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peachyteez · 3 years

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mint chocolate chip ice cream ≫ DAY FOUR, CONNECTIONS

this abandoned, shy bunny hybrid loves hanging around the open field area of the recovery facility. one day, with the help of jungkook, another bunny hybrid, jiyu meets mingi. after days of mingi being too shy and running away from her, a bag of carrots and mint chocolate ice chip cream was all it took to seal the deal.

PART OF THE HEAVEN SERIES.

✧ taglist: @defsoul15, @jaeminpeachy, @joongiebug, @sunsethw4, @t-tbinnie, @chanyeolol, @danibookmarks, @hello-its-ya-boi, @murralyn, @alienmashup, @panini, @moon8894, @koasworld, @taetae123094, @luv3rxcha, @treasure-hwa, @etherealbyeol, @hwaseongzzz, @lovely-sanie, @orbitiiny, @pirate-of-the-dark-seas, @babydolljo, @ms-starlight, @everrrlasting, @bls-luv-me, @atzgiggle, @arohabyeol, @rainbowmagicpixecorn, @soverystupid, @ayetothezee

✧ notes: i should be christmas shopping but 👀 also i have a new series in the works that might be released after heaven 👀

back。| next。

lazy days like these ones were jiyu’s favorite days. now with four others in her home with her, she loved them even more. seonghwa laid on the floor by a window with sunlight pouring in and napped, with earbuds in, hongjoong listened to his music and curled up on the couch. seeing yunho and mingi play around with each other brought a small smile to jiyu’s face as she watched them. mingi was so reserved back at the hybrid center but seeing him with a carefree smile around yunho warmed her heart.

thinking back to his behavior, she figured that, like the others, he came from a rough family. she wanted to help him, and the first step was to track his old owners down. she had an episode with yunho’s former owners, and she would do it again for mingi.

but how do i ask him without making it awkward? although mingi had opened up a little to her the previous night, she doubt he’d tell her his whole life story. seeing mingi’s eyes on her, she softly smiled before continuing to drink her coffee and typing on her laptop.

“hey, mingi.”

hearing yunho call out to him, mingi tore his attention away from jiyu to the puppy hybrid. “would you want to live here?” yunho asked, cocking his head to the side as his tail calmly swayed from side-to-side.

mingi flinched from the question. “i-i-possibly couldn’t—” he already felt bad for imposing on her by staying at her home for the time being. living here would be a dream, he wouldn’t lie, but he knew he legally couldn’t—otherwise it’d paint jiyu as a kidnapper since his previous owners still had custody of him.

yunho chuckled. mingi was his best friend, of course he’s know why he was so hesitant. “how do you think i’m here—no, she didn't steal me, calm down,” he reassured after seeing mingi’s face morph into one of horror, “she did it legally. she had my old owners hand the paperwork over to her.”

mingi furrowed an eyebrow. he’s heard many stories about yunho’s owners and how selfish and stubborn they were. “but...how did she—?”

yunho shrugged as memories of that day resurfaced. “i’m not sure, but i think there’s more to her than most of us know,” yunho said as he discreetly glanced over to the girl at the kitchen counter. “but not in a bad way. i can tell she genuinely cares for us; otherwise, hongjoong would’ve bled out in the forest, seonghwa would’ve been god knows where, and you and i would still be wandering out there and freezing our tails off.”

mingi nodded along to his friend’s words. she really went through the trouble of getting yunho’s paperwork? his owners were absolutely horrendous, how did she even manage to pull that off?

jiyu suddenly let out a groan as she face-planted onto her laptop keyboard. yunho and mingi yelped at the impact before rushing over. “are you okay?!” yunho asked as he bent down to her level.

she slightly chuckled. “i’ve face-planted many times for it to not hurt at this point,” she joked. she caught mingi peeking at her laptop; mingi squeaked out an apology before looking away. jiyu slowly reached up and pet his head. “it’s okay, mingi, i don’t mind.”

yunho glanced at her laptop to see lists of names and some of their information. he cocked his head to the side. “what are you doing?”

jiyu hesitated before looking at mingi. “i’m trying to track your old owners down—”

“are you going to give me back?!” mingi panicked.

jiyu shook her head. “no, bub, calm down. judging from your behavior the past few days, i doubt you’d want to go back. there’s probably a reason you ran away, and i wouldn’t be so cruel as to return you to the place you escaped from.”

mingi sheepishly nodded, feeling a flood of relief at her words. “are you going to...” he trailed off, suddenly hesitating. what is he was getting his hopes up that she would get his adoption papers? was his wish too big?

“yes, bub, i’m going to try to get your adoption papers from them,” jiyu answered his unasked question. “i’ve said this way too many times for me to count but no hybrid should have to live in fear of their owners. if you’re going to adopt one, then take full responsibility for their wellbeing,” she mumbled the latter with a slight frown.

mingi felt the wall around his heart crack even more at her words. at the moment, he felt as if he was encased in a warm blanket, away from the dangers of the world. now he could see why yunho trusted her so much.

“do you recognize any of them, mingi?” she asked, turning her laptop towards the bunny hybrid. “i’ve narrowed the list down to these people. are any of these people them?”

eyes flitting around the list, his eyes froze on one name. “here,” he softly said as he pointed at the name on the screen. “that’s her...”

park youjin. 28 years old.

she frowned when she pulled up a photo of the woman. apparently, she was the ceo of a pretty popular game company. “how are all of you from pretty well-known families?” she mumbled to herself.

unfortunately, the woman’s status caused a little problem for jiyu. she had already created a buzz around herself when she stood up to yunho’s former owners, the ceo’s of star enterprise, a company that her father had acquired a few years back. if she were to cause another buzz, she had a feeling her father would do something that would potentially risk her life with seonghwa, hongjoong, yunho, and now mingi.

“oh, man, i really have to call him...?” she asked before face-planting again onto her keyboard, causing yunho and mingi to yelp with fear for her face.

“call who?” mingi asked. he had a slightly bad feeling in his stomach at her reaction to his former owner. as much as he wanted to legally escape, he didn’t want to put anyone in danger or risk of anything. he didn’t know if his little heart could take the consequences.

“an old friend, you can say,” she wryly smiled before standing up with her phone. “i’ll be on the balcony,” she said before slipping the back door.

she stared at the contact name. yuta. she hadn’t spoken to him ever since she left the main house. yuta was a black cat hybrid and her assistant. rather than calling him her assistant, she always called him a friend. he’s been with her ever since the two were teenagers, when he became old enough to watch over her on his own.

“well, pray he doesn’t chew my head off for this,” she prayed before pressing the call button. hearing the dial tone, she was worried that he wasn’t even going to pick up.

“ms. jiyu?!” came a surprised tone from the other end.

gasping from the sudden sound, she almost dropped her phone. “ohmygod, that scared me,” she calmed her racing heart. “and i told you, you don’t have to call me ‘miss jiyu’, that makes me sound old and you're the older one,” she teased. hearing a sigh, she chuckled.

“sorry, it’s a force of habit,” he said. jiyu could imagine his tail swinging around in excitement. “so why the sudden call after three years? three years!”

jiyu held the phone a little ways from her ear at his scream. unbeknownst to her, the four hybrids in the house were watching her from inside. “i wonder who she’s calling for her to look like she went deaf,” hongjoong curiously mumbled; the others nodded in agreement.

“sorry, sorry,” she sheepishly scratched her head even though he couldn’t see. “i know this is really out of the blue, but i need a favor...” she could see his enlarged eyes at her request, making her internally laugh.

“with? i don’t really have a choice anyways,” he wryly responded.

“um...i need you to retrieve park youjin’s hybrid adoption forms for me.”

a moment of silence passed.

“...why?” he asked. “that’s a pretty random—”

“her hybrid ran away and i found him. but she hasn’t been...the best parent, so i’m helping him out. but i can’t exactly cause another disturbance like last time with star enterprise otherwise father’s going to have my head.”

yuta took a while to process her words. “i know it’s not breaking the law to request adoption forms, but that means you have two hybrids?!”

“...three actually...maybe four if you get me park youjin’s...” she nervously chuckled.

“i—what—four?! you’re returning in a year, are you bringing back four new hybrids?!” he incredulously asked, his mouth gaping open.

“i haven’t exactly figured that part out yet, but just trust me and get them...please?” she asked.

what felt like an eternity passed before he sighed again. “alright, alright. and without your father knowing, i’m assuming?”

“you know the drill.”

yuta slyly smiled at the familiar words. “your wish is my command, miss.” he burst out into laughter at her whining. “sorry, couldn’t resist. but I can give them to you in two days max. just send me the information.”

“alright, thanks. and be careful.” after saying their goodbyes, she went back inside to see the four staring at her.

“so are you getting them?” seonghwa asked, all of them looking at her with hope and expectancy in her eyes. especially mingi.

she broke into a smile. “don’t worry, i have a friend that has a way of getting anything and everything. just trust me on this, okay?”

although her words were mysterious and didn’t offer any clues, they all trusted her with their life. she hasn’t done anything wrong or harmful, so why would she start now? suddenly, a loud grumbling sound come from the red-hair’s stomach.

his cheeks turned red and he grew flustered. “s-sorry...” they laughed, amused by the bunny’s clumsiness and antics.

“alright, let’s go get dinner. what do you all want?”

as if they discussed it beforehand, a unanimous scream of chicken came from all four of them. jiyu was surprised, yet happy that they all seemed to get along despite only knowing each other for a short amount of time. “i guess that settles it,” she playfully rolled her eyes before grabbing her keys. “come on, maybe we can rope yeonjun, binnie, and beomgyu into coming with us.”

seeing mingi’s head cock to the side at the mention of new people, yunho pat his back. “they’re nice people and hybrids,” he reassured as they put their shoe and coats on, “soobin and beomgyu are great, but just a warning, beomgyu’s quite hyper. and yeonjun’s like a male version of jiyu”

hearing his description, jiyu’s nose scrunched. “that’s such an insult,” she joked.

seonghwa and hongjoong tried to suppress their laughter, causing jiyu to playfully put her hands on her hips. “not a word or no chicken.”

“you wouldn’t dare!” they all chorused.

“good god, it’s like i have quadruplets.”

#9th member of ateez #ateez imagines #ateez scenarios #ateez fluff #ateez angst #song mingi #song mingi imagines #mingi imagines #mingi scenarios #ateez mingi #hybrid au #kpop hybrid au #ateez hybrid #hybrid!ateez #ateez au

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“…The common work of American pioneer children has become an essential story of frontier life. Less well known or acknowledged is that gender boundaries were often disregarded in the course of this experience. Daniel worked not only at tasks with his father but also at those normally seen as women’s work. To help his mother, he dyed cloth, carried water from the spring, helped to nurse the younger children, and cooked. His work was indeed diverse as he did what was needed with little complaint—or so he remembered years later when writing his memoir. Then at fifteen, he was separated from all of it—from his physical labor and from his pious parents (his mother’s favorite word was “wicked”). She was hardly indulgent of him, either in the work he was required to do or in the virtues he was expected to display while doing them.

Many boys did female work. Henry Clarke Wright, who became an outspoken educator and a radical abolitionist, spent his childhood helping his stepmother by babysitting, and much more. “He cleaned, he cooked, he washed.” In upstate New York, where his family lived in the early nineteenth century, he also did more masculine work “riding the horses, yoking and driving the oxen, bringing in the cows, harnessing and all the rest of the hard labor of the frontier farmer.” After his farming experience, Wright was left to become an apprentice in April 1814. Lonely, “home-sick” and with a “feeling of wretched- ness,” Wright learned to grow up fast. He also learned his own mind and how later to defend his extremely independent and unpopular views.

The American boys of the early republic grew early into independence. They were neither indulged nor coddled. They were given some say in the objects of their labor and, when possible, free time to play. But the children were also seen as “little citizens”—persons with capacity as well as potential. Some visitors were shocked by the results, but others were impressed. One Englishwoman observed, “You will see a little being that has not seen the sun make one circle of seasons, lay hold on a toy, not to cram it in his mouth and look stupidly at it, but to turn it curiously over, open it if he can, and peep in with a look as wise as that of a raven peeping into a marrow bone. One mark of early observation and comprehension never failed to excite my wonder. Little creatures feed themselves very early, and are trusted with cups of glass and china, which they grasp firmly, and carry about the rooms carefully, and deposit unbroken.”

There is, perhaps, a degree of exaggeration in such observations, finding the precocious engineer within the child not yet a year old. But in light of current findings by cognitive psychologists about the “scientist in the crib,” perhaps it is less a matter of exaggeration than a willingness to see even young children as more fully capable of independent thought and action than most Americans are accustomed to today. Americans at this time assumed that children needed less supervision and direction. This was true for girls as well as boys. By the time she was six years of age, Caroline Stickney (later Creevey), who grew up to be a nature writer, was expected to go to the doctor alone after she had fallen and severely injured her arm. It turned out to be broken.

“Mother was too busy to accompany me and there was nobody else. Besides children were taught to stand upon their own feet in these days.” Caroline’s regular tasks included bringing the cow to pasture in the morning and retrieving her at night, and, like Ulysses Grant, she was able from an early age to roam freely in the woodland that this future botanical enthusiast loved to explore and whose trees she climbed regardless of risk. At ten, she was allowed to ride the family horse; when she asked her father for directions to find a certain path, he made clear to her that she could find her own way.

Anna Howard Shaw had a more extreme experience, as her father sent his young family from Lawrence, Massachusetts, to which the family had migrated from England after Thomas Shaw’s bankruptcy, to the north woods of Michigan. There the children and their mother were left alone to establish her father’s claim to the 360 acres he had acquired, while he remained East to settle his affairs. Shaw’s mother, overwhelmed by grief and disbelief at the raw and trying circumstances, collapsed emotionally and was “practically an invalid.” This left the enterprise entirely to the five children. Barely twenty years old, Shaw’s oldest brother, James, was in charge. Anna was recruited to lay floorboards on the earth and frame windows and doors.

When even James left because he needed an operation that took him back to Massachusetts, the young children were left to fend for themselves, through a variety of “nerve-wracking” conditions and winters that “offered few diversions and many hardships.” Anna eventually took advantage of opportunities for schooling that led to her unflinching grasp at independence as a professional woman. In later life, Shaw was a crusader for women’s suffrage, and managed to become both a medical doctor and a minister. This kind of brutal induction into resourcefulness and independence, while not representative, was also not uncommon.

Girls and boys matured early, and Tocqueville, for one, believed that American children did not have or need an adolescence. The very young child, given the right to handle glassware or crockery, is a child invested with the capacity to act responsibly. Dr. Spock would note more than a century later that such confidence acknowledged that a child is eager to do “grown up things,” like feeding herself in the same way as the adults around her. And early work laid the basis for later habits. Anna Shaw noted that work had “always been my favorite form of recreation.”

The English commentator who saw precocious infant explorers poking around their toys was observing a different model of child development, one that was becoming as alien to middle- and upper-class Europeans of the nineteenth century as it is to us today. While European children of the middle classes were being treated as precious objects of solicitude, needing careful protection, American children who later became presidents, doctors, writers, and reformers were exposed to adult work and responsibility. And they were far less supervised. It was not only that class was more fluid in the United States in this period but that the specific expectations about children remained more fluid than in Europe.

Later in the nineteenth century, middle-class Americans, too, would begin to separate children from adult activities and treat them, as we usually do today, as fragile beings who needed special toys and risk-proof furnishings. But during this initial period when American society was being formed and the culture was laying down historical tracks, children were much more integrated into adult activities and given both more responsibility and more freedom. Most Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century viewed their children’s early maturity as natural, an expression of both the helping qualities they required in the young and beliefs about children’s abilities to be useful from an early age. It was a widespread phe- nomenon in many parts of the new country and remained an active part of the culture up to the end of the century, while elsewhere in the Western world, children were sentimentalized.

It was true for girls as well as for boys, observed in the eastern United States as well as the West, common among rural folk especially but in cities as well. Rachel Buttz’s father, Tunis Quick, was raised in the Shenandoah Valley in the early nineteenth century. His father was a well-meaning “generous, kindhearted man,” but his decision to back a neighbor’s loan impoverished the family, and soon after his mother’s death young Tunis was “hired to a neighbor who required him to do almost as much work as a full-grown man.” Just past ten years of age, Tunis quickly became responsible in other ways as well. Tunis objected to the slavery that was a feature of the area in which they lived, so at fifteen he urged his father to move the family to the North.

They stopped first in Ohio “where [he] was variously employed in farming, hauling goods and keeping a ferry on the Scioto River.” Having worked hard and impressed his employer, young Tunis obtained the means to buy a home in Indiana where the family finally settled. Tunis Quick learned early to assist his family as they struggled, and his sense of responsibility also gave him the ability to think independently and to have his views heard and respected. By what we would consider his mid-adolescence, he had not only directed his family’s migration north, but he was buying property for them. Tunis’s desire to leave a section dominated by slavery is also noteworthy, since it was the South, where slave ownership defined the society, that was the major exception to the developing democracy within families.

To some extent, the independence given to children grew from the ideals and values expressed in the Revolution since Americans believed that future generations had to acquire the characteristics that would maintain the principles enunciated in that event. But more than ideology was involved. No simple commitment to an idea can completely explain the behaviors so widely observed and the general willingness to heed children’s independent judgment. Ideology will not necessarily loosen a father’s grip over his sons when he had always expected to be obeyed and to have his commands met, even when he is committed to republican ideals. In the Southern United States, of course, this loosening of paternal power never happened, since slavery reinforced its grip.

And even in other parts of the United States, some observed the loosening of parental reins with concern and attempted to inhibit the young through new institutions of supervision, such as schools, as they recognized how much mischief could be loosed in a world guided by revolutionary principles. Not all Americans took kindly to the idea of children acting on their own. But a widespread independence among the young continued nevertheless. American life in the first half of the nineteenth century was defined by conditions that made such views about children necessary while the restless temperament of Americans made them ready for change and improvement. Together, these conditions provided children with the leeway to become more independent as they became more useful. Utility as well as ideology needs to be taken into account if we are to understand the families that produced a Grant, Drake, Quick, Shaw, or Wright.

The changing circumstances of the early republic resulted from both material conditions and political institutions. Together, these were widely understood as fundamental to the difference between Americans and Europeans. A shrewd, early observer of the difference, the Reverend Enos Hitchcock, sought to sustain the new revolutionary ideology through appropriate childrearing and education. “The systems of education written in Europe, are too local to be transferred to America; they are generally designed for a style of life, different from that, which is necessary for the inhabitants of the United States to adopt: they do not reach our circumstances, and are not suited to the genius of our government.”

To understand the American regime of domestic relations, we need to grasp just how unsettled, raw, and unpredictable the American land and the developing economy were during the important first half of the nineteenth century, since the experiences of American children and their parents were an expression of that reality. This dynamic new economy revised expectations about youth and what it could achieve. So did the laws governing inheritance and generational relations. The changes in American domestic life also transformed power relations between men and women, husbands and wives, and this, too, affected generational relationships in important ways.”

- Paula S. Fass, “Childhood and Parenting in the New Republic Sowing the Seeds of Independence, 1800–1860.” in The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child

#american #the end of american childhood #paula s. fass #history

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allycryz · 3 years

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Fic Rec Friday Monday

“Talk about a fic or other piece of writing you’re particularly proud of!” tagged by @elveny and @kunstpause

The idea for this fic came to me early on, when I decided that I wasn’t going to stop after writing how Haurche and Nerys hook up. Primarily, the idea for the Artoirel scene played over and over in my head. It lived as a draft for a long while and I was so excited when it was finally time to edit/rewrite and post.

[Ao3 Link] Rated T / Haurchefant, Artoirel, and Emmanellain Focus

Haurchefant prepares for his new life. Emmanellain has doubts. Artoirel has regrets.

And here is a little snippet

“Who taught you all this when you packed to leave?” His brother asks, opening said closet to reveal a yawning chasm. “Father, I assume.”

“Ah...I was not the clotheshorse you are.” Haurchefant averts his gaze to examine a silken robe imported from Kugane. His younger brother had been oblivious to certain facts of their childhood. By the time he was old enough to comprehend the vagaries, the rest of the family had adopted those strictures into habit.

Haurchefant adores him. Has all his life, though his memories begin when he was three or four years old and Emmanellain a rosy-cheeked babe he doted upon. But the younger man has never been the most perceptive. What he sees, he assumes is true unless led by the hand to view under the surface

It is a worrisome trait in a Knight Commander. Every day, Haurchefant wonders if this is the right thing. But he has seen how much Em has grown in the past months and the potential he has before him.

And were Haurchefant to renege, he is far from ready to resume his post.

“Pity. We might have taken society by storm had you the taste for it. You are the second-most handsome brother of us.”

“Oh Impetuous Youth, you cannot lie to me. I know you know that I am the best-looking of us three.”

“Ha! And how many paramours have you acquired in your life?”

Haurchefant smirks. “That is another game you do not want to play, O Brother Mine.”

His brother guffaws. The sound fades as he peruses his many brocades, holding each up to his body with lips pursed in contemplation. They all suit, tailor-made to emphasize his dark hair and blue eyes. Those same eyes flicker from one doublet to Haurchefant, to the doublet, and back.

“...I am a fool,” he says at last. Gaze boring into Haurchefant’s. “It wasn’t that you had no taste for it.”

[Ao3 Link]

Tagging all who want to do this!

#ally writes #haurchefant greystone #artoirel de fortemps #emmanellain de fortemps

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voltrontranscript · 3 years

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VLD S8E7: Day Forty-Seven

Season 8 Episode 7: Day Forty-Seven

Transcript by @dragonofyang

Summary: Kinkade and Rizavi film a vlog that follows a relatively normal day on the IGF-Atlas with its humorous moments and the stress of battle.

[Google Doc]

Kinkade: Hello. This is Lieutenant Ryan Kinkade, MFE pilot. The time is 0600 hours. It’s day forty-seven. And this is a glimpse at day-to-day life aboard the IGF-Atlas.

[Cut to Kinkade brushing his teeth as the camera floats over his shoulder.]

Kinkade: Last night, I unpacked my video gear and decided to document the crew. I know it seems strange, but before Earth was attacked, I didn’t go anywhere without my camera.

[Cut to Kinkade running on a treadmill.]

Kinkade: Back home, people asked me why I liked recording things. They also asked me why I didn’t talk that much. To both of those things, I’d always say… [grunts]

[Cut to Kinkade doing pull-ups.]

Kinkade: Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

Romelle: You’re recording? Why?

Griffin: Kinkade has always been, uh… an individual who’s most comfortable observing and reflecting on life. Being a fighter pilot was actually his backup plan.

[Cut to Kinkade wearing a blindfold as he works on his blaster rifle.]

Kinkade: It’s true. I learned how to shoot with a camera before I learned how to shoot with a rifle. I guess filming is just a small piece of the larger puzzle that makes up the picture of who I am. Hm.

[Cut to Kinkade turning the camera on once more and walking to a fighter jet.]

Rizavi: So you’re really shooting another documentary? Please tell me this is going to be more exciting than that project you did for Mr. Pollard’s biology class about yeast.

Kinkade: That was actually about the process of fermentation. Yeast converts carbohydrates into carbon diox--

Rizavi: Boring! Okay, look, if this little documentary is how history will remember us, I’m gonna help you spruce it up! How many cameras do you have? What’s your visual effects budget? Do you have any smoke bombs?

[Cut to Keith and Pidge facing the camera as it focuses on Pidge directly.]

Kinkade: Okay. We’re set.

Rizavi: So, uh, catch us up on what’s going on.

Pidge: Right. Well, the Atlas is headed to the Grei-Aye system where we’ve identified the remains of a disabled robeast.

Rizavi: Oh! Those things are pretty dangerous, right?

Pidge: Do I need to explain that the robeast was one of the ones used in Honerva’s intergalactic ritual?

Rizavi: No, it’s fine.

Pidge: Okay. Um, so, once the Atlas arrives in orbit around the planet, the other Paladins and I will head down to the surface to secure the robeast and hopefully find its Altean pilot.

Rizavi: Ugh, okay. Keith! Why don’t you tell us about the dangers of this mission?

Keith: Well, every mission has some inherent dangers. For this one, we have to be especially diligent about the robeast. Even if it’s not fully functional, it can still pose an extreme threat. Combine that with the hostile Altean that’s probably still in the vicinity, and you’ve potentially got threats on multiple fronts.

Hunk: Hey, guys. What’s up? You making a movie? Cool. Can I be in it? Now, wait, if this is an action movie… is it? I don’t wanna be in it.

Rizavi: Hunk, we’re trying to do an interview here.

Hunk: Oh, sorry. Yeah, my bad. I just came by to see if you wanted to try this new recipe I’ve been experimenting with. This is just the first pass. The final version of it will be coming soon. No, Bae Bae! Not for you! I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll make you some doggy treats later.

Kinkade: What’s the recipe? Can we watch you work?

Hunk: Well, yeah! Yeah, this’ll be great! I’ve secretly always wanted my own cooking show.

Rizavi: What? No! Keith was just telling us about the mission and all the dangers! We’re not losing that to document cooking.

Kinkade: But, I like cooking.

Rizavi: It’s like you’re trying to make this boring.

Hunk: Whoa, first of all, cooking is not boring, okay? And it can bring people together. Some of the best times of my life were spent breaking bread with loved ones.

Keith: So, is this interview over?

Rizavi: No! Great, now the talent’s getting restless!

Iverson: Everyone, report to your battle stations immediately! I repeat… battle stations immediately! This is not a drill!

Rizavi: The camera!

Kinkade: Leave it! We need to go!

Rizavi: But this is gold!

Kinkade: Come o--

Iverson: MFE pilots, report to hangars alpha-bravo! Scrambling fighters in five! Paladins, stand by for launch.

[Scene change as Bae Bae finds the fallen camera and carries it around.]

Shiro: Where did it come from? Veronica, get me eyes on it!

Coran: That thing just appeared out of nowhere!

Shiro: Iverson, fire when ready!

Iverson: Target acquired! We’ve got lock! Wait. No… we lost it! Target has gone dark!

Veronica: Electromagnetic radiation from that planet is overloading our radars.

Shiro: Voltron, do you have a visual? I repeat, Voltron, do you have a visual?

Keith: Not yet. We’re going in now! Stand by! We can’t see a thing in here!

Griffin: Copy that. We have zero visibility as well. We need a visual.

Curtis: Roger. Trying another avenue. Scanning for biometrics. Visual acquired!

Coran: Incoming!

Iverson: Recharging all starboard cannons!

Curtis: Sensors are offline!

Iverson: What is that thing?

Coran: It’s massive!

Shiro: Iverson, open fire!

Coran: Direct hit! It’s coming back around for another shot!

Shiro: Veronica, prep shields!

[Scene change as the camera falls down a vent into Sam and Slav’s workstation.]

Sam: Whatever hit us just knocked loose the gravity generator! Grab the flaxum assembly!

Slav: I can’t do that! It’s red!

Sam: Is this one of your crazy probability, reality things?

[Scene change to a hallway as soldiers float through to their stations.]

Shiro: All crew, report to stations and prepare for Atlas transformation--

Atlas Crewmember: Go, go, go!

Shiro: --in T-minus thirty seconds!

[Scene change as Bae Bae finds the camera again and carries it.]

Colleen: Bae Bae, what are you doing out here? And what’s this in your mouth? A camera? Come on, girl.

Shiro: All crew, prepare for Atlas transformation sequence in five… four… three… two… one!

[Scene change as the camera dies, then powers on again facing Kinkade once more.]

Kinkade: Camera’s fully charged. We’re good to go. The time is now 0900 hours. We just experienced a minor mishap aboard the IGF-Atlas, but we’re back on track. In the future, we’ll hopefully be avoiding creature-occupied gas planets.

[Cut to Kinkade floating through a hallway.]

Kinkade: Hey, Seok Jin, where you headed?

Seok Jin: I’m transporting these samples back to Earth. Commander Holt thinks it can help with the recovery efforts there.

Kinkade: Well, they couldn’t have picked a better man for the job. Take care, man. Hey, Seok Jin… we’ll miss you, buddy.

[Scene change to the camera looking into the mess hall, where Vrepit Sal is cleaning tables and then rotates to face the hallway.]

Rizavi: There you are! Tell me this thing was recording during the attack! That was so intense! Oh, this documentary’s gonna be awesome!

[Cut to Kolivan sitting in a small office facing the camera.]

Kolivan: I believe our heading readout en route was 92254739.275. Wait, no. It was 9.265. Yes. That was our heading per our readout just prior to our deployment.

Rizavi: [mock snoring]

Kolivan: Our teams vary in size. Often we use the three-person unit, but it’s not unusual to have a four- or a five- or perhaps even a six-person unit. Seven seems rare, but... it could happen.

Rizavi: Okay, I like everything you’re telling me, but let’s just try it a little less like you’re reporting the facts to your commanding officer and a little more like you’re telling your friend an exciting story in the gym. You understand?

Kolivan: Yes, understood.

Rizavi: Okay, good. Why don’t you tell us about your last mission?

Kolivan: Our last mission took place on planet K-V Exus. The Blades divided into three four-person teams and we escorted approximately twelve rescue crafts to the surface. I believe our heading readout was 359.222--

Rizavi: Thank! Thank you! Okay, I think we got it!

Kolivan: But I wasn’t done.

Rizavi: Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah. We need to get someone more exciting in here.

[Cut to Coran leaning into the camera as it slowly attempts to focus on him.]

Coran: Then the Atlas started firing with everything it had! And don’t forget the white hole is swirling right next to us the entire time! Oh, no, it’s about to close! Meanwhile, not one, but two, yes, two, robeasts are attacking! Shiro’s shouting out orders. “Coran, get closer! Iverson, open fire!” Beams of quintessence energy are converging from all over the galaxy! Ah! You know, you could just imagine it.

[Scene change to Rizavi turning the camera on in Slav and Sam’s workspace.]

Sam: Welcome to the engine room. What you see here is just a tiny part of what keeps the ship functioning.

Rizavi: Slav, you’ve created some incredible technology. What do you think of the Atlas?

Slav: I can respect any engineering that extrapolates for transmutation, but I wish the writing was in Altean.

Sam: He’s mentioned that a few times.

Rizavi: So what are you doing now?

Slav: Right now we’re about to adjust the gravity generator, which was fractionally increased during our last battle.

Sam: Yes, our gravity generator is actually a fluid system, ever-changing depending on the specific needs of the location, so it requires recalibrating from time to time. Okay, adjust gravity generator back down to .12.

Slav: Copy. Adjusting now.

Sam: What did you press?

Slav: I don’t know! Which one is the two again? I can’t read these weird symbols you call numbers! Hey, big guy, toss me over! Oh, no. Directly on a crack!

Kinkade: Weird.

[Cut to the camera focusing on some juniberry shoots in a pot.]

Colleen: Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s an Altean juniberry. The first one to bloom in nearly ten thousand years. I managed to get it to grow by resequencing the genetic code of a similar plant. I wanna give it to Allura. These are our fertilizers. We have fish emulsion, worm castings, Kaltenecker manure. Just so much great recycled poop! And this is our lighting station. I like to say our lighting array is literally out of this world! You know, because we’re, you know, on a space ship.

Rizavi: Can I take a shot at this?

[Cut to the camera panning across the crops in the grow room.]

Rizavi: Welcome to extreme space harvesting! Where we have plants and crops and super fertilizers all under one roof! Meet Colleen Holt, the botanical genius behind it all.

[Cut to Colleen sitting in a chair in the grow room.]

Colleen: I guess I just liked plants all my life. I’ve done a lot of research, but I know I have much to learn. I guess… I like… the challenge. I’m sorry, where am I supposed to be looking?

Rizavi: Without Colleen, all life aboard the ship could perish. One bad crop, the introduction of one foreign pest, and it’s all over.

Colleen: I just like plants.

Hunk: Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting something again? I just--I just came in to see if Colleen had a very specific type of yeast.

Kinkade: Yeast? What for?

Rizavi: Oh, no.

Hunk: It’s that recipe I’ve been working on. I think I got the topping down, but I’m still trying to figure out the sweet bread.

Colleen: Well, I have so many strains of yeast, it’ll make your head spin. I got AB972, S288C. I even have O unilateralis. Don’t mess with that one.

Kinkade: Are you getting this?

Rizavi: Unfortunately, yes.

[Camera cuts to Kinkade and Rizavi floating through a hallway.]

Rizavi: The time is 1200 hours. We just got word that we are in the Grei-Aye star system. The Paladins will be heading down to the surface of the planet any second now.

[Cut to the camera facing Allura, Lance, and Keith in the hangar for Black Lion.]

Rizavi: Lance, how are you feeling about the mission you’re about to go on?

Lance: Oh, hey. I’m feeling good, I guess. Maybe a little tense. Maybe a lot tense. I don’t know. Why’d you have to ask me that question?

Allura: I think what Lance is trying to say is he’ll be fine. We all will.

Keith: Let’s move out.

[Camera cuts to Kinkade and Rizavi standing a ways away from Blue Lion as it launches.]

Rizavi: Right now, we’re headed to the situation room where we’ll be monitoring the Paladins in real-time.

Kinkade: By the way, you know we’re not gonna be able to bring our camera into that meeting, right?

Rizavi: Says who?

[Scene change to the situation room where Veronica, Coran, Sam, and Shiro are all facing a screen showing a no-signal symbol.]

Sam: Come in, Pidge. Are you reading us?

Pidge: Okay, we’ve just touched down on the surface.

Keith: We’re at the crash site now.

Pidge: That’s the robeast. It looks disabled, just like our intel reported. The Altean should be nearby.

Shiro: Paladins, brace for incoming!

Hunk: I didn’t know it could do that!

Keith: Take cover!

Shiro: Paladins, report! We’ve lost visual. Bridge, lock onto that ship now!

Curtis: Yes, Captain. Adjusting to long-range parameters. Locked on!

Shiro: Light it up!

Curtis: Direct hit!

Lance: Nice shot, Atlas!

Hunk: Yeah, thanks for the cover!

Shiro: Bridge, stay on alert.

[Cut to the Altean viewscreen of Pidge’s point of view through her helmet.]

Allura: Stand by, Atlas. We’re approaching the ship.

Hunk: Guys, there doesn’t seem to be a pilot inside.

Keith: Hey, guys. Over here.

Pidge: Keith’s found something. Let’s go! Give me a second. Just reconfiguring to this barrier’s isometric frequency. There! That should do it.

Keith: Atlas, our target is acquired.

Overlapping voices: Yippee! Alright! Yeah!

Shiro: Great job, everyone!

[Cut to Kinkade and Rizavi floating through another hallway.]

Rizavi: We just got word that the Paladins have returned from their mission. Maybe we can catch a glimpse of this new Altean.

Kinkade: This’ll be the sixth Altean pilot we’ve recovered from the powered-down robeasts left behind after Honerva escaped Oriande. Allura keeps trying, but she hasn’t been able to get any information from them as of yet.

[Camera cuts to Rizavi standing outside a room marked “Authorized Personnel Only”.]

Rizavi: Commander Shirogane said you two were needed on the bridge. We’ll cover your station.

Woman: Yes, Lieutenant.

Rizavi: There! Oh, man, I think we missed the beginning.

Romelle: Tavo, please. You and I grew up alongside one another. You must trust me. We’re here to help.

Tavo: We were told you are a traitor, and I can see now that it is true.

Allura: I’m done talking with him. I’m done with all of them.

Kinkade: Uh, what are you doing?

Rizavi: Sh! I got an idea.

Lance: Anything?

Allura: No. He was just like the others. A true believer in Honerva, and there’s nothing I can say that would make him think otherwise.

Lance: I’m sorry.

Allura: No, I am. These Alteans are the key to unlocking Honerva’s plan. They’re my people, but they won’t speak with me. You have no idea what it’s like to find out after ten thousand years that you’re not the last of your kind… only to be rejected by them.

Lance: I don’t. But I wish every day there were something I could do to change it all for you. You’ve suffered more than anyone should in a thousand lifetimes. But still you persist. Through the pain, you inspire. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.

Kinkade: No, that’s private.

Rizavi: Kinkade, what are you doing? That was our love angle!

[Camera cuts out, then focuses in on Romelle’s face.]

Kinkade: Please don’t touch that.

Romelle: Oh, sorry.

Rizavi: So, Romelle, you know these Alteans from your time on the colony?

Romelle: Yes, I lived alongside them for many decaphoebs. They are good people.

Kinkade: What do you think would make them join forces with Honerva?

Romelle: I don’t know. But you must understand, my people were hunted nearly to extinction. They’re afraid. And this Honerva… she’s turned that fear to aggression. If there was just some way to get through to them.

[Cut to the mess hall.]

Griffin: I’ve never seen anything like it. All those tentacles… so nasty.

[Cut to the kitchen where Hunk is stirring something purple in a pan.]

Hunk: Oh, hey. You’re just in time. I was just about to add the yeast Colleen gave me. No, Bae Bae! Bad dog!

[Cut to Kinkade and Rizavi sitting at a table with Allura.]

Kinkade: First off, thanks for doing this, Allura.

Allura: You’re welcome.

Rizavi: Maybe we can start with the Alteans we have aboard.

Allura: What about them? They’re on the wrong side of this war and they refuse to speak with me. There’s nothing else to say.

Rizavi: So, you’re frustrated?

Allura: Yes, I am. Oriande was destroyed, Lotor is back, and we aren’t any closer to tracking down Honerva. She’s out there, right now, planning something, preparing, and growing stronger. And we’re here flying around in circles, searching for Fraunhofer lines that don’t appear and scanning for wormhole signatures that don’t exist!

Rizavi: Do you think we’ll ever find Honerva?

Allura: No. I think she’ll find us.

[Camera cuts back to Hunk in the kitchen, this time wearing oven mitts.]

Hunk: Okay, it’s been a long day, but I’m finally done.

Kinkade: What is it?

Hunk: It’s an authentic Altean dessert! I’m gonna give it to the Alteans. Coran helped me with the recipe, but I think his memory was, like, a little bit fuzzy, so, you know, I did some improvising. No big whoop.

Kinkade: You did this for them? Why?

Hunk: Well, I don’t know. Because food has a way of reminding people of moments in time. That’s why I made a dessert. Usually, when you eat dessert, you’re pretty happy, right? Who knows? Maybe this’ll help those Alteans remember some moment that made them smile. Something before all this madness. That could go a long way in building a relationship. Well, that’s just what I think.

[Cut to the Alteans in a holding cell as the camera zooms out and pans to face Hunk.]

Hunk: Please, eat. Look, it’s good! Mm, really!

Tavo: You made this? It reminds me of home.

Hunk: Well, I had a little help from someone born and raised on Altea. A-and I know you don’t wanna talk with them, but Allura and Coran know more about your homeland than anyone alive. They were on Altea until its final day. They both would’ve stayed and died to protect it if Alfor hadn’t sent them away. That’s how much they loved it.

Tavo: I heard Altea was one of the most beautiful places in the universe. Did your Alteans ever tell you about the zyo crystal springs outside of the capital? The stories say those cliffs were more beautiful than all of the stars combined.

Hunk: They never told me about them. But I’m sure they’d love to tell you themselves.

[Scene change to Kinkade sitting in casual clothes facing the camera.]

Kinkade: This is Lieutenant Ryan Kinkade, MFE pilot. The time is 2300 hours. Day forty-seven aboard the IGF-Atlas is officially done.

End.

#vld #voltron #transcript #hunk #pidge #tavo #allura #lance #keith #shiro #curtis #sam holt #slav #romelle #colleen holt #james griffin #ryan kinkade #nadia rizavi #coran #iverson

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bi-starprincess · 4 years

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Visual Novel Reviews: Black Closet (Introduction/Overview)

Visual novel reviews are something I’ve wanted to get into for a long time now. So, for my first attempt, I’m going to be covering the game Black Closet by Hanako games, a noir mystery visual novel with yuri romance.

I’ve been following Hanako Games for years--they’ve been my first love when it comes to visual novels. Black Closet, I believe, came out around 2014-2015, and as a young queer girl I was very excited to see an exclusively yuri game be released. Black Closet features two art styles--each beautiful in their own way--an intriguing all-female cast, several cases to solve, a choose-your-own personality main character, and much, much more.

Continued under the cut!

You play as Elsa Jackson, a student at an elite boarding all-girl school called St. Claudine’s. Elsa has just acquired the position of Student Council President, and instructor Miss Talmage (who is very obviously The Villain) informs Elsa that it is her job to solve mysteries within the school in order to keep scandals from ruining the good reputation of St. Claudine’s.

Elsa, however, does not have to do the dirty work--that’s the duty of her “Minions”, the other student council members. (Yes, they’re referred to as minions!) Which, to me, was the first signal that this was going to be a delightfully creepy game. Not to mention these tasks consist of interrogating other students, searching their rooms, stalking them, and even expelling them if they are truly a threat.

But that’s not all--according to Miss Talmage, one of Elsa’s minions is a traitor! This traitor will do anything to sabotage St Claudine’s, and Elsa will be the scapegoat if they succeed. Of course, Miss Talmage won’t just tell us who it is--that’s our job to find out.

Who is the traitor, you ask? Here’s where it gets interesting: Upon your first playthrough of the game, the traitor will be randomized. After you beat the game once, you can choose who the traitor is in you following playthroughs. I’ll explain the significance of that as well as how to snuff out your first traitor later in the post, but for now, lets go over exactly who our “minions” are.

There are five total:

1. Althea, a flirty laidback senior who is also a childhood friend of Elsa’s and has a habit of seducing freshman girls one after another.

2. Thais, Althea’s bold and sassy younger sister with a captivating sense of style and a love of artistic expression.

3. Vonne, Elsa’s dutiful and loyal Vice President who refers to her by the nickname “Captain” for reasons unknown (at least in the beginning of the game).

4. Mallory, a bubbly freshman girl who is new to boarding school life. She quickly becomes popular for her friendly personality and is elected to the student council as a ‘Hospitality Officer”.

5. Rowan, a mysterious, quiet, detached girl that takes care not to draw too much attention to herself.

Take note: Thais and Mallory do not have full romance routes. They are freshman, and Elsa is a senior. You can kiss Thais and become cuddle buddies with Mallory, but that’s as close to romance as you’ll get with them.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to romance anyone. You can just start their friendship routes as well, even for the characters that do have romance routes (Althea, Vonne, and Rowan), but you won’t get all the CGs and special scenes without the romance routes.

Now I’ll go over the significance of the traitor, how to snuff them out, and how to start each girl’s route.

Three things play into the selection of a girl’s route: The identity of the traitor, loyalty scores, and who you chose to be your fellow Queen during the Harvest Festival.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the gameplay, its also a bit difficult to explain through text. More or less, the girls each have four stats at varying levels (intimidation, observation, stealth, and social), which will all be useful for different activities in investigating potential scandals.

I’m not going to lie, even on normal difficulty, Black Closet is hard. There is a debug command to change the values of the girls’ stats--which, honestly, I have always used. But I will continue on under the assumption that you want to play the game organically--the debug codes can be found on the Black Closet steam forum boards. (Yes, Black Closet is on Steam!)

Tips to find the traitor:

1. While solving the cases, you also have the option to send a girl to the supply closet--the traitor is the most likely to bring back lemons, the one item that won’t boost your stats.

2. The game will you probability ratings of successfully completing a task--if this score is 100%, and the girl still fails, she is likely the traitor.

3. About a week before the Harvest Festival, there is a dialogue option at a meeting to say that there is a traitor. Elsa will notice that two girls look guilty. One of these is the traitor.

On weekend days, you have the opportunity to visit two girls in order to increase their loyalty, through a variety of scenes. The girls will also occasionally stop by to give you feedback about the council or to ask questions, giving you a better feel for their personalities. The answers you choose will shape Elsa’s own personality--she can range from being a caring President to a black hearted leader.

If you happen to max out the traitor’s loyalty (45 points, I think), she will confess her involvement to you about a week before the Harvest Festival, each girl has a different motive. At that point you have a choice: expose her and get her expelled, or protect her and choose her as your Harvest Festival Queen.

“But what if I want to pick a different girl as my Queen, and also keep all my minions?” You can’t. (Edit: With the exception of Mallory) If you protect the traitor and choose a different girl as your Queen, she’ll still sabotage the Harvest Festival, and the game will end.

This is why the “Choose your Traitor” feature is handy--because if you don’t want to pursue your traitor’s route, you’ll have to expel her, which will leave you down one minion and make the game significantly more difficult, and will not benefit you save for...a certain route, which I will go over in a future post.

There is much, much more of the plot beyond this, and many more layers. But I’ll stop here for the sake of spoiling further, and because this is where the game breaks off into each girl’s route. I will be making separate posts reviewing each girl’s route, which will contain some spoilers.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! I’ll be posting soon to talk about Althea’s route.

#hanako games #black closet #visual novel #visual novel review #review #walkthrough #please like #or reblog #if you read

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im-the-king-of-the-ocean · 5 years

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3BP2 Episode 4: Mother’s Day Liveblog

...and we’re back with Whirl Does a 3Below Liveblog Thing! My apologies that this one took so long. I’ve had a lot of life stuff going on. But I will try to get through the entire second season of 3Below :)

I do 2 watches of favorite shows when they first come out. The first, a single binge-watching session through all new episodes, so I can feel all the emotions I’m gonna feel. The second is slower, to fully take in the new material and sort out my thoughts. This time, with 3Below, I’ve decided to liveblog my second watch through.

Episode 1. Episode 2. Episode 3.

Beneath the cut, thoughts on 3Below Part 2 Episode 4: Mother’s Day

>I tend to like episodes like this that are framed from the perspective of a side character who usually doesn’t get too much attention. It makes the world feel more developed past the main characters, like the writers have given thought to their entire cast instead of just the protagonists.

>That’s not to say I like every narrative choice in this episode, but the framing is something I’m ultimately glad they decided to do.

>holy crap is this show beautiful. Since my last liveblog I’ve gotten a new computer with better graphics and man is everything absolutely stunning.

>Mother checking in on her family as they sleep is so very cute 👌

>tbh, I feel like this episode would have been a better introduction for Toby this season. Right off the bat, we have him in a familiar setting, the dentist’s office, as a callback to Trollhunters.

Toby becomes aware of a potential threat (Tronos), later meets up with Arrrgh!!!, and then goes to confront the threat.

Starting with Toby here would have re-established him as a competent Trollhunter/reminded the audience of his involvement with Trollhunters already. Instead of appearing to just go along with Eli in ep. 1, Toby would have been shown to have a more active role. He hasn’t just been sitting around like ep. 3 seemed to imply and he does take threats to Arcadia seriously.

Also, not introducing him until a couple episodes in would have heightened anticipation for his return. Instead of just giving the audience him immediately, the writers could have gotten us excited to see him again by making us wait until a very exciting moment, which the beginning of this episode is.

>Tronos’s introduction here is great. Mother’s narration over him going through the power lines and then appearing in the dentist’s office is fantastic, suspenseful and gets the viewer hyped for the episode.

>Have I ever mentioned that I love Tronos’s voice? cause I love Tronos’s voice 😻

>Mother’s development is so so good 😊 it hurts my heart to know where things are going with her this season 😢 but I love her comments to Krel as he’s trying to do repairs.

>I like that Zadra distrusting Vex is a plot line. It shows that past events have lasting effects.

>If this were Toby’s introduction episode, then he and the Tarrons wouldn’t know each other as well as they do, and Toby wouldn’t call them about Tronos. This would circumvent the awkward phone call moment. Plus, the Akiridions could have easily found out about Tronos some other way (like him appearing on their censors like he did on Area 49B’s).

>First mention of Gaylen’s core. Interesting. I’m looking forward to exploring this more in later episodes. Also, I love the music here, it’s wonderful.

>Man, I love the interrogation of everyone in Arcadia. Just 👌stuff right there.

>Zadra training Aja is a nice scene. I like the little sound effect when she ever so gently taps her boot against the building and her smirk when she says “advanced tactics”. Give me more Zadra pls.

>Zadra’s line about compatriots betraying a warrior and having to fight alone read as emotional to me. Like she’s recalling how she had to fight alone at the beginning of Part 1 to prevent Morando’s forces from stopping Aja, Krel, and Vex’s escape. That was an experience she endured and overcame, but it did lead to her capture. This strikes me as Zadra not being unaffected by the experience and that fuels her anger at Vex. Even more so because he was someone I think she mentioned trained her and she trusted in the past. His betrayal hurt her because she trusted him and because of the experiences she had to go through because of it.

Just, I’m reading a lot of depth in Zadra here. Whether it was intentional or not, I cannot say. But it makes me love her character.

>I love love love Aja’s introduction to Arrrgh!!!, that entire scene, and the fact it happened in the museum (another TH callback!)

>I so want to see more of an Aja & Arrrgh!!! friendship, just that friendship. I have been sold on that friendship in less than a minute.

>Bonus points for the Arrrgh!!! vs. Tronos fight.

>See the call back to lightning in a bottle just convinces me more that this should have been Toby’s introductory episode, since we’re reminded of Trollhunters yet again.

>I haven’t mentioned this so far, but this was a really good episode to bring Kubritz and her Area 49B guys to Arcadia in. Also this introduction of Costas, nice to see him before he’ll get a little more significance later.

>The beginning of Morando’s snap commands to the OMENS. I don’t know why I like this, but I do.

>Kubritz’s later working with Morando is foreshadowed here by how she strikes a deal with Tronos. I don’t think that comes out of the blue. Kubritz has set her objective at protecting Earth. She’s found out extraterrestrials have more advanced tech than mankind, so she’s focused on acquiring that tech because without it, she can’t complete her protection objective.

Her goal and the way she goes about it are contradictory (she wants to protect Earth from extraterrestrials, yet she works with extraterrestrials). I don’t think she, as a character, has realized this yet. She’s gotten so caught up in her objective that I don’t think it’s occurred to her that her actions betray her values. At least not until the very end of the season.

We the audience can see her contradiction for what it is because we’re not her, and we have an outside perspective. We also have an emotional connection to Aja and Krel and, because Kubritz is antagonistic to them, we won’t agree with her.

Kubritz only has her own perspective. She doesn’t have to listen to her subordinates if she doesn’t want to (I believe, later, she doesn’t really listen to Costas when he begins to point things out). Until the final battle, where Arcadia is literally being destroyed and she has the evidence that she’s wrong in front of her, Kubritz doesn’t manage to get out of her own head.

I don’t think this makes her a bad character, but a character with flaws. To me, that makes her fascinating.

>“Dinner Family” is great.

>I like the ending conversation between Vex and Zadra. It works really well.

#3below #tales of arcadia #aja tarron #toby domzalski #zadra #tronos madu #aaarrrgghh #colonel kubritz #3below part 2 spoilers #whirl does a 3below liveblog thing #long post

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holstvick53-blog · 5 years

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gaming-rabbot · 6 years

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Rabbot Reviews: Far Cry 5

Great taste, empty calories.

Far Cry 5 is the latest game in quite the lineage of a series known, as you might surmise, as Far Cry. Game number 6, actually, dependent on how canon you feel Primal was. FC as it stands now, though, is a bit of a… how to put it? A long call? A distant yell? An outlying wail? A remote shout? No, a far cry from the original two games, before Ubisoft bought the franchise.

(Yeah, that’s the phrase. Glad I thought of it, though I don’t know where I got it.)

((Incidentally, Remote Shout is the name of my new indie punk garage band. Album drops: never, because this is a joke.))

Starting after Far Cry 3, Ubisoft has been telling their dev teams to make lightning strike twice. Thus, each game hereafter has been an excited waiting game of seeing how they’ll try and ultimately fail to match the demented, yet incredibly charismatic villain that was Vaas.

And 5 feels like this illogical conclusion of just that. Because you have not one, not two, but four scenery-eating, rompy villains. Less a refined, precise attempt at the concept, and more of a blunderbuss approach; hoping to tickle a little of everyone’s villain fancy.

That, I feel, is the perfect metaphor for the game in general.

Last call to avoid spoilers.

Speaking of fitting descriptions of the entire game, let’s start with the intro. Because I have mixed feelings about it, at best. There’s a lot it does right, and some things it simply gets wrong, in regards to the rest of the narrative as a whole.

The pacing and atmosphere are phenomenal. The very air feels heavy around you as you enter into the church, here to take the titular Joseph Seed away from his flock. The pressure of the stakes are established flawlessly, leaving a feeling of palpitation, and a true understanding of just how dangerous Joseph is. Surprised as I was, the game even managed to shock me a little.

In that respect, it’s fantastic.

But then the game uses the cop crew you rolled in with as your motivation for the entire rest of the game, in the form of saving them from the Seed family, and oh god, it’s Fallout 4 all over again.

Just like the Bethesda example above, this aspect of the intro simply doesn’t work. And not just because it’s asking me to unconditionally care about cops.

This sequence of the narrative focuses on every other aspect of narrative setup except for the characters that you’re supposed to get invested in. You get but the most cursory taste of who they are as people. Such a small amount of time can mainly attach their personalities to a specific emotion.

Whitehorse is the calm voice of reason. Marshall Burke is frustrated. Pratt is nervous. And Hudson is… there too, I guess. Look, I’ll be honest, I had to look up half these people’s names for this review. Which I’m sure is only a good sign.

With so little to go on, I found I simply didn’t care whenever a cultist bigwig dangled one of them in front of me on a string, expecting me to bat like a good little kitten. Instead, I yawned and wandered off to play with the packaging the toy had come in.

Like a mischievous little kitten.

Which is such a shame, because there are so many other more interesting characters I actually did care about. And in the few scenes where the Seeds held them to ransom instead, the game suddenly had actual stakes.

Nick and Kim Rye were delightful every time they showed up. Virgil was so honestly sincere, I couldn’t help but like him; and his past, as it unfolded, was interesting to dive into. And Jerome was pretty much cool by default, and an excellent concept for a foil to the cultist bad guys, and everything they stood for.

But the story feels almost unconfident in its execution. Like the team is scared you’ll get bored. So the solution, write more story, or rather, several seemingly self-contained stories across the three separate regions.

With no overarching theme or plot threads besides “Joseph Seed probably gave the command for this at some point,” however, the connection feels loose at best. And this looseness makes the narrative feel all the weaker.

I’d much rather the story had been more focused and condensed. If they’d honed in on about one third as many characters, and if the villains felt a little less redundant, the overall narrative could’ve been much more refined and interesting.

Even the gameplay, while fun, has the same issue.

When traversing from place to place, you can’t drive for five minutes without a dozen random encounters passing you by, whether they travel by wheel or foot or paw. What should be a ten minute trek can sometimes take 30.

Again, it feels like the game is nervous. Like it’s worried that if I’m not firing a gun every two minutes, I’m losing interest. Look, I know this is the age of the internet, but my attention span hasn’t deteriorated that bad.

What were we talking about again?

But it’s sad though, as it detracts from what could be some very nice vistas and scenic routes. I can barely enjoy the quiet, introspective new addition of fishing without a randomly spawned cultist with an exaggerated country accent shouting “Fay-oond ‘eem!” and scaring away all the darn fish with a wild assault rifle volley.

Speaking of guns, let’s talk about politics. Something that could only ever be fun and only ever go over very well.

I don’t want to get too deep into this, as it’s been covered to death, and more eloquently than I’ll probably put it. For a better dive into the subject, I’d recommend watching Errant Signal’s “The Art of Saying Nothing.” To sum it up though, while at face value, FC5 might seem as though it’s about to lay down a scathing indictment of certain aspects of American culture, it really doesn’t.

Not for lack of bringing it up though.

The lady who owns Peaches the cougar, that is to say, the former owner of this sweet large kitten (no I’m not looking up the name this time; she’s not even a narrative footnote), is a prejudicial old woman who lives alone in the woods.

Immediately upon entering her domicile so I could acquire my new kitty and leave, she mentioned that my player character looked vaguely Italian, and made an off-color comment about not wanting her silver/jewels to go missing.

What is this, the turn of the century, last century?

At Hurk’s place, you can meet his dad, who wants to build a wall. What, no, not a wall down there. A wall in the north, to keep out those accursed Canadians and their liberal ideology.

Addressing controversy by obfuscating the real world equivalent is cute, but it lacks the punch that makes it such that it’s proving some kind of point. Here, it’s npc’s that you’re expected to stay on good terms with, so that you can get more quests and goodies, like a new pet or ride.

(Shame you never get a new pet who is also your new ride, though.)

And why? Because they’re supposedly better than the cultists who only physically hurt and impede people different than themselves? What’s the takeaway here supposed to be, that it’s only physical extremism that’s bad and--oh god wait no, it’s Bioshock Infinite all over again.

Of course, we all know the real reason why. To offend as few people as possible. Because every offended party is a potential lost sale. Hence why despite clearly using Christian/Baptist imagery and motifs, no cultist ever actually mentions Jesus by name, and the peggy symbol only vaguely and technically resembles that of a cross.

I’ve bad news for you, though, Ubisoft; it’s too late. If you wanted to offend as few people as possible, it was already over the instant you let writers set it in a rural, dominantly Christian, dominantly white community, in America. Right wing talking heads were lining up to be officially offended the instance promos started showing bad guys toting guns, bibles, and the American flag.

Because despite bragging about having thick skin, when it comes down to it, they typically don’t.

At some point, you almost want to lean in uncomfortably close to the game’s face and tell it “Go on. Say what you really mean.” And it never does. Making it satire with no teeth, which isn’t actually satire, but parody. It’s a flag-waving, gun-toting parody of American culture. It’s an American beer commercial meets Saint’s Row. It’s a romanticized outdoorsy rural locale with tacky looking guns and gruesome murder set to made-up gospel and old rock hits.

Which doesn’t feel that far off from a Saint’s Row game, but it wildly conflicts with the tone Far Cry 5 very quickly establishes for itself. And it’s such a waste, because to use an on-theme colloquialism, “bless its little heart.”

It’s trying so hard, and there are some things I can’t help but enjoy about it.

There was a moment early on, when I was creeping through the bushes of a small neighborhood as slowly and quietly as I could. I had not but a bow and a pistol to my name. Cultists were stacking dead bodies while their speaker-mounted truck played their very own choir, singing about water washing away sin. As they were finishing up, they began to sing along.

It was as First Blood meets Jim Jones as the entire game felt, and it all just clicked. The gameplay and tone all lined up so perfectly and felt so right. Where did that go?

Luckily, the game is also pretty charming in various other inadvertent or otherwise unintentional ways.

Obviously it’s cute and wholesome that you can pet all the non-hostile animals. But it’s completely adorable how Peaches growls at you when you go where she can’t follow.

There’s also random npc’s you can recruit for the game’s buddy system, aside from the nine named specialty partners. At first, I seriously wondered how any of them could compare to Peaches, the oversized mewling kitten, or Grace, the cool as a cucumber sniper lady.

But then I found some lady named Evie, who looked like somebody’s mom, and I honestly found it hard to part with her. There was something so ernest and amusing about the idea of somebody’s mom who used to embarrass them at every PTA meeting or bake sale, now in an awkwardly-fitting militia vest yelling “Get some!” to every other cultist who dared cross our path.

The gameplay is also varied enough with timed races, and puzzling treasure hunting segments. The latter in particular, I really enjoyed. They had me doing everything navigating mazes of fire to hopping and swinging along successive grapple lines under a bridge, skirting river water along the way. It’s good, varied fun.

I also really appreciate the organic way in which story beats are unlocked, which is really saying something for a sandbox. Normally, there are specific missions that unlock the next cutscene that actually matters, and everything else feels like so much filler and padding.

Far Cry 5 had the genius idea that everything should contribute to an overall progress bar. This makes it that nothing feels like padding, as you’ll always be working toward the next story beat, even if you’re doing what feel like side quests.

But it’s one step forth and one step back with you, isn’t it Far Cry 5?

Once you’ve unlocked the next story beat, you’ll be whisked away to the next cutscene to have one of the villains get in your face for the next five minutes, whether you were ready for that or not. It gets annoying after the second time, and downright numb the fifth or sixth.

It’s also where the writing starts to fall apart some more.

You know that old James Bond trope where the bad guy has him right where they want him? But then because the villain is so contrived in how they want to handle him, he ends up getting away? Well that happens almost every time. It’s cheesy.

Also where some of the worst writing in the game comes into play.

Jacob Seed has a neat gimmick, I’ll admit. He’s all about classic conditioning, A Clockwork Orange style. Alright, interesting enough. And instead of escaping, you wake up, presumably days later, having finally escaped his mind control. It was a neat twist at first.

What’s incredibly stupid though is everyone points it out. Dutch, Eli, all characters who know about Jacob’s MO, and none of them think anything suspicious about it. Nope, just “Hey, now that I can finally get in contact with you after an entire week of you not responding, come back and get uncomfortably close to me and people I care about.”

Nobody thinks anything’s up with that? Even after it happens three or four times?? And not even my own character thinks to warn them that I’m being psychologically manipulated to kill them???

Oh. Look at that. The game made me kill Eli. How very unsurprising. What is that, something like four hours of build up to a twist anyone could see coming if they’ve ever seen a story?

“Who cares, it’s fun, isn’t it?”

I mean, yes, sure. It’s very fun, in fact. Fewer things have been more satisfying than timing it just right to take down three baddies at once, with a sniper shot from Grace, a mauling from Peaches, and a throwing knife from myself.

And like I said before, the gameplay is just varied enough to not grow dull. But what should be a good game is held back by mediocre writing and a lack of commitment.

Weirder than any of it though is the troves of people lining up to say it doesn’t matter, because the game is fun. Listen, I can enjoy the gameplay for hours of mind-numbing fun, but still be able to pick apart everything wrong with the overall experience. There’s nothing really wrong with that. It doesn’t completely impede what enjoyment I, or anybody else, was able to get out of it.

I really don’t get this, though. This is no critique of the game itself, mind you, but it is at fault for bringing it up again, even if by accident. So it bears discussion.

Clean Prince was right when he said that Far Cry 5 brought up a lot of what’s wrong with modern gaming culture. Yet I can’t help but disagree with his reasoning behind this statement. Because he, like many, asked why any of it matters, so long as the game is fun.

Look.

Gamers clamored for years, demanding our hobby be taken seriously. Entire groups and brands like Extra Credits formed, to try and gain for games the same respect film and literature already had.

Nowadays, we have critics aplenty, like Super Bunny Hop, and the above-mentioned Errant Signal, who regularly dissect games with the same attention to detail movies, shows, and novels receive.

We did it. We’re here. We made it, right?

No.

People tear down bad writing in games, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. The game being fun is the only feature that matters, now that it’s convenient to dismiss anything that seemingly gets in the way of your enjoyment.

Even though it doesn’t.

If Far Cry 5 were a film, people would be trampling over each other to repeat the critics’ disregard of its milquetoast shotgun approach to writing, and lack of commitment to an actual point, despite advertising itself as any kind of satire.

It’s not like having an actual statement is foreign to Far Cry either. Far Cry 2 had a well implemented theme of deterioration in every aspect; your character’s health thanks to the malaria, the guns falling apart from being old, fire spreading wildly out of control.

It’s not even necessarily a Ubisoft problem either.

Far Cry 3 was all about the lengths you’d go to for the people you care about, and how growing and changing as a person ends up alienating you from them anyway. There was also an underlying theme about there being no real winners in a setting so deeply seeded with violence.

Ending sucks too. That’s not a good transition, but it’s as good of one as it deserves, to be frank.

It’s awful, but not because it’s unsatisfying and you don’t get to technically win. Not every game needs to end on a positive note, just because you work for it. Spec Ops: The Line had some of my favorite gut-punch endings in a game.

But the takeaway is just bad, for either ending.

Either you walk away from Joseph at the end, and Jacob’s conditioning kicks in again, and you kill everyone you just saved, or randomly and completely out of bumbling nowhere, several nuclear warheads go off around the tristate area. And everyone you just saved dies in irradiated fire anyway.

What’s the takeaway here? That we should just let dangerous people get away with violent uprisings, because hey, who knows, they may actually have been right all along?

The nuclear ending especially is just bad writing. It’s a twist out of left field meant to shock, and take you by surprise, but only because there’s nothing to indicate it’s going to happen. It’s trying, and failing, to ape the nuke scene from the first Modern Warfare game. But that scene was the dramatic release after an entire level’s worth of building tension regarding the bomb which was mentioned earlier. Of which said established tension, there’s simply none here.

Each region even caps off with you burning out the cult’s various bomb shelters. Only to find out, what? That you should’ve given up and let them kill and maim and steal all they like, so you could huddle down next to them in their bunkers? All because some uninformed zealot who doesn’t even sound like he’s actually looked at a bible lately made a lucky guess?

No thanks.

Instead of inspiring shock and awe, the ending feels random and nonsensical. Once again destroying any coherency the overall tone the game could’ve had. Is this supposed to be a fun, silly game to be enjoyed with a beer or a friend?

Or a serious and somber game where you face the deepest human fear of all: how people manage to justify overt acts of pure evil as “the right thing?”

All in all, Far Cry 5 is like a cheap burger from a fast-food joint. The taste is fine and it’ll tide you over, but it’s probably not very good for you. And you can’t help but think about how much better it looks in the pictures on the menu.

#video games #review #Far Cry 5 #spoilers #rabbot reviews

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kr210 · 3 years

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Year One : Part 2

These little drabbles were so much fun to write. I hope you all enjoyed the stories as much as I did writing them. Sakura’s Character Page

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 |

Summary : Second half of the previous chapter with the autumn and winter seasons. We finally get to see what happened the rest of the first year of Namimori Middle School with Sakura and her crush Hibari.

Autumn The season of Autumn in Japan is pretty much like a second summer with colder nights. It was also the season for festivals. To say that Sakura wanted to attend a festival was an understatement. When she was younger Kai and Bai would not let the princess out anywhere without bodyguards . And now that she was attending school on her own and showing that she could handle herself quite well they thought maybe an undercover guard was enough.

So one autumn night Yuna and Sakura went to attend the firework festival at Namimori shrine. Yuna decided to dress up in a cute off white koi fish pattern on the bottom, kimono. Sakura on the other hand wore a dark blue crop top and faded hot pants with her yellow heels. Her hair was down but there was a hair tie around her wrist. Sakura had more than enough money as Yuna asked to try almost all the food and games.

What the girls weren’t expecting to see was all the Disciplinary Committee members walking back and forth collecting money from the stalls. “Good evening Sakura-san, Hinamori-san” Kusakabe said as he went to collect money from the stall that the girls were at. “If you guys are collecting money, does that Hibari isn't too far behind?” she questioned him. “You are correct. He’s closer to the shrine as he does not like crowds.” He shared. Sakura nodded her head understanding that.The head of the stall handed Kusakabe the money without him even asking. “Have a good evening” he nodded to them both and went to continue collecting.

They girls continued to have fun up until the fireworks. Yuna happily found a spot with the best view and the fireworks were very clear but Sakura snuck away to get a glance at Hibari. Sure enough at the top of the stairs of the shrine was Hibari avoiding the crowds and looking at the fireworks from the top of the shrine. Sakura smiled and let out a giggle before she made it back to her friend who never noticed her disappearance.

Cultural Festival Every November 3rd, Japanese schools celebrated their culture festivals. An event that took place usually over the weekend where potential new students would go to the schools they were going to attend and check out the campus and the school. Class 1-B wanted to do a maid cafe. But sadly at Namimori Middle School all Cultural festival ideas had to go through the Disciplinary Committee to make sure no disgrace fell upon the school.

When Hibari saw that 1-B was doing a maid cafe he scoffed and approved of it. He knew Sakura was popular at the school which meant she would be dressed as one of the maids and that meant she couldn’t disgrace his school with her distasteful choices in clothing. 1-B on the other hand was very excited as first years usually struggled to get their ideas approved by Hibari. Come November third, the school was bustling with all kinds of students and parents checking out the middle school including a young man with brown hair that looked a little disheveled. There was also another student who was checking out the baseball team while a different second year was chasing students and parents alike promoting his boxing club.

Sakura on the other hand was confused as to why the whole cafe had to be closed and was left alone with Hibari in the middle of the classroom. “So because you don’t like crowds everyone had to leave so you could make sure my maid uniform looked appropriate?” she asked him. He nodded and she shook her head then smirked. She posed all cute and smiled at him asking, “Would you like some green tea sir?” in the most annoyingly sweet voice possible. Hibari’s eyebrow twitched but he was amused and refused to lose to her. “Yes, you can bring it to my office on your break” he told her leaving the exact amount of change on the table next to them. He then moved his herd out to check the other stands. Sakura puffed slightly once he left. Needless to say she did bring him that cup of tea during her break. In fact they both shared a cup before they continued on their day.

Accident It was a winter and although Sakura had not fully fixed her uniform, today she was dressed with her shirt fully buttoned and the school jacket on top. Her skirt though was still hiked up but at least she was wearing stockings underneath. Today though she was wearing little ankle boots that had a four inch block heel on them. Yuna and the princess entered the school like any other day when Sakura noticed that Hibari wasn’t there. Disappointed she headed to change her shoes and continued on her day with Yuna.

After school she was pleased to see Hibari waiting outside for her as per usual. A smile appeared on her face glad to see him there. He pulled out his Tonfas. By now it had been ritual for the two of them to spar after school. Hibari enjoyed it because Sakura put up a fight. She wasn’t weak like the other herbivores that went down with one hit. And it had been clear that they challenged each other, improved their fighting styles and soon they became very compatible fighting against one another.

Today though something happened that neither one of them expected. Sakura took off her coat because it was restricting her movements. Then they went at it once again in the center of the courtyard where they wouldn’t be a danger to other students. Sakura did a flip to land a hit on the top of Hibari’s head. Hibari blocked it with tonfa trapping her ankle in the cross of the weapons. She felt it though. She felt the metal in her legs vibrate up to her knees. She looked at him with wide eyes.

He too felt it. It was normal for him to know what it was like for bone to collide with his tonfas but this was different. It almost felt as if his Tonfas were colliding with themselves. He frowned and looked up at her. Her usually calm confident eyes were wide with fear. His expression changed to concern. He found something out he wasn’t supposed and he knew it and he knew that she knew it as well.

Sakura retreated and Hibari let her. “I’m sorry” she told him, grabbing her coat and leaving the school in a rush.

Hibari was left there dumbfounded as Kusakabe approached him. “Sir?” he questioned. “Pull everything we have on Yakumo Sakura” he ordered. “Right away” the second in command said and left.

Cherry Blossom Princess Hibari was sitting at his desk looking over budgets for the clubs when there was a knock on his door. “Come in” he ordered as he flipped through the papers. Kusakabe entered, shutting the main office door behind him. “You asked about first year Yakumo Sakura?” he reminded him. Hibari put his file down and looked up at his second in command. Kusakabe handed the folder over to Hibari and Hibari opened it to read it.

First year, Class 1-B Yakumo Sakura 12 years old, Birth Date March 21st. Blood type AB 196 cm, 54kg, Favorite color soft pink, prefers green and white teas Heiress to the Yakumo Yakuza Known among the Yakuza as a princess, due to her young age and keen business aspects Namichu rank 7, rank 1 among the men at Namichu, part of track team Likes to sing and dance.

Hibari turned the page in the folder. His eyes widened as he read the history of this girl. The crash at nine years old. The trips in and out of the hospital for two years. She has studied karate, tae kwon do, gymnastics, and several other martial arts. Then he noticed the doctor’s footnotes and he looked up at Kusakabe. “These medical records are from Namimori hospital?” he asked. “Yes sir.”

Hibari turned the page again and saw the x rays from when she was nine years old. The shattered bones of a child that was protected and loved by her father. He kept leafing through the x rays all the way up until he saw the latest ones. He saw the titanium metal that was mixed in the outline of bone.

That metal explained why he felt that clang of metal against his tonfas earlier that day. A smirk appeared across his face. This girl suddenly seemed so interesting. Hibari wanted to acquire such a rare find indeed to have on the committee. It would be better to have her on his side then continue fighting against her quirky ways. “Tetsuya I’ll be keeping an eye on Yakumo,” he said closing the folder and putting it away. “I do believe she prefers to be called by her first name sir.” he stated. Hibari looked up at him and frowned before he quietly scoffed and headed out for a patrol.

Secret The first snow of winter had arrived just before the winter break. Sakura could feel the cold in her legs. Oftentimes it left her aching and hurting to walk. Today the pain was especially bad. She had asked Kai to make a doctor’s appointment after school. This cold winter day Sakura actually wore her uniform properly, something that pleased Hibari.

He approached both Sakura and Yuna. Scared Yuna hid slightly behind Sakura. But Sakura wasn’t feeling well and it showed in her attitude. “What is it Hibari?” the Yakuza leader snapped at him. His nose twitched. “I wanted to commend you for wearing the uniform properly.” Sakura nodded. “And I wanted to inform you that if you continue to wear your uniform properly there may be a spot on the committee for you” he shared showing her the red arm band. Sakura’s eyes widened as she looked at this item. A little part of her did want it and to be on the same committee as her crush. “I think I can manage that,” she muttered. Hibari nodded pleased with that answer. He turned to walk away. Sakura walked with Yuna besides her. But her pace was slow. “You okay?” Yuna asked, concerned. “Yeah. you know this weather really throws me off” She reminded her friend.

Yuna stared at her. “I’m worried Sakura, last time you were like this your legs gave out and you had to go to the hospital for a week” she commented. Sakura shook her head. “I already had Kai make me an appointment for after school I just need to last the day.” she said softly as she struggled to walk to the front of the school. Yuna was about to protest and tell her friend to call Kai right away but instead she found herself calling for her friend instead. Sakura fell forward, passing out from the intense pain.

Hibari was not far when he heard the scream of a voice he knew. He turned around to see the girl that had been challenging him since the beginning of the school year. His eyes widened before he called his men to get an ambulance and keep the students moving. After all it was still a regular day at the school. Hibari himself went over to Sakura and checked on her. Yuna was slightly freaked out. “You’re her friend right?” he demanded as he picked Sakura up off the ground. Yuna pulled out her cell phone to call Kai as Hibari took Sakura to the infirmary.

A trip to the hospital by ambulance Two surgeries Six weeks of rehab

The winter break had started by the time Sakura had gotten out of the hospital. Yuna had been the first person to visit her outside of the hospital. But to Sakura’s surprise was the gift she got when she got home. On her bed was a small box and a letter. Kai had said it was dropped off by a small group of young men with dated haircuts.

Sakura opened the letter first. It was from Hibari who was wishing her well and telling her that he expected to see her next spring. There was a date on the letter. The date was two weeks before the semester was supposed to start. Her eyebrows furrowed together and she turned her attention to the box. Carefully she opened it and saw the badge. Her eyes widened and she blushed then took out the badge and giggled a typical school girl giggle.

#Hibari Kyoya #OCxHibari #katekyo hitman reborn #khr #Yakumo Sakura #Namimori middle school #Hinamori Yuna #Kusakube Tetsuya #Autumn #Winter

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vladynews · 4 years

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just how to look after a dachshund

I have actually been keeping the dachshund for 25 years, so the type's features will certainly be prejudiced. I love these sausages with all my heart. And also not just me. In one Germany currently lives more than a million dachshunds. At the exact same time, their popularity is steady. It does not depend upon the variations of fashion - and also lots of types can flaunt the same?

Dachshund is one-of-a-kind. Little dimension and unpretentiousness in treatment make it a popular friend for residents. At the exact same time, the language does not resort to call the breed ornamental. Dachshunds stay "genuine", serious dogs.

The look of the dachshund

Taxi is one of the most well-known breed worldwide. A long and also short sausage pet dog just looks ridiculous prima facie. Cabs have effective paws and huge breasts. They are not large, yet extremely solid pets - their muscles are well developed. Strong constitution and endurance are a tradition of the centuries-old searching past.

A lengthy head with a smooth transition from temple to muzzle is decorated with huge ears. Brownish eyes always look with interest, in them you can see a remarkable intelligence.

What are the dachshunds

Inside one breed, there is a division by the type of wool and size. Because of this, there is a big variety of tex.

There are 3 dimension groups:

* Rabbit dachshund - weight 3-3.5 kg * Small (small, dwarf) dachshund - weight 4-5,5 kg * Standard dachshund - weight 8-9 kg

By the sort of woollen are additionally distinguished by three ranges:

* Smooth wool; * Long-haired; * Hard woollen.

Nowadays, hard-coat dachshunds preferred as functioning hunting canines: they do not freeze as their smooth congeners. The layer is not confused or unclean, as in the case of lengthy layer dachshunds. Sticker labels have their very own shade, which is called "boar".

Long-haired dachshunds swiftly ended up being ornamental canines due to their amazing appearance. Smooth hairs are just as suitable for searching as well as for home life.

The most typical shades of tex:

* Black-floor; * Red (from dark to intense orange as well as sandy);. * Coffee (chocolate);. * Marble (tricolor).

There are cream, tiger colors.

Character of the dachshund: 7 character features.

Even bunny dachshund is not a decorative "girls'" type. The smallest dachshunds were reproduced particularly for rabbit hunting. With a typical dachshund hunting not just on the burrowing monster (fox, badger) however also any kind of various other video game.

Individuals.

There are a number of kinds of searching dogs (sweetheart, dog, cop, and also others). Most of them work in pairs with a man, waiting on a group from the hunter. But not a dachshund. Regular pet dogs should discover the beast themselves and also get it. Struggle in a slim dark burrow is individually. A person there is no helper to the pet dog.

The first high quality of a dachshund is wilfulness. Dachshund groups are very easy to find out, but every time they assume concerning whether to execute.

Interested.

Once in the brand-new space, the dog will not relax till he examines every corner. A stroll for a dachshund is a real vacation since there is a feast of smells exterior.

Energetic as well as playful.

Brief curves of the legs can deceive the ignorant. Dachshund owners recognize that these pets have incredible endurance. If a dachshund is in great physical form, it prepares to cover a few kilometers on a daily walk.

Dachshunds must be permitted to spray out energy. They happily carry the ball, play with congeners, and also amuse the proprietors with their grimaces. Do not presume that due to the brief legs of the dachshund runs slowly. If wanted, it becomes an actual torpedo!

Tender

Like several hunting pets, dachshunds can completely ignore the owner on a stroll, with the rapture to hurry around the countryside as well as discover their own activities. But what they are really caring! Drinking on your back to scrape a stubborn belly, sticking your nose under your arm, as well as reaching lick your nose is all right.

Those that say "pleased not to buy" have not yet acquired a pup dachshund!

If you win a dachshund, you will not find a more caring pet. Dachshunds love to iron as well as cuddle with the owner in your rest.

Gambler

A lot of dachshunds do not recognize the anxiety - they hurry strongly at the adversary a lot bigger than themselves. If the dachshund wakes up hunting exhilaration, it ends up being deaf to your commands, feels neither discomfort neither tiredness, focusing on the target. Dachshund is exactly the dog that can bark for hrs on a rescued feline from a tree.

Smart

Dachshunds do not join agility and also will certainly not amount to in obedience to pets' official types, but no one will question their knowledge. It is the intellect that provides a dachshund a special appeal and slyness. They are damn ingenious in their tricks, after which they request for mercy so artistically that it becomes difficult to vow, just chuckle.

Vitality enthusiasts.

Dachshunds are not sad, are not annoyed, as well as do not hover with guilt. Searching - with excitement. For me, a dachshund is an endorphin canine!

Even if a pet's back legs fall short, dachshund proprietors usually do not also consider mercy killing. Due to the fact that their dog continues to enjoy life. Caring dachshund assists them leave any kind of condition, billing with positive outlook everyone around.

Dark side of dachshund: 6 unfavorable top qualities.

Since I'm a big lover of a dachshund, any flaws of these dogs seem to me simply cute attributes. If you are not yet struck by taxonomy, pay focus to them to assume about the repercussions before your very first dachshund.

Mania of greatness.

Any kind of dachshund, also a small one, will believe greater than as soon as regarding the question - isn't it the main one in this residence? For this insolent long-nosed pet dog to follow your orders, you will have to inform from the very first days. All your life proves that the owner is the main resource of food, enjoyment, and also enjoyment.

Which you can alter the dachshund, even if you have no time for it now/lazy/you are really worn out/ when can. If you provide the slack, your point of view will certainly no longer be taken into consideration by the dachshund when making decisions.

Arbitrariness, stubbornness, and a propensity to control make a dachshund inappropriate for elderly people or beginners to pet reproduction. Owners who can not place the dachshund in position develop a despot as well as a beast with their own hands.

Loud voice

For seekers, it was very crucial to hear the dachshund providing a voice while in a deep opening. On the other hand - if an animal is not appropriately raised, the dachshund can turn into a bastard.

A separate issue emerges if the dachshund groans and also barks, being left alone. Pets robbed of job do not get either physical or psychological stress and anxiety.

propensity to bite

Numerous individuals take into consideration dachshunds hostile. Typically, dachshunds attack their own proprietors as well as household members - if they consider themselves leaders.

The second reason for bites - if the dachshund safeguards itself, it hesitates. It is not permitted to beat the pet in the process of education or shed. This will not end well, particularly if the dachshund has a remarkable memory. A pet dog can toss on a particular odor, as an example, on drinks.

The 3rd reason is territorial aggressiveness. When I first brought a dachshund to my dacha, it bit my neighbor's leg with blood. She did not bark, just turned up and also barked on the back. It took place when an old lady pertained to our residence. The dog had actually never ever seen her in the past as well as chose that she was an unfamiliar person. It was not simple to describe with a bitten canine! Bite the dachshund as well as neighbor's kids if they were running around our website with squeals and noise.

Zoo aggressiveness.

Dachshund can get along well with cats in the residence - and also selflessly go after strange cats on the road. They need to realize their hunting impulse.

The amount of times I have actually seen the sobbing owners who chose that the hamster in the cage is not endangered with anything. The village dachshund can choke bunnies or hens, so the animal can not be release on a self-guided walk.

Contrary to fears, dachshunds can quickly quadrate pet cats in the same house. If you take a dachshund to a grown-up pet cat, they will certainly end up being buddies forever.

Without timely socialization, dachshunds barely interact with congeners, especially bigger than themselves. Greater than as soon as, I viewed a tiny "sausage" flick its teeth a centimeter away from the face of a puzzled Labrador or a sheepdog. It only stays to advise maintaining the dachshund on a leash due to the fact that fearlessness will certainly not help her avoid injuries in a battle with a pet dog a number of times bigger than herself.

Gluttony.

When the dachshund is awake, either states is looking for food or consuming. Dachshunds are the masters of pleading, as well as their begging look bumps out the most relentless. Never before have I seen a dachshund hug a lot that she would quit a delicious item.

On the one hand, a dog-leaver is okay, since it makes training simpler. On the various other hand, for a lot of the walk, you will make certain that the family pet does not vacuum from the ground.

Dachshunds are not just begging yet additionally swiping. My rascal as soon as chewed a bag of food, which I thoughtlessly left in the hallway. The dog looked like a globe yet was not mosting likely to pass away.

If you take a puppy to your home, you need to learn to order. You require to hide not just the food however all the potentially hazardous things: dachshunds might discover it edible what you can not think of - lipstick, lotion, made use of baby diaper.

Devastating propensities.

For such a lap dog, the dachshund has exceptionally powerful jaws. As well as paws. And claws. In a word, you must not let such a family pet obtain bored, or you will have a developer repair work in your home. It is simple to dig a couch, playing in the red. It is simple to rip the wallpaper. Grind every little thing, left neglected - why not? The dacha location of the dachshund can destroy the grass, steaming holes in it.

Dachshunds cope with toys from the pet store in a matter of mins, as well as just deals with like deer horns, or rubber rounds can take them for a very long time.

Inquiries of treatment and upkeep of a dachshund.

The popularity of dachshunds was substantially added to their unpretentiousness in web content. They really feel equally confident both in the streets of the metropolis as well as in the town. Cabs willingly eat both healthy food and commercial feed. They do not need to wipe their ears or eyes. The care varies just depending upon the type of wool.

Dachshunds need to be cleaned every time after the walk: their breasts and stomach get dirty promptly. You can show your pet dog to use a water resistant one-piece suit. Clothing will additionally be useful in winter season - smooth wool dachshunds are really cold. They should a minimum of use a coat.

Dachshunds do not like to stroll in the rain. If they do not like the weather condition, the pet will quickly chrome or rest on his back. You will be cursed to drag the "unhappy" on a chain (do not poop in your home), gathering the condemnations of passers-by. When you transform to the residence, the victim will support up as well as rush on all four paws.

All the dachshunds, as well as the hardcore ones, too, like comfort and comfort.

Difficult woollen dachshund need to be cut (plucked undercoat) 2 times a year during the seasonal molting (springtime, fall). Long-haired - regularly combed and also bathed. Smooth haired dachshunds, deprived of undercoat, the most comfy in day-to-day life. They are easy to clean, dry promptly, and also the home's woollen will be couple of. Nonetheless, hard as needles, hairs can purposefully get stuck in bed linens.

All dachshunds expand claws very rapidly, especially on the front paws. They are needed to dig. If the pet dog does not search and also strolls little on the asphalt, the claws grow as well long. They are shortened with claw cutters once a month.

Conditions of dachshund.

The bright side is that the dachshunds describe long-term pet dogs. I personally dealt with a 19-year-old cab. The life expectancy of 15-17 years in these dogs is considered the norm.

intervertebral hernia.

Amongst the public, there is a deliberate point of view that issues with the back of the dachshunds are connected with a disproportionately long body. However this is not the situation. Many cases when the back legs of the taxa stop working are related to hereditary discopathy.

In this situation, the canine has an illness of cells regrowth of the intervertebral disks. They lose their elasticity, and by the age of 4 years, there is a risk of disc herniation (outcropping, tear).

When the disc is sticking out, there is pinching of nerves or spine. Depending upon the rupture's size, this is either uncomfortable or a photo of paralysis (the pet can not lean on his back legs, urination and also defecation are disturbed). Therapy can be both operative as well as conventional. To choose the ideal technique, you require to "see" the rupture - CT or MRI.

A pet older than 4-6 years can prompt a rupture by leaping from heights, injury during energetic games with various other pet dogs. The only avoidance is to maintain excellent physical shape and avoid weight problems.

Supposed chondroprotectors do not influence the procedure of disk devastation. They are not used either for treatment or to prevent discopathy in dachshunds. Genes plays a decisive role: dachshund can live a life without having issues with the back. Or it can for the first time "buckle" at the age of 4, and also with age, the assaults will be duplicated regularly.

Bust gland conditions.

Dachshunds are very caring mothers. Also after the very first birth, they take superb treatment of pups, can embrace other people's cubs, such as kittycats. This is because of the high hormone history. But if the bitch is not decontaminated and also does not bind, there are troubles.

After a leakage, dachshunds often have an incorrect pregnancy and after that an incorrect lactating, mastitis. At an older age, deadly lumps happen on the mammary glands.

Because of this, it is suggested to castrate the bitches that are not associated with breeding, ideally - also before the first leak.

Parodontosis.

Dachshunds, specifically dwarfs, often tend to create tartar. Preferably, a pet dog must be instructed to comb his teeth (brush + paste) from youth. Tartar leads to periodontal disease, bad odor from the mouth, and loss of teeth.

Heart failure.

Type illness tax - mitral heart shutoff failure. In older pets (usually after 6 years) its sashes begin to deform as well as can no much longer close firmly.

Just when the left atrium is currently greatly expanded, owners might see a regular cough, lack of breath, intolerance to physical activity. A senior dachshund needs unique care.

Suppose the dachshund is older than 4 years old. In any kind of case, after 6 years, it is better to inspect the heart frequently.

Verdict.

If you as soon as begin a dachshund, it is likely that from this particular day on, just dachshunds will certainly stay in your home. Despite just how remarkable the other breeds of pet dogs are, they are not dachshunds, which states all of it.

Let such a pet dog needs attention. The moment invested will repay a hundredfold. It is difficult to mope when there is an energised, crafty long-nosed pet.

Comments from dachshund owners.

Why did we pick a dachshund.

Fifteen years earlier, when my child was in elementary school (that is, currently ripe for a pet dog, upkeep as well as treatment), by now my kid had actually reviewed several publications about canines and also enjoyed lots of films on the same topic, and also consequently, there was a passionate wish to obtain a pet dog.

They began to choose a breed for an apartment. We do not have a summertime home. It was not feasible to take a huge dog to the areas. As well as right here, a good friend, who stayed in 2 dachshunds, used this type. In the beginning, I was hesitant. It appeared to me that she was such lengthened as well as brief legs. Yet in the long run, we took a puppy with a common long-haired dachshund.

So this is our initial experience of maintaining a pet. As you create in this short article, dachshunds are unreliable, clever, and also they will certainly follow your order if it coincides with her desires. Now our charm is 15 years of ages. Over the years, she has actually been so mischievous: stripped off wallpaper, ate shoes, telephone and television cable televisions, ate off two males's bags at her spouse, and so on. A great deal of other things. Yet she offered as well as remains to provide us so much positive that thanks to her, we have one more long-haired dachshund (miniature, it is currently 5 years old), and also many thanks to her, we fell in love with this breed.

Exactly how do you agree kids and pet cats? With children, it is terrific. The main thing is to let the dog know that this is our youngster, and you can't injure him. They are hardly ever wise, as well as sometimes it seems that she comprehends the significance of what you have actually claimed. With felines, obviously, they likewise get on quickly. I would like to discuss another such factor. It is a solitary type. There are many similarities. Yet they are so various. Every one is an individuality.

The initial meeting.

That's why we are still ahead of us, however my partner came back from work and also fell for her. Now we discover the very first attributes of her personality. Gina always attempts to visit bed with us if we don't let her begin yelling and barking. She is extremely active throughout the day and also enjoys to play with kids and also cats with whom she ended up being pals very quickly. Currently she is a full member of the family!

This love is for life.

For 12 years, we have actually been living with our preferred dachshund. We have actually started our charm absolutely casually - we searched for a lap dog in your house. There was already a huge canine in the yard, and our grandparents desired a "bell", so your home allows, and we needed a guard inside.

However we did not consider that the old people would certainly not have sufficient toughness to take care of this "battery". We took it to the apartment. Whatever that can be chewed up in the very first days was chewed up, whatever that could be excavated as well as excavated. Most of all, we got winter months shoes, made from real natural leather and also with natural fur - we pulled every little thing up.

I was the just one that went to bed with me. She was not interested in the reality that she can be stuck to her feet - she crept to the pillow during the night, and in the morning, I awakened from snoring and a dachshund muzzle on the cushion. When I had a kid - I did not need a child monitor - dachshund lived under the crib.

Now my boy is 5 years old, and our doggie is the ideal girlfriend in all leprosy. They rest together, as well as frequently the dog replaces the youngster's cushion.

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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The importance of ‘unlearning’ the past: Interview with Balkans expert Keith Brown

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-importance-of-unlearning-the-past-interview-with-balkans-expert-keith-brown/

The importance of ‘unlearning’ the past: Interview with Balkans expert Keith Brown

‘Critical thinking demands, as an early step, recognition of one’s own blinkers, prejudices and areas of ignorance’

Prof. Keith Brown, Arizona State University. Photo used with his permission.

This story was originally published by Meta.mk. An edited version is republished here via a content-sharing agreement between Global Voices and Metamorphosis Foundation. All links displayed in the interviewee's quotes were added by Meta.mk. Keith Brown is a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Politics and Global Studies. He is also director of The Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian & Eastern European Studies. With a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago, Brown works primarily in the domain of culture, politics, and identity, focused on the Balkans. Part of his extensive research on ethnonationalism and the role of national history in the region has been available to the public in North Macedonia via the translations of his books “The past in question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation” (2003) and “Loyal unto Death, Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia” (2013). In an interview with portal CriThink.mk, Brown explains the importance of critical thinking when learning history. CriThink: How important is the application of critical thinking to history and anthropology?

Keith Brown (KB): Critical thinking is very important in both history and anthropology. Skeptics and naysayers sometimes dismiss our methods as “soft” or trot out tired clichés like “history is written by the winners.” But evaluating and comparing sources, and weighing how cultural and social factors impact individual decisions, are essential components of both disciplines. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, historians and anthropologists recognize that meanings and horizons shift over time and across space. This is especially important in the study of nationalism—a mode of political organization and identity formation that contributed to the break-up of multiconfessional empires in the 19th century, and which often seeks legitimacy by claiming ancient roots. What makes it more complicated is that most nation-states place a high premium on communicating to their citizens a strong sense of shared history that distinguishes them from others. Often, it is easier for people to see the inconsistencies and distortions in their neighbors’ versions of the past, than to question or closely scrutinize the history that they think holds their own society together. Critical thinking demands, as an early step, recognition of one’s own blinkers, prejudices and areas of ignorance. It also benefits from dialogue in which participants check their egos and agendas at the door, and measure success not by the points they score, but by the new ways of seeing they have helped generate for themselves or others.

CriThink: Political establishments in most Balkans states seem to insist on promoting the concept of “national history” based on selecting “positive,” and excluding “negative,” “facts” to create or maintain official narratives that are then used in public education textbooks. In the last 200 years, this dogmatic approach had often been used as justification for oppression towards “the others.” Is there another way to do history?

KB: History is an incredibly rich domain of study. In 2015, oral historian Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her work chronicling citizens’ voices from the end of the Soviet Union. Organizations like EuroClio—to which many history teachers from the Balkans and Eastern Europe belong—promote the study of global history, and encourage members and students to explore social, cultural and economic history. Courageous and open-minded historians are often leading critics of the exceptionalism on which national history is founded—including in the United States, through efforts like the 1619 project. I think that these kind of approaches have enormous potential to transform people’s understandings of the past, and prompt reflection on how the present will look from the future. I am particularly excited by the promise of microhistory, as pioneered by Carlo Ginzburg, which draws out the broader human significance from the close study of an event or community.

English language editions of Keith Brown’s books “Loyal unto Death, Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia” (2013) and “The past in question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation” (2003).

CriThink: In your book “Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia,” you note facing challenges of unreliability or bias in available historical sources, including the correspondence of British consuls preserved as microfilms by the Museum of Macedonian Struggle in Greece; or the applications for pensions submitted to the new Macedonian state by the elderly who survived revolutions between 1948 and 1956, preserved in the State Archive of North Macedonia. How did you deal with that challenge of extracting useful information from these records?

KB: I first read many of these sources while I was a graduate student in anthropology. Conscious that the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 had been interpreted differently by scholars for whom the correct context was Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Yugoslav, Ottoman, Balkan or Macedonian history, I wanted to get as close to the period as I could, by engaging closely with sources that, in one way or another, stood outside these frames of reference. I was struck, for example, by the fact that according to the records of the National Archive in Skopje, only a handful of scholars had sought access to the Ilinden dossier of biographies. My understanding was that these sources were discounted because, self-evidently, they were self-interested. The British, French, German and American diplomatic and consular records from Ottoman Macedonia, by contrast, are often treated as wholly dispassionate, objective and clinical accounts, as if their authors were scientifically trained medical professionals, diagnosing the ills of an empire on its death-bed. In writing “Loyal Unto Death,” I took an alternative, subversive approach toward these two sets of sources. Whether or not individual pension-seekers amplified their own roles, or edited out those elements that might weaken their case for state recognition, their accounts drew from their own or their age-mates’ experiences and understandings. No-one lied about the organizational structure of the revolutionary organization, the methods of recruitment, or the logistics of acquiring weapons or distributing information and supplies: what would be the self-interest in doing so? Thus they provide us, individually but even more so in aggregate, with a sense of the shared day-to-day experience of participation in a resistance and rebellion. British consular accounts, often read as if magisterial, reflect their individual authors’ biographies, perspectives and access to sources: Alfred Biliotti was a naturalized British citizen born in Rhodes who had worked his way up from the position of dragoman and had close ties with Ottoman and Greek authorities, whereas James McGregor knew Bulgarian and expressed the view that the Organization commanded strong support. Their accounts diverge or clash. This is not to say that all sources or accounts are equally valid or suspect. It is rather to argue that we need to get past our own cultural preconceptions, whether they tell us “peasants lie” or “diplomats are cynical careerists,” and remain alert to the ways they can surprise us.

Macedonian language editions of Keith Brown’s books “The past in question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation” (2010) and “Loyal unto Death, Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia” (2014).

CriThink: Lacking a viable time machine, it’s hard to precisely determine the “national consciousness” of historical figures, given the non-existing, censored, fabricated, or conflicting records, their interpretations, as well as changed meanings of some of the language used at the time. Which critical thinking skills need to be nurtured across the region to help resolve such issues?

KB: In “The Past in Question,” I chose to use the language of the British consular sources rather than update or modify it, and to try to translate sources in Greek and Bulgarian into the English of that time, rather than of the early 21st century. I thus used terms like “Bulgar,” “Arnaut,” “Mijak” and “Exarchist” seeking in this way to remind readers of the very different world of the late nineteenth century; when “Greece” referred to a territory roughly half the size of modern Greece; when only a small fraction of people who would call themselves “Bulgars” owed loyalty to the Ottoman-administered “Bulgaria” with its capital in Sofia; when the Sultan sought to restrict the use of the Albanian language, and the term “Macedonia;” and when the prospect of an alliance of convenience between the ambitious nation-states of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece to carve up and nationalize Ottoman territory surely seemed absurd to most. For me, critical thinking demands, paradoxically, that we try to unlearn what actually happened since the period we are trying to understand; or at least, allow it to strike us as surprising or at least non-inevitable. This then concentrates our attention on the factors that drive outcomes. It also liberates us from the illusion that figures in the past—like Ilinden-era figures Goce Delchev, Nikola Karev, Damjan Gruev or Boris Sarafov—imagined their own identity in terms of the nationalisms of their future.

Keith Brown and the historian Irena Stefoska at the promotion of the Macedonian edition of the book The past in question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation in December 2010. Photo by Vančo Džambaski, CC BY-NC-SA.

CriThink: Yet such issues seem to grow into central points of a slippery slope of international disputes, from Goce Delchev (Bulgaria-North Macedonia) to Nikola Tesla (Serbia-Croatia), Skanderbeg (Greece-Albania), Njegoš (Montenegro-Serbia) to King Marko (North Macedonia-Serbia-Bulgaria). Is there a way to resolve such issues at some higher, more objective level, rather than just between conflicting states, and based on their power?

KB: Social scientists, including historians (and I’d include myself in this assessment) don’t always keep up to date with developments in other disciplines and fields. This manifests itself in approaches rooted in the conventions of 19th century Newtonian sciences, with a focus on breaking down complex reality into experimental-size pieces, where we can test hypotheses in an “either/or” mode to determine cause and effect, the rules of energy transfer and transformation, and so on. Contemporary theoretical and experimental science, though, have moved far beyond this paradigm; into the world of quarks, bosons and quantum mechanics, where non-specialists can barely follow. Ask the average person where they stand on the wave-particle duality, and you’re probably in for a short conversation. It requires thinking in “both/and” terms that demands effort, and also a realignment of deeply held common-sense. But this lack of public understanding doesn’t prevent physicists from pursuing their work and generating new insight into the workings of the universe. Balkan history has been shaped by the territorial ambitions and disputes of the last century, and so has become a zero-sum game; it also has quasi-religious aspects, insofar as current debates reveal an implicit concern with purity and pollution underlying accusations around loyalty and betrayal. Grievances and disputes escalate; and (to pursue the game metaphor) there is no mechanism, in this case, by which both sides would agree to invest a referee with the authority to call the game fairly; the stakes are seen as too high. An alternative view would be that the dispute over Goce Delchev’s “true” identity, for example, is a classic case of the prisoner’s dilemma game; in which both sides fear that by surrendering their claim to ownership they will lose and the other side will win (Bragging rights? Prestige? The mantle of “true” nationhood?), but the consequence of their refusal to acknowledge ambiguity is that both sides are seen as intransigent or blinkered in the wider community of nations.

CriThink: Would some sort of International Scientific Tribunal need to be developed to prevent escalations, akin to tribunals used to provide closure for conflicts involving genocide and war crimes (Rwanda, Former Yugoslavia)?

KB: I don’t see value in an external tribunal offering some authoritative closure: for me, that’s not how history (or science) work. All findings are contingent and provisional: they are contributions to an ongoing exchange, the ultimate goal of which is not to set some conclusion in stone, but provide material that can open new horizons and perspectives.

CriThink: In the Balkans, contrary to the inherent role of professional journalists as promotors of democracy, the media often serve as amplifiers of the most radical and polarizing nationalistic views about history. Is there a way to embed critical thinking about history in the mainstream media sphere?

KB: My own fantasy solution is something like what a group of Macedonian youth leaders did in the second half of the 1980s with the Youth Film Forum (Mladinski filmski forum), and set up learning opportunities through engagement with film, literature and other prompts. What would happen, for example, if Bulgarian and Macedonian historians and journalists watched “Rashomon” together? Or undertook a joint project (perhaps with Albanian colleagues) on the economic, psychological and social effects of gurbet/pečalba? Or conducted a close joint study of the United States 1619 project? I believe they would emerge with a shared vocabulary to address issues of contingency, ambiguity, trauma and structural violence that are shared across the Balkan region—and beyond.

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Metamorphosis Foundation

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canadian-riddler · 7 years

Text

‘Love Story’

By Indiana

Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane [Scriddler]

Synopsis: He had been worth the wait since the beginning.

He was the most beautiful creature Jonathan had ever seen.

He was sitting at the bar, his lips scowling around a cigarette as he regarded the stout man standing in front of him. His eyes were sharp, holding their own separate conversation with the world as he spoke. Jonathan no longer remembered why he’d entered the establishment in the first place. His entire existence was now directed towards that man sitting at the bar. His new mission in life was to speak with him.

But not yet.

AO3

After asking the nearest barmaid whom the man was and how often he stopped by, Jonathan began to formulate his plan.

He settled in to make his observations: a dark table in the corner, within view of that man’s habitual barstool. It was always left empty for him. He always arrived exactly at seven pm. He would remove his outer jacket, lay it out carefully along the edge of the bar next to him, and then sit down on the stool and place his hat on top of the jacket. Afterward he would lean forward on the bar and within five minutes a woman would bring him his drink. Always the same woman, always the same drink. Half an hour later she would return with a second drink and some sort of appetizer involving shrimp – and always seven, which Jonathan knew because he always counted them before he ate them - and he would nod and thank her and resume what he’d been doing. Sometimes it was talking to someone next to him. Sometimes it was watching whatever entertainment was gracing the stage that night. Sometimes he spent the entire time there looking pensively into his drink. Jonathan wanted to know what he was thinking about. He always left by nine pm. Jonathan never had a reason to stay much longer than that.

It had already been made clear that Jonathan, who did not spend much nor add much to the atmosphere, was unwelcome. In Gotham, however, anyone could be anyone. And so as not to potentially insult anyone of significant power, no one was removed from the club unless particularly disturbing. So he was allowed to remain in his corner with his one drink, and anyone who tried to claim a seat there was met with such a look that they backed away and stammered an apology. He was unsure who these people believed he was, but if he was left alone he did not care. And he watched the man at the bar. Noted who he spoke to. Who he smiled at. How often he laughed because he was genuinely amused, and how often he did so just for show. The kinds of women his eyes lingered over and the types of men he allowed to take the empty seat on his left. Over the weeks Jonathan built up an extensive mental catalogue of his behaviours, a guidebook to how he thought. Friday nights were the highlight of his week. He thought of the man constantly. He found himself trailing off during lectures, wondering what he would think if he were in attendance. If he would be able to converse intelligently about Jonathan’s work. If he would be willing to give Jonathan the time of day at all.

There arrived a night where seven pm came and went, and the place at the bar remained empty. Jonathan’s hand tightened around his glass. It was irrational. He knew that. But his mind leapt immediately to the thought that something had happened to him. It was possible. It was equally likely that he was a busy man, a powerful man, and this week it so happened that his two hours at the bar could not be spent.

“Looking for someone?” a voice behind him said. Jonathan’s face settled into his habitual scowl.

“That’s hardly your – “

It was him.

He was even more beautiful up close. He had a strong nose. Naturally visible cheekbones. His auburn hair looked soft beneath the hat. There were grooves of age just beginning to set on either side of his mouth. And his eyes were… dazzling. Jonathan was dazzled. He had no other word, no other description for it. They were cold, displeased. But they knew how to find things. They were looking to find something now.

He sat down.

“It’s been three and a half months,” he said. “Three and a half months of you coming in here and watching me. If you are under someone’s employ you are doing a terrible job. I was onto you on the second week.”

“No one sent me,” Jonathan said. The other folded his hands together atop the table.

“Then what do you want?”

“You know the owner. Quite well, it seems.”

“I do.” He tilted back his hat slightly. “And that has what bearing here?”

“If you knew what I was doing fourteen weeks ago, why then did you not have him ask me to leave?”

He rubbed his thumbs together. “You should never answer a question with a question.”

“Your answer will determine mine.”

He sat back in the chair. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“None at all.” Jonathan was not much for either the news or the nightlife.

“Then I’ll tell you.” He leaned forward again, his glasses lowered enough that they were clearly visible between them and the rim of his bowler. “I am not someone you can negotiate with arbitrarily. This is not a repartee. This is me asking you a question.”

His voice had acquired a hard edge. Jonathan had already summarised that he was of some import; there would be no other way for him to be treated as he was at the club otherwise. It did seem, however, that he was more powerful than Jonathan had anticipated. Someone in the upper echelon of criminality that could bring his life to the ground with one indicative finger. He didn’t seem the type to allow Jonathan much time to manipulate the conversation to his advantage, either.

The thought was… thrilling.

“Very well.” He folded his hands upon the table. A deal-making gesture. “I’ve been watching you because you make me quite curious.”

“Is that so.” His eyes never wavered. Jonathan didn’t want them to. He decided to be a little unconventional. It would likely pay off, if his observations were correct.

“I find you quite attractive,” he said. The other man’s expression flickered.

“That’s… very candid.”

“That is my answer. And if I am recalling correctly, you implied you would offer yours in return.”

The man took a long breath, noticeable only because Jonathan was watching for the smallest details. Finally, he said, “I was also curious.”

“I know everyone of import in this city. You are not one of them. We do not occupy near the same strata. You are, according to my cursory search, a nobody from nowhere.” His eyes had hardened again. “What, exactly, does someone like you hope to achieve with me?”

His argument made some kind of sense. It was also the first thing he’d said or done all of this time that gave Jonathan pause. He did not move. “You would dismiss a man based on perceived social class? I daresay that seems shortsighted. There are simply things of more import to me than money. If you do not understand that, then perhaps I was wrong about you.”

The man’s lips parted for a moment before he asked, “Wrong about what?”

Jonathan leaned forward, lowering his voice. The club was loud enough that the other would have to pay attention to hear him. Would have to focus on his words. “You would not dismiss a man out of hand without giving him a chance to prove himself, would you? That seems indicative of a great many lost opportunities, and you take significant pride in your intelligence.”

The other sat back in his chair, folding his arms. Jonathan had gotten to him. He took a breath to calm himself and remained sitting patiently, hands folded atop the table.

“I don’t know what your game is,” the man said suddenly, “but rest assured I am going to find out.” And with that he stood and crossed the floor to his usual seat. Jonathan’s face settled into a mild frown. That hadn’t been the reaction he had expected. Had been designing. This man was smart enough to know when he was being manipulated, but not quite emotionally mature to prevent it from working. Completely, that was. He had walked away on his own terms, after all.

Very well. The game, as it had been named, would continue.

Jonathan continued to watch him on Friday nights and he continued to pretend Jonathan wasn’t there. Jonathan was not deterred. If anything, his resolve had strengthened. He had not succeeded in convincing him on the first meeting. That was fine. Jonathan was still honing his skills on that front and he had clearly planted some seed in the other’s mind. His behaviour was… muted. He had confronted being watched, and now he was watching himself. He did not want to give Jonathan any more information.

He was receiving plenty.

It was both fascinating and amusing, really. The simplest solution would be for him to cease his two hours on Fridays altogether. But he was, apparently, too stubborn to do that. He preferred to wait Jonathan out instead. Little did he know that was nigh impossible. Jonathan was very, very patient. Far more patient than this fellow.

There came a night about four weeks after their little discussion when Jonathan was the last to use his particular lecture hall at the university, and he was supposed to do a myriad of things he usually chose not to do. He did, out of habit, turn off the lights, and when he reached for the handle of the door across from the hall’s desk, he heard a noise that bade him look in the direction of the other set of doors.

Someone was standing there. His brows lowered in annoyance before he realised this silhouette, sketched out by the hall lights coming through the window of the door behind it, seemed reminiscent of a bowler hat. He had to catch his sudden breath. How exciting. How long had he been watching Jonathan for?

“Good evening,” he called. Jonathan was clearly meant to notice him at this point. It was possibly a test. “I’m afraid this room is closed for the night.”

“So it seems, doctor,” the man said. His voice was commanding, even when his physical presence was not quite there to back it up. “Off to indulge in your… extracurriculars?”

That did give Jonathan pause. And an unpleasant one. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man’s laugh seemed to abrade the darkness. “You should probably find a different basement. You should never do your work where… well, where you work. It’s a beginner’s mistake, so I quite understand. A little pointer for you.”

He knew about that. Jonathan’s eyes cast to the darkness in search of answers. What else did he know?

“Oh, don’t be like that,” the other chided. “If I had aims to turn you in I would have done so already. Discovering your true vocation was but a step in my evaluations. My suggestion is a small gesture of grace from myself to you.”

“And what might these… evaluations… have told you?” He didn’t doubt the man would decline to give him an answer, but he had locked himself into this farce and he couldn’t withdraw now that he had lost the upper hand. In some damnably infuriating way, it only made the man more alluring. He had a powerful mind. Jonathan had a need to know it.

“You’re from Georgia. Abandoned on a doorstep and shuffled from hand to reluctant hand. Poor marks in school until your senior year, until you realised your only way out of that hellhole was a scholarship – any scholarship, in fact. The only one you got you took. It wasn’t the school you wanted but it was either that or perish of mediocrity. You found your goal at the age of eighteen. You have headed on single-mindedly ever since.”

Jonathan bit his tongue. Much of that information was difficult to find. This man was very, very dangerous.

It did not deter him a whit.

“Kudos,” he said, evenly. “Unfortunately I am not as learned about you.”

His second laugh here was considerably warmer. “If the government can’t uncover my origins, you certainly can’t.” Jonathan could hear him advancing down the stairs. “But I would be willing to provide you with some insight.”

“Perhaps I have some business to attend to.”

He could barely see him, given the darkness, but he had stopped about three feet from Jonathan. He seemed to incline his head. “I won’t offer again,” he said, and held something up in front of him. Jonathan took it; it was a business card of some kind. “I don’t like to be kept waiting,” the man told him, and left without another word.

Jonathan did not intend for him to do so.

The first few meetings were superficial, and Jonathan learned almost nothing. He did not care about this until after the man had left, however, because he was so enjoyable to talk to. He had something of an ego, and though having one was not unfounded for a man in his position he either did not care or took it in stride when Jonathan remarked upon it. Jonathan was discomfited by how much he knew about Jonathan’s… projects, but the questions he had about them were genuine and thoughtful. And he was very good at asking questions. He was very pleasant to talk to when he dialled back the haughtiness, but as that befitted his status Jonathan did not criticise him overmuch for it. After every meeting, each in a different location, he would be given a card that signified the next date and time and locale, and Jonathan anticipated them like he had nothing else.

After five or so of these, Jonathan knew little still about the other. His name, Edward Nygma, was false. It led nowhere. No work history, no school records, no places of residency that Jonathan could find. All of his assets seemed to be owned under equally fake names. And he seemed to have a great deal of assets. His money was largely endless: on top of being an unrivalled software engineer, he also had a tremendous network of informants through a list of places so vast even the highlights were many. He listened to everything and sold the best to the highest bidder, that was, when he did not keep it for himself. He had fingers in everything, and if ever he wanted to know all he had to do was ask.

None of this put Jonathan off at all. It was, contradictorily, quite telling. Edward felt the need to hide from something while knowing everything. ‘The government’ was the easy answer, but not the correct one. He was hiding from a person. He held relationships with few beyond the professional. Something had happened to him that had sharpened his intelligence and ambitions to a knife’s edge, and that same something caused him to hold people at the end of that point. But Jonathan was getting closer. And the closer he got, the more the man grew on him. He was a little surprised. He had half expected the thrill to pale once he had gotten within sight of his goal, but no. Edward was as close to a friend as Jonathan had ever had, and he found himself… desiring that. Wanting such a thing. It was odd. A little disconcerting, that he did not know what he wanted as well as he thought he had. But if Edward were to be the exception to that rule, so be it. He did not plan on ending this any time soon.

“We can’t be seen together,” Edward had said.

Jonathan had, at first, thought it the usual reasons: he was unattractive, unpleasant, and unwelcoming. Not a good right hand for a man in Edward’s position. He had not taken offense. His behaviour was his own decision and he would accept the consequences. But when he had mentioned it, Edward had laughed in such a way that Jonathan felt he were being ridiculed.

“Those are good excuses,” Edward had remarked. “No, my friend, but thank you for taking my reputation into account. The fact is, this city adores the thought of two scantily-clad, seemingly ageless ladies sneaking a kiss in the dark and holding hands on a park bench beneath a tree dripping with pink flowers. Two middle-aged men… not quite so alluring. Particularly not with your special brand of facial features. We would both be run out of town. I’m all for it, but not before we’ve seen the breadth of our careers.”

Jonathan had gotten caught up on ‘my friend’ and it had taken him a moment to parse the remainder of what had been said. It made good sense. About half of Edward’s decisions did.

Edward had provided him the address and key to one of what he said was multiple safehouses. He’d mentioned it was not his best, but Jonathan begged to differ when he saw it. It was aggressively modern and minimalist, everything standing in its place so firmly Jonathan was sure that if he dared move a single piece of furniture he would find behind it an outline of the object itself, like the tools upon the wall in an enthusiast’s garage. Jonathan spent a good amount of time looking over it all. He had never seen such a thing in his life. Everything in the apartment had as clear a place as though it had been labelled. There were some minor oddities – what Edward did not have three of, he had five – but it would be the most pleasant place Jonathan had ever been. He returned shortly after to his formerly abandoned warehouse, and he had never noticed before now how cold it was. How drafty. How nice it might be to have electricity and running water. His luxuries were Edward’s necessities.

Edward stole a kiss from him behind the crumbling storefront that hid the bar that night, long and sweet. He had been smoking beforehand. If he had not been there at the time, Jonathan would not have noticed. Edward walked away from this with a pretense of a smile gracing one side of his mouth and held his palm up in farewell, calling, “I’ll meet you tomorrow.” Jonathan walked home, his body acting largely autonomously, and did not notice it had been raining until his heel lost traction in some of the mud he had tracked over his threshold. The taste of Edward’s lips – apple, smoke, and liquor – lingered on his own for a long time after.

When Edward kissed him the following night, it was mint and apple. Jonathan had no thoughts of resisting him. If he observed Edward, he would learn what to do. It was better than forcing Edward to endure his ineptitude at such things. Edward was showing to him, too, things about himself he had no knowledge of. He had never had kisses trailed down his neck. He had never had hands gripping his waist. The first few nights this happened, occurring a few weeks apart, he had been unable to sleep. In part because it was difficult, at his age, to accept that he still had things to know about himself, and in part because Edward was beside him. They both took up space in beds to begin with, given their height, but Edward’s body seemed to have the sleep-induced need to encroach upon Jonathan’s.

He discovered he didn’t mind.

Edward slept long and deeply; many of his positions looked uncomfortable and quite often he ended up with his face entrenched in the mattress. Sometimes he snored and sometimes he spoke words that could have been made up for all Jonathan knew. If Jonathan pressed his fingers into Edward’s scalp he would still. That was the only place he touched, save for when his tired hand needed to rest in Edward’s. Sometimes he was tempted to do otherwise, but he knew if Edward had done the same to him he would not have liked it.

The first time they made love, Jonathan had not even intended for it to happen. He had not even realised what was happening until Edward put a hand against his shoulder to abort the fumblings of Jonathan’s lips against his, his eyes straying. Jonathan bit his tongue upon realising what he was looking at, and he had meant to excuse himself and get rid of this sudden awkwardness. But Edward had decided otherwise, sliding his hand around the suddenly distracting ache between Jonathan’s thighs. He knew where to put his hand. He knew what to do with it. Jonathan buried his face in Edward’s neck then, clumsily caressing it with his lips. He didn’t know where to go from here. He didn’t know what to do. His hands wanted nothing more than to memorise the uncharted ground of Edward’s unseen body. He wanted to caress the breadth of it, to know every inch of his exquisite existence. He could do nothing but sit back, unknowing as to where he should even begin.

Edward guided him. Not a single word between them passed, but somehow Edward guided him. He silently directed Jonathan’s clumsy hands, the mouth he didn’t know where to press. He guided Jonathan inside of him, and Jonathan did not last long in his inexperience but Edward still said nothing. Jonathan lay upon him then, his face against the warmth of Edward’s chest. He breathed in the sweat clinging to Edward’s skin, and he cherished it. Edward’s strong hand was curled into his tangled hair. Edward’s body was soft and warm. Edward’s existence was soft and warm. The silence between them was the most comforting thing Jonathan had ever known.

Their trysts were few, by necessity. There was never really a plan as to what they were going to do when they met: Jonathan often had intentions just to talk to him, but upon seeing him was overtaken by the need to press his thumbs into the soft flesh between Edward’s legs. To be inside and around him at the same time. Sometimes the thought alone left him breathless. What a beautiful thing it was, when he phrased it like that. He learned, quickly despite the gaps between their meetings, what Edward liked for him to do. Where he liked to be kissed, and how hard, and what whisperings would leave him desperately seeking Jonathan’s mouth. The less he needed to show Jonathan, the more aggressive he got. Sometimes Jonathan had done no more than close the door to their chosen place for the night when he would turn to find Edward’s fingers tangled against the back of his head as he hungrily applied kisses to Jonathan’s neck. It took only a few moments of this, as Edward’s body ground his against the wall, before anything Jonathan had meant to say completely evaporated from his tongue and his hands slid themselves down Edward’s waist and beyond his hips. Their height difference was not great and Jonathan was glad.

It was after one of these nights that Edward was lying on top of him, both of them on a cool wood floor with the bed standing above them. Jonathan was concentrated entirely on breathing in his scent: some mixture of sweat and pleasure and Old Spice. It was dizzying. It was beautiful.

“What are we?” Edward asked, softly. Jonathan’s thumb caressed his shoulder.

“Does it matter?” was his answer.

“I wish it didn’t,” Edward said. Jonathan swallowed, allowing himself a moment to think.

“Why should it?”

Edward’s right hand was cupped around the base of Jonathan’s neck. He traced out an aborted path along Jonathan’s collarbone. “I don’t want it to end,” he answered. “If it has a name, maybe it won’t.”

“I believe the opposite,” Jonathan told him. “It is simple to rid oneself of that which he can put a name to. Once he has a name, he constructs a face. A voice. A presence. The nightmare which lasts longest is the one that contains the horror you cannot name.”

He saw Edward’s smile, just barely. He often wished his sight were better in these moments. “Do dreams last longer on those principles as well?” he asked.

“I don’t know much of dreams,” Jonathan said. He pressed a kiss to Edward’s hair. “Help me to learn of them.”

As they grew more used to each other the physical intimacy became less desperate. They savoured it. It came to them that they had time. There was no need to rush. They spent more time talking, but most often they opted to enjoy the other’s silence. Jonathan would oftentimes just watch Edward work without saying anything at all: the way his glasses slid down his nose if he kept it tilted too long, the precise movements of his fingers across his keyboard, the slow unravelling of the hair that never seemed to want to stay where he’d positioned it. If it was late enough Jonathan would abandon his own work altogether and press a kiss behind Edward’s ear. He would glance over at Jonathan then, his eyes moving to the clock on his computer screen, and more often than not he would stand as well. Jonathan had never looked forward to sleeping so much in his life. It was not really the fact that sleep seemed better when Edward was there, but his trusting proximity. Edward always positioned himself to be draped across Jonathan, and though it took some getting used to it was one of the things Jonathan enjoyed most.

Edward was methodically running his thumb up Jonathan’s ribs. Counting them. When he reached the top Jonathan asked, teasingly, “Are they all there?”

Edward laughed. Jonathan adored it. It was so carefree, so unrestrained; he allowed himself to be amused so much more easily than Jonathan did. To make him laugh Jonathan had to modify his own mindset. To look for opportunities to create joy. It was… odd. It wasn’t something he knew how to do. But Edward almost always laughed when Jonathan tried. Edward was teaching Jonathan so many things he never otherwise would have known.

“Yes,” Edward answered, and he yawned. His breath was a warm mist against Jonathan’s skin. Jonathan quieted so that he would sleep and spent a long time in the dark listening to him breathe.

Not all of it was easy. Much of it was. They got along well and their rapport was comfortable even when one or the both of them were not having the best day. But they argued often. It was usually meaningless, a way of dispelling the tension of their respective lives and of acknowledging that neither of them were faultless. Some of the arguments were bad. Enough to make Jonathan want to storm out in anger, and Edward came very close. If they did that, however, they were wasting their moments together. They wasted them the longer being angry. They would sort it out, if with reluctance, and by the time one joined the other in bed Jonathan would still welcome Edward’s head to his shoulder and Edward would still have the need to put it there.

Jonathan had no real idea how the most recent fight originated. The farthest back he could remember was Edward making some comment about Jonathan’s lack of hygiene, which Jonathan could acknowledge but had taken affront to, considering it was nothing Edward had not known when this had all begun. He had said something about Edward’s unnatural order being equally unhealthy, and Edward had made a remark about where Jonathan lived the other significant percentage of the time, and Jonathan had made the mistake of saying, “At least I have normal amounts of things in my so-called rejected pigsty.”

Edward had frozen up entirely. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jonathan had waved a hand towards the kitchen. “You know what I mean! You have three of everything! Three cups, three bowls, three plates. I suppose you don’t have three beds, but you seem to have solved that with the three pillows and the three sheets you’ve so meticulously applied to the one you have! You cannot seriously say to my face that I have issues when you get rid of perfectly good objects just because they don’t fit neatly into your trice-sorted home. How many more of these places do you own? No need to answer, I already know: you have three.”

Throughout this tirade he had watched Edward’s face grow steadily paler, and by the time he finished all of the fight had left Edward entirely. It was then Jonathan began to realise he’d said too much. When Edward turned away from him he began to realise he needed to follow that up with something, something… helpful, but when Edward left Jonathan realised it was too late.

He did not hear from Edward again.

Jonathan had no means of contacting him, or knowing where he spent any of his time. Other than the safehouse, of course, but he wasn’t going to go there. He had abused that privilege. He became distracted from his own projects in his ponderings as to what he should do. That couldn’t be how it ended, could it? A mistaken thrust landed in a series of ripostes? There were several occasions Jonathan became angered over it. How had he been to know that subject was especially sensitive? It was not fair to punish him for something he had not been informed about. Fine, Edward could take his leave, and good riddance. Jonathan had things of more importance to address.

The indignity worked until he found himself thinking about how much he would like to hear Edward’s voice again. About how soft his skin was. About whether or not some other was now the recipient of the affectionate glint in his eye. He couldn’t keep waiting to see if Edward decided to come back. Edward was not that kind of man. If Jonathan did not find a solution, they would be ended then and there.

One night at the end of the week, he had an idea. He debated whether or not it was smart to act upon it, but came to the result that he had no other choice. He entered the bar at seven-thirty.

He was there. Jonathan’s heart leapt into his throat and he forced it back down. Now was not the time for that. He moved quickly across the room to the empty stool once the barmaid had left. He stood behind Edward until he had finished his counting, then slid onto the vacant stool.

“You know we can’t be seen together,” Edward said, his lowered voice ripe with condescension. But he wasn’t looking at Jonathan.

“There seems to be no other way to speak with you.”

“There seems to be no desire from me for you to do such a thing.”

He was childish. Immature, antagonistic, rude. Jonathan’s leg positioned itself far enough back for him to stand up and leave. It took him a moment of carefully entwining his fingers to calm his mind again. Yes. He was those things. But there was a cause, and that cause was Jonathan. He could not walk away from this without knowing that he’d tried.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. No lead-in, no distractions. No procrastination. Just a clean and simple apology. Easy for Edward to process.

He slowly laid his fork down parallel to the right side of his plate. Jonathan could see only half of his face, directed towards the food as it was, but he appeared troubled. He had not expected this.

Jonathan did stand then, and Edward looked around at him. Before his opening lips could pronounce a sound Jonathan shook his head once.

“I’ll be there tonight,” was all he said, and then he left.

He was up late into the night, ostensibly reading. The reality of it was that he had not turned a single page. His mind was held captive by his ears, straining for the sound of someone at the door. He stared at the glare against the page created by the lamp over his shoulder. It was beginning to hurt his eyes.

When he did, finally, hear the sound of a key sliding into the lock and the low creak of the handle turning, he remained still. He did not look up until all sounds of movement ceased. Edward was seated in front of him on the coffee table, bent over, hands pressed together above his knees. Jonathan closed the book. He had long since memorised his place.

“Do you want out?” Jonathan asked after a moment. Edward didn’t move.

“If you do, merely tell me. I will not hunt you down again.”

It was clear from Edward’s expression that he did not know what he wanted, other than to forget what Jonathan had said. Jonathan was still unsure as to why it had bothered him so much. But there was a reason he was able to connect it to.

“You realised you gave someone the power to hurt you. But I did not do so with intent, and I have no plans to. It was a mistake. But if you cannot trust in that, there is nothing more I can say. And there is nothing more I can do except to walk away.”

“I don’t want that,” Edward said, nearly inaudible. Jonathan slid the book between his leg and the arm of the chair and leaned forward. “But I promised myself I wouldn’t let it happen again.”

“Allow someone to hurt you?”

His nod was barely visible. Now that Jonathan understood the problem, the solution was not far off. “It is the intent that matters. Not the act itself.”

Edward rubbed his thumbs together. “That’s something I have to think about.”

Jonathan stood up. His knees attempted to force him back down again. “Whatever you need.”

Jonathan wasn’t looking at him and so when Edward was suddenly wrapped around him, arms pressed into his back and nose digging into Jonathan’s shoulder, he did not immediately react. Once he had assessed this sudden situational change he too put his arms around the other. His fingers had missed the gentle texture of his hair. The scent of him was more comforting than he could have articulated, had he been asked.

“You mean a great deal to me,” Jonathan told him, hushed, directly into his ear. “Don’t allow any one thing to take that away from you.”

They dared to meet more frequently. One such place was too public and they were seen, but neither of them were able to take it very seriously. The thrill of discovery held too much excitement. Things were not perfect after: they still fought and Jonathan was often tempted to take it too far. Such was his nature. But if the requirement was that he remove himself from the engagement altogether lest he take advantage of Edward’s trust, he would do it.

As happened in the city from time to time, the need for the criminal element to take sides arose. Jonathan, not quite prolific but useful to those who paid attention, had been approached early on with a prospect which he had accepted. It had been somewhat lucrative, and the more money Jonathan had the less time he had to spend looking for some. The thought came to him that he should tell Edward what he had done, so he could make his own choice accordingly. He was not supposed to enter Edward’s primary safehouse, but he thought this qualified as an emergency. He stepped inside to find Edward carefully folding shirts into a suitcase.

“What’s this?” he asked, something unpleasant churning his stomach. Edward looked up.

“I don’t want any part of it. I’m leaving.”

Jonathan swallowed. He already knew that accompanying him was out of the question. He would have preferred to have discussed this beforehand. But Edward was his own man before he was Jonathan’s. A sentiment Jonathan would have wanted to be respected were their decisions reversed.

“You’re leaving now, then?”

Edward paused before nodding. “The only other thing I had to do was let you know. And you have taken care of that.” He crossed over to his desk and removed a file from one of the drawers. He rifled through it and then zipped it into the front of his laptop bag. He thinned his lips as he looked at Jonathan again.

“I know it’s abrupt. But I want to leave before any of this gets going. Before anyone tries to recruit me. It’s safer than merely refusing.” He put the laptop bag next to the suitcase. “I would have waited.”

His reasoning was simple. And smart. Jonathan wished he had had such an option. But Edward’s goals did not require the same things that Jonathan’s did. Jonathan needed money, and unwilling participants, and fields on which to apply his work. Edward slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Stay safe out there. Don’t make me bail you out when I get back.”

“May I say one thing before you go?”

Edward nodded. “Go ahead.”

Jonathan took a moment to decide exactly what he was going to say before he realised that was not how he should go about it. Simple, as always, was best. “I love you,” he said, plainly. Edward stepped back, his lips parting to aid him in his next breath. So as not to make Edward feel as though he were forced to reciprocate, Jonathan put a hand on his shoulder briefly and then turned around.

“You’re not going to hug me goodbye?”

The hint of a waver in Edward’s voice silenced any thoughts Jonathan had about making light of that statement. He just took Edward in his arms again, for the last time in who knew how long, and he held him there until Edward stopped trembling. Jonathan understood now. He was trying to make all of this easy on himself. Well, Jonathan would not argue with that.

His exit from the safehouse was slow. He was listening for the sound of Edward’s expensive shoes on the pavement, signalling to him that Edward had changed his mind. That he was going to stay. But though Jonathan went back to the place they shared so many nights in and waited, he did not come. He stayed there a few days for reasons he did not want to admit to himself. He regretted ever sharing that last sentence. He had given a piece of himself to another man and that man had walked away with it. He might never get it back. If he’d known how much he needed it, he would never have given it up.

He did not lack for things to do, engagements with which to occupy his time. But he could feel something coming over him. A coldness. He recognised it; he’d had it for most of his life. It had disappeared when Edward had become a part of his life and he had not even noticed. It made it difficult to care whether or not Edward did return, but for the nights when he lay awake because his bed seemed so vacant. So unwelcome.

The split of the city’s underworld lasted one month, and for two after Edward had still not returned. He tried not to think about why. He tried to convince himself it was possible he had not heard, but that seemed unlikely. It made more sense that he knew something Jonathan did not, and sure enough a few days later there came news of a killing done from one side to the other, and it began over again. Jonathan had tired of the mess some time ago but could not quite keep from being dragged back in again. What he would have done to have chosen neither side, and instead left with Edward. He would not have been able to carry on his work, that was true, but he was unsure it had all been worth it.

He found himself thinking of Edward at the strangest moments. When he was making coffee. When he was turning his clothes right side out. When a rock made its way into his shoe. He had played his part in the schism, he had gotten what he wanted, and yet…

He had underestimated how enjoyable it was to have someone to share things with. To talk to, even. He had thought he cherished silence, but now… it seemed to press physically upon his ears. It had been nice – and that was the only word for it he had, nice – to know someone who had been willing to listen to his somewhat obscure brand of knowledge. No, he hadn’t just been willing to listen. He’d been happy.

Jonathan no longer knew which of them he was thinking about.

It was the scent of him Jonathan recognised first.

He had gone to bed late the night before. He’d thought of not going to bed at all. But it would have been the next in a long line of such decisions, so he had lain down. He was awake now, staring at the dark ceiling. He hadn’t slept long. He waited until he was confident he was awake enough to know he was not imagining it, and then he turned his head.

His breath shortened. He was there! He was there, laid out on top of the blanket, entirely clothed in a green suit Jonathan had never seen before. Whether it was because he had wanted to avoid waking Jonathan or because he had not meant to stay, Jonathan didn’t know. But there he was, on his side, one of his hands tucked beneath his neck and the other held out in front of him, curled fingers up. Jonathan slipped his hand inside Edward’s. He wouldn’t wake from that. The man had once slept through three hours of demolition across the street from his safehouse. If the room itself had been collapsing around his ears, he would not have noticed.

Just the warm hand in his made him feel better. He hadn’t even realised he had been feeling badly.

Jonathan slept no more that night. He watched Edward instead: watched his eyes twitch beneath the lids, watched the soundless motions of his lips. The sudden jerkings of his fingers and that part of the night where he abruptly sank his face into his arm and Jonathan could then hear the air whistling through his nose for the rest of the night. There was no place else he wanted to be, nothing else he wanted to do. Edward was home.

In a few hours Edward lifted his head back again; his lips were wet but he didn’t seem to hold much more than a cursory notice, judging by the minimal use of his free hand. When Edward saw him, he smiled. It was small, and unfinished, and Jonathan was unsure his bleary eyes were actually looking at him at all. But it warmed him still.

“Missed you,” Edward said, the rough hoarseness of his voice the most beautiful sound Jonathan had ever heard. He moved onto one elbow without releasing Edward’s hand and leaned forward, brushing his lips against his brow. He used the other hand to take some of the soft hair to the back of his fingers, brushing it aside. Edward’s eyes slowly followed the movement, as though he’d never seen it before and didn’t quite know what was happening. Jonathan smiled. Here was a dream, with a name. And instead of using it as a means of banishment, he used it to call someone back. He’d been wrong, but that was all right.

“Welcome home, Edward,” he whispered.

Author’s note

My Edward has an obsession with prime numbers as part of his OCD. One and two technically are primes but he doesn’t feel comfortable until the number three and he doesn’t like even numbers. I did look into this to see if the prime numbers thing was a thing and it appears to be, if uncommon, but for Edward’s OCD to fit into canon it would have to be atypical and fairly mild anyway. Side note for that: seven o’clock is prime both in 12- and 24-hour time.

Jonathan didn’t ask about it because it was his first relationship and he didn’t want to question Edward too much lest that ruin things. In my stories in general Jonathan is also a little absent-minded, due to the fact he’s usually thinking about his work and stuff rather than paying attention to lesser things, and so he often doesn’t see things he isn’t looking for. Hence, he was not looking for OCD and therefore he didn’t find it. Edward also tends to avoid the subject when it’s even close to being brought up.

I work in a bar and for some reason I could not think of an appetizer that Riddler would eat if he were to go there so I just said ‘appetizer involving shrimp’ and then the next day I remembered shrimp cocktails exist. So that’s what he has when he goes to the bar. He is drinking Sambuca, which is an alcohol that tastes like licorice. Doesn’t taste that much like alcohol either, at least the one I had.

I know this fic is really cheesy and I apologise.

#Riddler #Scarecrow #Scriddler #Edward Nygma #Jonathan Crane #fanfic from Indy #it's such a queuetiful queuetiful life

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