hm i do not like how my brain works

Reluctant War AU Part 3

Part 1 Part 2

More of the brain worm that has taken me over, gonna probably post it to Ao3 here before too long. Already got another part started and so many ideas for additional stuff, someone please send help I've been consumed by this thing lol

Sorry if Waller seems out of character, outside of fandom I'm mostly familiar with her through Justice League the animated show & Justice League: Unlimited and her vibe there has always struck me as "deeply incredibly unlikable character that also kind of has a point but also has done so much fucked up shit in the name of her goals that you don't really care about her point anymore." So you know, complicated lol. If she's completely unrecognizable let me know, but I'm hoping she feels at least somewhat like Waller.

Forgot to say this in the last update, but still feel free to use all this as an overly long prompt if yall want. Literally anything I throw out to the void should be treated as a prompt lol If there's anything at all interesting to you in any of this nonsense go for it <3 <3 <3

---

Amanda Waller was someone who did what needed to be done.

Ruthless, heartless, vicious, cruel.

She’d been called it all. Wore the words thrown as insults as a badges of pride and valor. Because at the end of the day, when it came to the problems she was given to face, the issues she was meant to solve, those words meant she’d done what others had been too squeamish or cowardly to do. Life was a never ending slog of trolley problems and she the only one unshakable enough to pull the levers that needed pulling.

It wasn’t so simple as a matter of greater good.

Greater good was what the weak willed muttered to themselves after having feelings over doing the bare minimum. A justification used by people on all sides to do what they wanted with fractured, faulty logic thrown around like truth was a thing immutable. To assuage their guilt when they were forced to make a call they didn’t want to.

It wasn’t a matter of greater good. It was a matter of preservation. Of protection. Of digging through the filth to find the threats skittering beneath and crush them with ruthless abandon. Of facing a god and not blinking because if you did it could cost the world.

Of doing what needed to be done, no matter how underhanded or atrocious it was.

Hands dirty.

Hands red.

Hands wrapped tight around the throat of something that could threaten to destroy it all.

When the Ghost Investigation Ward had been shoved her way with it’s sucking wound of a budget, it’s bloated incompetent staff, its asinine methods she’d seen a rotted limb in need of hacking off. It hadn’t been until she’d been conducting her inspection, digging through the trash for a few pearls of effective agents she could snatch up and put to work elsewhere, that she’d truly seen what they were working on. The potential.

Potential to better arm themselves with in the forms of the strange new weapons being created.

Potential for threats far greater than anything even she had thought possible before.

The GIW as it had been when she’d first come across it was a fetid waste of time and resources. A laughing stock agency only secret because no one took them seriously enough to look. Made stupid and useless with its own conceited delusions of importance it didn’t actually have. Yet.

She went to work on it. Hacking away as she’d originally intended, but this time with a different goal in mind. She ripped out the weeds with bare, calloused hands and planted proficiency and loyalty in their place. She took over as director herself, tossing the self-aggrandizing fool that had been running the place into the ground to the dogs as the culprit for misappropriate spendings, saving the agency by tweaking things until their ballooning budget was pinned neatly onto the former director as an embezzling charge.

Then she got to work.

The Fentons were brilliant, if entirely insane. But Amanda could work with that. She’d reigned Harley Quinn in - more or less - she could do the same to the two deranged scientists that so eagerly wanted to be apart of the fight against the dead. Especially when the benefit came in the form of the inventions they threw together so easily, especially when those inventions were weapons.

It took very little to get them on board with her plans for the GIW. Keeping their focus could be a chore, at times, but she didn’t even have to really do much in the way of pressing to get them back where she wanted them. They craved knowledge and understanding nearly as much as they craved the eradication of the entities themselves. Letting them have the first look at a new subject here, free reign over a vivisection there, it took so little to fuel their fervor and keep them busy working on the projects she set for them.

Things had been going smoothly.

For a time at least.

Until Phantom.

He’d been the main focus of the previous director’s attention, the big fish he’d so desperately wanted to catch and put up on his wall. Amanda wouldn’t lie and say it wasn’t a tempting prospect, but not one she’d put above the other projects she had set in motion since taking over. No, Phantom was powerful, enough to be a real problem one day, but she could the awkward youth in the way he held himself, the inexperience in how he handled situations. She had time to get everything else in order before focusing on getting Amity Park’s would-be hero brought to heel.

And he would be brought to heel. One way or another.

Hands dirty.

Hands red.

Hands wrapped tight around the Core of a fledgling god and bending him to her will.

An artifact, old an powerful, recovered with some effort. A means of controlling specters, of chaining them to the will of the artifact’s wielder. Dangerous in the wrong hands. Dangerous in the right hands.

It was shattered, and even whole and functional Phantom was resistant to its power. But Amanda Waller prided herself in her ability to see the potential in things. It could be repaired, be made better. Even gods could be bound, be made to kneel, with the right pieces, with the right application of force.

It was just a matter of time to gather everything needed.

Phantom didn’t know he could single handedly destroy every last member of the Justice League. The baby fat, the innocent eyes, the split-second hesitations when he fought. He knew enough to be confident in fighting the usual ghosts that haunted Amity Park, but he still very much saw himself as a little fish. Maybe it was the part of him that was still Daniel Fenton, gangly teenager not quite sure what he was truly capable of yet.

She had time before the Fenton’s son truly became an issue. Time to judge if his parents’ obsessiveness would overcome their - rather shoddy, by Amanda’s estimation - parental instincts and continue to hunt him once they knew the truth. Time to get as much out of them as she could before hand, should they falter at the idea of attacking their own son. Time for the staff to be repaired and returned to working order, to get the other items needed for the truly big fish hidden on the other side of the veil between worlds.

She had time.

Until she didn’t.

Pariah Dark had not been something she thought she’d have to account for - not yet, at least.

If he wasn’t already dead, she’d ring the Ghost King’s neck with her bare hands. His arrival had opened Phantom’s eyes to what he was capable of, of just how big of a fish he was. Worse still, Phantom’s defeat of the war mongering King changed the state of play. Phantom was no longer an impressively powerful half dead teenager.

He was King Infinite.

He was an Ancient.

He was getting on her last damn nerves.

Phantom’s rogue gallery were now firmly under the boy’s control. Still distinct nuisances around Amity Park, but no longer considered true concerns. They were loyal to their boy king, delighting in ruffling his feathers but never crossing the line into treason or attempted regicide. Which meant that the GIW was the only thing that held his attention.

Amanda took the time to send a care package to the former GIW director in his tiny, dank prison cell. As thanks for his carelessness in revealing to the entire town - both living and dead - of the agency’s existence and their intentions. Had he stuck to standard protocol, Phantom would have been none the wiser to their presence. Would have scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders at the ghost that went missing upon occasion. Would have been boredly uninterested in the people his parents had begun working with. Would have been taken by surprise when they finally came for him.

But no.

No that self-obsessed, fame chasing imbecile had to go and announce to everyone and their dead mother that the GIW existed and exactly what it was they were in Amity Park to do.

Phantom knew what they were there to do.

They could only count on his naive certainty that he could broker peace with them for so long.

Peace. As if he and his people weren’t the invading force, the monsters slipping in through the cracks between worlds, the latest threat that had to be accounted for. As if he himself hadn’t rent their world asunder himself in another world, another time. No. Peace was not something they could hash out with this baby-faced monarch with his too-big crown. Peace was the assurance of safety, security. Of control of the situation.

There could be no peace.

The higher ups were somehow surprised when Phantom took that to mean there would be war.

Amanda Waller was not.

The Fentons, as suspected, took the right side when all was revealed. Steady hands and flinty eyes as they crafted the weapons that would be needed for the coming fight. Minds even sharper in their maddened grief, hearts set on revenge for the son lost and the entity that stole his face and friends and sister in his garish pretense at humanity. They were blinded to the reality of the situation in its entirety, the potential in what their son truly was, but at the end of the day it didn’t really matter. They did what she needed them to do, they could believe whatever it was they wanted so long as they did.

By the time the boy king and his armies marched upon the Amity park facility, preparations had been put into place. The base in Amity had been stripped back to bare essentials, everything of importance moved to more secured locations.

The weapons labs.

The artifact.

The girl.

All tucked well away from the front lines where Phantom and his motley crew could not reach. Their time to be put in play would come, but not yet. First she needed to gauge what Phantom and his people were capable of, what they were willing to do in the name of what they wanted. Amity Park was a pawn well sacrificed on that front. As were the other facilities she’d left easy to find.

The problem with making children gods, with giving them crowns and calling them King and giving them armies to play with, was that they thought there should be rules. That even in the trenches tearing apart their enemies, there was a certain level of playing fair that everyone was held to. They thought there was a way the world worked, of how things should be that blinded them to more effective options even as time stretched on and desperation set in.

It was the Dead’s problem though, not hers.

She reached out to the Justice League. Sour faced, unhappy, bitterly reluctant to accept that she needed their help. Stone faced and barely containing their rage at what little they knew of the situation, they agreed to a meeting.

She didn’t let herself smile until she was well and truly alone in her office.

Greater good. A lie people told themselves. A fairytale told to children. A means of convincing the weaker willed that they had no choice, that they had a noble duty to bend to. A belief that could be wielded like a weapon if the fantasy of the idea had dug in deep enough. And there were few it had dug into so deep as the members of the Justice League.

Amanda Waller was someone who did what needed to be done.

Hands dirty.

Hands red.

Hands clenched tight on a victory long in the making.

---

Part Four

Twisted Wonderland Reaction Part 17 ~ Special Edition

Hello everyone! 

So…it’s been a while since I’ve made one of these. Almost 2 years to be exact. But after book 5 forever changed how I engage with twst (for better and worse), I haven’t really been up to doing reaction posts anymore. Also after book 5 I actually began focusing more on the jp server since there were many things in the official translation that I found…lacking to say the least. 

But when twst jp released this mv on April fools day, I just knew I HAD to talk about it! I’m actually surprised more people aren’t. Probably the biggest thing about this mv is that in a lot of ways the narrative of book 5’s ending has changed now we have context to how NRC Tribe performed. I’ve seen a lot of posts on the bird app saying things like it makes sense now why they lost the VDC. 

I will say, this is definitely NOT a perfect performance. But as a former dancer with WAY too much time on their hands, I decided to analyze this.

So for context, Ive done a mix of ballet and jazz for eleven years, from age 4 to 15. Even though I gave up going to classes, I still did para para and anime dances with my friends. And in 2017, I decided to return to dance and have been dancing consistently ever since. I’m mostly versed in ballet but I still do some jazz, hip hop and took up kpop last year. To judge this fairly, I watched the MV several times, four times per member, (do the math and feel free to judge me). And with that, here are the things that stuck out to me the most. 

He is beauty, he is grace, HOW HE HELL DID HE NOT KICK EPEL IN THE FACE?!

Synchronization/symmetry 

The lack of synchronization was the first thing I noticed, ESPECIALLY in the first 30 seconds. The footwork is sloppy and Deuce and Ace in particular aren't as sharp with their moves as the other five. Rook seems to be the only one doing the choreography correctly because one point at 0:25 (and again at 3:31) where he bends his knee higher than the others and thanks to those fuckass uggs standing out so much, I couldn’t unsee it. At 1:03, 1:07, 2:07, and 3:00 Ace’s form is noticeably off as well.

And this may just be a personal hangup of mine but I found lack of symmetry between the boys at 1:14 very odd. Like, I don’t know how I can describe it but the way Epel tried to take center stage during his and Vil’s duet gave me the impression that wasn’t originally in the routine. At 1:13 there’s a split second where you can actually see Vil looking down at Epel like “...wut?” I immediately thought about that moment right before they go on stage where Epel offers to take on Vil’s solo’s because he looks so weak but Vil refuses. I wonder if Epel trying to take center like that is a callback to that exchange. Unfortunately, since the boys were perfectly symmetrical for the rest of the song, it stands out as awkward all the more. 

Kalim and Jamil

Lowkey, Kalim and Jamil both carried this performance after Vil. The little magic with the mic was a super nice touch and Kalim shines the most during the dance break. He seems to be having fun with it despite being in agony. What’s interesting is that after Ace and Deuce, Kalim is the most out of sync but he pulls it off well since I can tell he’s been on the stage before. Both he and Jamil are natural performers. 

Vil’s movements

So, this has been something of a headcanon of mine but it seems to have been proven correct with this mv. Vil has always struck me as someone who probably has a lot of classical dance training but little training in other styles like hip-hop or jazz. His movements are very graceful and elegant but almost…too elegant? I don’t know if that makes sense but they seem very smooth for this style of choreography. And because he’s in the center the most, it stands out the most.

AND THAT FUCKING GRAND JETE!!! Absolutely flawless but it feels SO out of place here! I will give him credit though, that is one of the most difficult jumps to pull off in ballet, and the fact he did that in fucking 5-inch heels right after the most mentally and physically traumatic episode of his life, it’s beyond impressive. And the fact he landed perfectly and so seamlessly moved into his final solo is even more remarkable. Still, that was the most jarring element of this choreography and I think it would still be out of place even if this was a “perfect” performance. 

Now here’s where I potentially piss people off

All in all this is a perfectly imperfect performance. Being completely objective and not taking my love for these characters into account, I honestly still don’t see how they lost. Well, I understand why but it still is fucked to me. I can understand Vil feeling like NRC Tribe didn’t perform their best since they were exhausted and hurting from dealing with his overblot. I can also understand that they were probably a lot more polished in rehearsal. But here’s the thing,  for a group of amateurs, I would probably expect this quality of performance even if they hadn’t had to deal with Vil’s overblot.

First off, while the choreography is rather simple from a dancers perspective, it can be pretty complex for beginners. For one, it requires a lot of synchronization to look correct. But as a beginner, perfecting synchronization alone can take months and, in larger groups, sometimes even longer. If NRC Tribe can look like this after only ONE MONTH of training, taking into account only three out of seven of them have dance experience, that’s extremely impressive.

To give an example, last year at my dance school for our end of the year showcase, the K-pop class did a cover of TWICE's Can't Stop Me. Because our class is made up of students with varying levels of experience (some none at all), it took us the better part of eight months to learn. We had to learn everything in groups of three before we could learn and practice together. And even then, we still fucked up a lot because none of us are professionals and some of us were dancing for the first time. Look at this video and tell me if you could learn this in only ONE month. Vil, can you train me please?? XD

And that brings me to the next point, the experience of all the members. Now, in Rook’s most recent birthday vignette, he mentions learning ballet and in book 5 we see Epel and Deuce taking ballet lessons. But in ballet, as a beginner, your earliest lessons are going to be almost exclusively barre work and depending on age, you might not do center work/combinations for weeks. I’m going to assume Vil is really the only one with solid dance training with Jamil and Kalim also having the most experience just dancing in general. As for the others, they were going to need a lot more training if this was going to look more polished. ESPECIALLY Ace and Deuce.

As for having to perform right after beating OB Vil’s ass, again I was expecting to see A LOT more noticeable errors. And knowing what they all just went through honestly makes me admire this all the more. The thing is, it’s easy to be beautiful when everything is right and perfect in your world. But being able to smile even when you’re struggling and your heart is breaking is even more beautiful still. Personally, I don’t think I could perform even half as well if it were me. 

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a MV of Neige’s performance so I could do a fully fair analysis. But if we look at all the evidence, it seems to me that NRC Tribe still gave a better performance. And I think the true tragedy here isn’t even that NRC Tribe lost since I think that was always a given considering the dynamic NRC and RSA has.

The true tragedy, I think, is that Vil could be convinced that this perfectly imperfect performance was still inferior to Neige’s. But I’ll leave that for another time. 

can you write for Tonowari x reader but there’s no ronal in this one.

Water on Rock

Pairing: Tonowari / Reader

Word Count: 1,037

Warnings: Hunting, animal death. Does not contain spoilers for The Way of Water. Does not contain gore. Does mentions of blood and minor injury.

Summary: You want to go fishing and bite off a little more than you can chew. Tonowari decides to lend you a hand.

Gif by bbutterrcuppp

Small waves crashed against the rock you crouched upon. Deep blue water crawled up the stone platform, trying to lick at your feet. You ignored it resolutely, too focused on your task to pay much mind to the chilly liquid trying to reach your crouching form. Your tail swayed ever so slightly from side to side. Your ears stood at attention, perked up while you tried to pinpoint a sound in the swirling depths. There was the caw of an avian creature in the distance. There was the soft splash of water on rock. There was the distant sounds of the village, which you could hear from your post. And suddenly- there. There it was. 

Something dark, moving below the surface. You could hear its lithe body shooting through the water. The small ripples it made. Swift as the very thing you hunted, you slammed your spear downwards, catching the fish in the center of its back and effectively ending its life. A triumphant grin tugged at your lips, baring your teeth to the water.

Victory tasted a lot like salty air.

You stood and started to pull your spear from the water. It was oddly heavy. The creature you speared wasn’t that large. Surely it wasn’t this weighted on its own. You leaned over the edge of the rock, squinting down into the waters below. The dark shape had stopped moving. Maybe if you just got a closer look…

It sprang to life suddenly. You could see now a little too late that your spear had struck it beside its fin, not in its back. It was playing dead to fool you. A squawk that was hardly dignified of the village Tsahìk left your lips as you were yanked forward into the water. The crisp air of fall had made the water carry a slight chill, and it washed over you now. You held on stubbornly through your spear. Pain shot through your stomach. The stubborn little thing was pulling your spear- and, unfortunately, you along with it. Your body dragged along rocks, smacking into what felt like every hard surface beneath the water. You tightened your grip on your weapon and yanked backwards, pulling the fish back towards yourself. The butt end of your spear smacked you in the nose. 

Cursing angrily, you expelled all your air at once. Your spear slipped from your hands and blood made the water by your head murky. Despite your lack of oxygen, you shot forward after the creature that had caused all of this. You were going to kill it with your teeth. Or, you would have, had a second spear not cut through the water and pierced it correctly, pinning it to a formation of rock. Seconds later, a hand grasped onto the back of your neck and hauled you out of the water like you were no more than a misbehaving child. You thrashed, gasping once the cold air hit your wet skin. Your hand struck something solid and you heard a hiss.

“Really?” A voice demanded. Your ears shot up at its familiarity. They then lowered with sheepishness. Still holding the back of your neck was your dearly beloved mate who you hadn’t at all meant to smack. His expression was a deadpan one.

“I did not know it was you,” you said. It was a little difficult to turn your head towards him, and so you settled for awkwardly looking at him from your peripheral. “How did you find me?”

His hand released you. You were able to turn now and get a look at him. His expression was severe, and the thought of disappointing your lover made your heart drop like a stone. Only one thing stopped you from being completely dejected. His lips were set in a hard line. Too firm to be natural. And his posture was rigid like he was trying to prevent a movement of sorts. He inhaled, and- Great Mother.

He was trying not to laugh. The realization had you gasping, and your hand settled over your heart in mock offense.

“You!” You cried. 

His resolve broke. Tonowari’s eyes crinkled around the edges, clear evidence of his smile.

“It was hard not to realize something was wrong,” he said. “I could see the bubbles and splashing from the village. Is it not beneath you to play with the fish?”

“I was not playing,” you hissed. “There was an attempt on my life. Look at me!”

He looked you up and down. His eyes lingered on your stomach. Then, they shot up to your face.

“Did the fish do that to you?”

Once more, you hissed. “The fish was vicious.”

“I am sure.” He circled you. His hand gently touched your lower back- his palm alone covering the entirety of it. “It seems as though it was able to claim victory against you.”

“I had it.” It was a little difficult to focus on defending yourself when his skin was so warm whilst your body was so cold. Perhaps if you kept talking, he would linger. You tilted your head back to look up at him once more and found he was equally focused on you. He was bent over- just barely- as though trying to near your height- and suddenly even breathing was difficult. Your breath caught in your throat.

“You should dress your wounds.” His face was so close to yours.

“I should.” Your gaze was locked on his lips. His hand drifted upwards on your back. He began to lean down, stopping when he was mere inches from your face. Your eyes snapped back up to meet his. He smiled.

“And I should retrieve our meal. If it is still edible after you poked so many holes in it.”

Bastard.

His hand dropped from your back, leaving your skin cold in his absence. He turned away from you and began making his way down the sand towards where his spear still stuck out of the water. You were left with your hand on your heart. It pounded frantically beneath your palm. You huffed and turned away from him, making your way back to the village, resolute in the fact that you would be getting him back.

I DNF'd Mistorn: Here's Why

Disclaimer: You asked for this. Let me start there. Don't get mad at me, Mistborn lover. If you clicked on this link, and that means you are taking the dagger into your own hand. The wound is self-inflicted!

I did not finish Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I know, I know, its actually called The Final Empire. The name Mistborn has stuck with so many readers for a reason, so I'll continue to use it as a shorthand. The book didn't work for me, but I think WHY it didn't work for me might be interesting to read about, especially for fellow authors.

If you have read and enjoyed the Mistborn books, or any work by Brandon Sanderson, I'm delighted. I want to applaud any work of fiction that brings people joy (so long as it or its author is not reprehensible in some way (he said, covering his ass)). I don't want you to think this is me taking shots at you or at Sanderson. I'm just talking about a work of fiction and what it did to my brain.

Believe me when I tell you I have no delusions about being some high-handed minister of good taste. You should see some of the anime I watch to destress at the end of a long day trying to be a self-published author, editor, and, well, just an ordinary semi-functioning human being.

I've read many, many books and loved them, only to come back to them later and find they were … less deserving of my matured tastes. Sometimes books meet us at the right time. If Mistborn was, or is, one such book for you, I would be a jerk and a fool if I tried to tell you that you were wrong for liking it. That isn't what this is. But, if you're at all curious why I didn't like it the way you did, here are my thoughts.

Instead of trying to construct some long elaborate essay, I've decided to present my reading notes as I was writing them. If you're at all familiar with my SPFBO9 opening reads thread, this is in a similar, though much protracted style. This is my travelogue of the first few chapters. If these notes are rough or feel stilted in places, I'm sorry. I DNF'd the book a few months ago, and I found in trying to clean up my notes that I was making up commentary to fill in gaps and I don't think that's fair. I've tried to provide some context where I could.

Pages referenced are from the first mass market edition, published August 2007 by Tor

My Notes:

Starts well enough. Interesting introduction to the fantastic elements of the environment (the ash fall) and the enslavement of the skaa. Some neat 2nd world titles “obligator,” etc.

Not great, not riveting, but competent introduction of world and one protagonist, Kelsier. He doesn't know what to do with Vin, though. Disconnect between the characters as we're told they are and their actions. Lacking coherent motivation.

(P.5)The slave that stands and stares defiantly sending a chill through the lord so-and-so is a bit melodramatic. Both actions struck me as over the top.

(writing note)…too many “of courses”

The writing is competent and descriptive. The Mist at night is another interesting setting detail.

(p.6) I immediately dislike Kelsier. “I’ll have to cure them of that (fear of the mist) some day.” This is has an unsympathetic arrogance about it. If this is also the man who stared defiantly at lord-so-and-so, hes blasé about endangering these people, and seems to look down on them, much like lord-so-and-so. I suspect this impression is not intentional. I suspect I’m supposed to think him strong and clever. We’ll see.

(7) rolling his eyes at these people. This seems intentional. But it’s also annoying.

(10) beatings beatings beatings. These “peasants” and their daily beatings. Did I mention the beatings? Their lives are harsh! There are beatings!

(‘) what is this talk about Tepper “leading” the skaa? Leading them how? They’re slaves! What decisions are they making? No, really. What is this forced little conflict? It’s pointless.

(‘) “How do you do that?” “What?” “Smile all the time” - there’s no reason for him to ask this. It’s unmotivated dialogue. How do you smile all the time? How? No. Why, sure. “You keep smiling. Is something about our home funny to you?”

(19-20, ch.1) I’m having trouble with Sandersons storytelling. This is coming across as heavy handed and simplistic. Here’s Vin. She was betrayed. There are betrayals. This boy who came to get her who’s nice enough will also betray her. But the ash is free…

I wonder if we’re going to slowly work through the alphabet section by section. Ash, then beatings and betrayal… who knows what could be next? Crime? I bet it’s crime.

Also - Reen’s sayings and betrayal. I think in general I find it a bit affected when we meet a character and they’re immediately thinking of their backstory … but that’s probably not fair of me. I think what comes across as affected is Sandersons execution. There’s a very light fiction - YA quality about Vin’s angsty introduction. I might have loved it if I read it at 14, but not now.

I’d like to think of an example of what would be more appealing to me - the introduction of a character with similar enough circumstances… Actually, Gideon the 9th might be a good example. We get to hear Gideon’s voice in the prose and the dialogue and get a strong sense of her character as well as the specific and very interesting world building details of how she got into the 9th house. Here, Reen’s betrayal is left completely unexplored, and so I wonder why bring it up at all except for that cheap YA punch in the gut of “my brother betrayed me and now I’m here.”

Maybe Sanderson felt some necessity to move faster here. He wanted to get to the city theiving … but it isn’t working for me, so obviously I think it was a mistake. Obviously he was hoping this would create a sense of anticipation that we would eventually find out HOW Vin’s brother betrayed her, but because he leads with it and then doesn’t explain it, it makes it seem like it doesn’t really matter HOW Vin was betrayed, what’s important is that she was betrayed and now she doesn’t trust anyone. It’s just a bit weak.

THE HEAVY HANDEDNESS (People being mean to Vin - her hard life) (21) the slap in the face (23) Theron looking Vin up and down - “eyes lingered on her … running down the length of her body. … She was hardly enticing (didn’t even look 16); some men preferred such women, however.” (24) “what do you know?” “Enough” - Vin hurts her, expositional dialogue about her brother’s debt and selling her to a whorehouse.

(25) fearing Vin would disappear in a scene she doesn’t have much to do during, we get these unnecessary interjections of her watching the interaction, followed by the explanation of Camon thinking Vin is his good luck charm. This should have been presented earlier, because it just interrupts the dialogue here. But also, it feels inaccurate after Vin made such a useful critique of Camon’s servants. She seems much more useful in other ways than a luck charm, and comfortable offering her criticism without the slightest hesitation.

This chapter ends rather abruptly and without much Go to it. Vin uses her Luck and gets our stuffy official to consider her boss’s mundane business proposal.

The notion that Camon brings Vin along because he thinks of her as his luck charm feels really thin, especially on a job like this where everyone has to look the part. Which raises an important question: what was Vin doing there? I mean literally. Why didn’t Camon have SOMETHING for her to do. Camon didn’t dress her up in any part, she didn’t have any kind of cover story as his daughter or nurse or anything. Just some kid in the room dressed … who knows how while important official business is discussed. She just floats somewhere, doing nothing, as far as anyone is concerned.

VIN’S MOTIVATION Where is it? What does she get out of making this work for Camon if he has no idea what she’s doing? Why is she avoiding him if this is such an important job? Why is she helping him at all?

The pieces are there, but Sanderson doesn’t put them together.

Camon should know about Vin’s ability to “smooth things over” in some capacity. This would give him a serious reason for her being there on this crucial job. Vin should be motivated to help him because if this lucrative job works out, it will go a long way towards paying off her brother’s debt. Now suddenly there is a sense of urgency for her instead of just having a bad time owned by a “crew leader” getting slapped around. The scam itself isn’t enough. Frankly, it’s kind of boring at this point. It’s a slow moving beurocratic swindle.

(32) Kelsier. Sanderson is doing a good job introducing some thieves’ cant here as Dockson and Kelsier are planning their job, talking about how they need a “Smoker.” Someone is a good Tineye. The loss of a man to the Steel Ministry underscores the mortal risk these men are taking. But … there’s something about all this crime play that feels a bit cute, like Sanderson had only a passing, generic understanding of (fictional) gangs/criminal organizations. He’s spent his world building energy on the fantasy aspects of the story - the dystopian Tolkien Lord Ruler and Steel Ministry, skaa, ashfalls, mist - but not on developing the criminal world of the characters, linguistically speaking. They’re all crews working on a job headed by a crew leader. This is the world we’re living in, most immediately, and yet it feels the most underdeveloped.

“Kelsier shook his head. ‘No. He’s a good Smoker, but he’s not a good enough man.’ Dockson smiled. ‘Not a good enough man to be on a THIEVING CREW … Kell, I have missed working with you.”

This stopped me dead. I laughed at the book and put my hand over my eyes. “Thieving crew” is just silly. It’s sixth grade D&D language, but even more ridiculous is the sentiment of Dockson’s statement: that character is somehow a moot point because they are criminals. It’s as if he’s saying: we’re breaking the law, so we’re the bad guys, and bad guys don’t work with “good men.”

Here we see Sanderson’s shallow understanding of the characters he’s portraying. They are stealing from slavers who exist in the service of a brutal, oppressive dictator. But put that aside, and consider we’ve just been told one of their ilk had been caught and beheaded by the Ministry. The risk these people are facing couldn’t be higher. Working with people they can trust, a stand up guy or a “good man,” would be one of the most important things to them. From their point of view a “good man” doesn’t mean a patron saint of the poor, but it means a hell of a lot. If a guy is a drunk who cheats on his wife, you can’t trust him not to turn on you. If he gambles too much, you can’t trust him not to gamble on your safety. He doesn’t keep his apartment clean, how can you trust him to be conscientious about keeping you alive. It all matters - even more so because he’s on a “thieving crew.”

Now, Sanderson probably didn’t give this line more than a moment's thought. He was writing fast and sailed right over it. But that’s exactly the problem. It gives the book a kind of childish, YA feeling.

(33) “Kelsier turned with curious eyes.” I’ve written lines like this, but I almost always revise them because I write about eyes too much. The point is his eyes aren’t curious, Kelsier is, and it shows on his face. I can’t picture curious eyes, and I’m sure you can’t either. And I would cut the next line of dialogue - going to chastise my brother … we already know he was going to do this because he said so, and the line just isn’t very good anyway. A look of curiosity from Kell, and the promise from Dockson “it’ll be worth your time,” gets us out of the section better. Sometimes the best repartee between characters is a look.

(33-34) the scenes with Vin remain heavy handed, and affected. This section adds almost nothing to the story accept for the disappointingly narrow view of a fantasy underworld that the women in it are only ever whores. This from a world crawling with Smokers and Tineyes? I think not. The clumsy presentation of Vin’s awful life is what makes these sections particularly affected. With her particular ability to use her Luck, I can’t help but wonder why she’s even still here. That seems to be the story to me. Not the abuse, but why she remains when she clearly has the power to get out. She can smooth over deals with reps from the SM, but she hasn’t thought to calm some member of the crew and then just … walk? Go literally anywhere in the city and use her Luck to get work where she won’t be whipped and slapped. It seems like the easiest thing in the world, so why hasn’t she done it? This is what the story here could have been, and it would have been so much more interesting.

Obviously she has to be there so Sanderson can have terrible things happen to her so she can be saved by Kelsier just like he saved the other raped scaa girl (let’s all take a moment to roll our eyes) and then her character can have a trajectory from passive victim to active hero - but that’s an excuse, and excuses don’t make good stories.

That said, as is, these two pages could be cut entirely and with very minor revision to the next session, nothing would be lost. It introduces a hideout we don’t need to know about, abuse that is redundant, over the top and unmotivated, and then Camon says “it’s time.” It’s just a prelude, in which nothing happens, before the actual scene. So just cut to the actual scene.

(36) we finally find out what the Camon job was supposed to be, I suspect because Sanderson finally decided what the details were. It would have been much more interesting to know this earlier, just like it would have been more interesting to understand about the particulars of Vin’s brothers betrayal earlier, so we could understand the context of the story being told.

But a LARGER ISSUE continues to emerge. First Camon tells Vin nothing about his plans. She says she is apparently the only crew member who didn’t know what was going on. Then, as they sit in the waiting room, in the vey belly of the obligator beast, he tells her everything. Why? Because Sanderson wants us to know even though he never decided who this character was.

He wants her to be a passive victim of inordinate abuses by a group of irredeemable villains, who only avoids constant sexual assault through the exhausting use of her secret magic so she can be saved and then learn how to be powerful later. But he also wants her to be a smart, capable member of Camon’s crew who is considered as such, because he knows passive protagonists aren’t interesting and because he wants us, the reader, to know what’s going on, and also think that Vin is cool. She can’t be both at the same time. She either needs to be less of an abject, pathetic victim, or she needs to be less involved in this big important scam - and that means she knows less about it and does less to make it work. As is, he’s done too little with either idea of her character and both Vin and Camon are an unmotivated mess.

(42) steel inquisitor. Cool, creepy, disgusting - something straight out of hellraiser.

(43) “Besides, I’m not about to let a possible Mistborn slip away from us” Ah!

Ch3 (45) after the meeting with the obligator (that was a trap), is the first time Vin ever expresses any interest in getting away. Much too late Sanderson gives us a much too thin reason why Vin hasn’t run away (considering the conflicting versions of her character as mentioned before). It’s little more than an afterthought.

(47) in no more than 2 pages Vin goes from never thinking she could make it on her own to leaving for good, telling herself she’d survived sleeping in alleyways before, she could do it again and - “Reen had taught her how to scavenge and beg. Both were difficult in the Final Empire … but she would find a way, if she had too.”

So far, this is all based on a bad feeling. More motivation conflict - Vin has no problem telling Camon directly how his plans won’t work and that he should change the way the servants are dressed, helps him succeed with her luck in both plans, but sees no reason to tell him “I have a bad feeling about this. That was too easy. Why did that obligator suddenly agree. Doesn’t this seem weird to you?”

Sanderson has many of the right pieces, but he hasn’t been able to put them together coherently.

(45)(And, just as an aside, I’m not sure why a girl who has spent to book so far reiterating to herself that EVERYONE WILL BETRAY ME is going out of her way to tell Ulef she has a bad feeling and to get him to come with her. Sanderson says “if he would go with her, then at least she wouldn’t be alone.” But he has also up until this point defined her character by a near constant desire to be alone - when she is introduced sitting in the window of the hideout thinking her brothers word “Vin wasn’t on duty; the watch-hole was simply one of the few places where she could find solitude. And Vin liked solitude. ‘When you’re alone, no one can betray you’- (37) at the “It’s just another betrayal, she thought sickly. Why does it still bother me so? Everyone betrays everyone else. That’s the way life is … She wanted to find a corner - someplace cramped and secluded - and hide. Alone.”

(47) "Bringing Ulef was a good idea. He had contacts in Luthadel." These after the fact explanations are no good. This isn't Vin thinking this, it's the author coming up with more justification for Vin's action, but in order for her character to seem active and motivated, this needed to be revised into the section where Vin decides to bring Ulef. Now it's just tacked on - oh, yeah, and, by the way, if you weren't sure it made sense for Vin to do this, Ulef probably knows people. So, there.

It doesn’t wash. Who is this girl? Can she not stand the idea of being alone, or is it the one and only thing she wants? Is she strong and resourceful in spite of her circumstances, or is she a passive victim? Does she believe everyone will betray her, or does she desperately want to believe otherwise because she can’t live in such an unkind world? Sanderson doesn’t seem to have been able to make up his mind. Maybe some of these details were added in revision on the suggestion of beta readers and the result is a checkerboard character. I’ve seen that before where you make a suggestion to a writer and they add your suggestion but they don’t make the necessary changes to the rest of the book so that the new material earns its place, they just throw it in and dust off their hands - job well done, gotta stay on schedule to publish! But now I’m just writing fan fiction about Sanderson’s process. I don’t know.

(55) Vin’s “weakness” - the contradictions/inexactitude of characters seems to be an ongoing issue for Sanderson, at least for Vin. Is she weak and has to pretend to be strong, or is she strong and often chooses to pretend to be weak (so far she has seemed to be weak and act weak, other than her Luck).

Well, that's as far as I got. Kel shows up just in time to be the wrath of justice for Vin. He's the superman who will make everything alright for this feckless girl. Our hero. Did Sanderson lay it on thick enough? Did you get that these people were all so irredeemably and stupidly bad? Aren't you so glad this strong man has shown up to be Vin's vengeance, just like had been telegraphed all along?

Sorry, I don't mean to be sarcastic. This part of the narrative really isn't so bad, its just been so heavy handedly and clumsily lead up to that there's no thrill in it for me. It isn't a bit satisfying. I'm just glad I don't have to read about any of these shallow side-characters anymore. Except, I have no intention to read on, so I don't have to read about any of them anymore.

Is this book bad? Yes and no. I don't want to read any more, and only read as far as I did as an examination of storytelling, so for me its bad. You only get so many eyerolls before I have to say that. The sentences are very clear and coherent. On their own, they are coherent. Together, they fail to paint of picture of coherent characters who drive the action of the story. If you don't have that, at least in my book, you've got nothing.

The images work. The setting, in its broad strokes, is eveocative. I'd love to set a DnD campaign in a world of ash and a dark lord and all that (I'm not the least mad about the cliché of the dark lord, by the way. Who doesn't love archetypical stories?) But, as near as I can tell, there are no human beings in this book. No one is real. The characters are just that, only characters in a book. They are paper cutouts. They fall flat when the hand of the author isn't pushing them around and making them do things.

Fans often hold Sanderson up as the gold standard of a fantasy author who produces work fast. And having read this far into Mistborn, I can say this about it: It reads like it was written fast.

Yes, Mistborn was an earlier book of his, so I can't judge him by it alone. But it is a work that is so often held up as a favorite by his readers. That's why I picked it up, to see what all the fuss was about. There were many things I enjoyed, but what I enjoyed wasn't the narrative. The story and the characters who moved it were the thing that I enjoyed least. The unique magic and broad setting details and description of places and creepy Inquisitors were what I liked best. The proper nouns were fun.

But proper nouns don't make a story for me. So I did not finish Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.

If I were looking for a light fantasy read that I didn't have to take seriously and I could pick up and put down whenever I wanted because it was never that exciting or particularly witty or clever, but managed to string along one event after another and kept them going, more or less, whether it made much sense or not, until the end, I think Mistborn would be a fine book to dip into. Lots of people have read it. But then, that seems to me to be its major appeal. It’s a book you can talk about with other people.

It's not enough for me, though. There's lots of fun fantasy books out there that feel more coherent, and, well, INTERESTED in the story they're telling. Interested in violence and revolution and crime in an oppressively totalitarian, dystopian world. Interested in the plight of a young girl who only wants … well, what does she want? To be safe? But the only way she finds she can be safe is to go toward danger and realize how very strong she is? Maybe this story would like to be that, but it hasn't been for the first 60 or so pages.

Sanderson's novel felt more interested in the large and vague story shapes around the characters - a city, a dark lord, slavery, soot snow, bad mist, some kinds of magic, and (I cringe to say it) rape and thieving and beatings - but not in the world of their lives.

I've heard good things about The Way Of Kings from people who did not like Mistborn either, but its safe to say at this point that I have reservations about my reading tastes being a good match for Sanderson's work, at least at this point in time.

If I'm looking for fun I'd rather read another swanky, noir fantasy by Douglas Lumsden any day, or the next gothic gaslamp fantasy mystery by Morgan Stang, or discover my next favorite author, indie or otherwise.

I don't think Mistborn was terrible by any stretch of the imagination. Sanderson has delighted readers for over a decade now! He's prolific, hard working, and he delivers what his fans want, and he and they continue to be richly rewarded for his efforts. He is a Name in the genre, often listed alongside the greats. And why not? Isn't pleasing readers what this is all about? Taylor Swift has oceans of adoring fans, and she's no less deserving of her accolades. Brandon Sanderson is the Taylor Swift of fantasy, you could say. I just don't like her music either.

I absolutely have to know Arthur's and tommys reaction to the dogs destroying the garden while they are just chilling tgt

Dear little shadow: You asked, I provide! 😁 Beware, Kaiser the disaster is back.

A Bone To Pick With It

Words: 1.4K

Notes: blurb related to this one shot. This work is a part of Heaven in Your Eyes' universe, but you can obviously read it as a stand-alone.

Arthur emptied his glass of whisky in one only mouthful, the alcohol leaving a pleasant burning sensation in its trail, “Well, if you have nothing more to tell me I’ll be off then, Tom.” Saying so, the oldest Shelby brother put back the glass on the varnished wooden table before getting up from the couch with a faint, slightly confident smile. And when he smiled, it struck Tommy: Arthur looked like a man who had finally found peace — such a thing he never thought his older brother was capable of. Yet, it had been evident from the moment he entered the mansion that his decision of leaving Birmingham and marrying you was the best thing he could have done for his well-being, no matter how painful it was for Tommy to admit it. Thomas Shelby and his never-ending neutral expression answered Arthur with a faint “hm” as his ice-cold turquoise eyes followed his movements. 

“Where is your wife, Arthur?” He inquired. The truth was the question had been burning his tongue for a while, but he did not want to sound like he really cared about you. Since you’ve been bailed out of prison, you had seen Tommy only once and it was during your wedding. Despite the raging hatred you felt for Tommy, you didn’t want to deprive Arthur of his little brother’s presence on such a significant day. Even less when taking into account he still wanted him to be his best man. 

Arthur raised one brow, “Erm. She’s waiting outside, eh.” 

“She should have waited inside. The air is fresher and Frances would have served her a drink.” His quiet voice retorted. But Arthur wasn’t fooled by his nice words, for Tommy’s tone remained empty of affection. He was just being cordial — maybe trying to make up for the whole prison thing.

“She said she wanted to read under a tree and play with Kaiser,” Arthur paused, his beautiful steel blue eyes looking at his feet for he hesitated to utter the following words, “And she still holds a grudge for what you did to us — which I perfectly understand. She has every right to feel so,” He paused, “They made her sleep on the ground during the first week like she was a bloody animal, y’ know.” 

“Arthur. She’s safe and sound now.” Tommy corrected.

“If you say so, Tom.” Arthur waved off the topic with a quick hand gesture for he really did not want to argue with Tom. More than anyone else he was aware of his little brother’s tendencies to never apologize, and it was not going to change. Moreover, they just had a pleasant moment together, and he wouldn’t want to ruin it. Tommy finally nodded, understanding his brother’s limits. 

“Well, I’ll see you to the door.” 

Thereby, the two brothers walked through the long corridors of Arrow House, talking about what they were planning to do for Christmas, or how Charles had started to learn violin. He even mentioned, to Arthur’s greatest surprise, how great your wedding has been. 

When they reached the door, Tommy was the one who opened it. With his eyes still focused on his brother, he did not immediately notice the chaos that was taking place in his garden. It was Arthur that saw it first and, as he did, his eyes widened with shock. 

Fuck, he thought.

“Oh. Fuck.” Alfie blurted out at the sight of Tommy’s frame, “Well, Mrs. Shelby, meeting you was a real pleasure. I hope you’ll come to Margate so that our two gentle beasts can play together again. I would be saddened to deprive Cyril of his new friend. In the meantime, I wish you well! Cyril?”  The huge bullmastiff looked at his master, blinked, and then kept scampering across the yard with Kaiser. At first, this sudden change in behavior left you slightly confused, but everything became clear when your mesmerizing eyes fell on Tommy and Arthur.

“If you thought you could leave and let me face the consequences alone, well, joke on you Alfie.”

“Pretty sure you’ve cast a spell upon my dog!” Alfie exclaimed.

You replied to the king of Camden Town with a mysterious smirk, whose beauty was embellished by the little spark of amusement that was shining bright in your ethereal eyes. In any case, you wouldn't have the time to answer properly for Tommy’s booming voice raged in the garden with the terrifying power of a lion’s roar.

“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THAT?!” His hoarse tone was quivering with both anger and utter shock. Now you were in trouble, you thought. His voice was still echoing in the wind when the two huge dogs stopped playing and looked at him. He went on, staring at you and Alfie with fury blazing in his sky-blue eyes, “I can’t believe it, eh. You let your beasts ruin my garden without batting an eye eh. Is that how you thank someone who invites you into his house?!” 

“Cm’on, Tommy, mate, we would be heartless creatures if we kept our dogs from playing together in this oh so-beautiful property of yours. A truly idyllic place for a play date uh! It’s nothing else than a few crushed flowers and holes. You should learn to chill — eh, maybe adopt a dog too. It would do good to your old rotten heart, y’know.” As he talked, Alfie patted his chest where his heart was.  

“Just a few crushed flowers, Thomas.” You reiterated, biting your lower lip to hold back the giggles that were threatening you to burst at any moment. 

“Fuck. Both of you.” The gangster turned to his own brother, “How many times I’ve told you to control your damn witch. The same applies to your fucking dog, now! Look at my fucking garden. Look at— Wait,” He leaned to his brother, “Are you laughing at me, Arthur?”

“N-No,” He snorted, an adorable pink shade has blossomed on his hollow cheeks. As for his eyes, they blurred with tears of hilarity. At this very moment, Arthur was trying hard to keep his composure but each time he glanced at Tommy’s face, which was contorted with disproportionate wrath compared to the dogs’ wrongdoing, he felt his self-control break down. The way Tommy was staring at him with his eyes squinted and his lips parted was too comical to remain impassive. Arthur let out a shaky sigh, still battling with the urge to laugh. Then, he crouched down to be at Kaiser’s level, “Oi Kaiser, ye big disaster, what did ye do eh? You’re a very mean boy, eh. Our Angel’s far too understanding with ye.” The Cane Corso’s ears perked up at his master’s gravel voice, causing his small beady eyes to look at him with attention, “Yeah I’m talking to ye, bloody rascal. Cm’here.” Kaiser wagged his tail in contentment, his back paws stomping the ground as he listened to Arthur, “Big boy’s happy eh?” It was enough for the mutt to rush toward his master with the speed of a cannonball and caused Arthur’s smile to vanish when he realized that a hundred pounds barking beast was about to plow into him with absolute zero intention of being gentle, “Oh fook no!” He exclaimed, panic spreading within his chest. Judging by how lean he was, he would not give much for his bones if the muscular dog bounced on him.

“OH MY GOD KAISER STOP!” You yelled at the dog when you saw him rushing toward your poor husband, but it was in vain. Kaiser was so excited at the idea of being pet by Arthur that it only made him run faster. Afraid of being smashed by the giant Cane Corso, Arthur, in all his survival instincts, moved behind Tommy to hide from the beast.

“Oh no,” You whispered, your frail hand covering your mouth.

“Oh yes,” Alfie smirked.

“DONT YOU—“ Tommy could not finish his sentence. Kaiser was running so fast that he did not get that Arthur had moved from the way until it was too late. That was why the giant dog jumped at Tommy and, doing so, tackled him with all his strength. Before anyone could do something, Kaiser shoved the infamous Peaky Blinders boss into a puddle of mud. Tommy hit the ground with a big thud, and mud splashed all over his clothes. But it did was not enough for Kaiser, who aggressively started to lick his face and shower him with doggie love.

At first, silence hovered above Arrow House’s garden as everyone was slowly realizing what had just happened.  

The confused look on Tommy’s usually placid face. The expensive suit ruined with fresh mud. Kaiser’s doing his best to cover Tommy’s with his sticky drool… Arthur, Alfie, and you burst into laughter at the very same time. 

“He likes you, Tom!” Arthur stated, tears running down his cheeks. He had to press his hands against his right side, convinced he would crack his ribs by dint of laughing, “Even if you seem to have a bone to pick with him, eh.” 

“Shut up, Arthur.” Tommy growled. His face was red with rage, yet you did not know if it was due to Kaiser or to the bad pun, “Shut up.” 

✞ Any comment, review, reblog, or constructive criticism is welcome. Your reactions really motivate me and keep me alive, so please don't be shy. English is not my first language.

So The Amazing Digital Circus has latched onto my brain like a particularly stubborn tick so now I gotta share a theory of mine from the Pilot.

Considering it's all, indeed, digital and the mental health of its occupants ties to their stability, I bet their avatars are near direct reflections of themselves and their issues/flaws, albeit with a filter to fit the Fun, Child Friendly Aesthetic of the Circus.

Pomni is a classic rendition of a Jester. A Court Fool. Her eyes are incredibly expressive and even change to scribbles, hollow circles, or pure black depending on her mental state.

She likely views her life as a joke, or views herself as the punchline of a joke. She's a Fool. Whether this is due to perceived incompetence, an inability to "grow up", or simply considers herself to be lesser than her peers.

I do however use the above picture on purpose. She's an absolute nervous wreck 99% of the time, but stops while being chased by a monster and is stunned by her own reflection. That isn't a look of fear or confusion, it's awe. Something about her avatar struck a cord with her and seemed right. I personally subscribe to the theory of her being transgender and experiencing a small bout of gender euphoria amidst the horrors thanks to a post made by one demilypyro.

Jax is a Cartoon Rabbit. Not really terribly much to say about the design itself other than it being very rubber-hose animation in its proportions and the seeming default smug expression.

Jax is an asshole. He plays pranks in bad faith, is incredibly snarky and dry even to someone in distress, and doesn't seem to overly care about the others well being.

"I'm fine with doing whatever, as long as I get to see funny things happen to people." It makes sense his avatar would take a similar look to another wise-cracking cartoon rabbit we all know. He also seems the most content to actually be in the Circus itself. Considering it can let him do all manner of things to others, from the lethal to the physically impossible, he might consider it better than reality.

Ragatha is literally just raggedy ann. A patchwork doll.

She seems to be the most outwardly kind of the individuals in the circus, showing patience and understanding with Pomni even when in distress, though she clearly has a limit to said patience.

I think it's safe to assume Ragatha has been through a lot of shit for her avatar to make her seem patchwork. Which is to say, damaged multiple times and repaired each time, leaving clear marks of the repairs like scars.

Zooble is a mess of individual parts slammed together in an approximation of a humanoid shape. Like someone took dozens of pieces from all sorts of toys and put them together into an amalgam.

Gooseworx has stated they have no idea what they're even suppose to be. This can and likely does include gender, but probably includes their entire identity as a whole. Or rather, their lack of one.

For whatever reason, be it alienation, isolation, or any number of potential causes; Zooble doesn't know who they are or what they want to be. No ambitions, no dreams, no real self identity. This makes their avatar manifest as a mess that also doesn't know what it wants to be, so is a little bit of everything.

Gangle is most insubstantial, their body almost entirely a ribbon. The key part of their avatar is the mask: Comedy and Tragedy. And it seems in the few instances it's not broken, they always try to wear the comedy mask over top the tragedy mask.

Gangle's behavior makes me think she's the youngest of the individuals, at least mentally. As for the masks, something about her circumstances in life made her feel the need to put on a facade of joy. Maybe to live up to expectations, or to hide her true feelings to avoid worrying others. As an avatar, this seems to have become literal: She seems to only be happy with the mask on and discontent at best with it off/broken.

Kinger is a White King Chess Piece.

He's a forgetful paranoiac who, according to the characters, has been present in the Circus for the longest amount of time. He seems to forget where people are and what he's doing quite a bit.

In a moment of lucidity near the end, he goes in depth about how the food they eat is just simulated, and how they provide the sensation of eating despite not being real. It's also worth mentioning the ground floor of the circus is a Chess Board.

I believe Kinger is/was at least partially in charge of creating the Circus. His avatar is a walking symbol of authority, a reflection on his standing within the digital space rather than his current mental state. Perhaps the avatar was more fitting when he first entered the Circus, aware of its intricacies and rules, but has long since forgotten such things.

We don't see Kaufmo while he's uh. Normal. But we do see pictures of what he did look like: A Clown.

From the dialogue of other characters like Ragatha and Gangle, he seemed to actually try and play the role of clown during his time in the Circus, even if he wasn't terribly funny.

Kaufmo likely found himself to be a clown in reality. Maybe he was a clown in the literal sense. Or maybe he just saw himself as a funny, quirky guy to be around even if he was none of those things.

Finally, we have what happens when someone goes completely plum insane.

The Avatars are based on mental scans of the individual made to fit the aesthetic of the circus. an Abstraction is what happens when said software tries to read a mind that has no logic or reasoning left. There's nothing to find, no basis of personality, no base to work with. So in confusion the avatar becomes a glitched mess, trying and failing to find a shape within the madness to settle into.

Kinger seems to be insane, yet they're stable, because there is still an individual underneath the neurosis. There's nothing left of Kaufmo at this point: Just a cyclone of emotions inside a broken human mind.

That's the theory, anyway. It's a fucking pilot I could be entirely wrong.

Subscription for a Paintbrush

A painter might feel like a paintbrush is an extension of themselves, developing muscle memory and skill to create beauty. But what happens when that tool is owned by someone else, and they charge rent? What if they've decided to take it away from you? What if they've decided your art isn't yours?

As a 3D artist, I was professionally trained in using Autodesk Maya, a 3D modelling and animation application. I became really good with it, and grew to love it! I used it at work and at home for my own projects. It became muscle memory, an extension of myself, an organ for expression.

The full version of Maya is ludicrously expensive at CA$2,500 a year! So I had to settle for a cheaper version called Maya LT. It was missing some features, but I wasn't using them at the time so it worked out. I paid CA$360 a year for 3 years.

COVID struck, and I lost my job. I had to use savings to continue paying my license for an additional 2 years, yet in that time they provided no updates. I was just paying for access.

In 2022, Autodesk announced that Maya LT was being discontinued, replaced by a new version called Maya Creative. Instead of a subscription, you'd buy "tokens", spending one token for 24 hours of use. You could only buy tokens in bulk, the cheapest being 100 tokens for CA$405, and they expire after one year.

I've never seen such a predatory, disgusting pricing model for a piece of software. It's like an arcade machine! I thought subscriptions were bad enough! I refused to participate.

Despite spending nearly two grand, the tool I love is going to deactivate itself soon, and I don't have any say in it. It's bytes will still be on my computer, but it'll refuse to launch. Maya LT had a proprietary file format, so all of my projects will be unusable.

It feels like I'm losing a part of myself.

I feel like a fool for even letting this happen in the first place. I let myself become attached to a tool I didn't even own, run by a faceless corporation! My own art is being held hostage! How unfair! Should it even be called a tool, or a service?

I've been avoiding 3D art lately, focusing on programming and game development. My friends and I started working on a game in the Unity Game Engine. A couple months in, Unity's owners were saying and doing some unsavoury things, so we swapped to the Godot Engine. I feel incredibly lucky that we did because of the Unity drama that followed.

Unity wanted to start charging a fee for every user that installed your game. They wanted this to apply to every Unity game retroactively. This is obviously a stupid idea, and they walked it back, but it begs the question: Do you even own the game you developed? It seems like you don't.

I don't want to let myself fall into this trap again. I feel like we as artists form a personal relationship with our tools, and it shouldn't have to be an abusive one! I want to own my art and tools! That shouldn't be difficult as a digital artist! I've been recommended some proprietary subscription based "tools" by friends recently, and I refuse to use them. I won't let this happen to me again.

I'm going to use as much open source software as I can. Open source software is the only software you can truly "own". You have access to the code, and you can do with it as you please! It's often democratically run by the community! You can distribute it to your friends, and it's not piracy! There's a ton of excellent open source art software out there, and I encourage you to check it out!

Autodesk broke my heart. When I get back into 3D art, I'm going to be learning Blender.

subjects you to warden essence b tier talk

okay so like, i really love the b tiers of wardens essence the design for all the characters is strongly tied together, i enjoy our b tier cast is all in there as prisoners and matching i have a lot of say actually about each and the insects/arachnid theyre subjected to i love majority of all the cast and need to gush about it i have a lot of say actually about each and the insects/arachnid theyre subjected to i love majority of all the cast and need to gush about it

even altrusitic ganji is there, as worker bee

mirroring his true backstory, the description especially "They praise my patience while pulling out my stinger." bees only attack once feeling threatened, to defend the hive and queen that worker bees quote " They act as nurse bees taking care of the young bees and the queen, as housekeepers who work to clean and expand the hive and as foragers and scouts who bring back food and seek out new hive locations. As a worker ages, it takes on different roles inside and outside of the hive." taking care of the young, who seek out new locations, it just makes me think of his trailer particularly for the 'pulling out my stinger' its not just that bees die once their stingers are used…Bees can actually sting insects multiple times "they also have stingers, but they can only sting mammals once and then they die. They can, however, sting other insects over and over again to protect the hive." that mammals have thick skin that they cant pull their stinger out of. causing them to die when trying to pull it out that theyre pulling out the stinger, these 'gentleman' [the wolves theyre portrayed as in his trailer his stinger to be caught] he only struck out of necessity- out of hostility from the other even when he waited to strike, his patience can only last so long

Vera [my love and personal favorite girl] as scorpion all about reflection of the self- of who/what she isnt "When I look at myself in the mirror, I wonder if I should show more kindness to others." in her description

a woman cast out continually by others around treated as lesser of the two sisters and odd, to have her interests dashed by her own parents over and over, that no one 'cared' Chloe Nair disappeared, that she could play the part of vera "The vast majority of scorpions are nonsocial, solitary animals that interact only at birth, during courtship, or for cannibalism." cannibalism, to not just eating another but if we want we can even infer the whole 'there can only be one scorpion. eating the twin. taking that place of territory.

jack as a centipede- which are natural hunters and aggressive by nature purposeful in chasing prey Description: "Mind your temperance in hunting; only then can you enjoy everlasting fun." the painted on red grin of his face. he's remorseless. this is all ripper and how he thrives as the predator, that for him this is his entertainment. its almost funny hes a prisoner here to be 'reformed' when he shows no sign of care for his prey or what he did. The only one with a painted smile - red that could have been made to symbolize how he eats his prey and thats blood

Norton as Ant Description: "What has group living taught me? To enjoy competition and embrace pressure? Or one should possess charity to avoid being perceived as evil."

the 2nd blatant piece of information before fools gold drop about how being around those other miners weren't that nice, competition and pressure? how he would help his family before fully leaving when he seemed to be a caring boy

like a miner ants both dig under the ground in careful crafted tunnels and hard workers but are also looked on upon with no empathy by many from kids to adults and regarded with disgust, trying to take the scraps to live and survive. That their lives hold no worth- especially with how many there are seen as pests even though they dont bite [except fire ants of course but this is just a regular ant]

naiad as a mayfly which "They usually come out of the water at dawn or just before nightfall to transform into adults, but some species leave the water at midday. Males usually surface well before the females" they are completely water 'born' bugs if you want to say. they went so far to make sure all these insects/arachnids [scorpions are arachnids did you know] are so well thought out to fit these characters

Description: "If fate favors those with diligence, why do I remain drifting on treacherous waters?" Shes the only one who in this line up hasnt been clearly identified as a 'killer' however thinking back to her original story is the drought enough reason to place the charge of manslaughter on her if people are deprived of enough resources they starve? or will we find something later

what we will find in future grace letters, her debut S shes to take the lives of the wretched in her b tier here she had to have killed someone to end up here matching the other prisoners in that regard

in rosemary shes aligned with uriel labs and the death of bella donna among who knows who else that dm caused from the employees work

looking back over the years (maison ikkoku ep. 27)

Well as one does throughout their lives, or at least as I often find myself doing, I am on yet another rewatch of Maison Ikkoku. I tweeted briefly about being struck by the animation in episode 8, which I had never noticed until this round. This time I'm also impressed by the amount of diegetic music in this series that I never really processed: music on the streets, pop songs in restaurants and cafes, even a sad Japanese folk rock song when Mr. Ichinose reveals over dinner that he's been laid off.

I've always loved the last few minutes of episode 27 and have mentioned it before, so it's no surprise that this time around I still love it, but it's always worth a few more laudatory words. The episode as a whole is unremarkable: Soichirou goes missing after Kentarou takes him out on a walk and he runs off after a stranger with yakitori. Kyoko at first is unconcerned about his absence, telling Kentarou that Soichirou will return when he returns, but she begins to mull on the dog's presence in her life, in turn revealing her memories of both the human Soichirou while alive and her grief in the days right after his death. Finally, she goes out to look for him, not realizing that Godai has already put in a Herculean effort to find the dog. Lost in thought, she walks the hill back to Ikkoku-kan, only to come across Godai and Soichirou walking home.

There's a maturity and patience to the final moments of this anime that you rarely see anymore. The pacing is glacially slow, with Kyoko's thought processes happening in 1:1 real time. When she first sees the silhouette of a man walking a dog, she breaks out into a delighted smile and calls out, "Soichirou-san!" The man turns around, the music swells, and you see a close-up of Kyoko's face. She is stunned, but by what, we're not sure. Does she see her dead husband, or does she realize at that moment that it can't possibly be him?

The music fades. The wind blows. In an agonizing half minute of silence, the train passes, and the streetlamps flicker into life behind her, one by one. When the streetlamp right above her lights up, we cut away to a shot of her face. She says her husband's name one last time, this time desperately, as if trying to grab a hold of a dog that has, unleashed, run away from her. She tries to say it a third time, but the name dies on her lips. She knows her husband is dead, and yet, can it be? It is like you are reliving her grief over the death of her husband with her.

Then: the streetlamp above the silhouetted figure lights up. It is, of course, Godai. We knew that, she knew that. Yet the light had to travel from behind her to above him, from the past to an unspoken future, before she can accept it. She calls Godai's name tentatively. He, bathed in sunlight and artificial light both, smiles down at Soichirou-san, sends him back to his rightful owner. In a moment of soundtrack genius, Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally" begins to play (but only in those regions that had the license to include it). When we next see Kyoko close-up, the moment is broken. She is present, in the present. She is smiling again, and Soichirou licks her face.

At 15 it seemed to me obvious that Godai should get Kyoko at the end, because he was the main character. At 20 I thought Godai was a fool to chase after a woman while being destitute in college. At 25 I thought about the hard choices Kyoko made to give up a life of security with Mitaka for a life of little space and even littler pleasures with Godai. But at over 30 I see this story for what it is now, a love story through and through. Mitaka never had a chance. Kyoko's heart had made its choice long ago; the seven years we spend with these characters is for her to make peace with that decision, to learn to listen to herself, to give herself space to grieve and hold space for Soichirou's death while also making room for Godai, like the long two minutes at the end of episode 27 which end with Godai returning Soichirou, metaphorically and actually, to her.

Some might call these scenes filler or saving animation budget. I think this is one of those rare moments where the anime truly internalizes the source material and gives us something unique to its own medium. Takahashi's original often makes Godai a butt-monkey even in his most dramatic moments. It is, at heart, a comedy as much as it is a poignant romance. The anime on the other hand takes an almost cinematic approach to "filming" the characters, who are often given moments to breathe and emote with just their faces as if this were a real movie. Nothing more is said in this moment in the anime, besides Godai and Soichirou's names. Nothing more needs to be said. The anime trusts the viewer to put the pieces together and link the parallel images of Godai and Soichirou to Kyoko's mental state. This episode comes after Kyoko admits at Soichirou's graveside that she isn't ready to move on and Mitaka/Godai both propose and ask and are asked to wait for her response. What a perfect moment to draw it all together. It isn't that Kyoko mistakes Godai for her late husband. She sees them both and knows who, and what, they are. It is that she needs time and our patience to cross that distance and walk under the same streetlamp as Godai. And in this episode, as he does throughout the series, Godai gives it to her.

Saitama, casually bending reality?

A funny thought struck me when I read reddit.

Saitama does his omnidirectional punch where he said he's gonna go full power against garou, meaning he knows he's bending reality and does not bat an eye when he grabs hyperspace gates. Then he chooses to appear from all directions, at the same time.

It means he's conscious of the usage and logic defining of his powers. This is important. Because he never goes full power in terms of strenght usage, he even fights with just one arm and keeps growing stronger the whole fight. So what he refers to is something else entirely.

Manipulating reality itself.

It's really not afterimages that we're seeing is it? He's literally just everywhere, even inside Garou's portal at the same time because he visualizes it happening. Garou can't believe his eyes when he sees it that Saitama is everywhere, even inside his hyperspace portal, which should be impossible. But it's only another possible direction that Garou opened for Saitama to appear from.

This is the reality manipulation that Blast and Genos confirm is happening. That Saitama manipulates the reality of the cosmos and causality itself. That he visualizes something and he can make it happen. He bends and kicks hyperspace portals, which is a feat that should logically be impossible. But he interacts with them, because he wants to and visualizes to move them away.

But I realised that...we've actually seen him do the reality manipulation this whole time. And the first iteration is extremely pointedly presented in the anime.

Consecutive punches.

He actually grows extra fucking arms. And then they disappear. My god.

Consecutively punching at the same exact time, not just punching fast enough that it seems to be everywhere. So multiple punches happen at the same time. The consecutive punching he did against Boros, THAT is an actual speed feat and it is depicted as such when his fist blurs.

I can't believe we attributed this to being just anime effects and a depiction of speed feat and afterimages. It was there this whole time.

This is so fucking clever misdirection and hiding the fact that Sai's been bending reality this entire time. Actually genius. ONE even tweeted about season 1 and 2 reruns like "hey you should go watch em btw" when he hasn't tweeted anything in years. Now with more understanding of the character, I'm suddenly having this lightbulb moment.

He also does it against Genos, when Genos believes it's just an afterimage. He multiplies himself.

Saitama's image even appears frozen in time, like a ghost and it does not move, compared to the actual fast speed punches Genos is throwing that cause afterimages.

The important thing to note here is that Genos had the target lock on. A biological lock. Even if Genos own senses were being fooled by Saitama moving too fast to track, a biological lock on would inform him immediately that his target is gone. Biological lock only needs sensors to detect the biological signature being present and would not be fooled by something like speed and either lose the lock on or inform Genos his lock on has moved elsewhere.

Unless said Target is still actually there ofc, so he never loses the lock on until the body disappears.

And we know that Genos can track Saitama's biological target from any visual distance away, when he fought Garou in the clouds too. Biological signature does not change even if Saitama came back from the future.

No wonder Genos was so confused.

This was just Saitama himself being in two places at once. Just like Garou, other people perceive it to be afterimages when it's actually not, he multiplies himself but far better than a measily kage bunshin from naruto lol.

Then there's ofc the death punch that just magically curves around Genos. Because Saitama visualizes the obliteration behind him but does not want to harm Genos.

Guys I think Saitama is even more busted than we originally thought.

You know what Genos? You're right, again. There is a secret ingredient to Saitama's powers lol. And the spar you had definitely was insightful too.

That's why you're the appointed narrator of facts in the series. You're the one with the highest IQ.

The Jungle - 6th episode Review.

Here we go for episode 6 ! I was really expecting this episode and I wasn’t disappointing. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but there were some good ideas.

Nithan really struck me as a naive but kind person. She is melting Naan’s heart with her kindness as she comforts him and try to make him see all his action in a brighter way. He tries to put some distance between them with his talking about separating professional and personal life but no one really fall for that expect Nithan herself. Pladao was describe as a gazelle and now Nithan is a squirrel It really feel like a wildlife and nature documentary sometimes with the voice over and all these comparisons with animals.

Nithan and Naan have to spend a day together at the spa, thanks to Nithan’s aunt. They want to avoid it but grandma wants a pretty bride and a handsome groom. This is again the forced proximity trope. We like it because it makes their love journey a bit more believable than the one from Gqle and Wayu. Well, Naan is not really indifferent to Nithan’s charm as he is watching her get to the shower! Who could blame him, Nithan is a beauty. He saw her collarbone and get flustered. Poor man is not going to be able to continue this charade. He told the story to the Jungle and they kind of make fun of him because he pretends he doesn't like her but talk about her a lot. He is indeed hooked! We got some cute moments between Naan and Nithan acting like true boyfriend and girlfriend. Every action she does now appear sexy to him. He proposes that they go to sleep together for pretense and gives her some lame excuses to have her by his side. Man you're supposed to be the playboy. You should be able to do that without any efforts. Instead you look like a fool.

We got again a nightmare from the past. I will start to hate pasta as much as him with those close ups of his mom eating it. Nithan wakes up at the same time as him and she is comforting him… Again! They have a talk about her dad showing how bad he is. However, I think she has a good philosophy about letting go of anger or hatred. Mad respect for that. Sometimes I get the feeling that she is too good to be with him. He seems to feel it to. She is really kind. She is growing on me a lot. I'm the one falling in love with her at the moment.

Nithan’s dad visit this apartment with Nithan’s mom. What is he looking for? So intrusive. He is looking for any clue to deny his own daughter of inheritance. This guy is too much! Mom likes Naan. Wow, now he is noticing even small things about her, like the food she likes. Man is whipped. Dad is not convince because Dad is freaking annoying. They need to do the engagement ceremony to get the money. Seriously the dad is too much. Mom can't stand him as we all do. I like that she wants to defend and help her daughter. We love supportive mom.

There is a small scene of the Jungle talking about Pladao and how she is a journalist but they are having troubles dealing wih her as she is Gale’s friend and Gale is dating Wayu. Pladoa should make merits because Gale really saved her ass this time, just by being her friend.

But let’s not spend too much time with her because this episode is about Nithan and Naan. They are at the engagement ceremony room, trying to find the right one. Naan doesn’t want his association with Nithan to end so quickly so he tries to delay it in some ways. Something that Nithan don’t understand. At the end it doesn’t work because they get a room and the engagement is now “tomorrow” ?! It’s a bit quick. I mean how can people be really ready for this event ? I wouldn’t even have a proper attire for it if I was invited. This is mad.

Pladao is still trying to get in the RV. Girl really wants her revenge for her cousin. She gets in and takes pictures of the place until she meets with hunter who is telling her to get out and delete all her pictures. She gets in an elevator and press the only button with no number. Stupid! Okay, so Pladao found the parking place and of course Naan with Nithan just arrived there. They go on the roof. He wants to show her how he feels about her but she is clueless. Girl he likes you. Open your eyes! This is the first kiss between them! At the same moment, Pladao is back in the bar and find Evil Naan thinking it is Nice Naam and this guy doesn't even deny it. She said she will protect every women from him but she doesn't even know that he has a twin.

Back to Nithan and Naan. So this is action over words. Nithan still doesn't understand so he kisses her again. She is mistaking his actions but he wants her to see that he is not playing. I think she wants to believe it. He really wants to be with her. There is everything, the love declaration with romantic music. And yet, she does not believe him. Problem of being a liar, no one trust you anymore. Of course she wants to be with him because she also has feeling despite knowing that he can lie pretty easily. Everyone could see it. Now be together, so more drama can come to you.

Pladao is trying to follow Evil Naan and she missed him again. This girl is always two steps late and will fucked up Nice Naan’s new love. She wants to help Nithan because she thinks that she is getting fooled like her cousin was. She told him about what she did with Evil Naan (Kissing and sleeping with him). I smell drama! She also tells her about her cousin and her death to prevent Nithan of staying with Naan. After hearing all of that Nithan fled. I found that a bit weird but why not. Pladao is of course mistaken because she can't see the difference between Evil and Nice Naan. She threatened him to expose all the Jungle’s men. While she is talking to Nice Naan, Evil Naan is coming!! Yeah! Finally she knows they are twins. So which one killed your cousin? You have no clues. She knows she fucked up but instead of trying to understand everything she is also fleeing? What the heck? If I could understand why Nithan fled I can’t with Pladeo. It’s like she doesn’t want to deal with what she said or did. This girl acts like the RV is a freaking metro station.

Nice Naan is not happy with his twin and they fight of course. It involves a gun at some point. It’s kinda messy and we can hear a gunshot without knowing who was harmed. We get a cut to the engagement ceremony, where everyone is dressed for the event but Naan is not here. Nithan is crying and being sad. She wants to say the truth but Naan just arrived. She smiles like she forgave him. Is it really Naan? The answer comes very quickly because during the ceremony Nithan notice something and knows it not her Naan. Girl, you are the best. Okay so this twins thing is in front of everyone. Turns out, Evil Naan is not that great at lying. Their brotherly relationship is so crazy. At the end Nice Naan is with Nithan. They kiss and it a happy ending for them. Evil Naan is watching from afar and seems happy for them.

So Evil and Nice Naan patched things up. So they help each other even if the other one is doing something shitty. Normal stuff with twins in any series. We also got the information that Evil Naan knew about their mom trying to kill them and didn't say anything at first. Naan protected his brother and that’s why they will always have each other’s back. Well, Evil Naan has a weird way of seeing their life but whatever. Nithan’s dad discovered that she lied to get the inheritance but he stands no chance in front of Nithan’s mom and Naan. Naan even punched him and we are all glad about it. I couldn’t stand him anyway. Nice Naan wants to know how Nithan knew about Evil Naan and she said she learned it from him. Everything was foreshadowing from the last episode.

The last scene is about Pladao meeting with evil Naan. He wants to help her finding who is being her cousin’s death. Turns out he may not be involved in it. I kind of think that it could be the friend we saw in previous episode who is responsible for this. I mean he was the one who told Pladao about Naan. Could be the culprit… But at the same time, she found a picture of him with her cousin in the bar and never trusted him. Next episode we'll learn more about this matter. The trailer for the next episode is promising and I’m still rooting for my enemies-to-lovers story for Evil Naan and Pladao.

By the way, I noticed I was really careless with Naan’s name because I called him Naam a lot before. I still have to edit some of my reviews to correct this mistake. It seems that the show is trying to get two or three episodes per couples. We got Gale and Wayu, then Nithan and Naan. It seems the next couple could be Pladao and Evil Naan. We still need romance for Hack, Pine and Nathee.

𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐄𝐓 𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎  //  lyrical starters from shinedown’s album, planet zero.  adjust as needed !

There's not a damn thing you can do, you better brace for impact. We've had enough of being powerless. We've heard it all and no, we're not impressed. We are the nightmare that you brought to life, so don't turn off the lights. Speak up or they will bleed your courage dry. No, they were never on your side. Struck down the golden rule as if they know what's best for you. No sleep until they hear us. Better pray that you're not erased. On your knees or you'll be replaced. Look at me, I'm not lookin' for a favor, I'm just lookin' for an axe to grind. All hail power to the people; except you, you check the box we don't like. Bite your tongue 'cause it might save your life. Shut the door, say a prayer, hold your breath, no one's comin', you're the only one left. They all talk shit about the shape I'm in. Yeah they really don't care. But you're never so gone that you can't turn back, so go and be unpredictable. I'm a little too dim when the moment gets bright. Who's it gonna be who's the first in line? Well step right up to the firing line. I'm on a first name basis with the afterlife. I dug myself out of the dirt for a reason. Life's killed me a hundred thousand times; you can try, but the dead don't die. I won't be the ending that was written for me. It's pretty boring, isn't it? This existence. Might as well not take fear off the table. You might be woke but not awake. Pray if you need it, beg if you want it, scream if you're for it. Is this apocalypse now? Who let the animals out? Who doesn't love a parade with gasoline and grenades? If victimhood is currency, then you won't starve. You've always been slightly awkward, kinda weird, upside down and not all here. Sometimes I'm in a room where I don't belong. I've never been the favorite, thought I'd seen it all. Don't worry, it's all just a symptom of being human. This all seems so familiar, but it doesn't feel like home. We're all just passing through, passengers on a ship of fools. I was never one to pick a fight I couldn't win. Look at the secrets we keep, they terrorize me every night in my sleep. You can be twisted but still optimistic, be the black sheep but not a statistic. Put on a happy face, make a scene and leave a permanent trace. Show me that rebel inside, where the leader of the revolution resides. Careful, you might slip and never recover. Careful, you might burn to death like the others. Yeah, they keep changing the rules. Because you think for yourself and you don't need the help. They want you to conform but it's not in your nature. Do you feel out of place? Well, that's good, yeah, you should. So wait one minute, can't say I didn't try. We've had enough of all these pointless points of view. It's the end of the world, but it sure is fun. It's obvious that we don't make the rules. But check it out, the word of mouth is "The joke's on you". If you're not here to win, then why'd you play the game? I was diagnosed with a fear of getting too close. I'm not the only one whose life's been pulled apart. So here we are, all dressed to kill, where should we go? You saved my life, make it all alright. When I don't feel like talking, you make sure I always see the daylight. It's amazing what the hard times can reveal. Like who shows up, who walks away, and who's for real. So take me on, I'll take the wheel and we can both outrun the past. We will always live forever if we don't look back. Not a thing wrong except you're cutthroat. 'Cause this ain't one for all, yeah this is groupthink. I guess we're on our own, ain't that a bitch though? Tell me the truth or tell me a lie. Tell me what I gotta say to get outta this room alive. So tell me the truth, are you really surprised? You live in a world where empathy goes to die. Right out of the gate, they punch me in the face, they drag me all around and tell me, "What a waste". I heard they're callin' out your number and it's comin' up fast. Won't you come out and play? I'm gonna rain on your parade. They're pulling at my strings, but I ain't gonna snap. So long, see you later, be well! Nevermind, I guess I'll see you in hell. We're constantly wired, yeah, it shows. But underneath it all, your skin might start to crawl and they know you can't look away. Goodbye, so long, see you later, good night. Did you get what you wanted? Is this what you wanted? You don't know what you're doing, you don't care who you ruin. You wanna live the dream, just kill your self-esteem. Oh, what a small price to pay.

I let myself be played for a fool for 18 years. This is how it happened. A decade before I got married, I realized my life choices were being dictated by extreme trauma in my childhood, and I sought therapy. I stayed single and worked hard on truly knowing myself and what I wanted. I had kissed a lot of frogs in my past, and I thought that after intense treatment and hard experience I could see through anyone's bull.

Then I met my husband. Let's call him Andy. He was far and away an improvement on the men I'd been meeting, but NOT too good to be true. He was open about his flaws. He's 4 months older than me, from the same general area but far enough away that our high school sports teams never played against each other. It seemed like we had an instant connection. We dated for 3 1/2 really wonderful years before we got married. His proposal was like something out of a Hallmark movie, there were literal fireworks (professional ones!). We had a beautiful wedding, an absolutely magical honeymoon in Hawaii, we bought a 3 bedroom mid-century ranch on a 1/2 acre lot in an established neighborhood, with 24-hour, fully licensed and accredited day care and one of the best elementary schools in town within walking distance. We had 14 months of newlywedded bliss.

Then came doubts that were harder and harder to dismiss. We were working opposite shifts, and things felt... off. He'd always had mostly female friends, but my gut was telling me something wasn't on the level. The night before our first big dinner party with his family and my family together in our new house, I decided to get peace of mind by taking a look at his email. We both knew each other's passwords, it wasn't really any kind of breach. I thought if I could just gauge the way he talked to his friends, I could understand him better. I logged in, and there was nothing in his inbox, nothing in trash, everything was deleted. Except for his sent folder. He forgot to delete the most recent one.

It started out with "Cindy, I fantasize about you coming to my house wearing nothing but a flannel shirt". It went on in very explicit detail about what he'd do with her and to her, in specific locations of MY house. I hadn't expected to see that, and I was beyond devastated. I had never even heard of "Cindy", but it was clear they had an established relationship. It broke me. I thought I'd been so careful to pick someone honest. I was in free fall. I didn't remember standing up from the office chair, but I found myself backing away from the computer like it was a venomous snake. I made it to the doorway of the office and collapsed. I have no idea how long I lay there weeping. I wasn't in the world. I was lost. At some point, I came back to myself, I sat up, and decided I needed to make a plan. I felt so ashamed that I'd been fooled, I couldn't bear the thought of getting divorced so soon. I didn't have anywhere to go. To say that my stepdad and I didn't get along was the understatement of the century. He was a disgusting animal. My mother believed my grandmother's vile, abusive rhetoric, so she stayed with him because she thought that's what she deserved. My mother would have gladly welcomed me back home, we were very close, but I couldn't live with him, and I couldn't bring myself to make life harder for her by fighting with him. My only living grandparents were my abuser and her enabler. I had no other family. With one year down on a thirty year mortgage, I knew I couldn't afford the house on my own. I didn't feel like there was a move to be made. I decided death was the only way out. I was giving the bathroom a quick once over because I didn't want to be found surrounded by dingy tile when I was struck with a vision. A real, sent-by-God epiphany. My mother's only sister had suffered a stroke about 3 months before I got married. She was in the hospital for a full year. My mom went to visit her one Sunday, and my aunt was really excited about something. The stroke had affected her speech, and because she was trying to express herself so exuberantly, my mom couldn't understand her. My aunt chattered joyfully until she got sleepy, then my mom went home. An hour later, the hospital called my mom to say my aunt had quietly passed away. In my vision, I suddenly understood that if I died now, just a few months after my aunt, it would be too much for my mom to bear. I felt it was revealed to me that what my aunt was so eagerly trying to tell my mom was that she was being released from a life of agony, and her death would save my life. It did. I snapped back to reality, and realized my suicide would have destroyed my mother. But I swerved too far in the other direction. I still couldn't cope with what I read, so I put it out of my mind. We had our big dinner party, and I carried on like nothing happened.

Three days after the party, I worked up the strength to confront my husband about the email. He was unflappable, completely not bothered. He calmly explained that it was all just a silly joke. "Cindy" was a friend from high school, and everyone from his small town had the same sense of humor, they just get carried away with jokes sometimes. It sounds utterly ridiculous to my ears now, but he spoke so matter of factly, and I was so desperate to believe my husband loved me that I wholeheartedly swallowed his excuse.

Years passed in a haze of new homeownership, financial ups and downs, and career changes. I pinned my hopes on a baby, we had planned our whole married lives around preparing for kids. But a baby never came. Then my mom got cancer. She told me about her diagnosis in December. She died in September of the following year. I was bereft. I didn't know how to be in the world without her, but I was raised to keep up appearances, so I soldiered on. My stepdad ran amok. He was always a slovenly pig, and without my mom, he was free to wallow in his own filth. Various neighborhood skanks traipsing in and out of my childhood home, my mother's little gingerbread cottage. One day, about a year after my mother was gone, I discovered the front door of her house standing open, and the inside completely ransacked and vandalized. All of my childhood belongings were lost or destroyed. He hadn't paid the mortgage and the bank was going to take the house, so he just walked away. Our shame was posted in my hometown newspaper, back taxes and foreclosure. Because my mother died without a will, my stepdad was considered the only heir, as her spouse. He never adopted me, so to probate court, I was no one. The house sat empty for a while until it was condemned and torn down. There's a weedy, overgrown lot with no street number where my home used to be.

Not long after, my employer of nearly a decade decided to "streamline" the company and I was unceremoniously "released". Now I was sinking in an ocean with no bottom. I clung to my husband and he assured me it was us against the world. Still no baby. I struggled with depression and ineffective treatment for a couple of rough years. When I found a new job and finally started to wake up to the world again, I realized I was feeling that same old something's-not-right feeling. I thought, it can't be, IT. CAN'T. BE. Not after all I've been through. On an afternoon in the summertime, we went for a drive in my husband's little sports car, then stopped to pick up a pizza on the way home. I stayed in the car while he ducked into the tiny shop. As I waited, I noticed a thumb drive sitting in his cup holder. As I looked at it, I swear it was glowing, highlighted like a bonus object in a video game. I picked it up just as my husband opened the car door and blindly handed me the pizza box. The ten minute drive home felt like an eternity, trying to stay focused on my husband's small talk while my brain was screaming THIS CAN'T BE A THING. IT'S PROBABLY BLANK OR SOMETHING FROM HIS WORK. YOU'RE SO FREAKING PARANOID, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU??? I waited until the next morning, after my husband went to work, then plugged in the drive, and there was "Cindy" in her fully naked glory. Since the email incident, I had poked around and found out that "Cindy" was Andy's high school dreamgirl. She mostly strung him along, but they did go on a few dates. Apparently her marriage wasn't going the way she'd hoped, so she reconnected with her simp.

I told him that evening that we needed to get into couples counseling ASAP, but I didn't mention the picture. We had a tense couple of weeks while we waited to get in to see someone, but he never asked why I felt it was so important. In the getting-to-know-you first session, he acted like "gee willikers, I don't really know why we're here, I just do what my wife says", and even though I had a copy of the picture in my purse, I couldn't bring myself to show it to the counselor. Right after we got home, I brought out the picture and asked him to explain. He started crying, saying it was a mistake, and nothing else happened, then he blamed my depression. I couldn't comprehend that, I was too astounded to even reply.

Therapy was an utter failure, we had the worst counselor in history. After two months of zero progress, we fired her, and decided we could make our own way. He convinced me I was who he wanted, and we would make it work. I know it sounds implausible that I would believe him. I think I needed to because I couldn't face being alone in the world.

Skip many years into the future. We gave up hope for a baby and accepted our lives as a child-free couple. We traveled, we aged, we carved out a comfortable existence. Through a quirk of modern technology, I intercepted an odd message from "Cindy", who was supposed to be banished from our lives. She and her husband finally split, her divorce was just finalized, and she was coming to town. In the following messages, Cindy and Andy made plans to hook up in a Super 8 motel instead of coming to my home while I was at work, because "she just couldn't get comfortable at the house". I moved out. But guess what folks? I couldn't tolerate the idea of losing the house I worked so hard for. The thought of another woman sitting in front of my fireplace was more than I could take. I'd already lost so much, when I wasn't the cheater. It just felt too unfair. So I came back. Only I discovered all my trust was gone. I'm not even interested in trying to believe anything he says. I just want my home, my only home in the world.

Hi may I request something for Cookie Run: Ovenbreak? how would Millennial Tree, Wind Archer, Fire Spirit and Earl Grey reacting to they're sweet s/o being part of the CoD? take your time! :D

Millennial Tree

He sorta knew you were with the CoD, but he's not too worried.

Amusing how your sweetness turned out to be a façade. Though when he admits to knowing this for a while, you became scared for a second..

Only to see he's not angry or disappointed.

Instead he asks questions about why you joined. Not to interrogate but simply to get insight. He wonders how DE manages to attract Cookies like you to her side.

But considering you genuinely love him and weren’t trying to use him to the darkness’ advantage (a fact he knows), MT still loves you all the same.

Though he believes it’s not too late for you to change sides. He hates seeing the one he loves succumb to the darkness’ temptations.

"This path isn't set in stone, s/o. I know our love can overcome the darkness that surrounds you." He's confident in your love and loyalty towards him, not worried about betrayal at all.

But you’re satisfied with your chosen path. No ancient was gonna make you change your mind.

Wind Archer

On the other hand, MT's guardian didn’t take your confession so kindly. 

He spied on you when he suspected you were up to something, and he was devastated seeing you converse with the Dark Enchantress.

He felt utterly betrayed; a fool to let his guard down.

You tried helping him enjoy life more, as both a cookie and a partner, but he sees that was all just an act.

If you were using him to reach MT, he’ll lash out at you with a flurry of arrows, trying to drive you out of the forest, though you fight back and try to explain yourself.

"You can’t explain away the darkness that has infested you! Don’t worry..I will purge it from-!”

“I don’t need to be saved, Windy. You couldn’t even save yourself and needed help from your little animal friends!”

You struck a nerve by recounting his memories as Night Raven--memories you both vowed to never speak of again.

But you’re right. He can’t be angry with you when he himself fell to the same darkness once before.

It only makes him want to try harder than ever to save you from this. He suffered too much and didn’t want you to end up the same.

Fire Spirit

At first he laughs, thinking it's a joke.

But when you drop that cutesy façade he’s become so accustomed to, he stops.

"Wait..you're serious??"

He's seen you fight with the powers of darkness many times before. But he didn't believe you’d actually side with DE and her goons.

Of course, this comes as you’re both arguing over him forbidding you from entering the Dragon Valley alone.

A slip of the tongue reveals you’re in search of a great power there for her cause. 

“I don’t have time for this, Fire. She needs--I-I mean I need..”

“Who is “she”, s/o? And don’t play dumb.” He already knows, but wants to hear the confession from you.

Though it doesn’t lessen the hurt he feels inside.

“So what really drew you to me, huh? My looks? Personality? Or was it because I harvested great power in that valley and you think you can just waltz in and steal it for her stupid cause?!” He snaps, unleashing fiery fury that you’ve never seen before.

You both clash for some time, though you never fought back. Only defending yourself until he nearly snuffs all of his flames out and is near tears.

He’s stupid to think you’d use your dark powers for good. But in the end you’re just the same as all the other CoDs: liars and traitors

Earl Gray

He definitely never suspected you, of all Cookies to be associated with the CoDs, even with his most careful observations of hotel guests.

While he does babysit Chess Choco, he doesn't consider himself in allegiance with them. He only cares for the twins and just wants to run his establishment.

So for you to openly admit that to him was a shock, and it leaves him saddened.

You'd try to convince him to join, thinking his hosting skills could be used for a better purpose, but he insists on putting the hotel before all else.

EG is neither good nor bad. 

He's here to make his hotel a comfortable place for all Cookies no matter what side they take. And he doesn’t plan on breaking up with you over this.

But even so..it still stings.

if fans wanted to include peach in stuff they write, would that be okay? and how would they write peach's personality? aside from "FIGHT ME" anyway, i think that much is a given lol. i only really write the anime characters 'cause that's what i know, but it sounds like it'd be kinda fun to try making a version of ash that fits into this blog's universe! nerf'd Obviously, but i think she'd probably appreciate how hands-on he gets when training his pokemon!

Ok, I get a lot of these messages, and I often hear folks wanting to throw peach into their stories and comics and writings, and I will always simply ask that if it’s published online publicly, to be linked to it so I can snoop and enjoy the content too. If someone asks about her in your work, let them know about the blog I guess? But literally I love that people take this stuff, these characters and stories, and make new stuff with it. No ones making money off my work here? So where’s the issue? Go for it buddy, knock yourself out, I’m all for it.

For you, and all the others out there who want to add peach, and other characters to your world building, I will give you a detailed rundown of the main lot, and how they behave, what they do, how they function. You can use that, use bits, or use none of it, I do not mind at all. If you’re creating something, you’re in control, not me.

So, peach doesn’t actually fight people as much as you’d think. She’s very aware most cannot and do not want to do that, and so she likes to keep to herself with regards to that aspect of her life, she doesn’t ask to spar with people, or even bring it up at all, but people ask her all the time, even if they clearly would lose or become hurt should she miscalculate during the fight. She looks at people like they usually create problems, and often has a somewhat reserved nature to other humans. You have to work quite hard to get anything more than formalities out of her. She will dead-pan handle people with blunt and very to-the-point statements, aid whenever possible, but very quickly get back to handling the Pokemon she so carefully tends. Her focus is clear, she’s all about hard work, her very small select family, and the Pokemon.

Her brutal, loud and brash personality only comes out with friends, family, difficult humans, OR any Pokemon. She will joke and laugh and play with Pokemon, but clam up around humans, maintaining tight body language and generally will be a little cold by regular standards. She does however have some weaknesses in this emotionless shield she puts up. When peach was young she was always angry, which swung so fast to sadness, back and forth. Her teenage years it just got worse and worse, it was crippling at points. She is to this day, full of fire and rage, even sadness, but now she has learnt to control it, to use it. When she sees that in others, it’s familiar, and she is pushed to drop the front, and be very real with the person. Underdogs I suppose, people who get bad reps, but deserve the same as everyone else. She can’t ignore it.

Once you start to pry open her personality, you’ll find she’s a lot more laid back and fun than originally appeared, you just have to work hard to find that side of her. She will meme reference, can’t dance to save her life, loves her coffee, and can be caught in quiet contemplation while gardening. This hobby is her calmest, and often is why she can stay so level headed when her quiet rage boils up again. Without time outside she will become grouchy, a little snippy, and lethargic. Will not go in the ocean for any reason other than life or death, is fine with ponds and rivers, or water at wading height. Likes the rain.

With regards to her training others, they usually have to tolerate her somewhat strict nature. She is a little....unforgiving, holds a grudge if you make a lot of mistakes, and has no tolerance for ignorance in the age of information that we all live in. In previous posts I’ve mentioned she’s only recently selected two students, after many years of testing kids who want to learn from her. Hundred tried out, only two have ever been approved. How she teaches is very fast paced, be prepared to get some scrapes and bruises, she will test your physical and emotional tolerances with intense tasks, carefully watching students like a hawk. Bad posture in your stance? She’ll be the first to tell you to sort it out. Not hearing your Pokemon partner? Right, now you spend the day without using words trying to communicate, let’s see how you like not being listened to.

This is a woman who has spent her life saying very little, and watching everything, she watches Pokemon and can see an issue from a mile off, and in battles, her observations are why she can react fast, and chose effective strategy to avoid damage and achieve results. Don’t let her body fool you, her strongest asset is analysing, watching, planning. Those skills have over the years transferred to people too. As a student, mistakes don’t go unnoticed with this professor.

Her methods are harsh but fair, and should you prove yourself, she will protect you with her life.

Because of her disinterest in kids and lots of noise, she does pass the training of students on to the other staff members whenever possible. Grey takes on the lions share of battle lessons, he is far calmer, more open and friendly, with patience for people, and an empathy that peach sometimes struggles to have. When you go through a lot of harsh training, and difficult events, it’s hard to change how you feel or think, with peach, well, she’s been through it. Most do not come out the other end in one piece, but she did, and it made her strong. You may think I mean strong like buff and big, and yeah sure she is, but I mean it mentally more than anything. Peach will not quit. She has learnt to destroy the boundaries that stop people getting hurt, gone is the fear that freezes you in your tracks, that feeling that you’ll pass out if you go one more step. She’s learnt to ignore it.

This means she’s a little forgetful at how it is to be normal, to be vulnerable and soft and squishy like students so usually are.

She has her issues, but for the most part, visitors get a laugh, a smile, a calm assertive confidence, and facts. She will indulge those who have genuine interest, or show a connection with nature, an understanding of the balance that needs to be struck for everyone to live well together.

Despite her many flaws, she’s fiercely protective, and will go above and beyond to defend the island, it’s staff, the Pokemon and the visitors. Injustice is her biggest gripe, along with littering, and she doesn’t stand by quietly if something happens that seems unfair.

You will not see her without Valka, her vulpix, close by. That Pokemon doesn’t like to be touched by strangers, at all, and will run the second someone comes at her with that intent. Peach will scold you for pushing yourself onto her, should you persistently try to get close to pet Val. They are in sync, if peach is sad, Val is sad, if Val is stressed, peach is stressed, and so on. They are inherently connected, it’s just been that long, the psychic bridge between them has been built, and reinforced over the years.

The only other Pokemon who follows her so endlessly is Booker, a teddiursa who’s pretty rough looking. He quietly trots behind, grouchy and stoic, they fight closely together a lot. He lost his mom a long time ago to poachers, and peach took him in, and changed her whole life for him. Not many people know, but Booker was the reason she left the rangers, changed career, and got so strong. Will tolerate people petting him but isn’t keen at all, grumbles a lot and tries to move away.

You may also need to know about the others, for the sake of writing, she here a few more bits that may be important to you, or others wanting to do this.

Grey is very tall, very burly, composed, tells bad dad jokes, is a bit of a goof if allowed to be. If he sees a pun, he’ll say it. Can’t help himself. Very nice guy to work with, good at keeping people calm and grounded. Pokemon are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he gives off warm energy, and has inhuman amounts of patience. If you wrong his family however, he will snap back.

He grew up in the city, loves to swim and hike and cycle, can snowboard, is really sporty. A total brain box with held items, and boosting stats. He will explore many paths, to make sure visitors and students get the information they need, in a way that can be remembered and retained for later. Is a huge guy, but will get on the floor to play with a tiny Pokemon. Treats big “meaner” looking species like babies, very good with all pokemon.

His free time is spent either tinkering, swimming, or trimming his bonsai trees. This guy stares at screens a lot, so appreciates time away from them. Peach built him his own little greenhouse for his trees and tools, which he keeps clean and loves dearly.

His methods as a teacher are built around fun and games, he makes hard work easier to do by distracting trainers from the difficult bits, and focusing in on something more interesting or compelling.

His most commonly seen Pokemon would be a houndoom, Saxon, old battle veteran, retired now to herding and being a good boy. Very gentle, loves a pet.

Pari, now a fully fledged nurse, often oversees the labs front desk and pokecentre features, such as healing pokemon, and informing trainers who come to visit. Her skills with eggs and hatchlings is high, she’s great with younger Pokemon, and hands out good advice to trainers a lot. She’s not a fighter, never was, but can find any file, any study, any book, and any refrence you may need. A true bookworm, loves her romance novels, chat shows and upbeat celebrity gossip mags. Will cry at a lot of stuff, be it sad or happy.

She’s got a seriously upbeat personality, but if caught off guard or shocked, she gets a little flustered. Too much chaos will overwhelm her, but usually she’s on top of things. The years spent on the island have made her better at maintaining composure in emergencies. With lots of siblings, she’s very competent with others, and has a good ability to disarm cagey people with her jolly nature. Because of this, she can sometimes gain information from trainers that some of the more harsh professors may not have access to. Charming is a word for it.

Her partners are an eevee, and a happiny. They are quite sweet and well adjusted, the eevee gets a bit bouncy if you get it too excited.