hmmm, 🔥 about fe3h, but make it something that would actually be one in your specific mutual corner of Tumblr as well, and not just the fandom in general (because that would be too easy)? 👀

Well funnily enough the one hot take I for sure know the majority of my mutuals don't particularly agree with is one I literally just saw one of them say LMAO but I think the monastery is not NEARLYYYYYY as bad as people try to make it out to be. I never once found it to be tedious and I loved running around talking to all the NPCs loitering about the place, and call me an omega nerd but dammit I liked reading the shit in the libraries 😭😭😭

breath of the wild 2: electric boogaloo where we get to play as link AND zelda as they go around fixing hyrule and tying up the loose ends that didn’t really get tied during the first game. nintendo hire me

I wanted to talk about the themes in the Walk in the Dust event. The story of Arknights has always had a high level of thematic consistency, but it’s especially prominent in this event. I feel like a lot of the discussion of the story in certain places comes down to “lore” and surface-level plot details, so I wanted to get this out there somewhere.

The two big ideas that are covered in Walk in the Dust are that of revenge and the homeland. Let's talk about revenge first. Long post and story spoilers under the cut.

In the beginning, we are introduced to Elliot, aka Passenger, who by the time we meet him, is an aimless husk of a man. He is utterly empty inside despite being the most powerful figure in the Reefsteep black  market, with vast wealth and political influence under his thumb. Having completed his decades-long quest to slay everyone who was involved in betraying his teacher, he has no more goals for his life. After killing  the Lord Ameer of Ibut, the last of his targets, he realizes that the revenge he had been pursuing was ultimately empty, that the weapons he built and the schemes he engineered to that end no longer moved him. Even the death of the Lord Ameer didn't matter one bit in the political landscape of Sargon.

As for the Sargon army... We live in different times now. The ruling  Padishahs simply care not about what is happening here in this barren  wasteland. My guess is that it matters not to them whether it's the  father or the son that's in charge. Actually, to tell the truth, it  hardly matters to me either.

Ultimately, no one cared if the Lord Ameer was murdered or simply  died in an accident, not even Elliot himself. Sargon continues to be exploited by the Columbian military and the ruling Lords. Professor Thorne remains dead. His research, once entrusted to Elliot to prevent  it from becoming a weapon of war, has nonetheless been used by Elliot  himself to bring even more death. Now, 22 years later, Passenger sees  finding Kal'tsit as his only path to salvation, so that she can once  again give him a purpose like she did when she rescued him the first time.

Folinic's mom, Lillia, also shares the same kind of story. Her husband was killed in Chernobog when the count decided to purge the researchers working on the sarcophagus device. Among the children of the families broken up by this incident are Lyudmila (later Crownslayer), Alex and Misha (later Skullshatterer), and Luisa (later Folinic). Lillia finds Kal'tsit after months of searching, intending to take revenge on  Grand Duke Vanya not just for her husband, but also for Luisa, who never got to know her father because of it. Kal'tsit tries to talk her out of  it, even during the final phases of the plan, but Lillia's mind is set.  She entrusts Kal'tsit with taking care of both Luisa and Lyudmila, as  she knows she won't be able to come back to live a normal life after  this. And... she succeeds. Although it is Kal'tsit who ultimately administered the poison, their plan works flawlessly and Duke Vanya is finally dead.

Except it still ended up being completely meaningless. The Grand Duke was in a glorified nursing home already near the end of his life, and if Kal'tsit didn't kill him then some other conspirator from the Ursus  political backstage would have done it anyway. He was already crippled and blind, and as we find out during the confrontation with the Emperor's Blade, even Kal'tsit only agreed to Lillia's plan because it  defused the conspiracies of other powerful figures who would have used  the Duke's death to spark another rebellion. The only thing that Lillia ended up accomplishing was making sure that Louisa would grow up without both a mother and a father, and Lyudmila would never get the answers she really wanted about her family's death. And, although she ended up not doing it, she was even also planning to go back to Chernobog to kill  Sergei, Alex and Misha's father, for his betrayal.

And this carries on through the future outside the event. Crownslayer ends up joining Reunion because she thinks it will give her the answers  she wants and avenge her father. Folinic almost lets her anger at Atro's death get her into a confrontation with Wolumonde. In the end, Crownslayer is stopped by Kal'tsit and Folinic is calmed down by  Suzuran, but we might be able to imagine what would have happened if  they managed to carry out their vengeance.

The theme of homeland is one that's intrinsically tied to Kal'tsit and has at least a bit of relation to the broader story outside of the event. It's harder to talk about since it's not clearly  split into individual stories like previously, but there's at least one character that exemplifies this theme the most: Old Isin.

Old Isin is appropriately to his name, old as rocks. He remembers being a servant to some lord of a long-lost city that very few even know once existed, and spends his time telling fortunes while trying to seek out people who, like him, also share that past. According to Kal'tsit, the city's people were scattered when it was destroyed, and now only Isin even remembers the origin of the name "Reefsteep". Even then, Isin only has vague memories, and believes it to be his unforgivable sin that  he has forgotten so much about the city.

Old Isin originally helps Kal'tsit and Elliot because he hopes that  she can help him remember about the lost city, and thus absolve his  "unforgivable sin". And Kal'tsit indeed does help him. Isin begins to recall the conquests of armies a thousand years ago, something even with  his age he should not have been a part of, much less remembered.  Kal'tsit dispels the illusions clouding his memory, and reveals that  what Isin remembers is only the stories that the padishah recounted to  him, that the glory of his old city was only a memory of another memory. In truth, the city in Old Isin's memory was merely a stepping stone for the padishah's ambition to conquer the uncharted deserts, and was abandoned just as easily when that campaign failed. His homeland's glory was just an illusion created in his mind by the padishah's charisma.

Which brings us to the Emperor's Blade. Wherever he stands is the dominion of the Empire of Ursus. Whatever he does carries out the Ursus Emperor's will. Or at least, that's how the Royal Guards imagine themselves, single-handedly carrying out their homeland's legacy. Kal'tsit lays it out clearly:

Kal'tsit: Tell me, what does the current Ursus Emperor think of the Pine Valley affair? Or do you mean to tell me the seeds of that uprising, the origins of the crisis were all the will of the Emperor? Feel free to keep deceiving yourself, but the truth is the young emperor is unaware of the events that transpired there. You believe he has no  need to know. You... all of you seek a bygone era. You are just caught up in the former emperor's grand vision!

As does Patriot in Chapter 8:

Patriot: I fought with your fathers. Your strength and tactical acumen are no less impressive than theirs. But you look at the Ursus of those times with rose-colored glasses. What you see is nothing more than your wild fantasies.

The Royal Guards are described in not too unclear words as soldiers  who probably believed too much of their own grandiose affect. They are unparalleled fighters, to be sure, but it isn't hard to infer that those words about executing Ursus's will and each Royal Guard being his own nation are words intended to strike fear into their enemies rather than  statements of any real truth. Indeed, if you know anything about the internal politics of Ursus, the idea of "Ursus's own will" can be seen as more of a nostalgia at a bygone era when Ursus was, or at least seemed, united in conquest under the previous Emperor. The perceived glory of their homeland is what motivates the Emperor's Blade, but like with Old Isin, the truth behind it is shaky at best.

We also have the contrast between the retired veteran at Pine Valley  and Grand Duke Vanya. While talking to Witte, the veteran cuts off one of his own fingers, claiming that the scars he has suffered in Ursus's wars, once considered symbols of his glory and honor, were ultimately meaningless, and he wants this self-inflicted wound to be his only legacy to Ursus. At the same time, the Grand Duke is postulating about how the seeds he had sown in the winter would give birth to beautiful flowers. Even though his actions and the crimes he committed never bore fruition, he is convinced even in death that Ursus's soil will bloom.

The issue of a real or imagined homeland, and its loss, is also  shared by the Sarkaz as a whole not only in this story but in the main story and many other events. It's even arguable that Rhodes Island's mission to help the Infected was originally inherited from Babel's goal of establishing a stable homeland for the Sarkaz. After all, as pointed  out in many places, the Infected and Sarkaz share much of the same discrimination.

Sarkaz Mercenary: Home...? How could us devils... us Infected possibly have one... Kal'tsit: The Sarkaz have tried to rebuild 'Kazdel', their home for centuries, though they have never succeeded. Everyone has a different idea as to what the term 'homeland' means, but as it stands right now,  Kazdel is perhaps as close as you can get to the term's original meaning.

And in Twilight of Wolumonde:

Armed Infected: We’re going home? To what home?

Mudrock: Kazdel. There may be no place for Sarkaz outside of Kazdel.  But in Kazdel, there is a place for you. Not because of tolerance. But because there is... nothing there. Kazdel... is where the homeless go. A land of rootless people.

So what does all this have to do with Kal'tsit?

In the ending cutscene, Passenger asks Kal'tsit whether this "Rhodes  Island" is yet another passing persona to be used to accomplish a goal and discarded when it's complete. Like the persona of the Trusted  Advisor, or the Servant, or the Laterano Cleric, will she abandon Rhodes  Island as well? Kal'tsit initially puts up a front saying he has no  right to ask, then bluffs about having thousands of answers, but is pushed by Passenger saying he'll even accept a lie. In one of the only times we get to see Kal'tsit faltering, she actually has no answer to this.

Unlike the other characters we see throughout the story, Kal'tsit has no homeland. No matter how fake or illusory it is, Old Isin and the Royal Guard have something to believe about a place where they can belong. The nobles in Victoria, as incompetent as they appear from the outside, are dedicated to defending the peace of their home despite having no ruler. Even the ostracized Sarkaz can ultimately go back to Kazdel, as unpleasant as that might be. But while Kal'tsit wanders the earth to keep the homelands of others from falling into chaos, she has no homeland of her own to go back to.

In one of the trailers for Chapter 9, we hear a recording from Theresa, addressed to Kal'tsit: "I hope this Rhodes Island can be a place to call home, a place you can always return to."

So I thought of a fun AU last night... you see, Celeborn is a fairly irrelevant character. Galadriel might just as well have ended up with someone else while in Doriath.

What if she fell in love with Dior instead.

Set any odd feelings about difference in age aside; Nimloth likely was much older than Dior as well simply due to the fact that it takes Elves longer to grow up, and of course Lúthien is much older than Beren.

And Dior-- Dior falls for the radiance of Valinor in her hair, her sharp mind, her pride. Her pride. Which was always one of her chief failings; which set her against Fëanor before there was ever as much of a reason for it. Her fondness for her cousins is not much greater, not after Alqualondë. Not after having faced them with bloody swords, her sword dripping blood of its own, but spilled in defense.

And now she is Queen of a realm, as she always wanted, to order as she thinks is right; because Dior loves the way her mind works, he knows how close she was to Melian, how much she learned from her. Perhaps the two of them together-- he with his Maiarin blood bathed in the radiance of the silmaril and she with her brilliant mind and her hair like the shimmer of the Trees absorbing and reflecting that light-- can restore the Girdle.

If they have time. And they need time. Melian's mourning was a natural disaster. No matter how much Galadriel learned of her arts, she does not have her power; and Dior knows less of her arts, though he has a little of it. They work on the Girdle together. It is slow work, and they cannot do any while apart. The power and the knowledge how to conduct it. Together. It is slow work.

The first letter arrives too soon.

Maedhros, heir of Fëanor, demands his father's work. The wording is polite but the tone haughty; there has never been much love between the two of them, and Dior he knows not at all. He and his brothers, he says, were willing to let Lúthien keep it while she lived; and her Doom stayed their Oath. The power of the gem to heal the land she could have for the rest of her life in return for her valiant deeds. But, he says, those days have ended. And her deeds were not yours; nor was the jewel ever Thingol's to demand. It is the blessed outcome of a cruel request meant to mock Beren. And the jewels, of course, were stolen goods. Though more than goods. Silima is as a body to their spirit. They are alive, and they are not yours, cousin; your hair did not go into their making. They are more than beautiful to us. They are our Doom, our leash, and our last link to our father's spirit. Give us the jewels, Galadriel. Or you will see Alqualondë again.

Dior pales beneath the splendour of Nauglamír. Her brother's necklace. Her brother, who wouldn't have died if it weren't for her damned cousins. She puts her hand on his trembling hand. Refuse them, she says. They don't deserve to have this. They are already doomed, and I foresee the jewel would reject them for what they did to our kin in the Swanhaven. Reject them, my King. But do it slowly. They will want to keep talking; they are my cousins, and some of them are still capable of feeling guilt. In the meantime, we will rebuild the Girdle. In the meantime we will grow strong.

Dior's hand stops trembling beneath hers. He is young, but he remembers the beauty of Doriath before the Girdle fell; his grandmother's arms around his own. He remembers his brave mother, his father, the way the Feanorians treated them; Maedhros' respect for Lúthien's rights comes not from nobility but fear, he thinks. His mother was very powerful. He is young, but he has grown into an adult at the pace of an adan. He is an able swordsman, fast, strong, starting to get a feel for Song, and sometimes, sometimes there is a hint of something more, and he can almost grasp it, like the fluttering of many wings--

They just need a little more time. And they need the jewel. Doriath will rise to its former glory again, and the then, with his new human ideas and Galadriel's innovative Valinorean ones-- will bloom into something strange and new, a little paradise beyond the sea, and this time from the start without prejudice. Perhaps, in time, they might even lift the ban on quenya without consequence. They will welcome his father's people, and Edain and Sindar will grow close and exchange their knowledge and love in ways not yet seen before.

This will take a long time, you know. This is not the Kingdom as it is now, full of brambles and with many patches now entirely unprotected. The Green elves don't always feel treated fairly, and have kin friendly with Fëanor's hunter twins; some of the grey elves fled into the Girdle after the Flame and changed their speech, but not their memory of Thingol.

Letters are exchanged. Galadriel is uncompromising as always. Dior, bathed in the light, grows confident and proud. The letters become shorter, and one day they stop altogether.

.

They arrive in the night, before the first bird starts to sing.

And when they leave there is no one left to sing of them.

Octavian in The Tyrant’s Tomb

Or rather, the lack thereof. You all know I’m salty about this, so here’s the official rant. 

First, let’s look at where he was mentioned. Exactly twice. 

“The legion had no high priest, no pontifex maximus. Their former augur, my descendant Octavian, had died in the battle against Gaia. (Which I had a hard time feeling sad about, but that’s another story.)” 

This one really hit me because it’s primarily just another instance of Apollo’s unnecessary sass. In The Hidden Oracle, he seemed to at least recognize his own fault in the matter for a split second: “A voice whispered in the back of my mind. This time I thought it might be my conscience: Who was the stupid boy? It wasn’t Octavian.” What happened to that? I get it, Rick knows that most fans hate Octavian. Ha ha. What’s important is that Apollo also thinks this way about Gaius Caligula and Nero, who are also his descendants. For all his character development, and for all the similarities between himself and these people he despises, Apollo can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that yeah, they all got this from him. It’s one of the last bastions of Apollo’s ego and hypocrisy, and I don’t think it’s ever going to be addressed. 

It’s half-heartedly joked that there are no “adults in the room” in New Rome anymore. Reyna notices a difference in the dynamic of the Senate. Apollo is expected to do all the ceremonial duties regarding Jason’s funeral. Beyond this, the book never once directly admits that Octavian’s absence has otherwise impacted New Rome. Or how his family reacted to his death. Sure the chaotic state of the community may play a role in this, but more on it later.

Apollo has mentioned in ToA that, of all his godly memories, he specifically remembers his talks with Octavian. I for one am very interested in this “other story” that Rick refuses to explore. 

““Praetors often partner up. In power. But also romantically, I mean. I thought Jason. Then for a hot minute, Percy Jackson. Gods help me, I even considered Octavian.” [Reyna] shuddered.”

This mention is purely throwaway; it’s meant to show how truly desperate Reyna was feeling. For the record, I respect Reyna’s subplot, for all I care about it at all. I think it’s hilarious how clearly repulsed she sounds at herself for even considering dating Octavian. Let’s be clear: this isn’t her admitting she ever liked him, or - gods forbid - had a crush. This is Reyna commenting on how oppressive the expectations of society are on single women. What’s funnier to me is that Octavian would have 100% turned her down, and her self esteem would have been toast. Good for her for sticking to her heart and not letting the world tell her what to do. 

Moving on, what’s more important is how Octavian wasn’t mentioned. I've said before that Riordan’s decision to flat out ignore Octavian has led to some minor but annoying continuity issues.

On a purely practical note, Octavian was a prominent, active member of a religion, a government, and a military. New Rome doesn’t have an augur. As Jason’s funeral shows, Apollo had to take up the associated religious duties. But how did New Rome handle honoring those who died in the war with Gaia? Or those who were more recently lost, in the fighting with Tarquin? How has the operation of the legion and senate shifted? Who replaced him as centurion of the first? What is it like to not be able to seek the gods’ approval via augury? Who approves new recruits, checks their credentials and assigns them to cohorts, and eventually gives them their tattoos? Who awards mural crowns and other military distinctions? New Rome has been without an augur before, as it’s a rare gift, but these questions still need to be answered for the community to operate. 

Back to Octavian’s family! His family is said to have been the oldest, richest, and most influential family in New Rome. Octavian is at least a 3rd generation camper, his family going back a hundred years or more. This is stressed in HoO because it’s used to show just how “entitled” and stuck up he is, but now? It’s not mentioned at all. No mourning, no help in Rome’s time of crisis, nothing. Unless by Octavian’s “family” Riordan was solely referring to the Triumvirate and Octavian was a member of an Imperial Household the whole time, this is ridiculous. I need to write a whole post about this, because Octavian’s life is fascinating when you consider what implications this has. 

As Gaius and Commodus are attacking New Rome with their fleet of yachts, New Rome’s navy gets brought up. I know Apollo isn’t the best narrator on this point, but all that’s mentioned is the sad boat Percy used for the Alaska quest. That small fleet of very nice speedboats that Octavian funded for the attack on Camp Half-Blood? Nope. Is this just Apollo being out of the loop? What happened to New Rome’s fleet?

With New Rome in chaos, this last point is really more of a nit pick, but can we please remember that Octavian led a very willing camp to war? Even before the Argo II disaster, even before Octavian spoke out at the Senate, the lares and legionnaires in the streets showed anti-Greek sentiment. The 5th cohort was “Greeks and geeks.” When Octavian proposed war, he had the legion on his side. As soon as Reyna left to go help with the Athena Parthenos, the centurions were ready to disobey her and follow Octavian. Even in the final battle of HoO, only the 4th and 5th cohorts really start to turn against him. All of this backs a very important, but largely ignored, point: you can lead a horse to the Senate, but you can’t make it vote. We see none of that tension in New Rome now. I get that most of the legion is dead, and that’s a huge part of it, but no one spoke out at all. We don’t see anyone with the opinion that Octavian did save Rome and defeat Gaia. We don’t see him get any funerary honors (which makes the book’s message concerning death all the more hypocritical). When Gaius confronts Frank - “Praetor Zhang, you are duty-bound to recognize Roman authority, and we are it! Together, we can rebuild this camp and raise your legion to glory!” - he’s right. But we don’t see a single legionnaire hesitate. 

I get that New Rome isn’t Riordan’s favorite, and that to develop the Romans would require a whole series of its own, but the sheer shallowness of New Rome just felt lazy. Even mentioning Octavian’s legacy would have done so much to show us more about Camp Jupiter. How is he remembered? A hero? A tyrant? A martyr? A fraud?

“NPC” OC Meme - Carmen

Tagged by: no one hahaha I MADE THIS

Tagging: u know the drill if u see it do it + tag me

Biographical

1. Would their name remain the same?

In my canon Carmen goes by Courier more than she goes by her actual name - so in a way, sort of. She’s still Carmen, just doesn’t have any way to distance herself from it.

2. What about their family?

Her family’s death occurs before the First Battle of Hoover Dam, so they’d still be gone. :(

3. Where would they come from?

Much of her backstory would remain the same: born in the independent territories by Utah and raised on a Bighorn ranch. The whole Courier thing only kicks off later on in the timeline so until she’s in her early 20s things would be pretty much the same. As for a residence, Carmen’s a wanderer whether or not she’s the Courier. She’d be living in whatever inn room her caps can pay for or camping out somewhere safe.

4. Do they look any different?

She doesn’t get that nasty scar on her temple thanks to Benny, and probably would go without the fair share of scars she collects over time. Her skin and hair are also probably in healthier condition due to less rad exposure in the hostile environments she was required to enter into as the Courier.

Occupation 1. Are their skills the same?

Still a pretty good shot, but by no means on the level she gets to with help from Boone and her training in the NCR. Her general performance is also probably lessened as she doesn’t have the benefit of amnesia to cut out most of her trauma.

2. What do they do?

It’s likely that while she would remain a courier for a short while, due to aforementioned reasons her stint might run pretty short. I can imagine her taking up caravan guarding and other odd jobs that keep a gun in her hands and her role firmly in the sphere of ‘intimidating’ while giving her mobility and cover.

3. Are they in the same area of expertise as they are in canon?

Carmen DEFINITELY would not enlist in the NCR, and she ABSOLUTELY would not step foot on the Strip. Her skills in reading people would be put toward trying to negotiate for more pay or avoiding sketchy employers and situations rather than shaping the landscape of the Mojave. So - vaguely.

4. Are their achievements similar?

Hahaha no. Without being dragged on the absolute mess started by Benny and the platinum chip, Carmen’s entire priority system shifts to staying alive and staying off the Omerta’s radar. She’d be very happy to be a non-player in the Mojave’s political web. An achievement for her in this state would be buying a good pair of boots.

Personal 1. a)  Would they meet or befriend/fall in love with the people they do in your canon?

She might bump into Cass or Veronica while running packages or guarding caravans. Whether or not she’d solve their problems or hang around long enough to make friends is up in the air. That’s the case for most of the companions - she might bump into them if her work required it, but she wouldn’t stay and chat long.

Fixing ED-E up is a possibility and maybe she’d do the King a favor for some caps and have Rex tag along every so often.

Boone and her wouldn’t end up in the place they do with her as the Courier. Even if she had a delivery for him specifically he’d be in no state for small talk. She also wouldn’t head to the Commonwealth. Free of the mantle of responsibility for her actions, she wouldn’t feel the need to flee the Mojave and would never meet Eleanora, Glory, Shaun, or the rest of the important people in her life on the east coast. :(

b) If the answer is no, what do you think happens to those people in a world without your OC in their canon role?

Depends on if the Courier in that world cares about them in the same way Carmen does. Veronica could end up staying in the Brotherhood, Boone might be encouraged to be vengeful rather than attempt to rebuild himself - it’s up in the air.

As for the East Coast people - Eleanora wouldn’t give her actions as much thought as she does or process things properly and might end up in the same state Carmen was in - hating herself for the choices she made. Worse, Eleanora or Deacon could have ended up dead in the hell week that led up to the assault on the Institute.

Glory would probably die alone in the crypt without the Courier by her side. Shaun’s teen years would be a LOT rougher and he’d be likely to have a lot less empathy for wastelanders as a whole.

All in all - not an ideal situation.

2. Would they be happier? Is life easier, or harder?

Carmen would be without a lot of the things that contribute to her pain and mental state. She wouldn’t have a tumultuous relationship with Boone and the haunted feeling regarding leaving him behind, she wouldn’t have entered the Sierra Madre, she wouldn’t have the guilt of handing the Mojave over to the NCR.

But she’d also be able to remember her childhood - her family, what she’d lost, her teenage years enslaved and the absolute mind-bending trauma of being one of the ‘girls’ at Gomorrah as an adult. She’d be constantly looking over her shoulder for one of the Omerta’s fixers come to collect. She also wouldn’t have the good parts of her and Boone’s relationship, or the breath of fresh air and invigoration that the East Coast (and Glory) provided.

All in all? Probably unhappier, but with much less weight and expectation on her shoulders. Shittier mental state, but easier life.

3. What would they think of the person who has their role as player character?

Assuming an Independent Good Karma Courier, she’d think they were the best thing that happened to the Mojave and the human personification of luck. She’d hear rumors about them and take pretty keen interest and if she ever bumped into them she’d offer them a drink - and maybe a discount for her services as a gun-for-hire. If said Courier ended up trying to run the Mojave, though, she’d bear a fair amount of distrust and resentment. No person should have that much power, in her opinion.

Couriers who take House’s route wouldn’t have her admiration - it’s just maintaining the status quo. She can’t hate House as she doesn’t know enough about the man to do so - he’s a mystery - but if she knew the truth you better believe she’d be pretty disdainful of a Courier working for a somewhat narcissistic pre-War businessman.

NCR aligned Couriers she’d disdain even more - despite that being the route she took in my canon, without Boone she has no reason to want the organization in charge and without her memory loss she is keenly aware of what the NCR does to the groups it comes across. She’d end up fleeing the Mojave if they ended up in charge - not so far as the Commonwealth, but probably ending up in Utah or Idaho.

Legion aligned Couriers would have her deepest hatred. As a woman and former slave she has a very long list of reasons to despise the Legion, however well spoken and educated its officers may be. She might just be tempted to track down such a Courier and put a bullet in them before they make things worse. (This would end poorly and she’d end up dead, because duh, Courier.) Or she’d flee - much farther than she would with the NCR in charge but still not quite Commonwealth far, parking herself in Montana or Wyoming.

READING THE REPUBLIC

Why does every teacher from an introductory philosophy class to one about political theory seem to be obsessed with assigning Plato’s Republic? If you glance thought the text, it seems to be better suited to a drama class, written as it is as a dialogue instead of the more traditional academic essay or treatise. However the Republic acts a good introductory text to so many subjects precisely because the characters of the text, through the course of their conversation, ask many of the same questions that subsequent thinkers will continue to ask and try to answer, questions that are the central inquiry of Western thought.

The Republic touches on questions regarding justice, what it means to be happy and lead a good life, the role of education in a society, what the ideal form of political government is, to what it means to have knowledge of something versus simply having an opinion. Plato was an educator and a philosopher, and reading the text can help teach the reader how philosophical inquiry can be embarked on, simply through having a conversation with your peers and asking questions about the world, and seeking an answer to them to with the goal of finding the truth.

What readers have taken from the text is myriad. By some, Plato has been read as providing an outline to a political society where power was given through individual merit, while others claim that the political society that Plato outlines is a totalitarian one, similar to Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. This shows the importance the role you, the reader, have. How you interpret the text and the arguments of the characters gives the text its meaning.

As a result, the Republic can, in some ways, be analyzed as a drama or a novel. In some accounts it is said that Plato once did have aspirations of becoming a poet. According to those accounts, when Plato showed Socrates some of his works, Socrates asked him questions about every line of the text, and as a result Plato burned all his works and never wrote again. In reading the text as students then, we should channel Socrates’ annoying inquisitive spirit, and carefully read the text line by line.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Plato has a reputation of being an ambiguous author, especially to the modern reader, who is not familiar with the historical events and characters present in the text in the same way that Plato’s contemporary readers would have been. To navigate these ambiguities it is important to have a bit of a background of the historical settings that the Republic was written in.

Plato was born in 427 BC (that’s around 2500 years ago!) to an influential aristocratic family at the end of the Golden Age of Athens, an age of Athenian domination and prosperity which had begun in the early fifth century with Athens’ defeat of Persia. This Golden Age would come to an end with the commencement of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Plato was born during the Peloponnesian War, and was around five years old when Athens entered into a truce with Sparta in 423 BC, called the Peace of Nicias. For some hopeful Athenians, this was a chance for Athens to rebuild its former empire and influence, free of the drain of warfare.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Only eight years later in 415 BC, Athens’ decided to send a fleet of ships to Sicily, refered to as the Sicilian Expedition. As a result, the unthinkable happened. Athens’ fleet, which had made it a dominant naval power, was destroyed at Syracuse in 413 BC. By this point in Plato’s short lifetime (he was fourteen when the news of the failure of the Sicilian expedition broke), Athen’s had gone from being a dominant power to receiving a crippling blow in a an international conflict that it had entered into in a dominant position. Ten years later, when Plato was around twenty-four, the Peloponnesian War ended with Athen’s surrender.

The decline of Athens would have had a great part in molding Plato’s political concerns, and thoughts of reforming Athen’s to its former glory would have been heavy on his mind. While Plato was influenced by other philosophers, it is of course Socrates that had one of the greatest influences in his thinking. When Plato was twenty he started to join the other young aristocrats who hung around Socrates in the marketplace.

Some of his family members were already part of Socrate’s group, such as his uncle Charmides and his mother’s cousin Critias. These were the same relative’s of Plato who, at the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC, would lead a group of conservatives to overthrow Athen’s democracy to rule as members of the Thirty Tyrants for nine corrupt and bloody months. Another infamous member of Socrates group was Alcibiades, who was the one to convince Athen’s to embark on the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, which lead to the destruction of Athen’s fleet.

So while, to Plato, Socrates represented the image of a philosopher who asked questions in the search for the truth, to the citizens of Athens Socrate’s probing questions, which he claimed to have no answer to, served only to undermine the city by questioning its traditions and established order. The democratic government which took power after the Thirty Tyrants was the one to sentence Socrates to death on the charge of corrupting the youth and, disbelieving in the gods of the city, introducing new gods into Athens. Socrates was sentenced to death and drank the hemlock in 399 BC, when Plato was twenty-eight years old.

Plato lived to be about eighty years old, but the first thirty years of his life were the most formative. The rest of his life would be spent doing what he admired most in Socrates – searching for knowledge. He became an educator in his own right, and founded the Academy, remembered historically as the first university.

This important period – the Peloponnesian War, the rise of the Thirty, their downfall to the democracy, which would execute Socrates – casts a shadow on the dialogue of the Republic through its characters, whose fates were embroiled in its events. The dialogue was set during the Peace of Nicias, meaning that many of the events that lead to the decline of Athens had not yet come to pass, and neither had the Thirty come into power – but they would have been fresh on the minds of Plato’s readers, who knew the future that was to come.

Many of the characters would be dead by the time the Republic was written. Socrates was sentenced to death for the same philosophizing he characterized in the Republic, Cephalus (the old man who opened his home to the visitors) would have his family fortune seized by the Thirty, who were relatives of the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus. Polemarchus would also be executed by the Thirty, and his brother Lysias and father Cephalus would be sent into exile in the Piraeus, which during the time of the Thirty acted as the center of democratic opposition, and would be recognizable to us as the setting of the Republic.

For me this knowledge makes the dialogue that much more poignant. It is almost as if Plato is saying “Look, pay attention! What may seem like an idle conversation to pass the time, asking grand questions about justice and the good life, will lead to the death of these men.” It is a warning to those that think these questions aren’t important, and what should happen if we decide to stop the pursuit of knowledge regarding the truth. It is my belief that it is this message that the Republic has preserved through its study by generations of students.

BOOK I

Cephalus (328b-331d)

The Question is Introduced – What is Justice?

Techne (332e) Types of human government (338d) Violence of tyrants (344b-c) The burden/difficulty of rule (345e-346a) Comparison between the city and the individual (352a) Proper task of things (352d-353a)

Polemarchus (331d-336a)

Thrasymachus (336b-354b)

The old order, introduction of Cephalus

The first definition of justice to be introduced is through an old man named Cephalus, who is the father of Polemarchus. In ancient Greek, Cephalus means “head”, which he could be named because he is the head of the family. He is happy to see Socrates, and partly insults him by saying to him that, due to his old age, his desire for conversation has grown so he wishes that Socrates would visit him more often to talk. Either intentionally or not, Cephalus has thus regaling the philosophical conversations to which Socrates has devoted his life to idle talk to pass the time in old age.

Cephalus is a “metic” meaning is not a citizen of Athens, despite his monetary wealth. It is here, where they sit down with Cephalus that the rest of the dialogue of the Republic is going to be held.

Cephalus begins the conversation by looking back on his life, and states that while old age has given him freedom from the sex and money that ruled his younger years, in his old age he has also began to wonder if he lived a just life. Cephalus wonders, if when he dies, he will go to the afterlife peacefully. It is Cephalus who poses the question of justice, due to the fact that he is approaching the end of his life and is worried about the judgement of the gods.

We can think of justice loosely as “acting in a right way” – for an example in a way that the gods would approve of in the afterlife. The English word “justice” is how the word “dikaiosune” found in the original Greek text is translated. Dikaiosune refers to behaviour that is regular and predictable, such as law-abiding behaviour, in contexts that involve behaviour towards other people. This stands in opposition to virtues like courage and honesty, which can exist in the absence of other people.

Pause here, my dear reader, to think about what justice would look like to you. How should we treat other people?

Say you think that justice is acting towards others as you would like to be treated. If this is your conception of justice, then are there circumstances where acting according to justice is made easier? What about harder?

Think about your conception of justice and argue against it. Some standards you should see if your conception of justice can meet are (1) if it is universal, meaning you should ask if it guides everyone’s actions in the same way, no matter the circumstances (2) if it can be taught, and if so, how.  

He then continues to say that the money he has is now good because he can offer sacrifices to the gods and pay back his debts to those he owns them to, and does not have to commit injustices because of a lack of money.

From this statement, Socrates asks him if that is what he thinks justice is “speaking the truth and paying back what one has borrowed” (331d).

Socrates has an argument against this definition of justice. He asks – what about if you borrowed a weapon from a friend that was not mentally sane? Under this definition of justice, which says that you must pay your debts and return what you have borrowed, you must give the weapon to this friend, even if he could hurt himself or someone else with it. This cannot be justice.

Here, Socrates has pointed out that Cephalus’ definition is deficient because it only describes an instance of what actions can be seen as just, without really telling us what justice is. There’s a famous story that once, Plato defined man to be “a featherless biped”, only to have the philosopher Diogenes run into his villa holding a plucked chicken, exclaiming “Behold, a man!”. Socrates has done much the same to Cephalus, and through his counter example made the point that merely describing what actions are just, does not explain why they are just.

Cephalus’ definition also does not give much guidance to those, like the sword lender in Socrates example, who do not have the ability to act according to it. Cephalus’ definition is one that is very much tailored to the position in life Cephalus is in, as an older person with money and few temptations, and has little to offer to those who are not in the same position. As Socrates says, it is a definition that outlines actions that are “sometimes just, sometimes unjust” (331c).

Cephalus agrees with Socrates, and admits that Socrates had made a good point against his definition of justice, but before he can hear Socrates’s argument he leaves the conversation, tasking his heir Polemarchus with continuing the debate on his behalf. With the exit of Cephalus, who will not return, tradition and the old order has left the conversation. This leaves the remaining characters – Socrates, Glaucon, Polemarchus, Thrasymichus and Adeimantus – to converse over a new definition of justice.

This is the primary topic of dialogue for the rest of Book I of the Republic. Similar to the conversation with Cephalus, a character tries to give a definition of justice, only to have Socrates come up with examples and arguments that show inconsistencies in the definition, such as how it is applied (as he did with Cephalus) or lead to a conclusion that is extreme (as he will later do with Thrasymichus).

Polemarchus, a dead man talking

Polemarchus is the next character to give a definition of justice. Polemarchus is a name that means “war lord”. Polemarchus is concerned with honor, and to him justice is a type of loyalty to your friends, to those that you identify as belonging to the same community as you. This is a very “us versus them” view, making it a view of justice that lends itself very well to international relations.

Prompted by Socrates, Polemarchus states that, like the art of medicine is to give “drugs, food and drink to bodies” and the art of cooking is to give “seasoning to meat”, the art of justice is “the one that gives benefits and harms to friends and enemies” or in other words “Justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies” (332d).

This is a definition that is more general than the one Cephalus had provided, and therefore harder to disprove with just a simple counter example. To argue against it, Socrates will show that if this is truly the definition of justice, it will lead to unacceptable conclusions if applied.

Remember, to say something about justice is to say something about how we should treat other people, so in saying that we “should give others what they are due”, Polemarchus is saying that to act justly is to fulfill our social obligations to the people in our community and those outside of it.

If you were Socrates, how would you argue against this definition of justice? Keep in mind what acting according to Polemarchus’ definition would entail. In 332c, the word “craft” is a translation of the Greek word techne, which to those of Plato’s time would have the same connotations as the word “science” would have to us.

So when Socrates asks “what the craft we call justice gives”, he is asking what type of knowledge is needed in order to fulfill our social obligations to those in our community and those outside of it. By treating justice as a techne, Socrates requires that Polemarchus’ definition of justice require knowledge. Look back on Polemarchus’ definition – what type of knowledge is required to “do good to friends, and bad to enemies”?  

Much of the diffuculty that Polemarchus’ definition faces is that Socrates treats the type of knowledge required by justice as a techne, or a skill. This sets justice to the same standard of knowledge as the skills that the term techne encompassed in Plato’s time, such as that of a medicine or navigation. These skills usually made up a persons occupation (such as doctor or ship captain), and therefore not only require abstract, theoretical knowledge but a way to apply that knowledge, and subsequently, teach it to others.

If we are to say we have knowledge of justice, of how we should treat others, then Socrates and Plato maintain this is the standard we must aim for in our search for justice. By having Polemarchus agree that justice is a skill or a craft, Socrates traps Polemarchus into having to show that there is a specific subject that is the sole domain of justice, in the same way that we have a defined view of the purpose of medicine or navigation. So if justice is something that guides the activity of “doing good to friends and bad to enemies” is there a specific field of knowledge that belongs to justice?

Socrates argument is to show that, if we are to follow Polemarchus’ definition of justice, that no, there is not. This is because the skill to do good or bad to someone is already accounted for by other crafts. If, as Polemarchus claims, the domain of justice is in matters of war’s and alliances (332e) and in peace-time, that of contracts,

Socrates asks Polemarchus how a person can determine who their friends are. People make mistakes, so can’t a person then think someone who is their friend, whom they consider to be good, be in fact their enemy? Since this is obviously the case, and people often mistake their enemy for their friend, Polemarchus’ definition of justice can mean that it is just to treat good men unjustly. This seems like a bad definition of justice.

In response to this, Polemarchus amends his definition of justice to state that “it is just to do good to the friend, if he is good, and harm to the enemy, if he is bad” (335a). Socrates is quick in his rebuttal, and asks if it is ever just for a just man to harm anyone? When you harm a horse or a dog they become worse. So therefore, cannot it also be said that the same is true of a human being, and in respect to human virtue a person would become worse? If human virtue must be a part of justice, just as “musicians cannot make men unmusical through music”, it does not make sense that a just man can make others unjust through justice. That is the work of his opposite, an unjust man.

Through these arguments Socrates has silenced Polemarchus, but we shall see later on that his definition of justice will make a reappearance. The best city is one that is peaceful, but that might not be so between the relations of states, meaning that a warrior force that protects the polis will be needed. The fact that this definition makes a reappearance is not a surprise, since is not a sense of community central to the citizenship that makes up political life? Can a political society even survive without a sense of what it is, and what it is not?

Thrasymachus, Socrates’s evil twin

The next to take up the challenge of giving a definition of justice is Thrasymachus, who has been sitting eagerly through Socrates’s conversation with Polemarchus, barely restrained by those around him from speaking. He is describes “hunched up like a wild beast” and once Socrates finishes his conversation with Polemarchus, he flings himself at Socrates and demands that he give a definition of justice himself instead of just refuting the definitions of others. This outburst startles Socrates so much that he thinks to himself that “he was frightened when he heard [Thrasymachus], and, looking at him, he was frightened” (336d).

But Socrates had noticed Thrasymachus’ agitation while he was speaking to Polemarchus and was ready to answer him. Socrates says that if he is making any mistake, it is not intentionally, since he would not stand in the way of someone looking for something as valuable as justice. At this response Thrasymachus exclaims in humor, and accuses Socrates of engaging in his “habitual irony” in not giving an answer. Thrasymachus is a sophist, who in ancient Greece would teach rhetoric for a fee. Philosophy was defined in contrast to sophistry, which was characterized by skepticism and a reputation for making anything look like the truth, while philosophy was the search for what was true and objective.

Thrasymachus gives his definition of justice, stating “the just is nothing but the advantage of the stronger” (338c). In other words, might is right.

Thrasymachus points out that every polity makes a distinction between the rulers and the ruled, and each ruling group, no matter the form of government, sets down the laws. “A democracy sets down democratic laws; a tyranny, tyrannical laws” (338e) for their own advantage and declare these laws to be what is just for the ruled, and punish their breaking as injustice. Justice is the rules of the ruling class, which they set to their benefit.

Socrates challenges Thrasymachus in a similar way to his challenge to Polemarchus. He asks Thrasymachus is if rulers can make mistakes, and therefore make laws that are disadvantageous and harmful to them. If it is so, which Thrasymachus agrees to be true, then the ruled are made to follow rules that are a disadvantage of the stronger. This shows a flaw in Thrasymachus’s thinking. Thrasymachus’s response to this challenge is that those who make mistakes are not true rulers, since they are not the stronger in having made their mistake. The true ruler acts on their own interest, as well as knowing what is in their own interest.

Socrates argues that an art is not made for the benefit of the practitioner but for the advantage of its use. Medicine does not consider the advantage of medicine, but of the body, and horsemanship does not consider the advantage of horsemanship, but of horses. Therefore, Socrates concludes, a ruler, in practicing the craft of ruling, considers not their own advantage but, instead, that of which is ruled (342e). Thrasymachus blows up again, and insults Socrates. He says that the relationship between the rulers and the ruled is like that of a shepherd and their sheep. The shepherd does not raise the sheep looking for the good, but for their own self-interest.

The value of Injustice

In giving his speech about shepherds and sheep, Thrasymacus makes some bold statements about the value of living a just life. He says that “the just man everywhere has less than the unjust man” and injustice is to one’s benefit if it is done on a larger scale, as a ruler, since no one will call it injustice. After all “for it is not because they fear doing unjust deeds, but because they fear suffering them, that those who blame injustice do so” (344c). The just is then what is profitable for the stronger, and the unjust is what is profitable and advantageous for oneself. Here, Thrasymachus has changed the topic of debate from the question of what justice is, to if a life lived according to justice is the best one.

Thrasymachus is claiming that perfect injustice is more profitable than perfect justice (348b). In response to this Socrates asks him if he thinks if justice is a virtue, and injustice is a vice. Thrasymacus agrees that justice is a virtue and injustice a vice, but adds that injustice is more profitable, and is good and prudent. Prompted by Socrates’s questions, Thrasymachus is also made to agree that the just man will be willing to only get the better of the unjust man, while the unjust man is willing to get the better of both those that are just and unjust. Put plainly, Socrates is making the point that the unjust are the sort of people who would take advantage of other people, both those who are just and unjust,

If, as Thrasymachus is also made to agree, those that are learned are not willing to get the better of those that are like them, but the unlearned are willing to get the better of both the learned and the unlearned, the just have been revealed themselves to be good and wise, while the unjust are unlearned and bad. It is at this point that Thrasymachus is made to blush, for he realizes that instead of defending justice as a virtue, he has been defending the unjust life, and those people who would take advantage of others.

Socrates’ second point is that even those that are involved in some unjust enterprise, such as thieves, would have to act justly towards one another in order to accomplish anything. It is injustice that produces factions and fighting among those factions, and justice that produces peace and friendship (351d). If the gods are just, the unjust man will also be an enemy of the gods.

But despite all this conversation, Socrates proclaims, the importance of this discussion is to determine the question of how one should live. The point of disagreement between Socrates and Thrasymachus is not only on what justice is, but if the just life is the best life (in being the most profitable).

Socrates goes on to say that each thing has a virtue in the work that it does. For example the purpose of an eye is to see, but if instead of being governed by virtue it was ruled by its vice, that is blindness, then its work would be done poorly. The same can be said of living, which is the work of the soul, so that a soul ruled by vice does not live well. Since justice is the virtue of the soul and injustice its vice, the just soul and the just man will live a good life, and the unjust one a bad one (353e). The just man will therefore be happy, which is profitable, while the unjust one will be wretched, which is not.

This conclusion seems to be an unsatisfactory one. It seems like Socrates did not really disprove Thrasymachus’s argument, more that Thrasymachus got frustrated and gave up. Glaucon and Adeimantus agree, and are not satisfied with this conclusion, as we will see in Book II.

The main point to take away from the debate around Thrasymachus’s definition of justice is that it hinges on what type of knowledge is necessary to rule. The central concession that Thrasymachus makes to Socrates is in saying that one needs knowledge in order to determine what is in ones self-interest. So if justice is self-interest, then justice requires knowledge. If the true ruler will act unjustly in order to pursue their own interests, justice, like all knowledge, is for the purpose of self-interest. By Thrasymachus’s view the strong are better of disregarding justice, and pursuing their own self-interests directly.

Why do we read Book I?

Having been introduced to the question of justice, and having been given three diverse accounts of how to define justice, we are left at the end of Book I with little answered. This leads many frustrated students to ask why we even need to read Book I? We will move on to Book II only to have Glaucon pose the same questions, mainly (1) what is justice, and (2) is the just life the good life – questions which, unlike in Book I, Socrates actually attempts to give an answer to.

This leaves many students tempted to skip Book I, but while tempting, I would not recommend it. The reason that Book I is still read in teaching the Republic is because it introduces many of the themes of the book, and in my opinion functions as a good primer to those who are unfamiliar with the Socratic method of philosophizing, asking questions and arguing. Plus, Book I sets important groundwork in the common ways that one may approach asking the question of what justice is, and the problems that those approaches will face.

While frustrating (which is in part the point, the search for the truth is not an easy thing!) the work of Book I is rewarding. As you will see, it is likely that you will return to Book I in your essay on the Republic in order to trace Socrates’ line of argument, since after Book I Socrates does not face much opposition in laying out his definition of justice.

It’s been a long and chaotic hiatus period folks, but at least we’re here. RWBY Volume 7. There’s been a lot of hype in the leadup to this. New outfits. New setting. New characters. Old characters making long-awaited comebacks. There is so much to be excited about this season, and the absolutely insane opening only added more fuel to the fire. I’ve done a review/analysis on the opening already, which if you’d like to check that out, you can find it here. 

But for now, after nearly ten months of waiting, it’s finally time. Review season is in full swing. So why wait any more than we already have? Let’s kick the Volume 7 Reviews off with Chapter One, The Greatest Kingdom. Because of course, that would be the title of an Atlas-centric chapter. Of course.

Overview

We begin exactly where we left off before. RWBYJNRQOM have reached Atlas… but Ironwood’s fleet is armed and ready as though expecting an attack. Everyone is taken aback by this, especially Weiss. This causes complications. With Atlas this high alert, if they dock in an unauthorized ship, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble. Weiss also worries that if that happens, they may very well return her to her family, and to her father. But she then remembers that since they’re now back in Atlas’ range, she can contact Winter. Thus, Maria steers the ship downward, towards the city of Mantle.

We get our first glimpse of the former capital, and it’s telling. The location has a New York kind of vibe. It’s big and industrial but also run down. One reason for that may be because of the number of troops and drones in the city. They’re making people afraid or rebellious, even children as we see two throw a rock at a drone. But even more telling is that the holo-screens have Ironwood talking, claiming that this is all for their own safety. Everyone is unnerved by this, and worst? Winter is also spewing out the propaganda, shocking Weiss. Due to this, the plan is to ditch the ship and join the masses in Mantle.

Thus, the ship is parked… somewhere. We never see where. But the gang walks through the city, and get an even better look at how rundown that it is. Thre’s political posters around, namely featuring some kind of pale blonde-haired figure. We also see some headlines highlighting events like the Embargo, the discovery of a dead journalist, and damage to the border. Drones are going all around and take photos of Yang, which earns a kick from her and then it gets run over. Oops. We even see graffiti that says “Show Your Teeth”. Best guess is that that’s the White Fang’s doing. Life looks awful in Mantle, and Blake expresses this out loud. This earns her getting told off by two drunkards, who go off about Atlas being great and all that kind of stuff that we’ve heard before. But when one starts to make racist Faunus remarks at Blake, Weiss responds by gravity Glyphing into a dumpster. This attracts security attention, but it was worth it.

Maria knows where they can go, and she takes them to some kind of clinic. This is where she had intended to go in order to get her eyes adjusted. We, therefore, meet the man who runs the place. An elderly, wheel-chair bound man named Pietro. He is a well-known scientist who has made various advances for Atlas and Ironwood, but he volunteers in Mantle to get away from the stuffy atmosphere and to help the people below. The gang has questions about Atlas, so Pietro explains how Ironwood’s paranoia has gone into overload. Not just because of the Fall, but because of how badly his forces were hacked and made Atlas look like both terrorists and buffoons. But we do find out that they still don’t know who hacked their systems, but they /do/ suspect that it may very well be one of their own. With everyone blaming Atlas for the Fall of Beacon, the council is so scared that they’re just doing what Ironwood says. So needless to say, Atlas is in utter chaos and isn’t as safe as our heroes previously thought.

Pietro begins to talk about Mantle’s representatives taking action… until he recognizes Weiss. Yang tries to get things back on topic, only for Pietro to recognize her arm. He sounds… kind of offended that she painted it, haha! But he soon recognizes Team RWBY, having heard of them from his daughter. Who is his daughter? Well before Ruby can find out, a warning siren goes off. A group of wolf-like Grimm that I believe are called Sabers are attacking, so our heroes fight back. It’s a pretty good action sequence, full of a lot of high-paced energy and an awesome guitar riff in the background. Poor Blake’s sword is still broken, so she’s forced to stick to the gun mode. Fortunately, our heroes are ripping the Grimm apart with ease… but they ultimately don’t defeat the Grimm themselves.

A series of lasers blast away the remaining Grimm. We see a figure flying up above. A very… familiar looking person. Green color-scheme… red hair… a pink bow… freckles… wait… the figure lands, and we get to see them in full. Ruby’s eyes widen in shock as, for the first time since the Fall of Beacon, she sees Penny Polendina. 

You read right folks, Penny is back! Pietro tells her to say hi to her friends and… she recognizes them! She recognizes Ruby! She flies right into Ruby to hug her! That probably gave Ruby a concussion, but eh she’ll live. But only one thing matters right now: PENNY! PENNY IS BACK!!! SHE’S ALIVE!!! WHOO~!!!

As it turns out, Pietro is Penny’s father/creator. After Amity Arena was brought back to Atlas, they were able to recover Penny’s core and Pietro was able to rebuild her and even better. She is now the official protector of Mantle. Penny is excited to catch back up with Ruby… but another siren goes off, and she has to go off. Everyone has questions, but fortunately, Pietro is more than happy to answer them. So successful Grimm fight, they made it to Mantle, and they found a friendly face. Two friendly faces! Sure we had the rough patch with Ironwood’s forces and his propaganda, but hey! So far things are going pretty well!

Well, let’s ruin that!

The gang is suddenly captured and bound down by a group of blue and white-clad soldiers. This is a security force known as Ace-Ops. Qrow argues that he’s a licensed Huntsman and was doing his job, but Ace-Ops take their weapons and, even worst, the lamp. Pietro questions the meaning of this, and their leader named Clover Ebi reveals the list of charges. The unauthorized ship, disobeying commands from Control, and fighting Grimm despite all but one of them being unlicensed. As such, they’re being arrested and taken to Atlas. The episode ends with everyone loaded up into the back of a police van with Qrow hating himself for jinxing everything up. Stupid Bad Luck Semblance.

Review

So this was a bit shorter than the previous couple of premieres, but really? That’s not a problem whatsoever. This premiere was really good! Not the best, but certianly does its job and does it well. We get to see Mantle after so many years, get to finally meet Professor Polendina, and we get a big surprise in the return of Penny. We get a fun action scene as well, which is always nice. And it has a solid ending in everyone getting arrested… well okay, that sucks for them, but it was an appropriate place to end.

Before we go into more detailed stuff though… let’s talk about the elephant in the room first. That being Qrow’s new voice. For those unaware, Vic Mignogna was fired and I don’t feel like going into it any more than I’ve already had to. But long story short; Vic did a lot of gross, horrible stuff and he deserved to be kicked out. As such, voice actor Jason Liebrecht was cast to take over, and so far… I think that he’s good! It was a tad bit spotty, but he’s still new so I’m not expecting perfection. But it still feels like Qrow and the voice honestly sounds like a cleaner, healthier version of Vic’s Qrow. Which if Qrow starts to sober himself up, it will fit very well. So yeah, I am perfectly happy with Jason’s rendition and I am looking forward to hearing more of him going forward~

Okay, got that out of the way. So let talk about good stuff now!

Mantle looks amazing. IIRC, Miles and Kerry said that Mantle and Atlas are based on different periods of America’s evolution. Mantle represents the Industrial Era, in particular New York, and it certianly feels that way. It’s a big city, but it’s not happy. The place looks run-down and dirty, there’s tons of unrest, and they have to watch as Atlas stands above them in all of its glory. It was meant to be a symbol of hope, but now? It just represents the oppression of Mantle and how Atlas stands superior to them. One of the most telling scenes is when we see a wagon of miners pass by. All of them are covered in soot and just look sick and miserable. It paints a very harsh picture, and it’s only going to become all the harsher as we learn more in the future.

But there is a bright spot. We FINALLY get to meet Pietro. He’s as I expected, a kind old-man, if a bit scatter-brained and forgetful. He very much fits the image of a Gepetto-inspired character. Though him being wheelchair-bound and his frequent coughing certianly has me concerned for him… and I have a very bad idea about his final fate by the time that this arc is over. Still, we get a very clear image of his character and there’s a lot of Easter Eggs in his office. Like the whale statue on his shelf, another allusion to Pinocchio. It’s that attention to detail that makes me appreciate CRWBY so much. Also fun fact, his voice actor is David Fennoy. Which this isn’t his first time working on RWBY. The other time? As Dr. Merlot, the antagonist of RWBY: Grimm Eclipse. Who, if you don’t know, was a mad scientist… so great casting gag there CRWBY!

But speaking of Pinocchio… 

Well everyone, we knew that it was coming, but we weren’t ready. Yes, indeed, Penny is back. So… there’s been some debate over her re-introduction. While everyone is happy to have her back, some have questioned the under-whelming execution and lack of reaction from Ruby. Now I will admit that it is more subdued than I was expecting, but Ruby? I don’t at all get her so-called ‘lack of reaction’. You can see how wide her eyes are and how stunned she is, but it quickly evolves into over-whelming joy. Not every reaction has to be tearfully breaking down, guys. Ruby processed it quickly and was just overjoyed. Then after the tackle-glomp, you can hear her struggling to find the words to say as she starts to ask what happened since she thought that Penny was dead for at least a year. So no, Ruby’s reaction was perfectly IC for her and he DID have a reaction.

But yeah, Penny is back! But unlike what we all assumed, she has her memory! I was confused on how since we saw the Nevermore stomp on her remains… but considering that the area was sent back to Atlas, I can buy that they dug around enough to find the core and repair any damage that it had. I admit her return is a lot less dramatic than I thought it would be… but I really have no issue with it. For one, there’s plenty of things with her that can be touched on later. How she felt about dying. Her status as Mantle’s protector. What’s happened with her since the Fall. Plus after everything that’s happened, I think that we deserved this one break regarding Penny and her having her memory still. So yeah, maybe the execution could have had a bit more substance, but I really have no problem with it. Penny is back, and that’s all that matters.

Thre is a lot of good setup here. We have Ironwood’s paranoia on full display as well as the results towards Mantle due to it. We get a look at the mindsets of people like the kids throwing rocks at drones and the drunkards shitting on Blake for her comments about Mantle. But we also have Weiss Glyphing the one guy, which while it was oh so deserved, she did cause a fuss due to it when Blake was trying to deal with the matter peacefully and had even previously stopped Ruby when she was about to argue back. It’s good to see Weiss not dealing with any racist garbage thrown at Blake, but it was not the best way to deal with it when Blake had it under control, and that may very well be something that we see touched on more and more with the plot as a whole. Not just regarding Faunus racism, but regarding the conflict of Mantle vs Atlas.

We have the propaganda being spewed in Mantle not just by Ironwood but also from WInter. Something that Weiss is clearly unhappy about, and something that may cause friction down the line. We have the Ace-Ops, who going by the opening is going to play a major part in the volume. Which funny how they showed up to arrest the gang… but none of the vast amounts of security forces were around to stop the Grimm. Sure Penny was there and she is officially Mantles protector, but a good chunk of the Grimm were stopped by our heroes. So much for looking out for Mantle’s safety, huh Ironwood? Clover doesn’t even listen to Qrow or ask to see his license for proof of it… okay yeah, Qrow would still be arrested for the unauthorized ship, but still. There are so many small things that show us exactly how oppressed the people of Mantle are, and we’re probably going to see even more of that unrest and protest as we go on. Especially with this Robyn Hill character that we see is running for Council, and against an Atlesian tycoon. And I have a good guess at who that tycoon may be…

Chapter Two Predictions

Introducing a new section to the reviews! Which I will also add to the Red vs Blue reviews when that starts up again (2020, hurry the heck up!). But yeah, I’m gonna start doing predictions and see how well I do… or more likely, how badly I do. It’s all for fun though, so keep that in mind.

So the gang has been arrested and is going up to Atlas. So we’ll probably get to see that and get to compare it to the worn-down Mantle. We see in the trailer that Ruby and Ironwood are talking, so chances are Ironwood will recognize them and hear them out. If we’re lucky, he may have gotten the letter that Qrow sent as well. Now whether hell license the kids or not I’m not sure, but he clearly is going to allow them to work with Ace-Ops (likely under his strict rules) so it could be that or he’ll mark it as Community Service to make up for the charges against them. I can also see him deciding to take Oscar under his wing both for his own safety due to Ozpin, and/or to properly train the kid since even with Oz’s muscle memory, he needs all that he can get. After that, the gang is able to get their new gear, get some haircuts, etc. Only one IDK what’s going to happen to is Qrow… but he’s likely gonna do whatever the Hell he wants or Ironwood’s gonna give him the harder jobs. But we’ll find out soon enough.

Episode Stats

Favorite Character: Pietro and Penny Polendina Favorite Scene: RWBYJNORQ vs The Grimm Least Favorite Scene: The intro before they went into Mantle since it was just re-establishment exposition. Favorite Voice Actor: Taylor McNee (Penny Polendina) Favorite Animation: Either the Weis and Ren combo on the Grim or Ruby slaying the Grimm. Final Ranking: 8.5/10

Final Thoughts

We are off to a very good start! We get to see Mantle and understand exactly the state that it, as well as Atlas, are in. We get a nice action sequence. We get a lot of setup for things later, like the propaganda and introduction fo the Ace-Ops. But most of all, we have Pietro finally appearing and, of course, the return of Penny. Not my favorite premiere, but it did its job and was a very satisfying watch. So I say job well-done CRWBY! It sure as Hell makes me excited for what’s ahead!

So You Want To Play A Wizened

(Artwork depicting the fuckmothering Rook  provided by cantankerousAquarius, character provided by me. Meet him in New Avalon.)

Previous article: So You Want To Play A Beast.

Chaos reigns in the kingdoms of Man, and the kingdoms of Arcadia are no different. There is an inherent unfairness in trauma and abuse, and in the depredations of evil. They can happen to anyone at all, for any reason, for no reason. It’s not the victims’ fault, and not in the victims’ control, and sadly of the vast collection of Anyone At All it can happen to, Not Many can call themselves survivors.

The Lost know the Not Many, and call them the Wizened. They did nothing to deserve this, not even by the arcane laws of the Fae and the twisting treacheries of the Wyrd, but it happened to them, and they became one of the rare few to survive and see their Homecoming. It’s rarely the joyous moment they were looking for. The Wizened that comes back is not the Anyone At All who left.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost, as well as Winter Masques and Swords at Dawn. It discusses some content from Rites of Spring. It requires Content Warnings for depictions of torture, maiming, and abuse.

The Invisible People - Wizened Overview

Wizened is the very last Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and joins Beast as one of the most commonly represented in the writing and worldbuilding, if not necessarily in terms of characters with statistics (but check out Auntie Ally and Jack o’ the Lantern in Night Horrors: Grim Fears). The Wizened were taken for spite, tormented for spite’s sake, and turned loose to rebuild something like a life when spite grew cold - and the legacy of that spite has made them twisted and small. More than many other Lost, to be Wizened is to know that you suffered a great loss, that you have been robbed and cheated of some piece of your humanity, and to try and live a life that can compensate for that loss. For almost all of them, the trades and skills that became their salvation first from torment, and then from Arcadia, become part of who they are and one of the bright and shining points in their lives. It cuts both ways: in identifying so strongly with their functions, all too many Wizened are reduced to those functions by their fellow Lost.

 Jack and Jill Went Up The Hill - Homecoming As A Wizened

Far, far more people will experience the opening stages of their transformation into Wizened than will survive those transformations, and more will change than will make it home. The fact that Wizened tend to be intelligent, clever, good with their hands, and fast on the draw is less about what kind of people become Wizened - anyone could become Wizened, for no reason at all - and more about the qualities needed to survive and outwit the captivity to which Wizened are subjected. The grim truth of it is, those who are too slow, too incurious, or too afraid of pain and death die, and they never make it home.

The Durance of a Wizened can generally be divided into two stages: torture and apprenticeship. Those who will one day be Wizened are subject to the terrible, unfurled glory of Fae malice and Fae cruelty without limit or relief. The things done to them beggar belief: in one Domain, human captives are crucified to trees of moonsilver that leech out their living blood and replace it with boiling acid. In caverns beneath the tainted earth, kidnapped children flee screaming from spider-wolves that lay their eggs in the warm and living bodies of humans, humans that do not die when the filthy things erupt in a shower of gore and broken bone. Long-limbed Greys perform surgeries with advanced machines and not a drop of painkiller, sustaining their victims with magic as they are turned from something human into something like the Greys themselves; a sinister Whistling Witch maintains an elaborate diorama of her domain, using the poppets that represent her slaves to wrack their living bodies with a million kinds of agony. Fae magic sustains the would-be Wizened far past human limits when normally their bodies would give them the mercy of unconsciousness or the peace of death. Some never leave this stage - they are discarded into worse, permanent tortures meant to serve as decorations or warnings - and others are killed when they grow boring to their abusers. But some survive.

Those who, by chance or by the intervention of their fellow captives, escape the tortures they are condemned to are put to work in the Domain of their Keeper. This is only rarely in a trade the person knew before being kidnapped (and when that does happen it’s likely complete coincidence); the Fae decides they need someone to clean floors, cook food, crack the whip against their other slaves, build the bodies of Fetches, construct elaborate golems of stained glass, or whatever else their Keeper can think of. The Wizened are only rarely directly trained in this new skill by their Keepers, instead being left to the management of their fellow slaves and goblin taskmasters. After a living eternity of torture and trauma, even glass-tipped whips are almost mild by comparison, and the Wizened learn to do their jobs, keep their heads down, and excel without being noticed. Their trade becomes how they relate to Arcadia, encouraging the Wizened to pay attention to their environment, to learn more about their physical space and its properties, to see the beauty and wonder amidst the horror and fear. There are worse coping mechanisms; this focus on their work and the way their work can help them relate to the world around them isn’t just the key to a Wizened’s escape, it’s the instinct that helps them find beauty in hidden places and utility in disregarded things back in the Iron Lands.

Wizened generally don’t have a problem with wanting to escape. After enduring the unendurable and then being consigned to slave labor, rare is the formerly mortal person whose first and brightest desire is not to be Anywhere But Here. The escapes themselves can be elaborate and dramatic, and the tail end of a Wizened’s tattered recollections of Arcadia can be full of memories of crashing space ships, revolutions in cities of chrome towers, or riding roughshod over hobgoblin soldiers from the back of the wolf-spiders that once tormented her. Wizened are among those Lost most likely to collaborate with their fellow captives to escape, either because their clever plans require it or because someone else’s clever plan requires the Wizened. Memories of the friends and allies that helped them make it to their Homecoming fade along with everything else when the Wizened get back home, but for those who acquire such memories again as their Wyrd rises reconnecting with their former fellows can be a powerful event.

A lot of Wizened were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were Taken. No one (least of all the Wizened themselves) likes to talk about it, but many of those who achieve their Homecoming were isolated before they were Taken, existing a half-step out of their own social circles with few friends. Memories of those friendships and those special places in the new Wizened’s life can be enough to call them home, but what happens after isn’t always a joyous reunion. Wizened are among those Lost with a high incidence of abandoning the traces of their former mortal life entirely, either because the idea of trying to fit in with mortals whose respect they crave is too terrifying, or because hindsight has made them realize that those connections were not what they once thought they were. Left to their own devices, some Wizened associate exclusively with other Lost, and they can be overlooked enough for others to just let that happen. In healthier Freeholds, though, their friends (or monarchs, if need be) drag the Wizened out and about to at least some public events, often those that match the Wizened’s hobbies and trades.

Every Man Jack - Wizened Kiths

The magical bonds which Wizened have in common show a curious contrast between being very subtle and very obvious. Wizened can’t ‘flare’ the way many other Seemings can; there are no skills or attributes which they can spend Glamour on, but all Wizened can enhance their Dexterity for great lengths of time for only a single point of Glamour - they offer up a token shard of power and become faster, more nimble, more agile, for anything such grace can buy them. When it comes to dipping out of a bad scene there’s few that can match the Wizened for sheer “fuck this shit I’m out”, and those same talents are also great in a kitchen, on the operating table, or when picking locks and solving puzzles. Their ability to enhance their Dodge is similar in nature, though not in execution thanks to the vicissitudes of how World of Darkness handles its combat.

On the flip side, the curse of the Wizened is quite obvious. Their lack of Presence and their penalty to untrained social skills manifests as a sort of diminishing. Some of it is magical, but much of it is a reaction to trauma. Too often, Wizened associate attention with pain, fear, and torture, so they do their best not to draw that attention - they keep their heads down, speak softly or not at all, wear neutral colors, lose themselves in their work. Physical touches, eye contact, and invasions of the Wizened’s personal space are often too emotionally ‘loud’ for them, sparking a fearful response that might turn violent if they can’t retreat or the person bothering them won’t back off. To put it bluntly, Wizened suffer from many of the classic outward symptoms of autism, PTSD, or both, symptoms that may not have been part of their life before their Durance. The fallout is far-reaching; society is not always or even often kind to the ways Wizened try to feel comfortable or manage their fears.

The end result is that at times Wizened look like they have much more of their shit together than they actually do because they structure their day (and their life, for that matter) to carefully husband their spoons. Those who catch a Wizened standing in a corner at a formal event like the Spring Revel didn’t get to see him working up the courage to go in the first place at home, carefully leaving at the optimal time to avoid traffic and crowds as best he could, stagger into the bathroom to change clothes (and steal a nip of whiskey to settle his nerves), pray for the peace of death in front of the mirror and then finally arrive. Even when Wizened deliberately seek attention - such as when they’re trying to intimidate someone, or make their voice heard - the fear and discomfort shine through, stealing the thunder from their words, cracking their voices, making their bodies shake like leaves. Quite a few Wizened end up joining Summer or Winter not because they can’t live without the structures those Courts provide, but because those structures and the strict rules involved let them be part of a society on their own terms, without having to constantly try to leave their comfort zones only to be derided as being stupid, callous, or unpleasant.

As already alluded to, Wizened Kiths and their function are the same. It can be easy to surmise that this means that a Wizened’s Kith is not part of their nature the way a Beast’s or Elemental’s is, but that line of thinking is wrong; for weal or for woe, a Wizened’s trade is bound to them not just by education or by joy, but by the Wyrd. It is forged into their fate. As a result, Wizened tend to be defined by their Kiths almost as much as by Seeming; Kithless Wizened are rare (and should be nonexistent since Drudge got printed in Winter Masques, y’all got no excuse).

Some expanded thoughts on individual Wizened Kiths follow.

Artist - The big swinging dick of Wizened Kiths and the one that several other Kiths are arguably “this, but worse”. It’s not just the fact that World of Darkness has a relationship to the Craft skill that is strange at best (strictly speaking dots in Crafts can be applied to all kinds of crafting at all times, something you’d think the writers might not have been aware of if they didn’t explicitly talk about this being why Freeholds are so fucking erect for Artists in Swords at Dawn), though that’s certainly a factor, it’s that Kiths like Smith and Brewer that are also supposed to be about the act of creation are so much better represented here. Artist’s Blessing can take some creativity to use as a PC, but with how broad it is and how many concept it’s applicable to you might as well consider it for any given Wizened character you’re intending to make. Dual Kith may be your friend here if you feel the need to focus down further.

Brewer - Speak of the devil. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I’d like to be a Venombite, but I’d also like to eat shit and die every time I try to use my Kith Blessing. How can I do that?” Then Brewer might be for you! For the rest of us this is honestly one of the game’s most frustrating Kiths, especially after Winter Masques gave it hints of alchemical themeing that it’s just not capable of following through on. It gets somewhat better at higher Wyrd, but Brewer never stops being incredibly niche and gated at multiple points of failure. Grit your teeth and make an Artist.

Chatelaine - The social Wizened Kith. No, really. No, really. Wizened represent servants and laborers to the Fae, and in that context, Chatelaines are the butlers and key-keepers, the creepy manservants, and the enforcers of social etiquette. This Kith is notably different from its closest peer (Riddleseeker Beasts) in that it’s genuinely potent in its social role in a broad variety of situations; Chatelaines can genuinely compete with Fairest and Beasts in matters of protocol, formality, and the gatherings that consider those important. Additionally, they can boost their Presence and Manipulation dice pools, making them capable of attempting firm social interaction even outside of that context. Wanna play a loyal second-in-command or an evil vizier? Enjoy super dramatic parties? Consider this Kith.

Chirurgeon - Voted Most Likely To Not Be Recognized By Your Spellcheck ten years running, Chirurgeons are a prized skill set that can, in themselves, shift Freehold politics by the bare fact of existing. Lost often have to turn to street doctors (where and when they exist, that is) to get lifesaving treatment or even normal medical care, but a sawbones with Hedge scars doesn’t just understand the supernatural injuries the Lost can bring home, they won’t feel obligated to report gunshots or stabbings to the police. Having the loyalty of such a doctor can make for a powerful tool for whichever Court she chooses to call home, and she’ll rarely lack for work. In terms of the aesthetic, while Chirurgeons trend towards the ‘alien abductions’ end of the Lost experience, there’s some strong arguments to be made for Igor-like figures, spindly goblin cutters with gimlet eyes, or even slasher-like figures who slipped through the shadows of murderous Fae, stealing the organs they needed to survive just one more day.

Oracle - Common Sense is a god-awful Merit, which is a shame because the concept of Oracles is both classically Wizened and a powerful archetype in itself. Oracles, as noted in Winter Masques, are rarely made on purpose: they steal, learn, or trade for the power of panomancy and utilize it to escape. Unfortunately I can’t really suggest this in good conscience. Invest in Hearth and Omen and play a Drudge.

Smith - Our second “this is Artist” Kith. Smith’s blessing is, well, it’s bad. It’s not Brewer bad, but it has a significant cost in time and Resources (since it can only be used three times ever on something you end up cycling through things) and eats up your Kith slot without really paying back what those things cost. The imagery of the Kith is cool, but ultimately “makes things with their hands” is what Artist is and Smith can’t compete in that niche.

Soldier - In some ways Soldier is the opposite of Smith and the brother to Chatelaine; made into the faceless ranks of Fae armies, soldiers embody the trauma of battle, the madness of war, and the long road home that does not end simply because one has arrived where home is. Unfortunately their Blessing, Blade Lore, is both lackluster and strangely counterinuitive; Blade Lore doesn’t stack with any other specialization, which means that Soldiers are penalized for investing in Weaponry in a way that others aren’t. Blade Lore lets them use unusual weapons without penalty, but unusual weapons also mean unusual attention. Talk to your Storyteller about the Soldier blessing and see if you can’t work it in another direction (personally, I feel like this Kith could have been Wizened’s Truefriend or Playmate).

Woodwalker - Compared to its closest peers (Woodblood and Farwalker), Woodwalker’s Blessing is niche and harder to make dramatically relevant, but when you need to roll Survival you’re probably going to succeed - and anyone who’s watched The Princess Bride has at least some ideas on how to make use of being immune to plant-based poisons. The broader issue is that while Woodwalkers sorta represent gardeners and wood-dwelling hermits in a way Artist struggles to, their niche is done a lot better by those same peers, and as a result Woodwalker concepts can feel awkward and overshadowed.

Author - Though on the weaker end of Kith blessings, Authors have the distinction of clarifying the skill used for writing endeavors and also for being surprisingly good at in-demand skills such as the creation or decoding of ciphers and translating mortal languages. An Author’s mere existence might get them the attention of the Winter Court and offers of work (and/or bribes and threats to stay out of Winter’s business), and in a roundabout way they can serve as an indirect translator and interpreter for the Freehold as well, presuming their clients know how to read and write.

Drudge - The reason Kithless Wizened no longer exist; Drudges are Wizened sentenced to menial labor who do not learn a fairy trade. In terms of folklore, they inherit the place of brownies, domovoi, and the like, and in the game they’re sorta “Wizened does Darkling”. Drudge is somewhat redundant, since the Brownie’s Boon merit exists, but the 9-again on Stealth (especially if you can combine it with the Wizened blessing to get down to 8-again) is real nice, and saving the dots on Brownie’s Boon might be worth it for another Merit that fits your concept better. Drudge is a Kith I have a lot of personal fondness for, and in a way its nature makes it the quintessential Wizened experience.

Gameplayer - My absolute favorite Wizened Kith, Gameplayers are people who, you know, play games. Its Blessing, the Grandmaster’s Strategem, is highly situational but incredibly potent in that context. The sheer aesthetics of being a game piece or a grandmaster player are amazing, and thematically they’re great in a lot of places; Wizened as odd loners, Wizened as schemers and manipulators, even Wizened as sorcerers (their Blessing ties directly into Contracts of the Board in a really useful way). Just keep in mind that you’re going to have to be pro-active about that Blessing if you wanna see it do its work.

Miner - Wizened does Whisperwisp. Miner is kinda in the same boat as Gameplayer in that their Blessing is situational but handy in that situation, and the sheer range on it is amazing. Still, though, you can probably represent this with Drudge and call it a day.

Cut-Price Magic And Bargain Bin Deals - Wizened Contracts

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Hey Vox, why didn’t Beast have a Contracts section?” I’ll tell you why: Wizened got fucked twice with no lube before White Wolf finally, three supplements in, gave them a real god damn Contract (Contracts of the Forge, in Rites of Spring, one of the coolest and most thematic Contracts ever printed for Lost) so now we have to talk about this.

The associated Contracts for Wizened are Artifice, Animation, and Forge. Forge is great and we’re not gonna talk about it because it’s not the problem here. Artifice can be taken down to about three dot (Blessing of Perfection) but two dots is going to be more common; it has high costs, high time requirements, and deeply niche applications. You could leave that as it stands and just only dip into it if you want to use it, or, you can remove Artifice as a Contract entirely and reassign the Contract of Hours to the Wizened as an affinity Contract in its place. Hours does the same things that Artifice’s early Clauses do (but better, since they’re appropriately costed) while having strong links to the thematics of Wizened both as craftspeople and in folklore.

Animation’s issues are more endemic and the Contract itself is essentially useless. Chuck this entirely and instead, share Contracts of Communion with Elementals (similar to how Wild is shared between Elementals and Beasts). Communion fills Animation’s niche entirely. To drive home the thematic difference, give your Wizened odd “elements” for Communion; instead of something like, say, Communion (Wood), try Communion (Portals) - your Wizened can talk to doors and windows. Evoke some of that “sorcerer’s apprentice” feeling.

Find Your Calling - Wizened in the Courts

Wizened define themselves by the professions they’ve become supernaturally skilled at, and those same skills make them resources to their Courts. Controlling access to the skills of an Artist or Chirurgeon can, at times, be the cause of a Hedgefire War (Swords at Dawn), to say nothing of more specific cases like Autumn’s desire to court prophets or Winter’s need to ensure that Authors are not used against them. The skills that a Wizened bring to the table are often essential, especially in the context of the damaged access that the Lost can have to medical care, financial aid, home repair, and proper tools. Who makes the adjustments the Spring Court needs to their bar? Probably a Wizened. Who sweeps and scrubs down the Freehold Commons and decorates it for every event? Probably Wizened. Who builds the flintlocks, repairs the crossbows, sharpens the swords, forges the armor? Wizened do. Every Wizened that can fill an internal role in this way is a service the Freehold doesn’t have to acquire illegally, and thus at risk to themselves or in competition with other, potentially violently criminal, elements.

Though Wizened are valued in these roles, they aren’t often appreciated. Their Seeming Curse can make them come off as rude and unlikable, making interactions with their clients tense and stressful at best for both sides. The nature of Wizened work is that it’s noticed most when it stops, and that can be a frustrating and uneven relationship to have in a Wizened’s life, especially given their great difficulty in asserting themselves and speaking up for themselves. Sometimes, a Wizened ends up in a Court with self-aware leadership, or with the friendship of someone in a position to mitigate these problems, but that’s not all Freeholds or all Wizened, and the resulting trend is notable enough to color how the Wizened are seen, and see their peers in turn.

The Wizened, like Beasts, tend to engage with their Courts on practical terms, though the relationship is not identical. It’s not that Wizened don’t or can’t have an appreciation for the high ideology of their Courts (and with time to calm down and start to come to grips with their new lives, many Wizened will begin to engage on that ideology), but rather that finding their own functions was one of the first positive transformative experiences in the Wizened’s life as one of the Lost. Finding their function was relief from unspeakable torment, and it shapes a function-first worldview that follows the Wizened into the political and religious society that are the Courts. When Summer says “we’re for protecting the Freehold” and Winter says “we’re for making the money” the Wizened take those Courts at their word.

For somewhat obvious reasons, Wizened leaders and officers tend to be rare, though they’re not unheard of, especially in Summer and Winter where the internal culture can de-emphasize sheer Presence in favor of protocol, set social standards, and a chain of command. More commonly, Wizened solve logistics or money problems for their Courts, with a strong side of work in breaking-and-entering, security, and the odd assassination depending on the Court and the Wizened in question. In the overall Freehold, Wizened are often among the first to volunteer as secondary combatants when they aren’t members of Summer and the first to leap to the common defense, as well as participate in rituals such as the Ashen Hunt. For too many, Arcadia was a place of unending pain, and the need to feel as if they will never go back is strong.

Spring - Wizened are not natural joiners of Spring, and almost never join it as their first Court. Spring’s anarchic nature, combined with its strong emphasis on social skills, dramatic expression, and bombastic personalities is a perfect storm of “things Wizened often do not fucking like”. For those that do join, generally after some time to calm their shit in another Court, it’s for Spring’s promise of renewal and growth; Wizened might never quite be movers and shakers in the Emerald Court, rare exceptions aside, but in Spring many can find the peace they’ve been seeking.

Summer - The Court of Wrath offers a lot to the Wizened, and for many it may be their first Court or their second (Wizened, like many freshly escaped Lost, are often early Winter joiners). Its clearly defined chain of command, stated culture of brotherhood, and clarity of purpose - a purpose that helps soothe the fears of recapture that haunt many Wizened - have a powerful appeal, and it isn’t like Summer’s lust for people to handle logistics, draw up tactics, build defensive fortifications, and practice sorcery isn’t equally powerful. Summer is also the Court most likely to initiate violence over access to a Wizened’s talents, which can lead to awkward situations all around, to say nothing of the potential body counts.

Autumn - Autumn is the strident exception to the general rule that Wizened join Courts for practical reasons and relate to them practically, and that can be put down entirely to the promise of Autumn: the power to make peace with your own fears. So much of what the Wizened are and what they do is defined by fears, not just of going back to the Fairest of Lands (but yes, oh yes, very much that), but the fears of the things they remember and so many more they don’t; rare is the Wizened without questions like “why do I break down crying when cats come close to me?” or “why can’t I listen to violin music any more?”. Autumn understands. Autumn has the power to help. And for Wizened with powerful, all-defining fears, the promise of relief from their own terror can be stronger than politics, friendship, or even healing.

Winter - Many Lost dally with Winter for a few months or even a year or two when they first have their Homecoming, and Wizened are hardly an exception. Scared and often not inclined to direct confrontation, Wizened find Winter’s MO and ideals appealing. Why court trouble? Why get involved in breaking shit and making a mess? Though many Lost will leave the Coldest Court, Wizened are among the most likely to stay, in part because their talents are useful in Winter but in main because Winter’s culture is very comfortable and comforting to them. Those among the Wizened who seek to move up in its halls of power do eventually need to learn to cope with social situations and interface with their fellow Courtiers, but even then that’s easier in Winter than it might be elsewhere. Chances are if you find a Wizened with a crown on her head, she belongs to the Silent Arrow.

Broken And Betrayed - Wizened And Changeling’s Themes

In some ways it could be said that Wizened are The Lost Experience, Just More. Ogres are shaped by violence; Wizened, too, are the victims of violence. The Wizened being forced into a trade mirrors how Fairest are made to feel complicit in their own captivity. Darklings lie, sneak, or manipulate as first instincts; so too do Wizened strive to avoid notice and maintain control over their own feelings. Elementals often can’t understand why the people around them do what they do and feel what they feel, and Wizened often can’t articulate their own comprehension of these topics. Even Beasts see themselves reflected in the invisible ranks, as these two Seemings share the quality of being Anyone At All. Everyone sees unsettling reminders of their own Durance in the Wizened, and this constant, uncomfortable presence informs some of the prejudice that Wizened can face when they return to the mortal world and try to build their new lives.

More than other Seemings, Wizened tend to embody shattering, violent traumas for which there can never truly be closure. They may not have known who their Keeper was or why they were taken (if indeed there was any reason at all). Their traumas may not even really have anything to do with their Keeper so much as the horrific systems perpetuated in whatever Domain twisted them and made them small. The hunched-over survivor of a factory the size of a world doesn’t know about its owner; she knows about machines oiled in blood, assembly lines that churn out cursed Tokens and twisted pledges, the horrible agony of dying, mangled, in a mechanism only to come back to life again and again until you are found. Why was she taken? Does it matter?

It doesn’t. Wizened are the victims of faceless, oppressive systems which serve the Fae, strongly mirroring those whose lives are destroyed by similar faceless, oppressive systems in society, with some of the metaphors being so thin that they’re essentially not metaphors at all. The only real difference between a Soldier who comes home with balefire burns and a quicksilver prosthetic and a young man in real life who goes to war to pay for college only to return too broken to cope is the fact that one of them is fictional and the other is probably someone you know. An Artist with needles thrust through her skin and sewn patches of cloth used to replace flesh that’s been flayed away doesn’t know how to sleep properly any more; her bursts of creativity and long bouts of depression and insomnia mirror workers driven to the edge by a need to take on longer hours and accept inconsistent schedules just to survive. The horrific burn scars that mar a Brewer’s flesh might be misunderstood by mortals as an accident with cooking oil, boiling water, or even welding equipment. Wizened stand in for the innocent people whose blood oils the mechanisms of oppressive systems and unjust economics.

Much of Wizened as a seeming is heavily autistic-coded and/or anxiety-coded; they have great difficulty in social situations, shy away from emotional contact, have trouble coping with overstimulation and physical proximity. This can make them very attractive for portraying an autistic character, but Wizened as a Seeming lacks a certain fundamental trait of the autistic experience: they, generally speaking, have an idea of Why People Do The Thing. Does this mean you can’t or shouldn’t use Wizened to represent an autistic character? Not necessarily, but given how well Elemental’s mechanics mirror the experience (more on them in their own article) that might be a better option for you. What Wizened go through in-setting emphasizes skills like Empathy that are used to survive their circumstances, and on awareness of the people around them.

Wizened are excellent for representing the consequences of extended abuse that makes someone anxious and inclined to retreat, back down, and question themselves. They tend to be among the most self-aware of the Lost; Wizened know what they’re afraid of and why, what their triggers are, and embody the unfortunate truth that self-awareness is not a cure. The flashbacks still come, the shakes and sweats, the dreams of mechanical trees, and knowing why won’t fix that. Wizened can very easily embody the conflict between a desire to be part of society, to have intimate friendships and a sense of belonging, versus the fears that can be triggered by those same desires.

I Owe, I Owe, It’s Off To Work I Go - Coping As A Wizened

The push-pull at the heart of life as a Wizened is finding a way to participate in society without having constant anxiety attacks and nervous breakdowns. Even the most sullen and withdrawn Wizened who genuinely dislikes all other people has a trade they enjoy practicing, after all, and such a trade requires customers - either those willing to come to you in your home, or those willing to come to you at a place of business - to say nothing of needing to semi-regularly travel to and from Freehold gatherings.

A Wizened, then works to structure his life in a way that helps service these needs. The first and most important consideration is the right place to live; Wizened join Fairest in being some of the Lost most likely to live with other people in the same space (such as with roommates, or in a group setting such as an apartment building), but a Wizened needs a safe place to retreat to. The sanctity of a Wizened’s workshop or especially bedroom is absolutely paramount, and they may react poorly, even violently, to those who do not respect that space. The location of the Wizened’s home is also important; is it in a crowded or loud neighborhood, or one with a high influx of strangers or tourists? What’s its distance from the non-home places the Wizened will go to regularly, and what are the travel options to do that? Is it defensible, easily escaped from, or both? Wizened are among those Lost most inclined to dig in and settle long-term, so quite a lot of thought will go into these decisions; it’s not necessarily uncommon to find Wizened living in Winter’s housing for some time, paying appropriate rents while they deliberate and plan.

Once one of the Wizened has established their own space, they tend to maintain control over it. Some of that is just daily ritual; activities keeping their room clean and neat, polishing and maintaining their tools, organizing their entertainments, pre-preparing meals or elements of meals, and decorating can be soothing, especially during times of stress, because they form concrete actions that establish control over one’s own space. Safety and fear factor into it as well - a controlled and organized environment is easier to keep track of, and if something is amiss it’s easier to get ready for whatever is coming. That same tight-ship operation generally extends to the workplace, where the Wizened does their job with exacting standards that they expect out of their peers as well.

Beyond control over their personal environment, Wizened tend to establish routines, again carefully crafted to help husband their spoons and lessen emotional stress. Though most know too well that habits can get a man killed, those same habits also enable them to live their lives at all. Disturbances in those routines can be highly stressful, or even misinterpreted as signs of a threat (or correctly interpreted as signs of a threat...) but in main it’s a positive reaction. Wizened know they can’t control a chaotic world, but they can control themselves, and taking those extra steps can help them as they integrate into their new society. They can’t make what happened to them unhappen, but they can come to terms.

Sample Wizened - Dancin’ Danny Daniels, Winter Miner

Page “Dancin’” Danny Daniels is a youngblood scion of Winter, barely a year into his new life but already promising to go places in the Coldest Court. The magic of his Tappingspeak sees a lot of messenger work pushed Danny’s way, but so do his skills in digging and construction; secret basements, cellar expansions, and clandestine passageways all serve Winter’s interests, and though he can’t always personally supervise the projects (Winter must keep its secrets), his Court pays him well for advice and consultation.

Danny got his nickname from the way he breaks into nervous dancing whenever he hears loud, snapping sounds - gunshots, firecrackers, backed-up cars, it goes off and there Danny goes, feet tapping, breaking out in sweat, terror in his eyes. He can be hard to get a hold of during holiday seasons known for their fireworks (and this public knowledge of his vulnerability is a soft mark on his record in the eyes of Winter), though that’s not the thing people gossip about. No, the talk of the Freehold when it comes to Dancin’ Danny Daniels is this: if he’s so afraid of guns, why does Winter’s up-and-comer carry around a vintage revolver with “D.D” carved into the grip?

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it! 

Next up: Elementals

7:characters continued - worldbuilding and NPCs

A few posts ago, I talked about the stories of two characters in Breath of the Wild – Mipha and Zelda, and how their individual story arc played out within the broader story. This time, I want to talk about the characters that aren’t really part of the story – NPCs, or non-player characters.

NPCs in Zelda games have always contributed to the world of the each game. RPGs will always have NPCs, usually populating towns and coming with side quests to give the player, but when done poorly, it really doesn’t add much to the story. A lot of the time, NPCs are either turned into exposition machines or just have a fetch quest for you to complete (like “kill 10 enemies and bring me their remains” LOL). The Legend of Zelda, starting from the 3D era with Ocarina of Time, has really put a lot of detail into folding the NPCs into the environment and themes of the game, and this really contributes to the player’s enjoyment.

Ocarina of Time has some great NPC storytelling, and it fits within the context of the story. As you’ve probably heard dozens of times before, one of the main mechanics of the game is Link travelling time from his time as a kid before Ganon took over to a time 7 years later as an adult when Ganon took over. The game takes great care to show the effects of 7 years of Ganon rule on the world, including the environment and the music (see the last post). To round this all out, the NPCs also change and develop, and it fits the somber events that occurred. Some people move up in the world, some people stay the same, but some people just straight up died. Ocarina of Time really excelled with its consistent storytelling throughout the game, not just the main story, and it set a precedent for future games to come.

(rip graveyard dude)

Breath of the Wild has really taken this to the next logical step, and I think it was done beautifully. Part of this is due to better technology, but mostly, it is just a dedicated attention to detail by the staff. The world feels real and interconnected. Most townspeople still stay within the safety of their homes, but as you travel along the roads, you will encounter people travelling around, and you can follow them to their next destination. Sometimes, you will have to save someone who is being attacked by monsters, and they remember you if have saved them before. There is a clan of evil ninjas, the Yiga clan, that poses as travelers you have spoken to along the road before, only to attack you. There is a traveling reporter who goes around from place to place, spilling gossip about nearby attractions. There is a travelling bird bard, whose goal is to learn songs about the Hyrule of yore that his master was unable to pass onto him before he passed. People move around, but are still wary of exploring too far themselves. As you venture further from roads, you will see fewer and fewer people, which makes the times you do encounter people unexpectedly off the beaten path more interesting. There is a brother-sister duo of treasure hunters that roam around the ruins of old fortresses, hoping to find valuable relics of the society that was destroyed in the past. There is a fishing village that you never have to go to, but has a multitude of people with their own stories for you to delve into. This sort of detail, which would go unnoticed by some people (it took me 60 hours to venture to that corner of the map), is what truly elevates the game. It isn’t just to serve as easter eggs, either; it really paints Hyrule as a civilization struggling to rebuild, but unable to make headway with the threat of Ganon still looming. For example, the people of the fishing village face constant threats to their way of life as monsters set up camp in their fishing areas. You get the sense that they had to stand their ground to maintain their traditions across the years. Even so, the constant threat of the monsters would make anyone feel cornered and helpless. The player doesn’t necessarily need to make the journey to Lurelin village, but it helps contextualize the struggle of Hyrulians throughout the past 100 years.

One of my favorite side quests in the game is one where you literally build a town. Throughout my first playthrough, I met some characters that just stuck out to me. There was a Gerudo woman who just sat in a bazaar, lamenting the fact that she couldn’t find a husband, as her only skill was making clothes. Another Rito boy told me how he didn’t want to work in his mothers shop anymore, and wanted to travel himself. I thought this was weird, because there was nothing for me to do to change their situation. Later in the game, you meet a construction worker who was tasked to build a new town on a small outcropping of uninhabited land. You help him clear out the area, bring building materials, and ultimately, bring these people who you have met before to populate the town. To me, this signified another theme within the game – needing to rebuild. While the people of Lurelin village were trying to maintain their lifestyle against the odds, other people were yearning for something greater. When you beat Ganon, Zelda tells Link of her plans to help the entirety of Hyrule to rebuild and recover its former glory, and you are reminded of the town that you helped build.

(the sidequest ends with a wedding, with all the people you gathered who wanted something else in life. what a great way to tell a human story while also making you chop down 110 bundles of wood to build the damn town.)

This is how games can use NPCs to not only add content to the game and provide a rich world for the player to explore, but to also help tell the story. An immense amount of thought and work went into creating every aspect of Breath of the Wild, and it really incentivizes the player to explore. Many games are working to implement this mode of storytelling through gameplay as a philosophy. Unlike other media like movies or books, the player can choose to get out of the experience what they want, and when a world is well built and populated with characters that feel real within the contexts of the story, it is extremely rewarding to sink hundreds of hours just talking to everyone and seeing everything.

:O wait can you talk about your story? i'm interested :3!!!

AAHH THANK YOU FOR BEING INTERESTED!!!! sorry for the late reply i wanted to be able to format BUT YKNOW

so basically it’s a mismatch of fantasy and scifi that leans more towards sci-fi if anything. it’s not based on earth or our solar system, and its a bit of like… cyberpunk in terms of cybernetic modifications + technology with a steampunk aesthetic. so like a few technologically advanced cities that are huge scattered throughout the world, and the further out you go from these cities, the less technologically advanced they are. there’s also a bit of magic, creatures, and quests that make up the fantasy elements.

it’s set five years after a huge world war that devastated the planet. the planet’s currently rebuilding, but resources are scarce, quality of life is impaired significantly, and there’s rebuilding but it’s slow. the good guys won, but they’re considerably weak and are still in the process of freeing some of the smaller societies that are still under siege (by the imperialists).

in the background there’s a secret organization of assassins who’ve been in stasis until the war ended. they believe they’re the answer to the problems of the world, and believe that people should be controlled without knowing they are. they’ve waited in stasis during the war, refusing to help either side, and are now in the process of wiping out political leaders and sending in those they’ve placed to take over without anyone knowing.

originally they were formed to be neutral and their sole goal was to maintain peace for the planet, and started off with good intentions and the belief that humanity as a whole were good and they were merely protectors. however, as time went on, corruption and a lack of desire to change and adapt to the world around them + growing cynicism made them into the organization they are currently.

this organization would take children during the war, either in the dead of night, or were given away by parents who believed them when the organization said they would protect these children during the war. of course, the parents never saw them again. these children were trained as elite warriors and depending on how well they did as children, would rank up within the organization or be sent out to the world to spread peace throughout the masses.

there’s a few conspiracy theorists that talk about the group existing, but it’s mostly seen as spooky campfire stories by the gen population at large about children going missing in the dead of night.

MY CHARACTERS… MY OCS.. MY BABIES UNDER THE CUT FOR THE LENGTH AND NOT WANTING TO CLUTTER THE DASH

so the protag is a former assassin of the group whose name is azura! she’s the only one who managed to escape from the organization. on her first assassination mission, she couldn’t kill someone, especially while they were asleep and weaponless, so she faked their deaths and ran.  

at the start she’s very on edge despite her very blasé personality. she’s crude, funny, cocky, and has a habit of running when things get too real. she found the biggest city closest to her, changed her name, and decided to hide within a crowd.

most of her skills are based in fighting, so she’s made a living as a merc for hire because… well she doesn’t have any other skills that are worthwhile to a nonviolent lifestyle and nobody would hire her. she doesn’t kill, but she’ll find people, objects, etc. for anyone after she’s gotten a reasonable background check on them.

bisexual former assassin who’s got a heart of gold who’s trying her best despite her mouth getting in the way

her main goal is to help bring peace to the world after realizing her hand in what made the world the way it is. also to make sure ajur gets justice after trying to kill her lol (a lot of vengeance vs justice ties in between her and ajur)

she also has a robo dog named fish!

my antag is named ajur and him and azura were raised in the same organization together. same teacher, and were neck and neck for the top spot, but they actually got along really well together. he actually considers her his sister, so when she left, it felt like a betrayal. 

since she failed to complete her first mission, his first mission was to kill her. he spends the whole year she’s gone searching for her, and the only reason he finds her is because she takes a job with a higher pay roll then she usually does.

farah and ajur are both traumatized survivors who are raised the same way and in the same place, but have both made choices that lead them on very different paths. i just wanted to show that you have the choice to be good or not based on your choices, not your upbringing and i wanted to highlight that

while azura is more skilled in combat, he’s more skilled in leadership and is more charismatic than she is, and has the backing of many young members of the organization who feel the same as he does

his main goal is to also bring peace to the world, first by dismantling the organization of assassins and leading them and the rest of the world into a new age of safety (through murder, manipulation, and false sense of security - is very pragmatic and believes the ends justifies the means, and if the world needs a person to be the one to kickstart with violence in order for the world to know no violence, he will take on the role)

then my side charas are farah, a runaway lesbian who azura first met when she came to the city then left because of how strong their connection was. (bisexual disaster.) nobody knows she’s a princess, and for good reason. her kingdom is still under siege by imperialists and she was the only one of her family to escape. she’s the head to azura’s heart, very logical, charismatic, and good with a sniper. 

there’s eva and bones hawthorne, my twins!!! eva is a pilot/mechanic and bones is a hacker/cyborg/dabbles in the occasional engineering. their older brother died during the war, and their family and village are still recovering from the effects of it. they learned their skills from their family, and are heavily involved with resistance groups. 

eva’s very head in the clouds, a little naive, but very protective over bones. she learned to pilot from her older brother, and how to maintain the ship too. she believes there’s good in everyone, you just have to look for it. 

bones is a little more realistic than his sister, and is also very protective over her even though they have that ‘hey ugly’ ‘what’ ‘lol’ ‘omg shut up’ relationship. he lost his his leg up to his knee from an attack on their village, and feels guilty because their family had to give up nearly everything in order to get a cybernetic replacement so he does jobs here and there that are a little more criminally inclined to help his family. 

then comes ari malloy, eva’s boyfriend! he’s the one who hired azura to retrieve a part of a map that leads to a mystical force that could restore the planet to its former glory (the fantasy quest-ish part, which i havent completely figured out yet lol). he’s a scout for the resistance, good with medicine, and average in combat. he’s also pretty much the glue of the team, and takes on a more parental role for the team.

and last but not least is ronan acosta. he’s a seer who is plagued by visions of the planet’s inevitable destruction due to humanity, and has a big hatred for it, partly due to his vision of the end and how he was treated because of his ‘curse’ as he sees it. he’s also able to talk with those from beyond to gather information, but it comes at a cost to his health where he gets migraines, passes out, or goes into seizures. he’s very closed off, angry, and not willing to help azura and co. with their quest at first, but he’s got a secret soft side where he just yearns to be a kid and have a family considering his abandoned him. (he’s also bones’ love interest)

I’M SORRY THIS IS KIND OF LONG BUT YKNOW I WARNED YA !!!!! this is my very vague outline/cast and i need to fill out names/timelines and other minor characters but this is the gist!! :~) thank u so much for asking

Isn’t It Obvious?

Okay, here’s the first story that needs to find its writer. It is for @squigglydigglydoo‘s Toon Henry AU for Bendy and the Ink Machine.

I am respectfully asking people not to like this post. It is not my work and I don’t deserve the credit! The rightful owner is @caspersthefriendlyghost, and as soon as they put this for their own blog, I am deleting this post.Everything below the keep reading is their work and I make no claim to it.

Everything below the keep reading is their work and I make no claim to it.

Alright! It only took forever but I did it! I’m a little rusty since I’ve had no time to write at all but I gave it my best shot!  (Marianna belongs to @upperstories!)

Being cornered by your former boss from thirty years ago in a different dimension was not how Henry wanted to spend his Friday night. Well, his date he had planned was the least of his concerns right now.

Joey limped closer to him. His back was already against the wall and he didn’t trust the toon logic to work in his favor. Shouldn’t his gimp foot not be affecting him anymore?

It didn’t matter. Not now at least. He still wasn’t exactly sure how cartoon logic would play out at the moment since technically speaking he is the good guy, but so far nothing has been going in his favor. Well maybe not good but not exactly bad either. How was he to know that if he tried to make a break for it that a banana peel wouldn’t show up out of nowhere?

“Henry, Henry, Henry. What to do with you.” Joey said with a smile. He was absolutely drenched in ink. At least his body wasn’t actually ink like Sammy. That poor son of a bitch…but he can’t think of that now. He can worry about him later.

“Joey…Joey please…don’t do this.” Henry begged. What could he do to get through to him?

His eyes quickly scanned the room. If Joey were to try something he needed a plan. Wait, is that Bendy? His eyes were wide and…scared? Alice and Boris had a hand on both of his shoulders. Wait a minute, cartoon logic. Bendy is the star of this show. Maybe since Bendy perceives Henry as the villain that’s why he’s always the one getting the short end of the stick. If that were the case he just needs to get him to see the truth, but how?

Wait. The hero being trapped by the villian. All the toons and even that fucking machine right there in all its glory. Evil genius with a master plan. Getting Joey, the evil genius, to tell him his master plan shouldn’t be too difficult.

This better work.

“Before you…you do whatever it is you plan to do with me…I need to at least know…why?” What was he thinking? Of course this wouldn’t work! Joey may be toonified, but he’s still Joey! And unfortunately Joey isn’t an idiot.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Never mind.

Henry saw the toons slip out of the door frame from the corner of his eye. Good. The last thing they needed was for Joey to catch onto his little plan.

“No? You brought our characters to life. What more do you want?” Henry tried to calm himself down. He was in no position to be yelling at Joey.

“What, them?!” Joey began to laugh. “Of course I want more! They’re only alive because I needed to make sure that I could actually pull this off!” Joey gestured to his beloved machine. “Yeah, I mean I they’re cute and nice to keep around but they’re nothing compared to what I have in store!” Henry refused to move. This couldn’t be right. Joey loved them when he still worked with him! They were his whole world! The reason he woke up in the morning! What happened?

“This machine is more then you think! Not only can it our bring cartoons to our reality, but it can bring us here! To this world! Where I am the god here. I can literally bend reality to my liking!” No. No this wasn’t the man he once knew. How could someone change so drastically? “One day I will have our world collide with this one. I will-”

“We really mean nothing, huh?”

Bendy’s voice caused Joey to jump at least a foot in the air. He turned around to look to the small toon. He was still surprisingly in his normal state. Well, he was dripping a bit.

“Bendy I…I just..I thought.” Joey stuttered.

“You created us…you promised we would one day leave! That we would be a family.” Bendy said. Henry’s heart hammered in his chest. He was just waiting for Bendy to snap, but Bendy kept calm. A little too calm.

“But Bendy I though that maybe you liked it here! We could still be a family I just need more time to figure out how to make this world merge with reality! You just need to wait.” Joey rambled. Bendy began to walk out of the door frame and into the room. Joey took a step back with every step Bendy took in.

“This was the place everyone walked out on me. This place is nothing but bad memories…I can’t stay here any longer. You promised we would leave soon!” Bendy stopped walking and stared at the ink machine.

Joey knelt down in front of Bendy and began to wipe the excess ink out from Bendy’s eyes. “We still can. You, me, Alice, and Boris can all live somewhere far away from here! We can still be the family you’ve always wanted! I just need more time and we’ll be okay.”

Bendy leaned forward into joey for a hug. Henry saw his eyes. They were void of all emotion.

“we can even rebuild our studio somewhere else. You can still become famous again.” Joey said. Bendy and Henry didnt break eye contact. What was Bendy thinking?

“Yeah…” Bendy murmered.

Poor Joey, he didnt even see it coming.

Bendy pulled away from the hug gently enough but he grabbed the collar from Joey’s shirt and pushed him back as hard as he could. Joey’s head made a sickening crack once it connected to the ink machine.

Henry couldn’t look away. No matter how badly he wanted too he just couldn’t. He just barely registered Alice getting in between Bendy and Joey. Judging by the starts swirling around Joey’s head, he was still alive.

He pushed himself off the wall. How dare Joey do this to him? To everyone? Didn’t he mean anything to Joey? What about Sammy? Oh god, who else did he bring down here that ended up worse then Sammy?

Henry’s fists clenched. He didn’t know whether it was the fact he was in a cartoon world or not, but nothing felt real. He had to keep Joey alive though.

“Bendy, don’t kill him.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Bendy’s voice was the softest he’s ever heard it. “Not in front of them anyways.”

Henry let out a breath he did even realize he was holding. What now? Was Bendy still hellbent on getting revenge on him? Would Bendy be okay? What will happen to them all when he leaves? When would he be able to leave?

Could Henry even get home?

No…no he had to be able to get back to his family, right? He couldn’t just be stuck here, right….right?!

One look at the toons and he knew that now was maybe not the best time to ask. Boris and Alice were tying up Joey with some rope they must have grabbed from the pocket dimension they all have behind their back while Bendy just stared at the ink machine.

This had to be the first time Henry ever seen Bendy drip without him being pissed at him and honestly? It hurt seeing Bendy like this. Sure, Bendy has been getting his kicks by messing with the old man, but he was…mostly harmless. Okay maybe mostly harmless is a stretch since Bendy got quite a few blows to him, not to mention Sammy, but still. If Joey hadn’t kept everything a secret from everyone and hadn’t been feeding the toons lies then Bendy wouldn’t be acting like this!

“Henry…” Bendy’s voice snapped Henry out of his thoughts. Out of instinct he blocked his face from the demon.

Bendy gulped and pushed back the excess ink out from his eyes. “You…you gotta get out of here…you….” Bendy walked up to Henry and sat down next to his feet. Henry soon followed his lead and sat with him.

“What are we gonna do?” Henry asked.

“what do you mean? I’ve seen Joey work that machine more times than I can count. You’ll be able to get outta here in no time.” Bendy whispered. His dripping only got worse. “you can go and live your life and…forgot about us again.”

Henry couldn’t help but laugh. “F-forget? Bendy, not a day has gone by where I haven’t thought about you!”

Bendy could have melted into a puddle right then and there. He’s honestly surprised he didn’t. “Then…but why…you didn’t…”

“Come back?” Henry finished. “I wish I could have. Joey told me if I took one step out the front door that I would be sorry if I ever came back…and I planned on coming back, I really did but…the war really fucked me up. I couldn’t function…would have been homeless or worse if it weren’t for my wife.”

Bendy shuddered. “but..but you’re better now, right?”

“well…not exactly. But I’m working on it…being here hasn’t exactly helped though.” Henry said. “But we can talk about this later. You said you can work this contraption so we can maybe have a cup of coffee and all of us can have a much needed heart to heart conversation. I’ll have to figure out all of our sleeping arrangements though. I’ll try to get everything situated to you can all have your own rooms, but for now would you all be okay if two of you had to share a room for a bit until Marianna get everyone’s rooms set up?”

Alice’s head snapped at attention. “wait.. all of us? At your house?” Alice looked over her’s and Boris’ work and they both sat in front of them, leaving Joey in the far corner of the room.

“Well yeah? I won’t just leave you here with Joey. I can’t just abandon you all.”

Bendy couldn’t take it anymore. Tears formed in his eyes before he crashed into Henry’s side, sobbing. Henry tensed. He already felt awkward and anxious about inviting Bendy to live with him since he was just terrorizing him not even ten minutes ago, but this was too much to handle.

“I-I’m so sor-sorry!” Bendy wailed. Henry relaxed a little at the state Bendy was in. It was sobering to see him so upset. Of course he feels guilty! He’s still the same little dork he once animated! He was just misguided. Maybe misguided isn’t a strong enough word. He was manipulated by the asshole currently tied up…who could wake up any second now.

“Hey Boris? Do you know how to use the machine to bring us back?” Henry asked while picking up Bendy and himself off the floor. He was in no condition to be doing anything.

“Uh..yeah I think so! Alice, could you help me just in case I forget something?”

“Of course.” Alice smiled weakly at Henry before running over to the machine with Boris.

The two managed to get the machine on with only a few hiccups here and there which Henry was surprised with. Joey must have worked on it with them more then he thought. It took Henry forever to turn it on in reality!

“Alright, y'all ready?” Boris asked, looking quite proud of himself and Alice.

“You two should go first. I’ll meet you out there with Bendy.” Henry said. Bendy pushed his face into Henry’s chest and wailed. The poor guy…but Henry didn’t have time to worry just yet.

Alice and Boris hesitated, but went anyways. First Boris, then Alice were sucked up into the nozzle of the ink machine. Henry couldn’t help but feel a bit sick. Would it hurt him to go through it? Would Bendy be able to go through it with him or would something happen? He wasn’t really in the mood to be molded together with the demon…but he had to try.

“Hen-ry.” Oh of course. Right when they were about to be home free Joey just had to wake up!

Against his better judgement, Henry turned around to look at him. He had his hand gently placed on the back of Bendy’s head so he wouldn’t have to look at the monster that created this mess.

“What do you want?” Henry all but hissed. He could feel Bendy’s body melt even more. His breathing started to get faster. He couldn’t stay here much longer.

“Please…Henry..my best and dearest friend..you can’t just leave me here.” Joey began to cry. “Please…you can’t…don’t leave me here.”

Henry’s grip on Bendy grew a little tighter. “Thirty one years ago i wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving you, you know that, right? I cared about you so damn much.” Henry felt his eyes sting. “But after all this shit you put us through?”

Henry turned around.

“I hope you rot in hell.”

He stepped up to the machine with Bendy securely in his arms and was sucked up back into reality.

They didn’t think twice about unplugging the machine.

Well, Marianna’s always talking about how she misses having children in the house. Hopefully three traumatised cartoons to raise will be enough for her. He just hopes she isn’t too angry with him for missing their date.

[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (64/?)

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.

Previous chapters conveniently available here.

[24 November 236 Before Age.  Extraliga.]

On a remote plain of an alien world, the Shockmaster struggled to contain his frustration.   His plan to restore Ancient Wist to its former glory had all come down to an invasion of the planet Extraliga.  Here, he would find an ancient device known as the Recollector, which he could use to retrieve a power source that had been lost to time.  It should have been easy!  He had cleared every obstacle, smashed through every barrier!  The path forward was supposed to be clear! But this wretched Saiyan woman refused to get out of his way! Luffa fancied herself a champion of the Extraligans and their allies.  She had opposed him once before, but he had defeated her with ease and left her to her fate.  Apparently her fate had been to challenge him again, only this time she was much more formidable than before.  It was maddening!  He had dreamed of this day for thousands of years.  She hadn’t even heard of Wist until a few months ago!  Yet she still barred his path.   And for what?!  Revenge?  She didn’t even care about his scheme to restore Wist to its former glory.  She just wanted to defeat him for the sport of it! No, it was more than that.   Somehow she had learned of the Recollector, and she claimed that saboteurs had already found it.  She wasn't just trying to overpower him in single combat.  She was determined to deny his strategic objectives as well, and this was what sent a chill down his spine.  It troubled him, because even if he defeated her now, he knew that she would simply come back and challenge him all over again.  He could rebuild Wist a thousand times grander than it had ever been, and this woman would burn that paradise to the ground, just to continue their one-sided rivalry.  Wist might be reborn, but it would never know peace, all because this Saiyan was a sore loser.  And what could he do?  He could defeat her a thousand times, but she would only need to succeed once.  She didn’t even have to defeat him at all.  She could simply destroy all that he had worked for. He had to finish this once and for all.  For the sake of Wist, there could be no other outcome.  As he stared into her savage, pitiless eyes, he knew there would be no other way.   "What’s wrong?" Luffa asked.  "You don’t seem to be paying attention.  Of course, it’s hard to tell with that stupid helmet you’ve got on." He rushed toward her and she stood her ground.  Before he could take three steps forward, something grabbed him from behind and exploded. When the explosion subsided, he looked around and saw ki constructs floating in the air.  Each was a ghostly imitation of Luffa, and they all snickered and catcalled at him as they surrounded him. "My apologies," said the real Luffa.  "You weren’t distracted at all.  You clearly meant to do that.  I guess you let me make all these exploding ghosts to try and get me to wear myself out." "Ohhhh noooooo!" one of the ghosts wailed. "W-w-wuh-what’ll we do?!" cried another. A third simply giggled without any attempt at sarcasm. "Well, you’ve seen through my ghost attack," Luffa said with a shrug.  "Guess I’ll go back to what worked." The Shockmaster crossed his arms to defend himself from the ghosts, but  their attack never came.  Instead, the real Luffa charged in, vanished from sight, then reappeared on his left before he could turn to meet her.  She kicked the back of his knee, then grabbed him by his boot and swung him around in a circle. He managed to kick free of her with his right leg, but this sent him careening into a crowd of ki ghosts, who gleefully converged to meet him.  The resulting explosion tossed him into the air. Luffa was there to meet him. "You’re still holding back!" Luffa screamed.  "Are you afraid?  Is that it?!  You should be.  I’m going to destroy you and everything you’ve ever worked for!  As long as I draw breath, you’ll never be safe!" "I WON’T KILL, LUFFA!" he shouted.    "Oh, yes, I know all about your 'superior' Wistian morals.  You won't kill me.  But the Extraligans are fair game, is that it?" This surprised him.  Did she know?  And if she did, then that meant--! Another ghost exploded against his back.  This one hurt more than the others. "You’re going to bring the Ur-Ember back, right?" Luffa said as she started bombarding him with ki blasts.  "Or at least you would have if I hadn’t shown up.  The Ur-Ember's radiation would kill most of the life on this planet, wouldn’t it?  Wouldn’t it!?" He managed to get up to one knee, only for her to kick him in the chin. "You make me sick," she seethed.  "A no-kill rule?  Okay that’s dumb, but I can respect the confidence behind it.  But that’s not what you do, is it?  I saw through your nonsense the last time we fought.  You beat me to a pulp, but you wouldn't kill me.  No, you let my husband try to finish me off!  You just didn't want to dirty your hands with my blood!" She started punching at his helmet as she shouted.  "How many people have your soldiers killed, huh?  That’s what warriors are supposed to do, but you sit back and pretend that’s not on your conscience, because you’re not the one pulling the trigger!" He struck back, driving his knuckles into her jaw.  "SHUT UP!" he bellowed.  But this only silenced her for a moment. "Oh, you told your boys to be careful the last time you invaded," Luffa went on.  "No casualties at all.  Nice and clean.  You just rounded up all the off-worlders and put them in a prison camp.    But you were still gonna bring the Ur-Ember to this planet and deep fry the Extraligans in their own homes!" "YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING!" the Shockmaster protested.  He hit her again, but this didn’t slow her down for long. "I understand the Extraligans!" Luffa shouted.  "I promised them my protection, fought alongside their warriors in battle!    What do you know about them?" "SHUT!  UP!"  the Shockmaster screamed as he hit her again.  This time she staggered back, and he pressed the advantage, punching her again and again. How dare she preach morality to him, the champion of the greatest culture in the entire universe!  Over one hundred thousand years of enlightenment rested on his shoulders.  What was she against all that?   Nothing more than a bloodthirsty ape with no right to judge anyone! Then suddenly his next strike was blocked.  Luffa shrieked, and he found himself knocked back by a wave of concussive force.  She lolled her head from side to side and licked a trickle of blood from her lip. "You’re gonna have to hit me a lot harder than that if you want to shut me up," she said. With that, she struck him in the gut with the point of her elbow, knocking the wind out of him.  He toppled over, but before could hit the ground, she caught hold of his chest and tipped him upright. "I had to buy some clothes when I showed up to fight off your first invasion force," Luffa said.  "Found a tailor in a small town on the other side of this planet, and his aunt runs a diner.  I paid in Wistian scrip and any supplies I found from their camps, because I could.  Your projected soldiers couldn’t stop me from looting them, but that’s beside the point." He tried to move away from her and regroup, but she slammed the butt of her palm against the side of his neck, then wrestled him face down to the ground.  Grabbing hold of his left arm, she wrenched it behind him and stood on his back. "Guy sitting in the diner was married to an alien.  Your goons took her prisoner, not that you cared to tell him that.  Old couple.   They probably won’t live to see the next decade.  They’d go to that diner every day and she’d watch him read the paper while she’d play some handheld game.  Her name’s Torsh, and she’s from the Hythoon sector originally.  She’s got family back there, and it just so happens I saved ’em from a Zoon warlord a while back." He tried to break her hold, but she had it locked tight.  His shoulder blade was on fire, and he could feel the bones scraping against one another.  He had learned long ago not to judge warriors by their size, but it was still astonishing that such a small woman could be this strong.  And in spite of the torture she was inflicting upon him, she  continued to talk like she was making conversation about the weather. "Lady that runs the diner asked me to help, because the old man didn’t want to make too much fuss," she said.  "Can you believe that?  He was so worried about his planet that he didn’t want to burden me with his missing wife." She twisted his wrist slightly, adding pressure to the hold.  "I read his mind so I’d be able to recognize her when I found her.  And I did find her, eventually.  She was fine, not that you or that slime Argon gave a damn.    See, I had to find her.  You want to know why?” He had been trying not to scream from the pain.   He failed. "When I read the old man’s mind, I didn’t just get a description of his wife.  I got all these other things too.  How much he loved her.  What her favorite foods are.  How embarrassed he was asking me to help him.   How worried he was about his home planet.  These Extraligans, they have brave warriors, but they’re not a warrior race like mine.  Still, they have their pride.  They have their passions.  They know what it means to lose someone.  What have you ever lost, Shocky?  I mean, besides the circulation in your left arm?" "I’LL...!  YOU...!" "You’d kill an old woman like Torsh and not even notice," Luffa growled.  "You'd kill plenty of people, but not me!  Not a warrior who can fight back.  Oh no!  Against me, you have a code.  Hah!  The 'Champion of Wist'.  You’re a pile of garbage, and so is Wist if they ever looked up to a piece of trash like you." "SHUT UP!" the Shockmaster shouted.  "DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK TO ME OF THE GLORY OF WIST!" "What glory?" Luffa scoffed.  "All that’s left of your homeland is a layer of dust and a few worthless relics.  Their 'great hero' is lying face down in the mud where he belongs!" She started to cackle again, and for the Shockmaster, this raucous laughter was the last straw.  As he gathered his power, he could feel it building at the center of his forehead.  He didn’t move.  There was no need, and this technique required intense focus to execute.  Besides, she would haul him to his feet sooner or later anyway, if only to mock him or give some pointless speech about honor. Indeed, just as he had finished his preparations, Luffa picked him up by the waist of his trousers and flung him over.  He rose to his feet slowly, feigning weakness.  If she had any idea what he was planning, she didn’t show it.  She just approached him, glaring at him like a predator in the wild. "Nothing to say?" Luffa asked.  "You’re just going to let me insult your culture and not do anything about it?  Where’s your pride?  I would have thought--!" Then she fell silent, and stopped in her tracks.  A moment later, she started to convulse, though she remained on her feet.  Her eyes went wide, as though glimpsing at some unseen horror. The Shockmaster walked up to her and examined his foe.  Satisfied with what he saw, he crossed his arms and nodded. "I WON’T KILL, LUFFA," he said.  "BUT I HAVE OTHER MEANS TO DEFEAT YOU, AND THERE ARE FATES WORSE THAN DEATH." She grunted and gasped, and tears began to stream down her eyes. He held up his massive right hand, palm outward, and extended his fingers. "THERE ARE FIVE MOVES OF DOOM.  FIVE TECHNIQUES SO POWERFUL THAT I DARE NOT UNLEASH THEM EXCEPT AGAINST THE MOST DANGEROUS OF FOES.  THE MYSTICS WHO GAVE ME MY POWERS REFUSED TO ALLOW ME TO KILL IN THEIR NAME, BUT THEY WERE WISE ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT I MIGHT BE FORCED TO USE EXTREME MEASURES.  AND SO THEY TAUGHT ME... TAUGHT ME THE FIVE MOVES OF DOOM.  THIS IS THE FOURTH." She bared her teeth and her hands began to tremble violently, but she didn’t show any awareness of the Shockmaster or her surroundings. "NORMALLY I WOULD USE THE FIRST THREE BEFORE EVEN CONSIDERING THIS," he explained, though he knew she could not possibly hear him now.  "I DON’T LIKE TO USE THE PSI-SHOCK TECHNIQUE.  IT TURNS THE VICTIM’S OWN MIND AGAINST ITSELF.  RIGHT NOW, YOU’RE TRAPPED IN A NIGHTMARE OF YOUR OWN IMAGINING, AND YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE." Her Super Saiyan aura hadn’t stopped flashing, but this didn’t surprise him.  Unconsciously, she was trying to defend herself from whatever she was seeing in her head, like a dog kicking its legs while it dreamed of running. "EVENTUALLY YOU’LL EXHAUST YOURSELF, BUT THE EFFECT WILL REMAIN.   IF YOU’RE LUCKY, SOMEONE WILL COME ALONG AND PUT YOU OUT OF YOUR MISERY BEFORE I CAN HAVE YOU PUT ON LIFE SUPPORT." Flecks of spittle gathered on the corners of her mouth, and her green eyes still stared at nothing, wide and unblinking. "THIS IS MY ULTIMATE SANCTION, LUFFA.  YOU WANTED ME TO USE IT, THOUGH YOU DIDN’T REALIZE WHAT IT WAS.  I ONLY SPARED YOU BEFORE, OUT OF MERCY, BUT YOU SQUANDERED THAT WHEN YOU SPOKE ILL OF WIST.  I WON’T FORGIVE THAT." Tears continued to stream down her cheeks, and she started to hyperventilate.  The Shockmaster shook his head with disgust.  Now that the battle was over, he couldn't help but feel pity for this despicable creature, twisted by her own lust for battle.  But he had wasted more than enough time on Luffa already.   He needed to contact his generals and find the Recollector before the enemy managed to-- He had turned and taken just four steps away, when he heard a low, angry snarl behind him.  When he looked back at Luffa he found her still gawking into the distance, but her lips had curled into something like.... a smile.  And then she began to laugh all over again.  "What was that supposed to be?" she asked as her eyes focused on him.  "NO..." the Shockmaster gasped.  "IT CAN'T BE..." "You thought that was going to stop me?" Luffa said in a raw, ugly voice.  "Idiot!"  Before he could react, she had blasted him in the chest with a wave of golden ki energy.  His body went flying, and then she was suddenly on top of him, slamming her feet into his head and sending him face-first  into the ground.  As he rolled over to get up, she kicked him in the ribs, and sent him through the air again.  "I was back on the Tikosi Hiveworld," she screeched.  "They were pumping Black Water Mist into my veins, and your crony Argon was blathering on about taking skin samples.  Everyone I cared about was dead, but I couldn't tell if I had killed them myself, or if they died because I was too weak to protect them." She was focusing on a single part of his body now.  Striking his left collarbone over and over again like a jackhammer.  The Shockmaster's ki could protect him from serious injury, but he found he couldn't blunt the impacts completely.  The pain was excruciating. "That was how I figured out it wasn't real," Luffa raved.  "I've got so many different nightmares that they start to contradict one another.  So what was supposed to happen?   Was I supposed to be so overcome with terror that I'd withdraw into my own mind?  Claw my own eyes out?  Interesting technique!  Oh yeah, really... really!  Interesting!" Without warning, she targeted the Shockmaster's side instead.  He had been so focused on protecting his collarbone that he wasn't able to defend in time, and he felt one of his ribs break from the blow.  "The problem is that it doesn't work on someone like me, Shocky!" Luffa screamed.  "All my worst fears are things that already happened to me in real life!  And none of it stopped me.  It just pissed me off." "ENOUGH!" the Shockmaster cried.   He summoned enough power to force Luffa away from him, though only for a moment.  He rose to his feet and faced her.  "I'VE HAD ENOUGH!" Luffa turned her head and spat on the ground.  "Not until you lie dead at my feet," she said.  ******* As the fight wore on, the Shockmaster began to feel the first cracks in his resolve.    He had used one of the five most unspeakable techniques in his arsenal, and it had only emboldened her.    She actually wanted to see more. "What's the fifth move?" Luffa asked.  "Show me!" The Shockmaster had managed to hold out this long against her, but he could tell that he was losing ground.  He had assumed that Luffa could never maintain this level of power for an extended period of time, but she showed no signs of slowing down.  Rather, she seemed to be getting even more aggressive and confident as they fought.  While he had vast reserves of power to draw upon, he couldn't increase his strength any more than he already had.  He could fight on like this for hours, or even days if necessary, but that wouldn't do him any good against an opponent strong enough to overpower him like this.  Every breath he took reminded him of his broken rib.  Now she was using that against him, targeting the injury to put him on the defensive, or feinting an attack on his torso to score hits on the rest of his body.  She was carving him up like a roast, and yet she kept pushing him to fight harder. "What's the matter?  Afraid I won't be able to handle it?" she scoffed.  She pointed at her chin.  "Come on.  Hit me!" The fact was that not even the Shockmaster knew what the Fifth Move of Doom was.  He'd never needed it, and he had no idea how to use it. The Mystics who taught him the first four moves would only tell him that he "would know what to do when the time came."  In those days, he had been satisfied to trust their words, even when they spoke in riddles.  Besides, his usual techniques and powers had usually been more than enough to accomplish his objectives.  He had only used the Psi-Shock a handful of times in his long career.  Luffa was the first and only one to resist it.  And it had merely whetted her appetite for battle.  For the first time since he became the Shockmaster, he was completely unsure of what to do next.  The first three Moves of Doom were inferior to the fourth, and unlikely to succeed.   But he had to do something, and quickly.   Each second he tarried here gave her allies time to sabotage the Recollector. "I'm waiting!" she said.  "No, on second thought, I've waited long enough." As she charged towards him, all he could do was improvise.  Blocking her first strike with his left hand, he charged the fingertips of his right hand with power and swung his arm over his head.  The night sky had been clear, but when he lowered his hand, the stars were suddenly obscured by dark clouds that materialized out of nowhere.  Luffa noticed this immediately, and when she glanced up to look, she grinned expectantly.  The Shockmaster didn't mind, since this attack wasn't designed for stealth.  "THUNDERBIRD!" he shouted, and the dark clouds coalesced into the shape of an enormous winged creature.  It descended upon Luffa, lightning crackling from its shadowy talons. "Not bad at all..." Luffa said with a smirk.  She backed off from her assault on the Shockmaster and turned her focus to the Thunderbird.  When it opened its beak to fire a blast of energy at her, she dodged it, but only just.  "It's not just your own ki, is it?" Luffa remarked.  "You're drawing energy from the planet, aren't you?  I'm impressed!" The Thunderbird continued to chase after her, firing beams of energy from its maw, and slashing at her with its claws. Luffa kept avoiding it, laughing as she led the creature on.  She never bothered to counterattack, and the Shockmaster didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.  He set that matter aside and concentrated on the second step of his plan.  Gathering energy in his right hand, he plunged it into the ground, burying his arm up to the elbow.  Crouching there, he watched Luffa carefully while the Thunderbird lured her into position. A moment later, from the ground directly beneath Luffa, there came a glowing filament that burst from the soil like a vine made of pure electricity.   While her back was turned, it reached out for her, coiling as if to grab hold of her ankle.  At the last possible moment she spotted this, and rolled away, causing the filament to swat uselessly at her boot heel.  Watching from a distance, he could tell that she had deduced his plan to catch her in a pincer attack.  But he wasn't finished yet.  The Lightning Ribbon was more than just a single ligature of energy.  As Luffa continued to avoid the Thunderbird, more electric filaments burst from the ground, each appearing in anticipation of her movements.  He purposely timed these attacks to lull her into a false sense of confidence, to make her think that she could anticipate when and where each ribbon would appear.  Then he revealed their true speed, and managed to snare her wrist just as she was dodging the Thunderbird's talons.  Wasting no time, he brought the remaining Lightning Ribbbon filaments to the same spot, and in a matter of seconds he had all four of her limbs secured.   However, there was still enough slack on the filaments that she wasn't completely immobilized.  The point of the Lightning Ribbon wasn't to restrain an opponent, after all.  With a determined growl, he activated the attack, and Luffa suddenly convulsed.  Wracked with pain, there was no way for her to avoid the Thunderbird's next strike, which would almost certainly cripple her-- But it never came.  The Thunderbird swooped in, opening its shadowy beak to vomit fire upon her, and then Luffa looked up at it and did the same thing.  A stream of ki energy from her mouth engulfed the Thunderbird, forcing it back while she tensed her arms and legs against the coils of the Lightning Ribbon. The Shockmaster regarded this with a detached fascination.  He had used these moves separately in the past to defeat his most powerful enemies.  Now he was using them in concert, and it still wasn't enough to stop her.  Before long, the Thunderbird would falter under her attack, or the Lighting Ribbons would wither.  They weren't meant to be used for long periods of time.  He had never needed to use them for prolonged battles of attrition.  But he wasn't finished yet.  Unorthodox as it was to combine two of the Five Moves of Doom, he still had a third to add to his assault.  Charging power to his left hand, he grasped his right arm, to which the Lightning Ribbon was still tethered.  Then he activated the Third Move: the Drain Charge. The Shockmaster's techniques all adapted ki energy to the principles of electrical energy.  The Drain Charge took that principle further by converting an enemy's ki into a form the Shockmaster could absorb and use for himself.  Normally, this relied upon making physical contact, but the filaments of the Lightning Ribbon would serve as a conductor, allowing him to use this ability at a distance.  Almost instantly, he saw Luffa's resistance waver, while his own body felt revitalized.  She continued to fight, however, and he could see no way to end the standoff, short of draining her power until the Thunderbird could overwhelm her defenses.  It would be a slow process, but one he expected to get easier with time.   His only regret was that he couldn't add the Psi-Shock to this attack.   Ineffective as it had been, it had kept her pacified for a minute or so, which would have allowed the other three moves to finish the job.  Now, there was no point in trying.  Luffa understood the Psi-Shock for what it was, so a second one would be a wasted effort.  As he struggled to focus on three attacks simultaneously, Luffa continued to thrash and pull against her bonds, even as she continued firing energy from her mouth at the Thunderbird.  He had expected her to try some other tactic, or do something to resist the flow of power from her body.  Did she not understand her predicament?  Or was she too overconfident to appreciate it?  And then he felt a pain in his arms.   He looked down at them to see what was wrong.  They were engulfed in golden flames.  This alone wouldn't have bothered him, but he began to feel a strange restlessness along with the increase in power.  He tried to restrict the flow of power, but found that he couldn't.   He pulled his arm out of the ground.  The Lightning Ribbons attached to his left hand were throbbing and glowing yellow.  He stared at his hands in horror. The restlessness soon gave way to panic.  Desperately, he looked back at Luffa, hoping to find some kind of explanation.  As if sensing his confusion, she suddenly broke off her attack on the Thunderbird and headed straight for him.  The Lightning Ribbons held fast to her arms and legs, but were pulled out of the ground as she moved, kicking up a cloud of dirt.  The Thunderbird chased after her, but its movements were much more sluggish and imprecise than they had been.  If the Shockmaster hadn't been so preoccupied with defending himself, he might have deduced the reason for this. He tried to shoot an energy blast at Luffa, but the result was too diffuse to do any real damage, and he couldn't guide it in the direction he wanted it to go.  It sailed harmlessly over Luffa's head and nearly hit the Thunderbird.  He started to tremble violently and then he began to scream.  And then Luffa was upon him, driving both of her fists into his throat.  "Not so easy, is it?!" she asked.  "Let me show you how it's done." With a casual grace, she swung her right hand across her upper body, nearly touching her left shoulder, then swung it out again, launching a burst of green energy from her outstretched index and midddle fingers.  The Thunderbird shuddered when the blast made contact, and then it dissipated into nothingness.  "It took me days to get my Super Saiyan form under control," she said, gesturing at the glowing hair on her scalp.  "And even then, I had to be careful what I did while I used it.  But I stuck with it and figured out how to use my full power exactly the way I wanted.  I am a Saiyan, after all." She grabbed some of the filaments that held her right wrist and winced as she ripped them apart.  "These ropes of yours hurt, I'll admit, but not as bad as that beating you gave me the first time we fought.  And your energy drain kind of dampened the effect.   It was clever to combine your techniques, but they're not completely compatible with one another." He tried to punch her, but she sidestepped it and responded with a knee to his midsection.  "You were trying to absorb my power, but you couldn't do it fast enough to weaken me.  Worse, you had to take more of that power into your own body, and you weren't prepared for it.  It's too... wild.  You couldn't control the Thunderbird as precisely, because you were trying to keep yourself from freaking out." She finished freeing her legs from the Lightning Ribbon, but held all the strands in one hand, which she closed into a fist.  The flow of power continued unabated.  "Maybe we should finish it like this," she suggested.  "It'll level the playing field a little... but no, you might flip out and accidentally blow up the planet.  And I might get too weak to stop you.  I don't want to lose sight of what I'm fighting for here."  The Shockmaster was stunned.  He didn't know what to do.  After a few seconds, the Lightning Ribbons faded, mostly because he no longer had the presence of mind to maintain such complex energy constructs.   He took a step back, and Luffa glanced down at her now-empty hand.  "Good for you," she said idly.  "Better to lose on your own terms.   Accepting a handicap from me would be disgraceful.  Come to think of it, I apologize for even suggesting it.  You're scum, Shockmaster, but you're still really strong.  Worthy of a little respect.  You deserve an honorable death, at least." He took another step back, and Luffa stepped forward.  She looked up at him and smiled knowingly.  "What's wrong?" she asked.  "You've got plenty of power left.  You came to this planet for a fight, didn’t you?   You said you wouldn't forgive all the terrible things I said about your homeworld.  You want to conquer Extraliga, don’t you?"  She held up her hand and wagged her fingers towards herself.  "Well come on.  The fight's this way, you miserable oaf." He didn't know what to do.  He had come this far, after so long, and this awful woman--this nightmare--refused to let him pass.  Before, he simply pitied her for a fool.  Now he despised her.  In spite of his lofty code against killing, he wanted to kill her, and he was ashamed of that.  Not for wanting to kill her, but because he knew that he couldn't. "Come on," Luffa said.  "Fight me.  You don't want to let Wist down, do you?   You're their champion, after all." His thoughts turned to the mystic sorceress who granted him his enchanted helm, who taught him to use the power of the Shockmaster.  Kind, beautiful, impossibly old.  He had promised to do anything for her, never imagining that he might taste failure. "What about that fifth move?" Luffa asked.  "There were Five Moves of Doom, you said.  I've only seen four.  Maybe that last one was a dud.   Your teacher must have slacked off that day." He had trouble seeing the sorceress' face in his mind.  She had been dead for millennia, after all.   Now, he couldn't help but imagine Luffa’s hideous visage in her place, spitting on Wist's heritage, mocking everything that was good and just about it.  It sickened him that a Saiyan's ignorance was backed by greater power than the combined majesty of Wist's Mystic Council.  He couldn't just give up here!  There had to be a way!  And then, suddenly, he sensed it.    An answer.    The solution to everything. Wasting no time, he collapsed to the ground like a corpse. NEXT: Mindgames

Before becoming what he is now, Englorious Shaid was once a human sorcerer. While some may use some magical prowess for good, Englorious only cared to use his talents to further his own goals. He desired more and more power, and did so through magical experimentation and the collection of ancient magical artifacts. Those who were unfortunate enough to live near the accursed tower he called home knew well that their land and homes were his testing grounds. Whatever artifact or tool he got his hands on were tried out on the locals, with no regard of their safety or lives. Eventually, his cruel antics caught the attention of a band of heroes, who sought to purge this evil. The team attacked his home and defeated his various minions, all building up to the final battle. The clash that ensued was one worthy of legend, as the sorcerer threw all his power at the knights. Seeing that swords and blades could not fell such a powerful foe, the heroes took one of his ancient tools and turned it against him. The spell tore Englorious' soul from his body and fused it into one of his crystal balls. An empty husk, his once proud body crumbled to dust, and the sorcerer was vanquished. The heroes took the imprisoned sorcerer and presented it to the king as a trophy of their conquest. For many weeks, the soul of Englorious was locked away in the guarded halls, screaming from his crystal prison. For some time, they guarded his sealed soul, but as the weeks rolled on, security got lax. With no proof that Englorious could use his powers in his current state, they believed that he was no longer threat. When the orb was left unguarded, Englorious' minion, Kree-Tal, crept in and rescued his master. 

The trapped soul was spirited back to his destroyed tower, with pursuers no doubt following behind. Using old safeguards placed within his home, Kree-Tal was able to activate the pre-placed runes and teleport the entire tower to a hidden location. The massive spell succeeded in relocating them to unknown territory, but it also caused even more damage to his base. Regardless of his home's condition, Englorious worked with Kree-Tal in finding a way to release his soul. After many attempts and failures, the best they were able to do was crack the orb and free Englorious' magical abilities. With his power, he was able to create a false form to move about with, but his soul remained locked away in the orb. With no real solution in sight, Englorious was content with this temporary solution and looked to rebuilding his home and strength. As he fixed up his tower and curated his surviving artifacts, he believed that this new form would work so much better for him then a measly fleshy body. At first he welcomed this new shadowy form, seeing the potential it had. As time wore on, though, Englorious began to miss the simple pleasures of having a body. Eating, drinking and sleeping was something he longed to do once again. With that, Englorious has now brought his focus upon finding himself a new body, and a spell that would allow him to move his soul into it.   

Attitude - Englorious is a patient and methodical person, trained in these ways by his years of using magic. Anything he does calls for planning and tactics, a practice that he can spend hours on. Anytime he looks to launch a mission or seek out a magical artifact, every little thing needs to be researched and looked into. He prefers to do things in a slow and elegant manner, with no rushing or blind flailing. Everything must be organized and put in its proper place, which can be seen with his vast collection of magical artifacts. His archives is meticulously sorted, labelled and stored, to the point where he loathes using any of them in fear of damaging them or screwing up his system. Educated in the ways of magic and other talents, Englorious enjoys studying and reading the many tomes that his library contains. Some say that his desire for planning and research is just an excuse for him to read through more books and scrolls. As an educated man (as he likes to call himself), he looks down on the brute force of physical combat and the blindly aggressive ways of warriors. To him, the use of swords and shields is one peg up from smacking one another with sticks. Those who do not care for reading, studying or any kind of planning are instantly seen as dumb in his eyes. Such love for elegance and finesse is the driving reason he wants a body again. When he was human, he enjoyed good food and wine, which is something he can no longer have. His shadowy form is incapable of taste, smell and touch, which has begun to drive him mad. Though his new form offers many other benefits, he yearns to be able to drink his favorite wine once again, while enjoying a good tome next to a warm fire. This desire has grown so much that Englorious has his servant, Kree-Tal, cook fake meals for him to eat. At the designated times that one eats, Englorious sits himself at his banquet table to "enjoy" the food that Kree-Tal prepares for him. Though he cannot eat, drink or even smell, he acts like he can, often commenting that the food "smells delicious" or that the use of spices is "exquisite." Outside of this fantasy of his, the food and drink just ends up landing on the floor, which Kree-Tal then cleans up after the meal. Englorious knows that this seems ridiculous to others, but he goes through this ritual just to keep himself sane. It is just another reason why he needs to find a new body and the correct spell that will let him claim it. He can spend countless days researching and looking into the perfect form for him to inhabit, and his top picks will frequently change as he weighs the pros and cons. When in pursuit of a physical body, even Englorious can stray away from his well laid plans, as his desires get the best of him and he rushes to claim his prize. This usually ends in defeat for him, which only strengthens his belief that meticulous planning is a must for everything.   Relations - When a human, Englorious never worked with any one else. Seeing himself as superior to all others, and having a vast array of spells at his fingertips, he never saw the point of working together. Now that he has been knocked down a couple pegs and is working to regain his former glory, Englorious has turned to outside sources of help. His main source of aid (and grief) is King Olaf the Seventh. Englorious only knew of Olaf because the teleportation of his tower landed him near the mountain range that Olaf rules. Englorious met with the power-hungry king and was immediately turned off from the immature ruler. He saw Olaf as foolish, egotistical and just plain stupid. The king's plans and goals were absolutely ludicrous and shoddily put together. Englorious saw no need for the king and looked to never speak to him again. It was only with Kree-Tal's prodding that he agreed to meet once again with Olaf and discuss a partnership. While Englorious had magic and knowledge, he lacked resources and manpower, which Olaf had in droves. This partnership was further solidified when Olaf revealed that he possessed an ancient, indecipherable tome known as The Stitched Manuscript. This book of primordial knowledge was passed down by his ancestor, but the ability to read it was not. Englorious took interest with it, as he believed it could contain the spell that would at last give him a new body. So with that, the two formed a partnership. To this day, their deal still holds, but it has been very rocky since day one. Englorious' first impression of King Olaf has not changed at all, as the bumbling ruler is still a pride-driven fool. Olaf constantly demands results and rarely follows plans, which infuriates Englorious. This irritation is only increased when Olaf tries to steal magical artifacts from Shaid's archives, and complains that he never lets him use them. Even when Englorious is given access to The Stitched Manuscript he is still bothered by Olaf. The king is extremely protective of the book and requires dozens of Tin Soldiers watching over Englorious at all times. Englorious despises the controlled environment that Olaf forces on him when he is trying to decipher the tome, and finds it very difficult to get any work done. To top it all off, they always end up arguing with each other when things fall apart, blaming one another and refusing to take responsibility. At times it is a wonder on why they even work together.

Outside of Olaf, Englorious has had run ins with various other characters. While working with Olaf, he has met Marianess, a shade from the Underworld who also helps the king out from time to time. Englorious dislikes her as well, as he finds her brutish, blunt ways offensive and simple minded. In turn Marianess sees him as a know-it-all snob. The only time the two can agree with each other is when it comes to complaining about Olaf or making fun of him. They can at least bond over that. He has met Baalastor during his time with Marianess, as the shade loves to drag the ancient demon around with her. Out of the whole lot, he is the only one that Englorious is fine with being around. Baalastor acts much more professionally than the others and takes time in his actions. The only thing Englorious dislikes about him is his lack of motivation and the fact he doesn't really seem to care about whatever they are doing. Another run-in has been with Ver'Rahl the necromancer, but these meetings have been brief and not very professional. The two have just seen each other on the battlefield, when their forces seek to destroy the Knights of the Wrong Table. Englorious despises the idea of even talking with Ver'Rahl, mainly because he is a necromancer. Englorious always says that necromancers are the drama queens of the magic world, never shutting up about life, death and other stupidly "dark" things. Even away from that, Ver'Rahl is a pretty vile person to begin with, so Englorious sees no point in working with him.     Subordinates - The one being that he has working for him is Kree-Tal, a sentient crystal ball that has been passed down through his family. Kree-Tal does the work of a butler, taking care of the tower and maintaining the vast collections. Though Kree-Tal does the cleaning, organizing and cooking, Englorious does not look down on him. Rather he treats him like an equal, asking him for advice and running ideas past him. He sees Kree-Tal as an important source of information, as he has served under his ancestors for many years. The two work well together, and Englorious would never think of mistreating his servant. In the rare case where Kree-Tal objects with an order or task, Englorious will actually respect him and think it over. Abilities - To list Englorious' abilities would be a near impossible task, as he has many spells at his disposal. As a well-trained sorcerer, he can unleash a devastating amount of elemental spells, as well as weave illusions and other magical tricks. When in simple combat, he is content with hurling missiles of ice, fire and lightening at foes. It is during tricky situations when he uses more complex spells. His shadowy form aids these abilities for him, as it is impervious to all physical damage. His shadow body can become intangible at any time he wishes, so blades and arrows will simply pass right through him. This helps when he is unleashing explosive spells, as he doesn't have to worry about damaging his shadow limbs. He is also capable of creating more than two arms at a time, so that he can hurl multiple spells. When enraged or need of a quick retreat, he can produce dozens of shadowy arms and barrel through the battlefield at blinding speeds. The other benefit his shadow body has is the lack of flesh. Since he does not have mortal flesh and muscle, he does not have to worry about mana poisoning or Mancer Syndrome. There is no physical body for him to taint, so he can use a variety of powerful spells without worry. This gives him a heads up above other mages and sorcerers who must manage their mana use in fear of poisoning their natural mana.   Tools - Due to his vast collection of magical artifacts, and the fact he is always looking for more, Englorious has a wide array of tools at his disposal. The problem is that he values them more as antiques and collections, then as weapons for war. From time to time he will pull one out for use, but often he is very hesitant and worried about damaging them. He also possess tomes and scrolls that he can use to craft spells and other abilities. When on a mission, he will handpick ones that will work best for his goals and bring them along. Outside of the realm of magic is his spider legged pedestal. This is run by the mana that courses through his orb, which allows him to move about on his own. This set of legs is not used as a weapon by any means, and is just used for locomotion.     Weaknesses - His biggest weakness is the orb body that his soul is trapped in. Despite his large, shadowy form, his true body is held inside the spider-legged construct. Attacks and blows on this small body will disrupt his shadow form and whatever spells he was casting. With it being small, it can easily be launched or thrown, which will drag his shadow form with it. If the orb is shattered, it will splinter his soul into fragments, effectively killing him, unless it is fused back together quick enough. Another problem is his reliance on magic, seeing it as the one and only tool. With mana and magic on his side, he can be a devastating opponent, but if he is cut off from his source or drained, he can do little else. His desire for a body to inhabit can cause him some problems, as it forces him to make plans that involve capturing opponents alive. This just adds more difficulty to his efforts and more things he has to take care of. It also can force him to make rash choices, as he is desperate for a new body so that he can eat and drink once more.   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Englorius Shaid, a character whose name I should probably change to something less stupid, but I kind of like it too much.

Wow, I enjoyed all the prior speakers and the pastor with his beautiful, heartfelt prayer. They hit all the high lights. I must begin by thanking God for blessing me in abundance of portions of immeasurable proportions;

I thank God for joining us together today to unite as one in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will elaborate a little on why we are here on such a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. First, I would like to begin by praying with and for you in my Native tongue of Cherokee….

Thank you for indulging me in prayer because I believe we must remember to always put God first.

I was originally asked to speak at two other March for Trump events, first in Springfield, Illinois, the cradle of Abraham Lincoln.

My opening was going to be something like, almost everyone, including Democrats, would include Lincoln as one of their three favorite Presidents. By no means, do I consider myself as a Historian, but Lincoln would certainly make my list, as well as Ronald Reagan.

With that said, I expect and anticipate that President Trump will become the greatest President in history as for me President Trump is already on my number one President of all time and his stunning wife is most certainly our classiest and most beautiful First Lady ever with Jackie Kennedy as my favorite before the beautiful Melania and I would like to share why I choose Mr. Trump as my favorite President, it is because in 2009 I was invited to NY to have lunch with Donald and everyone thought I was crazy for believing this was true let alone it could happen to me.

I went with 3 objectives:

1. Take a picture with Mr. Trump

2. Get his autograph

3. Get a testimonial for my website from the greatest business man of all time

I would have been happy with even one of these and he gave me so much more, he answered my questions and even made ample time for the more than 30 people in the room to fulfill their request and dare I say their dreams. I witnessed him give money to what appeared to be a homeless person with a joyous heart and buy coffee for a construction crew that wasn’t even working on one of his projects.

This is the integrity and character of a man who cares about our homeless, a man who’s very definition is to protect and serve by putting the needs of others above his own. This is the man I met and know.

I firmly believe he will lead us to put America First and make America Great Again.

The next event was to be the premier event held in Washington, D.C., where there was even hope that President Trump and his beautiful wife our First Lady might attend.

I was excited for this and in talking to a friend he said there will be a lot more pressure on you in DC with probably a lot more people and you will speaking on a different subject than you normally do.

My response was “Bring it On because diamonds are created under pressure and I love a good challenge”.

I then learned that Oklahoma City was to host an event and my excitement overwhelmed me because it flooded my soul with memories of Sunday morning after church sitting on the church steps with lemonade and the ever-popular fried chicken legs talking with my friends. I just knew I had to be switched to Oklahoma so I could share time with my family in each of you.

A little background on myself is I live in gratitude because I had to fight my way into this world not once, not twice but three times as my mother attempted to abort me three times.

I was knew that I disposable and only wanted when I was convenient and my message here is that you matter, each of you are valuable, and loved because God loves you and I love you.

In growing up in Indian territory and attending schools where I only spoke Cherokee until I was 10 years old I also learned that your success is in direct proportion to your contribution, I learned I am a giver.

In my early career I wasn’t familiar with many business leaders, but I had heard of Donald Trump.

My first introduction to President Trump was when I was involved with one of those multi-level marketing companies where everyone’s goal was to drive a pink Cadillac you know the one.

An early part of that process was to create a “vision board” with an “I” story, My ‘I’ story was to meet Donald Trump and ask him one quality question within 5 years, I met that schedule ahead of deadline by 2 years another example that God really does answer your most passionate prayers.

I have no idea why I was chosen for this most prestigious honor because I am just a little girl from Tahlequah, the backwoods of Punkin’ Holler in a tiny little place in the middle of nowhere on the way some somewhere in a home with dirt floors and a place where no one ever sees “you,” the you that is crying to come out, all the while knowing it’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that no one can see but you and realizing through God’s design this the only way to find your direction and today is proof that dreams really do come true and for this I thank you.

One reason perhaps is because I have supported Trump from the moment that I heard that he was running for president, before it was even official, I have supported him through the many threats that my family received through the Native American community because of my unwillingness to back down and my family stood by me in my decision.

My father who always supports my decisions with great enthusiasm had even told me that if I back down because of threats then I am certainly not the daughter that he raised because he raised me to stand up for what I believe in, he taught me to be strong, tenacious, and he taught me that a decision means to sever, to cut off, leaving no other option or alternative so when you make a decision it means you stand up even if it means you stand alone, And there were many times within my Native American community where I did feel that I was standing alone, actually that’s not true, for how could I be standing alone when I have God before me and my father beside me.

Outside of my Native American community I have had many friends that disagreed with my support, I have had many friends that we simply agreed to disagree and I appreciate each one of them for that because I believe we learn from each other.

I believe much of the resistance across the entire nation comes from and unfounded fear that as we rebuild our economy there will be many cutbacks on financial assistance.

And while I strongly believe in a hand up I do not believe in a handout and there is a huge difference. These handouts and many other govt. handouts are wrong and should be eliminated or reformed. People need to realize that our country is like an individual that is bankrupt or so close that they can feel it like a train wreck.

Our country does not have an unlimited black card, more like an ordinary credit card that is about to be rejected at the checkout counter over a piece of bubblegum.

We have a national debt of almost twenty trillion dollars, which is one of the main reasons why China has or is about to surpass us as the major power in the world and other countries have little or no respect for us, understandable so.

We must make many changes, none of which will be easy or popular, such as how to get our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid back on sound economic ground.

I did not vote for Obama nor did I vote for Hillary and did not agree with most of their agenda but I did support him during his term and would have supported her because of the position because I was raised that even if you do not like the person you must respect their position, I had hoped that he would began to solve some of our problems during his 8 year term, that did not happen.

The two huge issues I would put at the top of my personal list would be protecting our Country and turning our economy around.

To me, any President’s first priority should be to protect its citizens, both from within and outside our territory. My personal opinion is the prior administration from former President Obama, the Attorney Generals, Secretary of States, on down did a poor job of this.

I applaud President Trump for his beginning to rebuild our military and appointing cabinet members who will help protect us and keep us safe. Our local sheriff and police departments overwhelmingly voted for Trump and for this I am grateful. By the way, I’m pleased that the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruett is a fellow Oklahoman, I would expect major changes in that area.

I realize my other priority of turning around our economy covers a myriad of issues like the national debt, Obamacare, jobs and dollars going overseas, high corporate and individual tax rates, bank derivatives, etc. I think the commitments from some of our prominent corporations to add jobs, build facilities here rather than abroad and cut costs on some defense projects was a huge step in the right direction. The positive gains in our financial markets since the election is another indicator. One statistic I absolutely love was that in the first month of the prior administration our national debt increased 200 Billion dollars compared to the reductions of 12 billion dollars the first month of President Trump’s administration.

With that being said, all I ask is for all the naysayers, specifically and including the media, to give our great President Trump that same respect and support that we gave the previous administration.

Keep in mind, President Trump has only been in office less than 2 months and has made exponential progress already.

I firmly believe President Trump will lead us to put God first, the American people as his priority and make America Great Again.

My goal in this speech isn’t to solve the many Issues our nation faces as that is not my job, rather to focus on society’s responsibility as a whole to keep those individuals whose job it is to solve these problems results focused and focus driven. Both parties, republicans and democrats, have been guilty of complacency and merely kicking the can down the road.

Without even thinking about it, I can list 7or 8 major problems such as terrorism, immigration, health care, infrastructure, our international relationships, drug issues, education, our overload of regulations, etc. I am certain you can probably think of at least two or three others that you could add to that list.

Is it really too much to ask one person to totally solve all these major issues? Of course it is, however, its not too much to ask him including our Congressional delegates, and our state leaders to get started working on resolving them.

The best way to accomplish this is for each one of us, as individuals and collectively, to do our part by working together, coming together across the great divide, and be willing to compromise and learn from each other as we all share a common goal.

I’m proud to be from Oklahoma for many reasons, one being conservatives while still becoming more and more progressive. I know that you are already aware that our two United States Senators and all five Congressmen, including MarkWayne Mullen, who we are so honored to have with us today, and our Governor are all Republicans.

I knew that Trump would easily carry Oklahoma, but was pleased that he got 65.3% of the vote, carried all 77 counties, with Cimarron County in the Panhandle having the highest percentage% of 83%. There were only two states that had a higher percentage% of Trump votes than Oklahoma.

In closing I would remind each of us that we have played a part in electing President Trump, but it’s not just a matter of handing the ball over to Trump and our elected officials and standing back and watching. We need to stay committed, keep them in our prayers, and let them know we support them and their efforts.

Please keep in mind that everything we are praying for won’t get done in six months. Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and there will be some compromises as there is strong opposition and we can create a favorable transition if we choose to love them through it and remember it is always better to follow a great example than to lead by ignorance, personally, I choose to follow the example of Christ Jesus and love them through gratitude and forgiveness.

With that being said, I am asking us to each love each other, accept each other, even agree to disagree because in the big picture we all want the same things, to be loved, to matter, and to live with passion.

Let us all continue to keep President Trump and his family in our thoughts and prayers.

God bless President Trump and his humble family, God bless America and God bless each and every one of you and your beautiful families. I love you.

    VIDEO and TRANSCRIPT of MARCH4TRUMP: Lisa Christiansen’s Speech at The Oklahoma State Capitol Wow, I enjoyed all the prior speakers and the pastor with his beautiful, heartfelt prayer. They hit all the high lights.

Wow, I enjoyed all the prior speakers and the pastor with his beautiful, heartfelt prayer. They hit all the high lights. I must begin by thanking God for blessing me in abundance of portions of immeasurable proportions;

I thank God for joining us together today to unite as one in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I will elaborate a little on why we are here on such a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. First, I would like to begin by praying with and for you in my Native tongue of Cherokee….

Thank you for indulging me in prayer because I believe we must remember to always put God first.

I was originally asked to speak at two other March for Trump events, first in Springfield, Illinois, the cradle of Abraham Lincoln.

My opening was going to be something like, almost everyone, including Democrats, would include Lincoln as one of their three favorite Presidents. By no means, do I consider myself as a Historian, but Lincoln would certainly make my list, as well as Ronald Reagan.

With that said, I expect and anticipate that President Trump will become the greatest President in history as for me President Trump is already on my number one President of all time and his stunning wife is most certainly our classiest and most beautiful First Lady ever with Jackie Kennedy as my favorite before the beautiful Melania and I would like to share why I choose Mr. Trump as my favorite President, it is because in 2009 I was invited to NY to have lunch with Donald and everyone thought I was crazy for believing this was true let alone it could happen to me.

I went with 3 objectives:

1. Take a picture with Mr. Trump

2. Get his autograph

3. Get a testimonial for my website from the greatest business man of all time

I would have been happy with even one of these and he gave me so much more, he answered my questions and even made ample time for the more than 30 people in the room to fulfill their request and dare I say their dreams. I witnessed him give money to what appeared to be a homeless person with a joyous heart and buy coffee for a construction crew that wasn’t even working on one of his projects.

This is the integrity and character of a man who cares about our homeless, a man who’s very definition is to protect and serve by putting the needs of others above his own. This is the man I met and know.

I firmly believe he will lead us to put America First and make America Great Again.

The next event was to be the premier event held in Washington, D.C., where there was even hope that President Trump and his beautiful wife our First Lady might attend.

I was excited for this and in talking to a friend he said there will be a lot more pressure on you in DC with probably a lot more people and you will speaking on a different subject than you normally do.

My response was “Bring it On because diamonds are created under pressure and I love a good challenge”.

I then learned that Oklahoma City was to host an event and my excitement overwhelmed me because it flooded my soul with memories of Sunday morning after church sitting on the church steps with lemonade and the ever-popular fried chicken legs talking with my friends. I just knew I had to be switched to Oklahoma so I could share time with my family in each of you.

A little background on myself is I live in gratitude because I had to fight my way into this world not once, not twice but three times as my mother attempted to abort me three times.

I was knew that I disposable and only wanted when I was convenient and my message here is that you matter, each of you are valuable, and loved because God loves you and I love you.

In growing up in Indian territory and attending schools where I only spoke Cherokee until I was 10 years old I also learned that your success is in direct proportion to your contribution, I learned I am a giver.

In my early career I wasn’t familiar with many business leaders, but I had heard of Donald Trump.

My first introduction to President Trump was when I was involved with one of those multi-level marketing companies where everyone’s goal was to drive a pink Cadillac you know the one.

An early part of that process was to create a “vision board” with an “I” story, My ‘I’ story was to meet Donald Trump and ask him one quality question within 5 years, I met that schedule ahead of deadline by 2 years another example that God really does answer your most passionate prayers.

I have no idea why I was chosen for this most prestigious honor because I am just a little girl from Tahlequah, the backwoods of Punkin’ Holler in a tiny little place in the middle of nowhere on the way some somewhere in a home with dirt floors and a place where no one ever sees “you,” the you that is crying to come out, all the while knowing it’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that no one can see but you and realizing through God’s design this the only way to find your direction and today is proof that dreams really do come true and for this I thank you.

One reason perhaps is because I have supported Trump from the moment that I heard that he was running for president, before it was even official, I have supported him through the many threats that my family received through the Native American community because of my unwillingness to back down and my family stood by me in my decision.

My father who always supports my decisions with great enthusiasm had even told me that if I back down because of threats then I am certainly not the daughter that he raised because he raised me to stand up for what I believe in, he taught me to be strong, tenacious, and he taught me that a decision means to sever, to cut off, leaving no other option or alternative so when you make a decision it means you stand up even if it means you stand alone, And there were many times within my Native American community where I did feel that I was standing alone, actually that’s not true, for how could I be standing alone when I have God before me and my father beside me.

Outside of my Native American community I have had many friends that disagreed with my support, I have had many friends that we simply agreed to disagree and I appreciate each one of them for that because I believe we learn from each other.

I believe much of the resistance across the entire nation comes from and unfounded fear that as we rebuild our economy there will be many cutbacks on financial assistance.

And while I strongly believe in a hand up I do not believe in a handout and there is a huge difference. These handouts and many other govt. handouts are wrong and should be eliminated or reformed. People need to realize that our country is like an individual that is bankrupt or so close that they can feel it like a train wreck.

Our country does not have an unlimited black card, more like an ordinary credit card that is about to be rejected at the checkout counter over a piece of bubblegum.

We have a national debt of almost twenty trillion dollars, which is one of the main reasons why China has or is about to surpass us as the major power in the world and other countries have little or no respect for us, understandable so.

We must make many changes, none of which will be easy or popular, such as how to get our entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid back on sound economic ground.

I did not vote for Obama nor did I vote for Hillary and did not agree with most of their agenda but I did support him during his term and would have supported her because of the position because I was raised that even if you do not like the person you must respect their position, I had hoped that he would began to solve some of our problems during his 8 year term, that did not happen.

The two huge issues I would put at the top of my personal list would be protecting our Country and turning our economy around.

To me, any President’s first priority should be to protect its citizens, both from within and outside our territory. My personal opinion is the prior administration from former President Obama, the Attorney Generals, Secretary of States, on down did a poor job of this.

I applaud President Trump for his beginning to rebuild our military and appointing cabinet members who will help protect us and keep us safe. Our local sheriff and police departments overwhelmingly voted for Trump and for this I am grateful. By the way, I’m pleased that the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruett is a fellow Oklahoman, I would expect major changes in that area.

I realize my other priority of turning around our economy covers a myriad of issues like the national debt, Obamacare, jobs and dollars going overseas, high corporate and individual tax rates, bank derivatives, etc. I think the commitments from some of our prominent corporations to add jobs, build facilities here rather than abroad and cut costs on some defense projects was a huge step in the right direction. The positive gains in our financial markets since the election is another indicator. One statistic I absolutely love was that in the first month of the prior administration our national debt increased 200 Billion dollars compared to the reductions of 12 billion dollars the first month of President Trump’s administration.

With that being said, all I ask is for all the naysayers, specifically and including the media, to give our great President Trump that same respect and support that we gave the previous administration.

Keep in mind, President Trump has only been in office less than 2 months and has made exponential progress already.

I firmly believe President Trump will lead us to put God first, the American people as his priority and make America Great Again.

My goal in this speech isn’t to solve the many Issues our nation faces as that is not my job, rather to focus on society’s responsibility as a whole to keep those individuals whose job it is to solve these problems results focused and focus driven. Both parties, republicans and democrats, have been guilty of complacency and merely kicking the can down the road.

Without even thinking about it, I can list 7or 8 major problems such as terrorism, immigration, health care, infrastructure, our international relationships, drug issues, education, our overload of regulations, etc. I am certain you can probably think of at least two or three others that you could add to that list.

Is it really too much to ask one person to totally solve all these major issues? Of course it is, however, its not too much to ask him including our Congressional delegates, and our state leaders to get started working on resolving them.

The best way to accomplish this is for each one of us, as individuals and collectively, to do our part by working together, coming together across the great divide, and be willing to compromise and learn from each other as we all share a common goal.

I’m proud to be from Oklahoma for many reasons, one being conservatives while still becoming more and more progressive. I know that you are already aware that our two United States Senators and all five Congressmen, including MarkWayne Mullen, who we are so honored to have with us today, and our Governor are all Republicans.

I knew that Trump would easily carry Oklahoma, but was pleased that he got 65.3% of the vote, carried all 77 counties, with Cimarron County in the Panhandle having the highest percentage% of 83%. There were only two states that had a higher percentage% of Trump votes than Oklahoma.

In closing I would remind each of us that we have played a part in electing President Trump, but it’s not just a matter of handing the ball over to Trump and our elected officials and standing back and watching. We need to stay committed, keep them in our prayers, and let them know we support them and their efforts.

Please keep in mind that everything we are praying for won’t get done in six months. Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and there will be some compromises as there is strong opposition and we can create a favorable transition if we choose to love them through it and remember it is always better to follow a great example than to lead by ignorance, personally, I choose to follow the example of Christ Jesus and love them through gratitude and forgiveness.

With that being said, I am asking us to each love each other, accept each other, even agree to disagree because in the big picture we all want the same things, to be loved, to matter, and to live with passion.

Let us all continue to keep President Trump and his family in our thoughts and prayers.

God bless President Trump and his humble family, God bless America and God bless each and every one of you and your beautiful families. I love you.

VIDEO and TRANSCRIPT of MARCH4TRUMP: Lisa Christiansen’s Speech at The Oklahoma State Capitol Wow, I enjoyed all the prior speakers and the pastor with his beautiful, heartfelt prayer. They hit all the high lights.