four corners of it, in order to find a solution.

Daphne then talked about rewatching since season 4 and how certain things feel different knowing the end. She said the scene in ep 2 where she’s begging Eleanor to leave with her and says ‘I will never ever leave you’ felt significant in relation to Max and the story as a whole, because she’s saying it to Eleanor, but Eleanor is Nassau in a lot of ways, and it was almost like it was quiet but Max had a commitment to Nassau that perhaps exceeded everyone.

Jon said she’s the only one who made that connection that the conversation that was running throughout season 4 was a bit of a fantasy, that question of ‘can you leave civilisation?’. It comes with you and is a part of you and to separate from it is temporary at best, and Max’s arc is a story about a woman who is abused by it, who thinks she can run away from it, who gets trapped in it to the point where it looks like it will be her end, but then learns how to tame it. She’s the only one really trying to tame it. Everyone else is trying to defeat it or kill it or separate from it. She’s the only one standing there with the chair and the whip, trying to figure out how to get it to do what she wants and acknowledging that it’s always going to be bigger and stronger than she is, but that it is manipulable.

Daphne talked about how Max parallels with so many characters, some that seem to be two sides of the same coin and some that don’t even seem to have a relationship to each other. She thinks the people that Max was textually most paralleled to were Vane, especially in the beginning and at the end where she talks about slavery with Grandma Guthrie in a similar way to how Vane did, and Silver obviously because they meet in the beginning and were both looking for angles. But she keeps thinking about Vane saying ‘give us your submission and we will give you the comfort you need’ and she thinks Max found the way between those two things, which seem like two ends of a spectrum. When she was telling Grandma Guthrie near the end of 4x10 the things she couldn’t give her but what she could offer instead, she found a way not to submit but also to get her way.

Jon said part of what feels like ‘Max’s Story’ is a series of compromises and that in season 3 she starts to suffocate under the weight of them. Everything feels like a compromise that just leads to a more unpleasant compromise behind it, but where she is able to break through is when she realises that there are certain things you plant flags around, and that in a story about a series of compromises it’s actually the moment she refuses to in which everything cinches for her. She refuses to create a situation that is exclusive of Anne and refuses to accede to every demand that is put upon her.

He also thinks that it makes sense to him as a kind of 3D shape, and that if you look at it in a certain light it looks like she harmonises with Vane and with Silver, but it doesn’t require turning the light very much for it to look like she is in Flint’s story; that she is abused and traumatised for who she is and what she is and has to figure out a way to shake her fist at civilisation, but come up with different answers about how to do it. And you don’t have to work that hard for her to look a lot like Anne, which is text in seasons 2 and 3. And it’s text in season 4 that she is literally in Eleanor’s story, just 8 episodes behind; living the same choose your own adventure story and trying to figure out a way to get to a different ending. Part of the reason therefore that she feels central for him is that she exists in the middle of a venn diagram in which there are meaningful pieces of everyone. And that’s part of the reason it felt right that she’s the one left standing.

Liz talked about a discussion in the round table podcast about the world of the immortal myths and legends and the mortals of Nassau, and how Max was one of the mortals whose story was very big on its own, but was also so much hers, as opposed to say Flint or Silver’s which impacted so many other people on such massive levels of civilisation and society. Hers was a small contained universe where she was very active and had a great deal of control, even though there were times there were crossovers, such as being involved in getting the Urca gold. She was so low in the hierarchy when we met her, but she worked her way right to the top.

Jon said that, with the Greek myth instagram filter on, there is a story happening where she is subject to Flint’s story. She is trying for three and a half seasons to make the best of a story which is the guys who hate England and want to kill it vs. the guys who are with England. There is a massive pivot in the argument scene with Jack in 4x06, which is possibly the first time we’ve heard her swear in anger, and it is a moment to him that is Max wrestling the story away from Flint. It’s the first time we’ve really seen her lose it. She is by sheer force of will starting her own version of the story in which she is not operating in accordance with the terms Flint and Rogers have set out, and she gets to the ending that way. She is able to find something that has eluded Flint and everyone else. The moment she applies her own terms, either she’s going to get killed for it or she’s going to make it work, and she makes it work.

Jon said he thinks Max is really the only one who ever saw the end of the story. There is an element to that kind of conflict where the participants will consciously or unconsciously keep it alive, but she is the one who has been saying since the beginning ‘I don’t want that ending’ and has been rational about trying to figure out where all these decisions lead to. That’s where he feels her frustration comes from, the idea of ‘where the fuck did you think this was going to end? We’ve been in this same story for thirty-some odd episodes and nothing is changing.’

Daphne said they’ve joked that Max is the only one who’s been watching the show. Jon agreed and said she is able to see that there are certain realities that you can do the things that make you feel good, and you can do the things that feel inevitable, but if you’re not trying to figure out where it’s going to lead to then you’re gonna be in season 3 of black sails forever and you’re never going to get to season 4. She circulates a little bit, and does these tasks to get to this ending, which is why Rackham at the end feels like witness (or chorus or narrator) to her story.

From there they went on to talk about Rackham’s truth speech. Jon said they actually wrote it on the set on the day, because it never felt right to him on the page. It came out as they were rehearsing and Jon wrote it down on the back of the script and handed it to Schmitz, who got it and later gave him shit for it. Daphne asked, shit for the process or for the speech? Jon said both. Schmitz was like ‘we’re really just going to talk about art at the end of this? We’re just gonna go for this and do this?’.

Daphne said it really worked for both of them, and Liz helpfully supplied that it doesn’t work for her with the ‘happy’ ending story, but with the ambiguity she loves it.

So then they talked about the ambiguous ending, and how it was a bold choice. Daphne asked what the process was that led them to choose to make an ending that could be read in different ways.

Jon said season to season and episode to episode they put a tonne of pressure on themselves to make sure that everything was better than what came before it and that it was developing in a way in which every episode, scene, and line of dialogue was meaningful in some way. The unavoidable result of that is that the ending has the pressure of a lot of narrative behind it, and how do you make all of that mass and momentum stop? Because you want it to stop; you don’t want to walk away from the story feeling like your head is spinning and you don’t know what the hell happened. Jon said he personally doesn’t appreciate story that way. At the same time it would be unfair to the narrative to suggest that it is reducible to something simple. Added to that is the complication that there is a wholly other narrative (Treasure Island), that is completely alien in some respects to their show, that they were trying to contextualise and marry this to, and make Captain Flint’s curse and the interim between show and book and what is Silver’s life after he decides he doesn’t want to be Long John Silver again, and what makes him put that name back on? It’s got to do all of those things too.

He said there aren’t a lot of great models for ends of shows that don’t feel like you’re just dragging yourself cross the finish line. They looked at a few and tried to pull out what it was that made them shows they went back to and what was it that made them feel right. The Sopranos was one, and whatever people think about its finale it said something and it forced you to engage with the material after the end of the narrative. They also went back and spent time with the Cheers finale. And there were others that you would expect, and some that you wouldn’t.

Their ending just ended up feeling right. Jon said that the ending doesn’t feel ambiguous to him, and when he watches it it is pretty clear what it feels like is happening. He is also fully aware that there are multiple interpretations of what it is, which is also by design. In a story about what your place in a story is, in a story that is fully self-aware about narrative, the audience or reader needs to have an opinion and there needs to be space within the story for that opinion to matter. It’s why, while it is clear to him what is happening, he doesn’t feel as though it is his place to impose that on anyone. The act of watching it and feeling an ending in that story is a personal one.

He has two different positions to stand in with respect to this story. He said if you ask him that question as the person who wrote it, the answer is he doesn’t want to talk about it. It is built the way it’s built and it’s for you to appreciate. But for him as audience, he feels like he watches it and he is seeing the story that feels right to him, and it feels clear. So if that story feels clear to you then you are watching the right story too.

[Honestly, bless Jon Steinberg for all of that.]

Daphne talked about how fascinating is is that throughout the show the story took us to places emotionally we didn’t expect and made us think about things we didn’t necessarily want to or it didn’t occur to us to think about, and the ending brought that to a new level. You really had to look inside yourself and what aspects of the story are important to you, and what aspects speak to you personally, and that helps you find the ending that is most meaningful to you.

Jon said he’s aware when making a show that has to appeal to a large number of people that a lot of people are watching different shows and are invested in and like different things and want different things, so part of where the burden of the ending comes in is that you have to make choices about what story you think you’re telling. So the challenge was ‘can we land this in a way that it is still interpretable even in its ending, in the way that it was half way through?’, which is difficult but doable.

[That fuckery about the Devil’s Theory is coming up here. I’ve included it just in case anyone wants to know exactly what it was, but I’ve crossed through it because I’m spiteful and it annoys me and it isn’t necessary to understand anything Jon said.]

Liz agreed that it came down to your personal satisfaction and what speaks most to you, and that to her what always brought her back to BS was the conversation about light and darkness and shadows and obstruction, and she thinks there’s more room to explore that theme with the ending she prefers [i.e. if Flint is dead]. She thinks if it ends up an almost happily ever after then she loses some of the catharsis and what continues to make her think about these people and their choices and about herself and her choices.

Daphne said they really did succeed in creating an ending that allows us all to have different experiences, and thanked Jon for it.

Liz asked how Jon feels about the demise of Eleanor and her full arc, and said that there has been some dissension between the podcasters about it during the roundtable.

Jon said he was going to beef with Lauren Sarner a little. He doesn’t think Eleanor’s is a story about a woman who is Stockholmed. He thinks (with his audience hat on) that that isn’t fair to Eleanor, and he doesn’t know that it’s how he would read the text of it. He said that Rogers, for an episode [3x01?], which is just a scene and not even the entirety of it, he is fully in control of her, but it immediately gets turned upside down. In the second episode, in their second scene together she calls him on his bullshit and says he doesn’t have anything without her, and so they are fully partners. Rogers threatens to kill her straight after, which Jon says in the language of this show is always the resort of ‘I’ve run out of productive things to say’, and anybody can say it, but it doesn’t suggest he actually has the power in that relationship. It actually feels like a moment in which he’s losing power. So platformed that way, what the story felt like to him was two people who didn’t belong where they were from, and who were unusual and who had never met anybody like themselves before, and who did in an incredibly unlikely way. So it felt like a moment where Eleanor could start to have a relationship she’d never had before.

Jon said he doesn’t know that her relationship with Vane was based in ‘love’, depending on how you define that. He thinks they both think it is, and there are elements where that is true, but not really. They’re both trying to have a relationship that is fulfilling to themselves that the other person is screaming to them ‘this is not what I want’. In season 2 when she turns on him, Jon says that Vane has essentially told Eleanor that he is a dead-ender, who wants to drag her down with him and that there is nothing she’s going to say to change his mind. And she’s saying ‘I want to live a life and be happy and not have to kill what we eat’, and he’s saying ‘it makes me feel good to kill what I eat’, and Jon thinks it would have felt really fucked up for her to decide she was going to go down that drain with him.

So the relationship with Rogers was the first heterosexual romantic story in which both players are actually on an equal footing, and in which there is some meaningful commitment to each other, that ends tragically when there is that one space in which they’re not connected. He called it a cyclical tragedy she keeps finding herself in, that the only way to do what feels right is to do something that is patently wrong.

He says he knows there’s a way to watch it where there’s a lot of second guessing about what she’s up to, or what he’s up to, but he always watched it at face value, as two people who fell in love with each other because they could understand each other. They could understand being half and half: half of a pirate and half of somebody who wanted better than that.

The scene between the two of them in bed was one take from Hannah New. Jon said either Eleanor Guthrie the character is the greatest actress of her generation, or that is a real moment of a person expressing ‘I love you’ in a way that she’s not actually able to say.

Daphne mentioned her speech about ‘so many goddamn men’ and their references to introspection. Hannah had talked in her interview about Eleanor not being an introspective person, but the one commonality between Rogers and Vane is that each of them tells her who she is, and it’s not who she is, and that ends up being part of the problem with each of them. Vane’s constantly saying she’s like him, and in the end the problem with Rogers is that he brings Spain to bear when he thinks she’s not acting like herself, but it’s a herself that he defined as who she’s supposed to be.

Jon agreed and said the second half of the season doesn’t happen if Rogers is able to hear her. She’s making herself very clear and he just doesn’t want to hear it. There is tragedy in that, that in every direction she looks there is a man who is making it very difficult to figure her way out of this puzzle, in a way Max is able to. Eleanor is kind of the first one into the breach who is setting off all these landmines and creating a path through which Max is able to finally find a way out.

Daphne says Eleanor isn’t very good at defining herself, but she more than any character is subjected to definitions by other characters throughout. Not just romantic partners. Everyone seems to be defining who Eleanor Guthrie is, and maybe Flint’s the one who gets closest to who she really is, and then Max ultimately. Eleanor’s constantly subjected to judgements by the characters and also judgements by the fandom that often match them.

Jon said it’s an interesting thought experiment to think about the things she has done that become fan favourites to excoriate her for and either hold them up to things that men in the show have done or imagine them being done by men, and it’s very hard to suggest that those things would be judged in the same way. He thinks it’s more complicated than that, and it’s hard to compare two characters because they’re people and there’s different spins on it and things that come with it in terms of baggage, but even if it’s not an entirely true statement there is certainly some truth to it.

Also Eleanor was sort of written that way deliberately. She doesn’t know anything else. She was raised by not just men, but these men, and it’s the only thing she knows how to do. So it felt untrue to try to protect her from that and there is some nobility in it for her. She is trying, which is not necessarily something you can say of the characters people do love. She is trying to make this work, and failing at times and failing to see answers that maybe she should have, but her head and heart are in the right place.

Daphne called her ‘a messy person’, in the most sympathetic of ways. She came from a messy place. Though Max also came from a messy place and is Max.

Jon said they have different relationships to violence. In as much as things like civilisation are characters in the vocabulary of the show, violence is as well. Eleanor resorts to it in ways that define her. Strangely those are the things that people are least turned off by, but it does make her culpable in a way that the rest of them are, and in a way that Max largely keeps her hands clean of.

Daphne then talked about talking to other people about violence in the show, and how of course it’s there, because it’s a story about pirates. But then Jon said earlier that it was a story about domesticity, and she finds it fascinating, because what she kept saying to people was that this show, unlike almost every other tv show that has violence, doesn’t feel like there’s ever a place where violence doesn’t have consequences.

Jon said he thinks that’s true, and if it’s ever the case that the violence doesn’t have consequences then it wasn’t the intention. And in terms of the show being about domesticity, it’s actually a very short trip from piracy to civilisation, and is domesticity the end of civilisation or the means by which it perpetuates itself? He felt like that was something that was interesting about the show to them, because none of that had been explored before. It was always just Errol Flynn. When you scratch the surface and realise there’s this other thing underneath it, it had to be a story.

#black sails #fathoms deep #jonathan steinberg #honestly this beast is about 7600 words long #make a cup of tea first

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akiharashizuka · 7 years

Text

Cardfight Vanguard G: Next turn 31 thoughts

Fragile Living Things

Not much going on in the first few minutes, but the focus slowly moves to Saori.

MC Miya described him as having a cool fighting style, however we know very well that he is bored of everything.

We get a flashback so soon. Not that I’m complaining xD

I like how casually Shiranui called Saori by his real name (I should start using it as well). Of course, he raised his guard quickly.

Also, their conversation after that was done well. They talk like they are familiar with each other, which makes sense, since both Shiranui and Dumjid are from the Dragon Empire nation. And, despite that, Dumjid still asks for payment xD

I guess we have the confirmation now that Miguel, as well as Antero, who possessed him, are dead. Unless there will be some plot twist later (if there is, they’d better execute it properly).

This is something I’ve suspected for a while, and now it’s finally confirmed. While Amaruda has admiration for humans, Shiranui and Dumjid look down on them. Ok, Shiranui’s exact thoughts remain unknown, but Dumjid is completely unimpressed by the human world. Except for the music. It makes me wonder why that of all things.

I actually do have a possible explanation. People have created different forms of art to express themselves: music, drawing, literature, photography, sculpture and so on. Each piece of artwork is made with certain emotions attached to them, and people who come in contact with them can feel these emotions. Sure, there’s also the entertainment factor, but when you can resonate with a piece of artwork, you appreciate it more. I’m guessing that’s what made Dumjid like music. Now, I’m curious what genres he listens to because not everything can make you feel something. There are some superficial stuff out there.

Wow, it’s already happening o_O At the beginning of this week, the summaries for the upcoming 4 episodes were revealed and the one for episode 32 revealed that Shiranui defeated Am, Luna, Kumi and will be fighting Enishi. Am and Luna weren’t shown today though.

The important thing here is the reason why he challenged Shiranui.

I must say, he looks really pissed off. Makes me wonder what Shiranui said to Kumi, exactly. It most likely has to do with her "fighting for the fun of it" (as stated in the summary), and it also ties with Am and Luna’s defeat, but how horrible did it sound?

Ok, we got something to look forward to next week, but let’s focus on this fight.

Maybe I’m nitpicking, but I would have liked if Saori reacted in some way about Tokoha being a Neo Nectar user. He might not have now him personally, but he was informed that Miguel/Antero was a musketeer from Neo Nectar.

Gotta point out quick that Jaime is being more serious in this episode. Obviously, his team faces the most overpowered people in the tournament. But that’s not all. He was one of the few who noticed something wasn’t right with Noa. So, he might notice something about Diffride as well. Plus, he was acquainted with Miguel.

Here is another scene which further makes Shiranui’s real intentions a mystery. He did his research on Try3 and the teams they made (Hayao’s photo can be seen near Tokoha’s) and warned Dumjid about them. He also went and challenged every single one of them. Clearly, he wasn’t impressed with Shion and Tokoha. I’m not sure what he thought of Chrono at first. However, later it seemed that he had a better impression of him. Not only because he said so himself, but it was also pointed out by Chaos Breaker.

In last week’s episode, he expressed annoyance that humans playing Vanguard can decide the Units’ fate, yet he seems to be testing them.

Dragonic Blademaster...”Kouen”! However, this is not Saori’s avatar. And Dumjid is a Perfect Guard, not a Grade 3. Some might be disappointed because of this, but who says someone’s avatar has to be the main Grade 3 of the deck? It can be any Unit, as long as the fighter feels a connection with it.

And yes, Mamoru uses Dragonic Blademaster too, but this one is different. It’s Dragonic Blademaster “Kouen”. I really hope Tokoha realizes that and doesn’t get overconfident just because she knows Mamoru’s deck.

Hmm, they changed the depiction of the Blaze keyword. Actually, it wasn’t depicted depicted at all when Mamoru used it in episode 10.

Well, it’s only natural to look different, since it’s a new season and it’s animated by a different studio, however this Blaze looks more sinister. Kinda like the black and red energy coming from Reverse. Ok, ok, the Reverse/Void returning is still a mere speculation. It’s just the similarity that bothers me.

I liked this part and how it reminded me of what Neo Nectar symbolizes: life and vitality, being based around plants. And Tokoha showed this aspects well during her turn.

This also reminds me of the occasional flowers blooming in cities, through concrete and the saying “Life always finds a way”.

The flashback was depressing. When I first saw Saori, I thought he was the brat of the team. Then, as more about his character, I started dropping this idea. To be honest, I’m relieved that wasn’t the case. However, not completely, since what we saw was Dumjid, not Saori himself.

I must say, him acting the way he does, saying that once you die it’s over makes perfect sense. He probably fought in many battles like this and ended up being the last one standing. I also think he is actually a very lonely person...or dragon.

For once, Dumjid isn’t showing a bored expression. He is shocked, he is shaking. Probably because he feels both fear (of a possible defeat) and excitement.

Surely, he can’t comprehend the situation and still refuses to acknowledge humans. Which is normal, considering the flashback.

A thing that has been bothering me is how a lot of people are quick to bash Tokoha’s reason for participating in the U20. And that’s because there was hinted a potential romantic development. Well, I agree that it wasn’t that well-written, considering that we’ve known Miguel for only one episode and Tokoha for like 2 days. However, that’s NOT the goddamn point!

The nature of their relationship isn’t what matters. It’s that Tokoha has forged a bond with a person, who happened to die soon after and she wants to honor his memory. I personally think it’s a good enough reason. Probably those who didn’t experience the death of a person they cared about might not understand... Believe me, no matter how much time passes, you still think about them. And doing something in their memory it’s only natural, even it’s just a small thing, like bringing flowers to their grave (just for assurance, this is indeed from my personal experience, but it’s not anything tragic; it’s about my grandparents who died 7 years ago from old age)

Tokoha found this way to honor Miguel’s memory, but she’s also doing it for herself. She loves Vanguard, she loves a good challenge and it’s something she personally wants to excel at. Miguel just gives her extra motivation.

(I also felt extra motivated to accomplish something after my grandparents died, because they encouraged me to give my best when they were still alive)

And now, probably what most would think is that my case is different from Tokoha’s because it was about my family, while Miguel is just a random person. Yep, it’s different, but again, the exact nature of the relationship doesn’t matter, as long as it’s about a person you care for.

Hope I shed some light on this matter...

First off, him keeping 3 Perfect Guards and using them all to block Tokoha’s attack was incredible. Also, here’s the proof that Perfect Guards are cool. especially with Dumjid’s effect. I mean, in order to complete guard, you have to discard a card from the hand. However, with Dumjid you can avoid it if the condition is meant. Sure, it’s not a complete guard anymore, but it still has a high shield number. Probably this kind of development wouldn’t happen so easily if the Diffriders didn’t have so much luck in cardfighting.

Now, for his turn. I was confused why he gave the Critical and extra power to the Ziegenburg when it was perfect guarded, and he had Rear Guards on the front row. Then, he activated the effect and re-stood him. The extra power and the critical remain available, since his turn hasn’t ended. I don’t recall how many cards Tokoha had, but taking into account the 2 Rear Guards ready to attack, she couldn’t have enough. She was most likely overwhelmed.

Wow...I don’t recall commenting so much on the actual gameplay xD Anyways, another thing I’d like to mention is how furious he was the entire turn.

The dragon Tokoha touched was definitely dead. I like how they showed Tokoha realizing the dragon was dead.

By showing her this, Dumjid most likely got his point across. I hope this would serve as development for Tokoha. I do sympathize with her, but she also must realize that there are some dreadful things out there and just some optimism won’t solve them. Her belief that feelings are inherited isn’t wrong, but she has to prove it in a different way to Dumjid. And to do that, she has to learn about him, about the diffriding, and about Miguel/Antero. There’s definitely more to his story, and if she doesn’t know what he stood for, she can’t truly honor his memory.

For now, it’s her loss and Team Jaime Flowers is really in danger to be eliminated. I’m glad she made the connection though and hopefully she will seek some answers.

The next episode will show Enishi vs Shiranui, which was already set up in this episode. I guess we will get more info on the Shiranui and Antero interactions.

Looks like Dumjid might approve of my playlist. Our taste in music is similar (not sure what “Electric” is supposed to be though; if it’s electronic music, then I’m not a huge fan of it...) And Amaruda reading subway schedules and bus routes xD I’m still not sure if that was a joke or she really meant it.

#cardfight vanguard g next spoilers #cardfight vanguard g next #Akihara's random opinion thing

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