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flingmetothemoon · 2 months

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Hello again, do you have any cute Sonikal Headcanon’s?

Oh hi there! Are you the same Anon who asked about the first kiss? I already appreciate your cute asks! As for your cute Sonikal headcanons, well I have come up with alot of them throughout the years so lemme see what I can do…

~~~~~~~Cute Sonikal headcanons~~~~~~~~

-Here's my possible explanation to the question that has always remained a mystery to me ever since I heard it: Even though she never once introduced herself to him, how did Sonic know Tikal's name? Shortly after Tikal's sacrifice and the birth of Angel Island. The echidna temple was rebuilt to serve as a shrine dedicated to the incident told by witnessing survivors (Makes sense because the temple is inspired by the famous Mayan temple of Tikal). During his early adventure days after meeting Knuckles, Sonic first explored the abandoned Mystic Ruins and heard about the story of a tragedy that fell upon the ancient echidna clan due to the warmongering chief's selfishness and greed and how his daughter sealed herself and the monster in the Master Emerald to stop the destruction.

-Using his ability to channel the M.E.'s power to show people/objects held in the emerald, Knuckles shows Sonic the echidna girl. (Chaos isn't seen because Tikal trapped him in her blue water ring to secure extra escape prevention) Despite essentially being fridged, Tikal actually isn't frozen or disempowered. (She mostly just sleeps when there's nothing else to do) She can still channel the M.E.'s power, transport people/objects and communicate to people And even told Sonic not to rescue her because she fears the destruction that could occur again if she and Chaos were to be set free without plan B.This makes Sonic sad and he often thinks about her even if he doesn't admit it to Tails and Amy. He can't imagine how much Tikal had to sacrifice to stop Chaos from destroying the rest of the world – her freedom, her old friends and family, her opportunity to enjoy life without watching her home turn into a war zone just so everyone else can enjoy those privileges. Not only does she remind him of someone he vaguely remembers in the past, but he also knew what it was like to be confined into stasis for a long period of time due to a tragedy, except she had to go through this ALOT longer. He wants to save her so badly. 😢

-Sonic’s most challenging yet rewarding battle after SA1 is Perfect Chaos. There's not a whole lot to be afraid of when he's basically an invincible Super Saiyan who can easily beat Eggbutt’s robots on a regular basis, but what makes Chaos a unique rival to Sonic before Shadow is the fact that not only is he literally a body of one of his weaknesses: Water, (The fact he is powerful enough to trap him in water and drown him if he can sure as heck doesn't help) but he initially viewed him as another one of those baddies of the week he'll simply kick the butt of as usual, but Tikal, the girl Sonic wanted to help out the most, showed him Chaos was actually that once kind, gentle monster from that historical incident she had to suffer to tame. It was pretty scary for Sonic to tame a literal water God with a whole flood around him, but boy it was worth it! Now he can rest reassured that Tikal and the calmed down water creature found peace again and can start a new happier life. Now he just makes sure she gets the comfort and new friends and adventures she might need to heal from her trauma at any opportunity he gets.

-Sonic is one of the few modern friends of hers Tikal trusts the most to have a listening ear when she wants comfort when she feels down from her memories of her old life and family she lost so the pain and sorrow inside her wouldn't consume the qualities that made her lovable amongst her former people: Love, joy, kindness & hope. Ever since that day, Sonic was the light to her gloomy darkness. Thanks to him, Tikal doesn’t have to fridge herself or Chaos for another 5000+ years until another madman comes and uses Chaos as a weapon of destruction, she can now have a chance to live a more happier, peaceful life, make herself a new home, make new friends, have new adventures, have more freedom and even be a new hero alongside her light. Tikal is anointed as the new chieftain of her new friends one day much to her surprise and dismay because she now associates a chieftain with her father, who used his position of power to harm others. But Sonic and his other friends reassures her that she'll be a fine chieftain and use her position of power to do good instead of bad, to help those in need and advocate for peace and harmony.

-Even when away from each other, Sonic and Tikal still find ways to communicate with each other from long distances due to their interesting telepathy ability and their creative ways of communicating to the emeralds, particularly when they are relaxing at the end of the day and they don't have anything else to do or anyone else to talk to. Due to their connection to the emeralds’ energy, they can also feel each other's energy when touching each other and feeling a certain emotion. When one is stressed and another is calm and touches the stressed one, the calm, positive energy transmits into the stressed one, and they also calm down. Sonic (Even though he doesn't want to admit it due to him not normally being a physical touchy kind of person) and Tikal likes to hug and hold hands for a reason.

-Tikal didn't really get to explore the world outside of her home place in her life. So for their dates, Sonic takes her to explore a new fun adventure and try new things, whether it's beautiful scenery or a new cuisine. Tikal has a high spice tolerance and loves chili peppers, not only does she like chili dogs as much as Sonic does, maybe it's not spicy enough to her and she often tries to make it spicier by using spices and/or hot sauce. Both her and Sonic often have fun eating spicy food together and watching their less spice tolerant friends suffering. 😂 And they also like to hang out at beaches and the sunflower field of course. They also like to spend a quiet peaceful day together hanging out at a chao garden and parenting the chao as if they're their children. And although Sonic doesn’t want to swim for obvious reasons, he doesn’t mind joining in a pool where Tikal is swimming in long as he simply sits on a stair step where he can still feel a body of water on half of his body while knowing he can easily get out if he starts getting uncomfortable. He surprisingly finds pure peace and serenity when he just chills that way.

-Tikal also sometimes joins Sonic in defending small, helpless critters from Eggman. She despises that guy ever since he fueled her closest friend's anger and used him as a weapon of destruction. Just imagine how she would feel about him when she learns he also takes small, helpless, innocent critters and uses them as machine batteries and pollutes the environment around them. She would not kill him, but she will wreck his replaceable machine's good with her gymnastic warrior moves and her newfounded spiritual powers she can get creative with. Forming orbs with her hands? Fling them as bombs. Wanna create a spiritual border to trap Eggman to keep him from causing trouble? Call this girl. Summoning lightning? Causing stunning earthquakes with a slam of a palm? Hydrokinesis? Shovel claw whenever Knuckles isn't using it? She got it. Mix that with Sonic’s speed, boosts, spindashes strong enough to create underground tunnels, his super form and whirlwind forming and you sure get one heck of a power couple that gives even Superman and Wonder Woman a run for their money. Whirlwind + Water = Waterspout

-It took a while for these two to decide to get married due to their own things to do and their own issues to work on. But when Tikal finally uses her position as the new chieftain to propose to Sonic with a golden ring, they come up with a very creative wedding ceremony idea that fits for both of their personalities. Both are a bit introverted, but also like to spend time with their friends and make them feel included in the happy memories, But they're also worried about how Amy would react to Sonic marrying someone who is not her. So for their wedding day, they hosted a “fancy party" and put on a dress and tuxedo respectively, but didn't make them look too obviously like wedding gowns. They had fun food and dancing as usual, but Sonic and Tikal sneaked their vows and the kiss the bride ritual when everyone else isn't looking and then he'll bridal-carry her and run into the night to their honeymoon. Their interactions after their marriage aren’t even that different from their normal interactions. Yes, there’s a few kisses and cuddles here and there (They prefer to kiss and cuddle in isolated areas where it's more intimate for them), but they mostly just keep doing what they’ve been doing.

Welp, that’s all I can think of without letting you wait for my answer for much longer. I hope you enjoy reading my headcanons. Cya next time!

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firemanwhenthefloodsrollback · 3 years

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Who Saved The Day? Season 6

Going right back in with season 6 of Who Saved The Day because last time I didn't move straight on to the next series I accidentally left it a month. It's a controversial statement sometimes but season 6 has always been my favourite season by far and I will never get over my obsession with the darkness and moral complexity. I think this is going to be a hard instalment of deciding who saved the day but I'm excited to get started.

A reminder of the rules: in every episode, including the first parts of two parters, someone must save the day including when the day isn't really saved. The day can only ever be saved by one person and when there are multiple candidates, the person who did the physical saving of the immediate physical threat gets the point.

At the end of season 5 we left it with:

Buffy: 54

Willow: 7

Angel and Giles: 5

Spike: 3

Anya, Faith, Oz, Tara, Xander: 2

And 9 characters including Dawn who have 1 each

So without further ado:

1. Bargaining Part 1: Willow

Straight in with a hard one. Willow is the main man in the spell to bring Buffy back, which certainly solves a problem in a more general sense. The buffybot didn't save the day at all so there isn't really another candidate here.

2. Bargaining Part 2: Dawn

I really really nearly went for Buffy here but I felt like Dawn was the one who solved the main problem. Reaching Buffy when she couldn't function like a human being feels like the greatest achievement here. According to my own rules, I really felt like it should have been Buffy getting Dawn down off the tower but Dawn was the one who solved the main problem.

3. After Life: Buffy

Buffy kills the thing with an axe. An underrated and very very creepy episode. The late seasons moved a long way away from the horror movie origins of the high school years, but After Life is one of the greatest horror movie-esque episodes of the later seasons, and potentially also overall. Willow and Tara did the spell but Buffy wielded the axe.

4. Flooded: Buffy

Buffy kills the demon and most, most, most importantly, save the pipework. Now I'm 25 and have my own relationship with the water company I finally understand the true horror of this episode.

5. Life Serial: Buffy

Three times as a matter of fact.

6. All The Way: Dawn

Dawn saving her own life in one of the sweetest late season episode endings, I feel. This episode and a few others like it remind me of how much the things that seem silly and easy to deal with in the later season were major threats early on. For Dawn, this is a disaster on the same scale as the things Buffy was facing and hoping her friends could face in seasons one and two. I love that Dawn got to save herself here and show the kind of strength that Buffy was using to save the day inn the high school seasons.

7. Once More With Feeling: Spike

Xander averted the demon taking Dawn, Buffy and/or himself away to his magical demon world, but Spike saved Buffy's life during Something To Sing About and I feel like I'm gonna count that? It gets presented in the episode as a bigger deal than Xander's saving of the day, which is thrown away as a comedy line.

8. Tabula Rasa: Xander

By accident, but that'll do sometimes. Treading on something by mistake is the kind of saving of the day that I feel like I could actually aspire to.

9. Smashed: Tara

I have absolutely no idea who saved the day here. Normally I'm very insistent on it being the person who stops the supernatural threat saving the day who gets the point, but I really don't know what threat that was here? Obviously a lot is going wrong psychologically, and I love this episode both for Buffy and for Willow, but neither of them faced a 'threat', as such. So the person who solved a problem and kept someone safe at the end of the episode was Tara, choosing to stay with Dawn to keep her safe even when it was potentially awkward.

10. Wrecked: Buffy

It really depends on what the actual villain is here. I originally gave Willow the point for killing the demon that was chasing the car, since that was in a very real sense the monster of the week, but it's just impossible to watch this episode and feel that that was the real threat or the time that the day got saved. The threat here was Willow's addiction and the episode makes it very clear that that's what we're meant to be focusing on, so Buffy helping her at the end is portrayed as saving the day. There's a mystical element to it and it resolves the issue that was the main threat here, so Buffy it is.

11. Gone: Willow

Willow changes the settings on the invisibility gun thing and Willow makes the trio visible again. Just thinking about the trio makes my skin crawl, more and more and more with time.

12. Doublemeat Palace: Willow

How profoundly and wonderfully symbolic.

13. Dead Things: Buffy

Tara honestly deserves it more for the way she talks to Buffy at the end of the episode - one of the rare moments of pure, open-hearted, uncomplicated goodness in a very dark season. Tara is the one who comes closest to making things better here, but the rules I've been using for the other seasons were that the person who deals with the supernatural threat or monster of the week gets the point even if someone else does something more emotionally resonant. I also almost gave it to Spike for stopping Buffy going to the police, but he also didn't really stop her going to the police so no point for Spike. When Buffy recognises Katrina's name and leaves the police station, that's the moment that ruins Warren's plan, so Buffy gets the point.

14. Older And Far Away: Anya

One of my absolute favourite episodes and certainly one that deserves to get talked about more. Anya puts two and two together about Halfrek being the demon who cursed them, and her bringing Halfrek to the house is what gets the curse lifted, so a well deserved point for Anya.

15. As You Were: Buffy

Buffy throws the grenade. Weird episode.

16. Hell's Bells: Buffy

Buffy and Xander do kill that demon communally, but for very obvious reasons I refuse to give Xander a point for this episode and I defend that decision.

17. Normal Again: Buffy

Buffy makes the horrifically difficult decision to go back to the world we recognise so no one else is getting close to this point.

18. Entropy: Willow

Was...... the day saved here at all? Willow solved the issue of the hidden cameras which was technically the threat here I guess?

19. Seeing Red: Xander

My least favourite episode by a very very long way, and not one I ever rewatch. I had to use a plot summary to help me with this one because I just don't do Seeing Red at all. Xander gets Buffy the ambulance, which is the closest thing to saving the day that we get here.

20. Villains: Anya

This episode was so hard to make a call about that it kind of undermines the idea of doing my silly little project at all. Anya finds where Willow has taken Warren and leads the way there, and probably comes the closest to saving the day of anyone?

21. Two To Go: Giles

Giles!

22. Grave: Xander

The yellow crayon speech makes me tear up and it always, always will.

So that was season 6! Some very difficult calls and fewer points for Buffy than any other season by a fair way. At the end of the season we are left with:

Buffy: 63

Willow: 11

Giles: 6

Angel and Xander: 5

Anya and Spike: 4

Dawn and Tara: 3

Faith and Oz: 2

And 8 other characters who got 1 each

I'm excited to get to season 7 and finish my weird little project off. No one is coming for Buffy, obviously, and I'd be very surprised if anyone takes the number 2 spot away from Willow, but what happens further down the leaderboard is anyone's guess.

#who saved the day series #buffy #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #season six

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

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RP meme from Scream Queens Ep 11 "Black Friday"

"Be careful. I'd really like to kiss you again."

"I'm saving my energy for Black Friday doorbusters tomorrow morning."

"How about you do the honors?"

"Oh, the holidays. That festive time of year where everyone's decked out in their Christmas finest."

"The season of joy and love and presents begins when the clock strikes midnight."

"I thought you got all your clothing hand-delivered by A-list designers."

"Black Friday is about buying deliberately cheap, totally forgettable Christmas gifts for friends. The obvious cheapness of the gift makes them question our friendship and makes them way easier to manipulate as they try desperately to get back on my good side."

"Is this black toilet paper?"

"Amazing. A pair of mink albino boy shorts."

"I bribe the dude who deals weed off the loading dock to let me in a half hour early."

"Torturing these soulless manatees of senseless consumerism brings me so much joy. And isn't joy what the holiday season's all about?"

'At first I was like, "What a weird turkey." And then it clicked. Like... "Damn, that's a head."

"When you agree with me, it makes me question whether I actually agree with me."

"I am gonna take this opportunity to be the strong parental influence you have never had."

"You are gonna march over to that sofa right now and you're gonna sit down because you are in a time out."

"I'm sorry. Did you just put me on a time out? You do realize I'm not seven, right?"

"Well, behold how badly you've failed."

"I think it's pretty safe to assume that your career is over."

"Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to the mall to exercise our patriotic right to join hundreds of thousands of our fellow out-of-breath Americans in sweatpants as they make frenzied, ill-thought-out purchases of cheap, crappy garbage they can't afford and don't need. To deny us of that right would be un-American."

"Let's go, sluts."

"I want to know what I'm being charged with."

"You drove your pickup truck through the front window of a Best Buy."

"You killed or maimed people. Let's go."

"Sounds awful, but I'd keep that to yourself."

"You're not really helping yourself."

"Most of the uniformed cops out there are working on a volunteer basis because they get backed up inside if they don't crack a few skulls every day."

"There's a killer on the loose and you're telling us this town has no police force?"

"I don't understand why you have to get us the crappiest gifts possible and then make sure we know about it beforehand just to ruin the surprise."

"I mean, that's like bringing pineapples to Hawaii."

"So would you feel the need to waste $13,000 buying me something I already have?"

"Maybe instead of using my disgusting wealth to buy my friends crap, I should use my disgusting wealth to buy my friends things they would actually enjoy."

"The mall is deserted."

"Oh, go on and shoot me, hag. It'll just make me young and skinny forever and you'll still be old. Come on, finish me off, you shriveled, old crone!"

"First day on the job and I caught a killer."

"Wait, you have a gun?"

"Damn! Why didn't I shoot him when I had the chance?"

"How's your crossbow wound?"

"The arrow missed all major arteries, and I'm currently rolling on some sweet painkillers."

"What exactly are you proposing?"

"I've always had this vision of a band of sisters who stand together like an impenetrable community of shields who kept everyone safe and secure."

"Sometimes, instead of shields, we need swords."

"No one is going to help us."

"No one is going to stop this until we are all dead."

"Well, I'm sorry, but she is a vindictive, amoral woman who no one is gonna miss."

"I say we poison her."

"Did you ever do it in my bed?"

"So you were gay lovers?"

"No, we were not gay lovers."

"I'm an investigative journalist."

"Well, you know, I really love the idea of a bunch of guys from different backgrounds getting together and forming a brotherhood for life."

"Have you ever been to a driving range?"

"What sort of ab regimen are you rocking, bro?"

"I guess the fact that you and I cannot stand one another is finally out in the open."

"Name your weapon."

"So pick your weapon. You can choose sabres, guns, baseball bats, small pebbles, spoons, doesn't matter to me. What does matter, is that we will fight, and we will fight to the death."

"Well, I am sorry that took so long, but, you know, a watched pot never boils."

"Being a millennial feminist means growing up listening to Taylor Swift say she doesn't like to think of the world as boys versus girls."

"That's not what feminism was about."

"How come all the pictures on the wall are selfies?"

"Oh, it smells amazing."

"Where did you get puffer fish venom?"

"I want to be there when she dies."

"That's bliss!"

"Is it nutmeg?"

"I am like a soldier at war. I am killing to stop more killing. It's totally justified."

"But what about moral law?"

"Oh, that would be hard for you?"

"I don't "rage" on Tuesday nights or have competitions about how many girls I can have sex with in one day."

"What I'm trying to say is guys join fraternities to get a sense of structure in their lives. Problem is the structure

they're buying into is antiquated. It's misogynistic and hierarchical and dangerous."

"It's misogynistic and hierarchical and dangerous."

"I don't think I'm in the right headspace right now."

"You're a rare breed, one of the true good guys."

"That's the weirdest explanation for anything I've ever heard."

"We need to think of new ways to kill her!"

"I'm really gonna cherish our time here together."

"Killing is wrong, but, under this circumstance, I don't know what other choice we have."

"Hold on, sluts."

"When I was your age, I was thoughtless about sex."

"If you don't think you're ready, you probably aren't. And if you aren't, well, then no good can come from doing it, anyway."

"The main thing is you have to be perfectly dry. The cryosauna is set to 200 degrees below zero, so any water on your skin freeze instantly."

"How come there hasn't been any screaming?"

"No, we need to get away while we still can."

"Hey, hey, it's enough. The point has been made."

"Why do you want to continue taking this any further?"

"Yes, I feel guilty!"

"Don't you ever call me again."

"I heard about these Buddhist Monks that found a way to meditate, so they can sit outside all night, way, way up in the Himalayas in weather that would kill a normal person, but their core temperature stays totally normal."

"You're thinking of the movie Teen Wolf, you brainless gash, which is not, in fact, a documentary!"

"Uh, Rasputin. He was a mystical Russian peasant who became a close advisor of Tsar Nicholas II because he could magically cure Prince Alexei of his hemophilia."

"Okay, this seems totally not germane to what we're talking about, so can we please just skip ahead?"

"Maybe she has some magical powers that make her unable to die, like some horror movie villain, like Michael Myers, or Jason, or Dr. Giggles."

"So, maybe try on a size zero."

"Okay, I'm not gonna try on the size zero because I won't fit into the size zero."

"This is discrimination!"

"Look at her. Give her something. Give her something to be happy!"

"Come on, what is wrong with these idiots?!"

"Why did you ask me to meet you here? And why are you carrying a bag clearly filled with chains?"

"I thought we could talk about bondage and go for a swim."

"You're all packed up. I thought you were staying until you cracked the case."

"I was just gonna go to the woods and write or something,

like Thoreau, but with WiFi."

"I mean, maybe I could come with you. Might be kind of romantic, you know?"

"I could bring a slow cooker, and we could talk about the case all night over short ribs?"

"Well, I do love short ribs."

"I'll always be able to say that my first was with a great, great, great guy."

"I am a sentient grown woman who has been through

hell the past few weeks, and I'm sitting next to you, now, with open eyes and an open heart, telling you that I want to give myself to you."

#rp memes #rp meme #rp starters #roleplay starters #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #scream queens

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teetlesandnimjas · 4 years

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What if in the explosion the brothers got separated?

This is a villain turtle au- if you don’t want to read it you can scroll past! I know it’s a cliche concept but it was fun! And I like doing my own spin on things.

(Note in this au when they’re mutated they are a little older, young kids, as this idea wouldn’t work if they weren’t SEMI competent. They’re still 13, 14, and 15 in modern times, but when they’re first mutated Mikey is 3, Leo and Donnie are 4, and Raph is 5)

Donnie: got scooped up by Draxum in the end, and works as his assistant first, son second. He has a similar position to Foot Recruit; despite being fully capable of actually being useful, he is treated with little respect and does mundane tasks like running errands and fixing random, broken objects. He is trained constantly but is told over and over again that he is “not good enough” yet. Despite this he puts his heart into everything he does. Broken clock? Sure he’ll fix it and it’s got LAZERS now! This causes him to accidentally make problems, and Draxum thinks that Donnie is “a complete and udder fool” which is further from the truth. Villain Donnie is a lot like canon Donnie personality wise but a bit more serious. He does not approve of Draxum’s use of mystic powers, and resents using them himself. He refuses the axe Draxum tries to give him. Draxum has little regard for what Donnie thinks and does, and therefore has an awful relationship with him. And yknow Donnie’s abandonment and self-worth issues? Yeah crank that up to 11. Basically Donnie hates Draxum and the Mystic City, and the Shredder going rouge is the last straw. “WATCH ME! ILL WIPE OUT THE HUMAN THREAT WITHOUT YOUR STUPID MAGIC! YOU HEAR ME BARON DRAXUM- I DEFY YOU!”

Leo: made his way to New York via Senior Hueso. Originally I was going to have him raised by Hueso but then realized it wouldn’t make a lot of sense- so Senior Hueso picks baby Leo up off the streets but ever the wanderer Leo walks right through the GIANT PORTAL IN THE WALL. From there Foot Brute, attempting and failing to find members for the clan, picks up this tiny, promising turtle off the street. “What is that thing?” “I dunno but he’s cute- and we’re in need of members” “That is an actual child” “so?” And then Leo is raised by his two dad- I mean sensei. I put raised lightly. He was treated better than Donnie but he was never given a lot of attention, and therefore turned to causing trouble to get attention. And not just from his dads, from anyone he can. Causing mischief in the city actually helped him in his training, as he became very skilled at sneaking, fighting, and stealing. He butts heads with Foot Recruit a lot because of his constant need for approval and attention. She finds him genuinely annoying while he just views it as “playful teasing.” That comes back to bite him the butt upon meeting Donnie, who comes along to help make form the Shredder armor, but he does not want to be there. Forced to work together, Donnie gets sick of Leo’s crap real fast but they don’t really hate each other, but in the moment they needed to play it off like they did and therefore gave the impression to the other that they DID hate them. Confusing, I know. Draxum tries and fails on multiple occasions to nab Leo but if he does he realizes it’ll put a major dent in his plans. So he forbids Donnie to speak to Leo. But no one stops Leo from talking to him. But Donnie’s coldness and Leo’s cruel banter really doesn’t help them get along. The moment Shredder goes rogue and the Foot Clan collapses, Leo flees in fear. “What if” this and “what if” that but mostly because he tried to take out Shredder and ruined his clan name. But even on the street, Leo remains the same annoying, much more cruel and dark humored mutant.

Mikey: Got scooped up by the Mud Dogs and taken to Big Mama, dragging only Lou’s glasses with him since even as a toddler he picked up anything shiny he saw. I plan to draw the interaction between tiny Mikey and the Dogs (and how Mikey got his name in this au) but that’s a surprise. Anyways pretty quickly he got entered in the Battle Nexus. Think about the appeal that fight would have! Just a couple years of training and then bam! “Introducing Hakka-gu! Our youngest fighter ever- only 8 years old!” And having natural talent and capabilities he was an instant hit. And he wasn’t treated horribly, after all Big Mama couldn’t risk one of her most profitable champions running away. But he is still treated as nothing but that- a profit, a marketable product. No one calls him his real name anymore, no one cares about him, just his capabilities. When he gets injured it isnt “are you okay?” It’s “is your body okay?” And sometimes he’s treated like an idiot- especially by Big Mama. He was never taught language and has very botched speaking patterns because “intelligence isnt important for a champion.” Well eventually he has enough of that, and through a bloodbath, he is able to escape to New York. Now he’ll get respect- he’ll make them respect him. But he gets quickly spotted by the Foot Clan and Draxum, as he’s in the way. Upon finding out about the plans to wipe out humans, he knows he has to stop them. Who can respect him if THESE GUYS wanna take over the world? He’s not getting mistreated again. But when the Shredder goes rogue he panics- he cant stop it but... he knows who can. He goes crawling back to Big Mama and strikes a deal. A better champion. Better than him. And she takes it, although in the end she makes some... alterations to the deal. But this doesn’t stop his quest for respect, and he ultimately heads back to New York.

Raph: Savage! He’s alone, a young child who doesn’t know where to go. He panics, and rampages all the way to New York. After a good, long, temper-tantrum, he finds himself in an alleyway, climbing into a sewer. And there he eats rats, he sets up a not-so-homely-home for himself. He flashes in and out of his anger, but he is almost always emotional and looking for some sort of control in his life. He gets that through rampages, causing destruction in any way he can. Usually he doesn’t make TOO much of a mess but he’s brought down a few buildings in his time. Eventually, upon seeing a rampaging demon-armor in the streets and seeing 2 figures trying to stop it (at this point Mikey is getting Big Mama) he realizes there are others out there like him. And then begins a struggle for control not over the world, but over himself too. There are times he gains control and although lonely, he knows he must learn. He learns English in flickers, and it isn’t perfect, but he can communicate. He can talk to them. Now he just needs to stop hurting them.

Extra notes:

In this au the only one with their weapon is Donnie. Mikey and Leo are skilled with the weapons they have in canon (the Ōdachi and Kusari-fundo) but they do not have mystic powers. Raph is... well... Raph. He can’t fight with weapons well but he can pack a punch.

Mikey is still a chef and artist, taking a liking to the ability to create, but just like with everything else he “needs to focus on his fights” so he can’t have interests. A kid like Mikey HATES this and any time he can he sneaks away to bake and draw. Usually this is at 2 am.

Leo has anxiety. The minute something not in the plan happens, or a loud noise, or having to talk to someone without a script, he goes into fight-or-flight mode. He often finds that the answer is to fight.

Raph is not necessarily evil- he is an antagonist but he is not evil. He simply has no control and lashes out at everything. That’s why he stays in the sewers. Nothing down there’s moves other than rats, bugs, and the water. But he has to get violent urges out some how.

April is a reporter-in-training in the au, as she never met the turtles until after the Shredder incident. She’s immediately interested in it, as she is everything “supernatural” and she gets dangerously close to some of their fights. I don’t know how they meet yet or if she becomes friends with any of them.

After the Shredder incident, the only thing stopping each turtle from destroying New York is each other. Seriously. They keep getting in each other’s ways because “I want to take over the world, not THEM!”

They all have certain villain stereotypes. Donnie is sort of a mad scientist, Leo is a teasing, monologging villain, Mikey acts like a nut case but has a certain intelligence to him, and Raph appears as a total destroyer.

In the end they get redeemed and find out they’re family, but it takes a while. Mikey is the one to hunt down Draxum, while Leo stalks him. Upon finding this out, having 3 out of 4 looking for each other, they find each other pretty fast. And there’s a big dramatic apology scene with all 3 of them, and at first Donnie thinks they’re conspiring against him and ambushes them but is only met with three harmless turtles who refuse to fight him. They tell him what the deal is and Donnie is shocked. And then he’s pissed. “WHY DIDNT DRAXUM TELL ME!? YOURE LYING! LIARS! NO!” In the end he realizes the truth, but it takes a little “talk” with Draxum. And then Donnie nearly commits murder. Don’t worry they stop him. But there’s no Draxum redemption arc because Donnie would continuously try to commit a felony. April is also somewhere in there and like gives the brothers goodness lessons but idk where that fits in I’m still working this out shajajajajaj

#rottmnt #rottmnt au #villain turtle au #i love theeeeese #also sorry theres no cut i couldnt figure it out on mobile #YOURE GETTING ART SOON! IVE ALREADY GOT MIKEY!#TaNTalks #im sorry

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bibliocratic · 4 years

Note

Jonmartin prompt: Jon wants to cuddle Martin very badly and is also super awkward about it, like "how do I touch you without my elbows crushing something"

(post 160, jonmartin)(this is… well, it’s sort of what you were after? hope it’s ok!)

It’s not easy, the slapdash and imprecise art of communication. Martin’s never been particularly adept. His words trip over footholds of his own making on their way out of his mouth. He has a stammer he’s never quite rid himself of, his words too earnest or too anxious to showcase any finesse at the skill.

And Jon…

Well. Jon.

It wasn’t simple before, twisting the tape back to the start of all this, Jon talking like a car trying to jump start when things felt too personal, his indelicate sincerity that struck with all the tenderness of an anvil. And Martin likes to think they were both getting better, before. They had three weeks of stumbling, artless practise, their amateur declarations witnessed by no-one but the wind and evening-dappled fields that stretched like lazy days for miles around.

And now.

Martin wouldn’t say Jon’s up to managing much talking now.

Oh, he’s not silent. Chatty in his own way, and the conversations they have are tug-of-wars, teasing, testing to find the edges their pieces slot into.

Easy isn’t the word for it though. Martin supposes, it was never going to be.

They’ve stopped for a few days to gather themselves. They’ve made it as far south as Melrose on the borders, and it would have been a pretty market town, antique fairs and village fetes and a eye-catching ruin of a fourteenth century monastery, if the Hunt hadn’t passed this way, maybe the Spiral too. There isn’t much left here in the way of civilisation, and little to nothing in the way of humanity. There are shadows like the imprints on wall after the outpouring shock of a bomb, but their limbs do not concede to the shape of limbs. They sway as leaves on a branch, like they’re hanging from where their feet are stuck to the ground, and Martin tugs them clear of their gathering places.

They’ve managed to let themselves into the half-unhinged door of a little high street shop that used to sell fancy card and stationary. They had tried an art gallery further up the road, but the Dark had started to take root there like black mould, and it’d eaten away the ground floor to yawning inky nothing.

Martin asks Jon if they’ll be safe here, and Jon rallies himself wearily, Looks. He replies that nothing will come for them, and that’s as much as they can ask for these days.

Above the shop, accessed via a back-room still plugged up and packed with unopened boxes, up carpeted stairs on which bundles of unopened notebooks and special occasion cards balance committedly against the will of gravity, there’s a small flat. The decoration in the flat is… interesting. It’s more something one of Tim’s friends would have had, the few times Tim got Martin to go out with him for one of his ‘de-stress Friday’ sessions. Martin would laugh at the wall-hangings like indoor curtains, the posters of the zodiac and some tie-dye hippy representation of chakras, the bong even still on the coffee table in the poky living room, except his attention is slightly more taken up by Jon at the moment. Leant against him like a downed tree, his eyes drooping closed and his legs fast failing him, shuddering from the effort of taking the stairs.

The way here was treacherous. There’s a town further north about forty miles swallowed by the Vast. Jon tries to avoid Seeing as much as possible, of course he does, and Martin will never ask that of him outright, never, but they’ve had to check if the way is safe a number of times. And each time he opens the door or whatever metaphor Jon uses to understand it, it drains something from him it takes a long time to claw back.

Martin drops his backpack by the entrance. Divests Jon of his. Jon sways and blinks with lidded eyes, and his gestures are sloppy, poorly formed. Martin ends up carrying him to single bed off to the right of the staircase, the room still wreathed in the old stale smell of tobacco and weed.

Once Jon’s out for the count, Martin checks the doors, the windows, their rations and supplies with the religious militancy of a man who knows what happens when they don’t. He counts out rations, makes careful notations in his notebook with a stubby pencil sharpened by his pen-knife. The cupboards of the flat are mostly a bust, but there’s a few cans of baked beans, tinned peaches, and the delight of finding a single can of tinned custard, which Martin stashes to surprise Jon with later.

There’s a billy bookcase next to the non-functioning TV, crowded full of precarious piles of console game boxes and disordered books and back issues of the Fortean Times. Martin peruses through a number of books on mysticism, the paranormal and how one can access their inner self before he finds a glossy hardback on origami to entertain himself.

The sky outside is dark and scratched with an ugly bruising colour, but it’s likely to be only mid afternoon. Martin ventures back down the staircase and grabs some coloured card before he settles back into the spring-less corner of a battered settee draped with a brightly adorned throw blanket. There’s another, equally obnoxiously shaded blanket of clashing colours, and he places it over himself and gets comfortable.

It’s a few hours later when he hears the bed squeak. A clearing of a throat, the unsteady padded steps of someone who hasn’t found their equilibrium just yet.

Jon pushes the door open with a sighing squeak and peers blearily around.

The nap hasn’t helped at all by the look of it. Martin turns mid-fold and gets to see a crime scene of disturbed sleep evidenced on Jon’s body. One of Martin’s long-sleeve t-shirts rucked up, the under arms and ring around his neck patched damp. His skin rippled with a thick sweat, hair coming wildly and carelessly from the band he’d tied it back in. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet like he’s still following the motion of running, and his eyes as he stares at Martin are unnaturally dilated, unnervingly steady even as he scrubs his face with his hand.

“Hey,” Martin says carefully. Knowing to keep his voice pitched low, calmer than Jon feels right now. “Are you… everything ok?”

Jon pauses, blinks just too slowly to seem natural, and shakes his head.

“What’s wrong?” Martin asks. “If you can… if you want to say, that it.”

Jon pauses. It’s habit now. A nervous tic. Mulling over what he wants to say and how he’ll say it.

He has to be so careful with how he says things.

Martin’s expecting a truncated gesture or two. A stumbling sign that Martin will have to parse, backed up by a thousand other signifiers of meaning in their home-spun language. But unusually, Jon clears his throat, bites his top lip anxiously before he opens his mouth.

Like tuning in a radio station mid-programme, someone else’s words ring out.

“I allowed myself some brief hope,” Jon’s voice sloshes out of his mouth with a South American cadence. “that maybe he’d just left me, maybe he’d escaped with just a divorce. But no. One call to the housing association confirmed that, as far as they were concerned, I’d always lived alone.”

Most of the statements Martin doesn’t recognise. He’s not been cursed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of them after all, a forced and unwilling archive now capable of speaking in every voice but his own. They’re all the same anyway. The recycling of other people’s tragedies and miseries, their worst days committed for posterity and recited dutifully by the archive Jonah Magnus created to house them.

Jon usually doesn’t share the content of his dreams.

“Nightmare?” Martin says, deliberately lightly. He puts down his truly butchered attempt to make a swan and watches as Jon swallows, brings a hand to his mouth to gnaw at a nail.

He wonders if that’s the right word, knows in his heart it isn’t, not really. Because nightmares are a twisting of things that both are and aren’t, a plaited deceitful recollection of an unkind brain. Jon’s dreams are a hideous witnessing, with no hope of challenge of change.

Jon jerkily nods, before he says in that awful ventriloquism:

“… regarding a series of misplaced objects lost over the course of three months.”

Jon’s started to rub his arms. His lips firmly closed again, as though embarrassed he’s shared the history he’s been watching in his dreams. But he did share it. And that’s notable.

Martin holds up a corner of the blanket on the settee, and chides “Get in here, or you’ll catch your death”, and Jon’s crossing the distance as though he was waiting for the signal.

They don’t say anything for the while. Jon folds himself up against Martin’s side like a gangly greetings card, like one of his obviously failed origami projects. Martin puts an arm around his shoulder and consigns himself to the rather shocking robbery of body heat that’s rapidly occurring. Jon accepts the arm, but the tension is still wound through his marrow, and he doesn’t calm like he usually does.

“This one really bothered you, didn’t it?” Martin says.

A twitchy up-down motion.

“How come?” Martin asks, before: “If you want to talk about it. If not, well, I can tell you all about my grand adventures in paper folding. A wild ride, I can promise.”

Jon raises an eyebrow at the truly dazzling menagerie of wobbly animals, and huffs a stale laugh.

He brings out his hands from where he’d buried them in the furnace of Martin’s space, and makes a sign, a twisting hooked hand motion - Spiral. And then, shakier, flatter, his fingers closed like shutters – Lonely.

“As far as they were concerned,” he repeats with a mournful and stolen tongue, “I’d always lived alone.”

He makes a sign again, and meets Martin’s eye like he’s been trying not to – Lonely.

Jon reaches out, and like setting fingers to the board of a violin, delicately fits his hand against Martin’s. Like he’s memorised exactly the places where they go, the coves and shorelines where their islands can align.

Martin’s grip has never been as careful. His fingers engulf Jon’s smaller size, cushioning them in a sturdy grip.

“You’ve not lost me,” Martin says, reading in between the lines of Jon’s gestures. “I’m here, yeah? Alright. And we’re together. I’m not lost.”

Jon makes a grunt of acknowledgement, inclining his head in agreement, impatiently, as though he knows all this, like he begrudges being reminded. But clearly this knowledge hasn’t stained every part of his waking yet, because there are tears slipping unwanted from his eyes and his hand grips Martin harder.

His gaze flickers like a camera shutter from the floor and its foot-scuffed rug to Martin, back and forth. Martin wishes, not for the first time, that Jon could just ask for what he wants. Could stop feeling like he needs to justify every out-reaching motion to himself, approaching physical affection like he’s trying to do the cryptic bloody crossword.

He’s learning. They both are.

“What do you want me to do?” Martin asks instead.

Jon’s eyes finally linger on him. Cheeks damp, eyes red. He removes his hand from Martin’s grip like he’s unmooring a ship from port. His next movements being planned behind his eyes. A methodical consideration of angle, of intent, of reciprocation that’s as much caution as it is overthinking. Martin wonders sometimes whether this is the Jon he always was, or the Jon that’s been made by this world and all that’s been laid against him. Maybe it’s one or the other or both, or maybe it doesn’t matter much any more. This is Martin’s Jon, the Jon that is, the one that is thinking about how he’s going to place his limbs as though there’s a wrong way to it, who will steady himself before he’ll reach out. But who always does, eventually, in his own time.

His arms encircle Martin’s neck now. A pause, a release of air, before he’s pulling back, fretting like something hasn’t worked. But he clearly wants something, enough to push through his dissatisfaction, face folded in on itself unhappily before it sets in determination and then he goes for around Martin’s chest, fingers steadying, finding their own bony handholds in the material of Martin’s jumper. The right angles of his elbows, the washboard of his ribs felt under his shirt, they don’t have any give and Martin shifts a little to ease the hard sensation of it, try and reorient them better. Jon picks up on this, already trying to shift again or perhaps even move away, and if his tongue could still form apologies, he’d be making them.

Martin’s arms come round decisively, closing the circuit of them.

“Stop fussing,” he murmurs, and Jon quietens. Face against the round of Martin’s chest, the hand that’s not still gripped vice-like carefully combining through his damp hair.

“This ok?” Martin says finally, wanting to know, wanting Jon to feel like he can tell him.

Jon lifts his head. Nods, brings their lips together for a skimming kiss, like he’s sealing the sentiment.

He shuffles his body so he’s wedged next to Martin, taking up any crevice he finds. After a moment, pulling and positioning Martin’s arm back over his shoulder, so it drapes heavy and solid and present. A lightness on his face that sleep couldn’t achieve but a victory Martin likes to claim as his own every time.

It is no hardship for Martin to understand every one of these expressions just fine.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #no cws or tws #fluff #post 160

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mininky · 5 years

Text

Heavy Lies The Crown-14

Summary: (Y/N) has the fate of her people on her shoulders and according to a seer, the only way to save her kingdom from the bloodthirsty wolves is by giving herself to the god of the hunt.

Pairing: werewolf!Namjoon x reader

Warnings: None for this chapter

word count: 2.9K

Prologue Chapter one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve twelve and ½ thirteen fourteen fifteen

A/N: I know that this chapter is muuuch shorter than my usual updates but this has a really good stopping point for the next chapter to pick back up on and honestly I just wanted to share, it was time for HLTC to see the light of day again! Thank you guys for waiting for the update!!

The trip to Jackson's village was far easier than anticipated. There were frequent breaks along the way of course, but all of them were short-lived enough that you ended up making it there slightly early. Jackson had of course already been standing outside, waiting eagerly for everyone along with the rest of the village. In many ways, their village felt almost identical to your own. People were warm and friendly, greeting all of you with open arms and wide smiles. Even with all of their own hardships they've had to contend with they had banded together to make the most out of everything. You're sure that there have of course been some arguments and scruples along the way, but it was clear that everyone there adored Jackson and seemed to take his words to heart much the same way that your own people listened to Namjoon. While you hate the circumstances and the reasons as to why they need help, you can't help but feel a sense of ease that of all the villages you could stand with during trying times it was one as so lovely as this one.

It's clear, however, that the land has most certainly seen better times. The soil is parched, every plant nearby other than the older trees have succumbed to the drought, what's left of the grass looks like it could easily burst into flames if the conditions are right. The air is stagnant and dry in a way that makes you feel the sun seep right into your bones. You've grown used to the sense of frenetic beast magick that hovers over pack villages, but this...this feels different. You aren't sure how to describe it, but the sensation is almost as though someone condensed all the magick into a tidy box and then forced it underground. As if it's laying there, but not to be seen or touched. There's a current that zips through you, a lethargy that grips strongly at your magick as though pulling you through the mud. It's hard to think or breathe, everything feels stifling and confining and you want to claw your way out of this.

You keep this to yourself for now, however. There's work to be done leaving you with little time to dwell on the oddities of the situation at hand. Water and food need to be dispersed properly to each of the villagers, and Jackson luckily already had a plan figured out. Each person received rations while anything left over was to be stored in the bar that doubled as the meeting hall, the same as your village. You tried focusing yourself on the busy work, handing things out with the others and greeting each person at their door. But it was easy to be distracted, so many new scents, so many new noises, and a painful amount of new thoughts to try not to dissect apart.

It wasn't until the sun had set long ago that you could finally rest your weary feet at Jackson's cabin. His home was cozy, a small little abode nestled right in the middle of all the hustle and bustle a village could have. Jackson has a surprisingly large array of books, many of which you recognize as widely distributed works in human cities. Either he has a very good connection, or he dabbles in entering human territories from time to time. This might explain why you've never sensed a lick of animosity directed towards you from him, something that was as relieving as it was confusing amongst all the hate you felt when you met all the other pack leaders at the summit meeting.

The smell of fresh bread coming out of the oven has you stirring out of the guest bedroom and padding down the hallway. Namjoon is sprawled across one of the chairs, his head resting on the dining table as Jackson puts down the fresh loaf of bread next to an assortment of dried meat and fish along with some pickled and dried fruits and vegetables. You have to admit, for ration food, it really doesn't look half bad. Or perhaps that's just your intense hunger pains talking. Before you can even sit down Jackson is speaking to you, a wide grin placed on his face. "I haven't had a chance to tell you guys yet, but congratulations!"

It's a good thing you aren't the type of person who likes surprising others because wolf noses certainly ruin this one. "Thank you, Jackson!" Namjoon is beaming at you as he speaks, his dimples appearing and his face looking slightly less haggard and tired before he turns his attention back to Jackson. "By the way, we came out here for some other things too. Jisoo, the vampire who lives just outside of your village has...recently come to our attention. What do you know about her?"

Jackson ponders as he chews on his bread, his gaze cast at the ceiling before his sights swivel back and forth between the two of you. "Jisoo huh? She's not bad company. Say what you might about vampires, but we don't discriminate around here. She's lived around these parts for a very long time, and she's always been a genial neighbor. And count this as you will, but during the great war, she refused to join sides. She said that she wouldn't kill any other magick kinds and that she had no interest in werewolf politics. I do kind of wish she would stop calling me a mutt though. She sticks to herself mostly, but when she stops over in any human towns or villages she's always sure to bring back a supply of books for me and some of the other werewolves. She sometimes even brings me these things called newspapers, it's fascinating what humans get into sometimes."

Well good news, it looks like no matter where you turn Jisoo seems to check out as a stand-up vampire. It's also incredibly encouraging to hear that she has no desire to spill magick blood, this might explain why she doesn't seem to live near any other vampires. "Have you ever seen any other vampires visit her?"

"Jisoo? Not really. I know she has some friends in all magick communities, but as I said, she sticks to herself. She's the type of friend to pop by once every six months to let you know she's still alive and then flee back into the darkness once again. But if she's spending time around your village I wouldn't worry. For one thing, she probably won't be there long. But most importantly, she's never caused any trouble. She's a bit rough around the edges, but as long as I've known her she's had a heart of gold. Honestly, she's probably just spending time in your parts because she's hunting." Jackson nods to himself as if agreeing silently as he speaks. You wish that you could say that's the only reason, although he isn't entirely wrong. You're sure that she was the culprit behind the drained dear carcasses.

Namjoon grabs a piece of jerky, chewing slowly before speaking up. "That's good news. I trust your judgment Jackson, you've never been wrong before." It is indeed good news, but the truth of the matter is no matter how much the two of you dig up on Jisoo it's not your choice to make. It's Yoongi's. And as much as all you want for him is to be happy, you also can understand that moving forward with a vampire will be no easy task for him. All you can try to do at this point is reassure him that she doesn't appear to be doing this with any ill intent in mind. At least not if Jackson's opinion on her is truly accurate of her character. Namjoon glances over at you, silently handing the floor over as you stir yourself out of your thoughts.

"Jackson, I also have some questions to ask you about the drought. However, I think it might be a good idea to have your village elder in this conversation as well. They might be able to shed more light on some of the questions I have." You watch as his face squeezes up in confusion for a moment before he nods slowly.

"Of course, we can certainly do that. We can go as soon as we finish supper if you'd like?" It's clear that he wants to ask why exactly the village elder will be necessary for this conversation, but he doesn't ask for any further details.

Namjoon and you agree quickly to holding the meeting right after dinner, and you try to relax into your meal. While it would be nice to be able to rest for a bit before discussing anything further this most certainly takes priority. The sooner you're able to figure out what's going on the sooner you can try to put things back to some semblance of normal. At least, weather-wise.

There's something strange here, the drought isn't of natural causes. You can't explain why you know that. You just know that something has gone cosmically awry for unseen reasons. As if in just this section of the world things have started spinning out of place. It might also be the notion that gods are at play here though, and try as you might to say you have no biases you have already heard whisperings that may or may not be clouding your better judgment. As it is, you just need more information. Something more to fit the pieces together. And even if it is the gods, then what? How exactly does one proceed when the heavens have a vendetta against you? Unfortunately, there's no magical guidebook on how to get through situations like that. Just handfuls of myths and lore that might guide you correctly. Then again, that's only if the gods are in play. You could be wrong, it might not be mystical but rather just an unfortunate and unstoppable fate. You don't know what's worse. A climate change that you can't control, or having to devise a plan to go up against gods.

------------

The village elder of Jackson's pack looks more like a pirate with his hooked nose, scarred face, and a look in his eyes that says he's seen far too much and won't go down without a fight. Unlike your own village elder, this man clearly wasn't expecting you. It's almost refreshing that he doesn't seem to be an omniscient sage. He glares down at Namjoon and you for a moment before breaking out into a gummy grin, ushering the two of you inside as he hobbles around to pry out some wine he says he keeps just for special occasions. You had unfairly expected him to appear rather mystical, a savant who has seen it all akin to your own elder. Instead, he seems like a kindly grandfather who reminisces on war stories at random. If you're honest, it's throwing you for a bit of a loop.

You kindly take a small sip of the (overpoweringly disgusting) wine before sliding it closer to Namjoon when the elder winks at you. "Ah, a little wine never hurt a pup. Congratulations you two! I just wish our own pack leader could finally find his mate. I'd like to see those rugrats running around this place someday, and someday soon. I don't have all the time in the world anymore. And what with this awful drought business we sure could use some good news like that to lighten our spirits."

"About that, I actually have some questions for both of you. I noticed that the magick in the air feels rather stifling, have either of you ever noticed the same thing?" You peer at both of them, moving slightly closer when you see a hard glint in the elder's eyes.

"You're a sharp one, even some of the other wolves around here haven't caught on. So you can sense it too?" He strokes at his straggly mustache as he watches you.

"I sense something. What praytell that something is I haven't the foggiest notion of yet."

"Oh but you do. You're a sharp one, but a skeptic at best I'd guess. I don't know what's a more foolish thing to do. To refuse to believe in the gods' will, or to refuse to believe in anything but their wills."

"Would either of you like to tell me what's going on?" Jackson breaks into the conversation, his eyes swiveling between the two of you before landing on Namjoon before getting a mere shrug from your mate as if to say he doesn't understand what Jackson isn't catching.

"Gods, my boy. Gods are at play. Do you think a drought just appears out of nowhere? With no warning from the winds, no prophecies from a single person in the village or even from the mermaids?" He pauses to swig down some more wine before scooching up to the edge of his chair, "You know humans often offer sacrifices, rituals. They do things to appease the gods as they don't have the ability to sense the magick that we can. They never know when they're in the presence of one, or if they've upset one or made one glad. But magick creatures? Even if we don't fully understand it, you can most certainly feel it. I fear that the more the gods constrain our magick the less likely people in these parts will be able to sense it at all. It's gone on for too long. And unfortunately, gods are out of our realm. We are in their domain, they're free to choose who to smite and who to cherish. Magical beings might claim themselves to be better than humans, but it's clear that we rest at about the same level as them in the eyes of the gods. We are simply at their mercy."

"Are we, are we truly at their mercy? There must be something that we can do. There must be something that they want from this land or a reason as to why they've decided to bring on this drought. I refuse to sit idly by and simply say that we have no control in this situation without even trying. You might say that humans only give rituals and sacrifice and praise as they know not how to feel for the gods, but I disagree. I think even they can sense when the world is at a state of unrest. And perhaps as magick creatures we've been arrogant too long, assuming that they want nothing from us and only from humans. There must be something that we can do, or at the very least we might be able to figure out the root cause of this all to untangle this messy web they've weaved." Namjoon rests his hand on your back fondly as you speak, giving his quiet agreement before silence settles in.

For a moment you aren't sure what they'll do, or how they respond. But then the elder gives a barking laugh, slamming down his now empty cup of wine before propping himself up on his elbows. "I like you girly, you've got a fire in you. I've met more powerful beasts than you with far less bite. I personally believe it foolish to go against the gods, but for some reason when I hear you speak I can't help but want to rear into a fight. I've seen some crazy things in my time, but never in all my years did I think I'd hear someone honestly try to take on the gods. I have a feeling though that if you're involved, you'll make sure things go your way."

Jackson nods his head animatedly, jumping up on his feet as he speaks. "I don't know how I didn't put it together sooner. The two of you are right, there must be very powerful magick at play. I'll try digging up some more information, ask around the village to see if others have seen anything or had any prophetic dreams lately. Would the two of you mind staying a bit longer? I wouldn't expect the two of you to be here for too much time of course, but I feel it would be easier to sleuth with your great minds than by myself. Besides, it'll be much faster to come up with a plan while you're still here than having to wait to send messages back and forth. Of course, I understand if you have other pressing matters, but I would greatly appreciate it."

"Well with glowing reviews like that, how could we turn you down?" Namjoon gives a wide grin when Jackson gives a whoop of joy. While you watch the scene with a sense of pride, you can't help but wonder what all you can do. It seems that it's time to turn to Merlin. Perhaps dear old dad might lend you some pertinent information from the afterlife.

#namjoon smut #btssmutclub #namjoon fanfic #namjoon fanfiction #bts smut #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts reader insert #namjoon reader insert #namjoon angst #bts werewolf au #namjoon werewolf au

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gadgetgirl71 · 4 years

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Amazon First Reads for April 2020

Here we are again, it’s time to choose one of eight books that Amazon First Reads lets Amazon Prime Members download for free. At the moment I seem to be downloading more free books than ever. I wonder if it’s my mind trying to get off what is happening around the world, lets just hope that I start to read more quickly.

This months book choices are:

Psychological Suspense

What we Forget to Bury by Martin Montgomery, Pages: 439, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

synopsis: Truth and deceit blur as one woman’s desperation twists into another’s desire for revenge in this mind-bending psychological novel.

Charlotte Coburn has a tragically dark past. But she’s safe now. She lives in a gated community, protected from danger. When teenager Elle knocks at her door looking for shelter during a particularly severe storm, the woman can’t help but think how lucky Elle’s been to have found someone as friendly as her. Except Elle chose her door on purpose…

She knows all about Charlotte’s secrets because they ruined her family and her life. And it is time that everyone else knew. But Charlotte’s past has left a dark void in her life, so she is concocting her own vicious plan, convinced that Elle can help fill that void.

As events unfold, the truth unravels and pulls both women into a dangerous game that will leave you wondering, Who’s the villain?

Contemporary Fiction

Little White Secrets by Carol Mason, Pages 33, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them.

For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control.

Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again.

When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…

Thriller

The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayner, Pages: 328, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: For a Florida police diver, danger rises to the surface in an adventurous thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Naturalist.

Coming from scandalous Florida treasure hunters and drug smugglers, Sloan McPherson is forging her own path, for herself and for her daughter, out from under her family’s shadow. An auxiliary officer for Lauderdale Shores PD, she’s the go-to diver for evidence recovery. Then Sloan finds a fresh kill floating in a canal—a woman whose murky history collides with Sloan’s. Their troubling ties are making Sloan less a potential witness than a suspect. And her colleagues aren’t the only ones following every move she makes. So is the killer.

Stalked by an assassin, pitted against a ruthless cartel searching for a lost fortune, and under watch within her ranks, Sloan has only one ally: the legendary DEA agent who put Sloan’s uncle behind bars. He knows just how deep corruption runs—and the kind of danger Sloan is in. To stay alive, Sloan must stay one step ahead of her enemies—both known and unknown—and a growing conspiracy designed to pull her under.

Science Fiction

A Girl from Nowhere by James Maxwell, Pages: 442, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: Surrounded by fire, a girl with mysterious powers and a young warrior search for safety.

Life in the wasteland is a constant struggle. No one knows it better than Taimin. Crippled, and with only his indomitable aunt to protect him, Taimin must learn to survive in a world scorched by two suns and frequented by raiders.

But when Taimin discovers his homestead ransacked and his aunt killed, he sets off with one mission: to seek revenge against those who stole everything. With nowhere to call home, his hunt soon takes a turn when he meets a mystic, Selena, who convinces him to join her search for the fabled white city. Taimin and Selena both need refuge, and the white city is a place where Taimin may find someone to heal his childhood injury.

As they avoid relentless danger, Taimin and Selena attempt to reach the one place that promises salvation. And they can only hope that the city is the haven they need it to be…

Romance

Love on Beach Avenue by Jennifer Probst, Pages: 310, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: True love is in the details for the Jersey shore’s premier wedding planner in this heart-swooning series about big dreams and happy endings from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst.

Avery Sunshine might not have a soul mate of her own, but she still believes in happily ever after—for her clients. Making dreams come true is her business at Sunshine Bridal, which she runs with her two sisters. When her best friend announces her engagement, Avery is thrilled to take charge of the giddy bride-to-be’s big day. Less thrilling? Her best friend’s arrogant and demanding brother, who just so happens to be the man of honour.

Carter Ross’s first instinct: call 911. He promised to always take care of his impulsive little sister, and he honors that vow. Even if it means taking over her wedding, where he is sure Avery will fail. At best, Avery is unpredictable. At worst, if she’s anything like the spitfire of a college girl he remembers, the main event could run wild.

With Avery and Carter wrestling for control, tempers heat up. So does the spark of attraction they’re fighting with every kiss. As the wedding draws near, it’s time to reconcile a rocky past and make a decision that could change everyone’s lives. Because what they’re rebelling against looks a lot like love.

Contemporary Fiction

Stories We Never Told by Sonja Yoerg, Pages: 328, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: From the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of True Places comes a suspenseful novel of love, secrets, and obsession.

Psychology professor Jackie Strelitz thinks she’s over Harlan Crispin, her ex-lover and colleague. Why should she care if Harlan springs a new “friend” on her? After all, Jackie has everything she ever wanted: a loving husband and a thriving career. Still, she can’t help but be curious about Harlan’s latest.

Nasira Amari is graceful, smart, and appallingly young. Worse, she’s the newest member of Jackie’s research team. For five years, Harlan enforced rules limiting his relationship with Jackie. With Nasira, he’s breaking every single one. Why her?

Fixated by the couple, Jackie’s curiosity becomes obsession. But she soon learns that nothing is quite what it seems and that to her surprise—and peril—she may not be the only one who can’t let go.

Literary Fiction

Meadowlark by Melanie Abrams, Pages: 238, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: A haunting novel about the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the resulting choices we make for our children.

After growing up in an austere spiritual compound, two teenagers, Simrin and Arjun, escape and go their separate ways. Years later, Simrin receives an email from Arjun. As they reconnect, Simrin learns that he has become the charismatic leader of Meadowlark, a commune in the Nevada desert that allows children to discover their “gifts.”

In spite of their fractured relationship, Simrin, a photojournalist, agrees to visit Meadowlark to document its story. She arrives at the commune with her five-year-old daughter in tow and soon realizes there is something disturbing about Arjun’s beliefs concerning children and their unusual abilities. When she discovers that the commune is in the midst of a criminal investigation, her unease grows deeper still.

As tensions with police heighten, Arjun’s wife begins to make plans of her own, fearing the exposure the investigation might bring for her and her children. Both mothers find themselves caught in a desperate situation, and as the conflict escalates, everyone involved must make painful—and potentially tragic—choices that could change their worlds forever.

Gripping and beautifully crafted, Meadowlark explores the power and danger of being extraordinary and what it means to see and be seen.

Children’s Picture Book

Bear & Fred (A World War II Story) by Iris Argaman, Pages: 47, Publication Date: 1 May 2020

Synopsis: Based on true events and beautifully illustrated, this is the story of a friendship that will last forever—told by Fred’s best friend, his beloved teddy bear.

During World War II, Fred must leave his home and live in hiding, apart from the rest of his family, but he always keeps Bear by his side. Bear knows it’s his job to take care of Fred and make sure he doesn’t feel alone.

After the war, Fred and his family are reunited and leave Holland for the United States. And still Bear is with him. When Fred grows up, he and Bear part for the first time when Bear is sent to Yad Vashem—the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, where this book was first published—to show the power of hope, friendship, and love.

I felt Fred’s small hand grab me. He patted me and whispered, “Bear, I won’t leave you here all by yourself. You are my best friend.”

*** Which book will you choose? I decided to go for Love on Beach Avenue. ***

#amazonkindle #amazon prime members #amazonprimemembers #amazonfirstreads #Kindle #Kindlebooks #books #childrens #childrenspicturebooks #contemporary fiction #goodreads #literary fiction #PsychologicalSuspence #romance #thriller #science fiction

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball Z 011

Hot damn! It’s time for Terror on Arlia! This is probably one of the best filler episodes ever. It’s like, the driver’s ed episode, the Goku vs. Pikkon fight, and this. I’m not sure how I’d rank them, but maybe I’ll work on that sometime later.

First off, some time has passed once again since the last episode. Now, Gohan is strong enough that the dinosaur that keeps attacking him is no longer a threat.

Gohan just calmly runs away from it, then jumps right before he runs into a boulder, and the dinosaur hits it instead.

Then he hacks off a piece of the dinosaur’s tail while it’s stunned. Again. Gohan’s apparently been doing this for a while now, and he warns the dinosaur that it’ll run out of tail at the rate they’re going. The message is simple: Don’t eat Gohan’s friends.

Gohan has also figured out how to make his own ki blasts, which is pretty high-level stuff. His ki may only be powerful enough to start a fire, but it’s way more than most of the other characters could have done at age four.

Meanwhile, Bulam, Krillin, and Yamcha are looking for Tien and Chiaotzu. Or maybe they’re just talking about looking for them now that they have Yamcha. I’m pretty sure the Gohan scenes are taking place over the course of several weeks, while these Z-Warrior scenes are supposed to be playing out over the course of a single day. Even if it really is taking this long to find Tien, why would Krillin and Yamcha be with her for the whole search? They’d be better off heading to Kami’s Lookout, so they can start training for the Saiyans.

Speaking of Tien, Launch is on the run from the cops for stealing a bunch of money for Tien.

She eludes the police with a grenade launcher.

So she escapes with the loot. Most of it anyway, a lot spilled out of the back while she was being chased.

But never mind that, here comes Vegeta. He and Nappa are on their way to Earth, and they set their space pods to put them in stasis for the year-long journey, but Vegeta programmed it to wake them up at a certain point along the way, so they could get out and stretch their legs.

Seems he found a planet along their course for Earth, and since the Saiyans conquer planets to sell for profit, he sees this as a way to make some nice profit on the side. This seems a bit out of character for Vegeta, given what we learn about him later on. I would think that the Planet Trade business is just something he puts up with until he can find a way to get out of it. So it’s not that he wouldn’t want to take a pit stop on the way to Earth, but I doubt it would be to score some extra cash.

Anyway, Nappa just wants to get out of the pod and move around a bit, so he’s up for anything.

And here’s the lucky planet they’re going to. It’s called Arlia, and it looks really crappy, even from a distance. There was an episode of Mythbusters where they tested the futility of polishing a turd, and it ended up with them making piles of dung into spheres. That’s what Arlia looks like.

The planet actually manages to look even worse up close. I don’t know if the boys meant to set down in a desolate area like this, but I always got the impression that most of the planet looks like this, so they didn’t have much choice. Vegeta concedes that they probably won’t find a buyer for Arlia after all. I figure this is the sort of planet a Space Trillionaire would buy, but only because he wants to feel like a Space Quadrillionaire.

Suddenly these big bug people show up. I don’t know why they’re so much bigger than Nappa, when the rest of the Arlians we see are not. There’s a lot we don’t know about the Arlians, and we’ll probably never know. They threaten to arrest the Saiyans and take them to King Moai.

Nappa’s eager to fight them, but Vegeta orders him to stand down for the moment, since he wants to see this Moai guy for himself. I guess he figures the planets’ leader would be in a more advance (read: valuable) location, which would give Vegeta a better idea of what Arlia has to offer.

Notable, this is the first indication of Saiyans using telepathy. Goku uses it later on, and we’ve already seen Master Roshi, Crane Hermit, Korin, and Kami use it, but it always seemed to be this mystical thing that only wise old martial artists could do. Oh yeah, and King Piccolo could telepathically communicate with his offspring.

I guess what I find interesting about this instance is that Vegeta uses it rather casually, when he could just as easily whisper to Nappa, or maybe use some nonverbal gesture to get his point across. The point here may be to indicate just how scary-powerful Vegeta is, but the thing about Vegeta is that anything we see him do can be applied to every other Saiyan character. If Master Roshi can read minds, it sort of stops there. If Vegeta can communicate telepathically, that means Nappa, Raditz, Goku, and Gohan can too, along with every other Saiyan character that hasn’t been introduced yet. Vegeta might be the only one who knows how at this point, but that’s just a matter of skill.

So here’s Moai’s stronghold, and guess what, it’s also a dump. I’m not complaining about the artwork, mind you. This scenery is breathtaking. The twin suns sort of make this look like a face, with the clouds forming a furrowed brow. It’s like the Arlians’ god is looking down on the castle, and he’s not happy with what he’s seeing.

Also, while Moai’s fortress looks moderately impessive, it’s surrounded by absolutely nothing. What happened on this planet? My guess is that it was ruined by centuries of war, but it’s also possible that the Arlians prefer it like this.

Vegeta and Nappa are taken to a dungeon, which looks like something from a Prince Valiant comic. This is the paradox of Arlia, because it looks like the Arlians are generally familiar with alien visitors, implying that they’ve been exposed to advanced technologies, but their own world is backward and medieval. They don’t even seem interested in the Saiyans’ ships or their scouters. And they lock them up behind a wooden gate. And why do they carry swords when they all seem to have some sort of red mouth laser?

While they wait, the Saiyans meet Atla, one of the native Arlians who’s been imprisoned by Moai. Well, “meet” may not be the right word. Atla just starts introducing himself and explaining the backstory while they stand silently and face in his general direction.

From Atla’s words, it sounds to me like Moai took over the planet fairly recently, perhaps after a long civil war that killed anyone more qualified to rule. Unconcerned with actually governing his people, Moai just does whatever he pleases, using his unlimited power to enforce his whims. So there’s a good chance that the planet looks like a dump because of his indifference.

I dig this sort of thing, because it reminds me of the decline of the Western Roman Empire, where the emperors eventually became little more than figureheads backed by strong military leaders. Over time, the Roman armies became supplemented by foreign mercenaries, until eventually the top generals were all foreign mercenaries, and eventually they just dispensed with the figureheads and started ruling Italy outright. I get the impression that the emperors didn’t particularly care that their domain was being usurped by outsiders, because as long as they were comfortable in their palaces then everything was fine.

There’s kind of a similar pattern in the Bible, where you see David and Solomon’s descendants slowly letting the Kingdom of Israel decline. Rehoboam’s arrogance caused the kingdom to split in two, and while there were a few good kings who embraced piety and reform, a lot of wicked kings abandoned the principles that made their reigns possible. They worshipped idols and did whatever they liked, and then eventually they found themselves surrounded by powerful enemies. The later kings were reduced to vassals, but they didn’t seem too concerned about that as long they got to sit in their palaces and pretend everything was okay.

Atla laments that now Moai is capturing space aliens on top of oppressing his own people, which suggests that Moai only sees his rule as a right to oppress other people for his own amusement.

I wrote about this episode some time back, comparing Arlia to Westeros from Game of Thrones, or A Song of Ice and Fire or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be called. I’ve never read the books because I need that time to liveblog anime, but everything I’ve heard about it suggests that the whole story is about some backwater planet full of medieval fantasy tropes, and all the leaders are corrupt, venal idiots who only stay in charge because they’re protected by bullshit laws and traditions, or because they’re better at the endless palace intrigue that goes on in the story. There’s one kingdom that was ruled by a Draco Malfoy clone, and another run by a guy who hunts naked women for sport, and I think some character keeps fetuses in jars for no apparent reason. I get the impression that a lot of the books is just George R.R. Martin trying to use shock value to pad things out. That and lore. If Tom Clancy and Howard Stern co-wrote Lord of the Rings, you might have something pretty similar to Game of Thrones.

What I’m trying to say here is that Moai seems to just sit around all day watching his subjects fight each other for his own amusment. He forced Atla’s betrothed, Lemlia, to be his queen (she’s the pink bug lady in the back), and he has soldiers just roaming the wastelands in search of new prisoners to mess with. His men captured real live space aliens and he’s like��“Oh goody! Bring them before me, because I actually believe they’ll respect the idiotic rules that keep me in power.” I’m pretty sure this is exactly what King Draco Malfoy Clone would do in this situation.

He looks and talks and acts like a complete buffoon, and he’s just begging for some hero to come along and punch him in the mouthparts. Except Atla’s in the dungeon, and some other, more competent hero must have gotten killed off three books ago (cf. A Sleet of Testicles).

And this is what I love about this episode. Vegeta (along with Nappa, of course) are sort of being put into this role of traveling heroes who enter a tyrant’s domain and set things right. They’re certainly powerful enough to do it, but we already know that’s not what they’re here for.

Vegeta kills all the gladiators and informs Moai that he only let himself be captured just to get this close to the king. It astonishes me that Moai needs to have this explained to him. He’s so used to having his own way that it never dawned on him that anyone could use his arrogance against him.

Nappa strikes his classic pose and kills all the guards.

Then Moai summons an even bigger bug creature named Yedi. Nappa asks permission from Vegeta to handle this one, which I think is a nice touch.

Nappa rips off Yedi’s finger and licks the monster blood off his face. Nappa’s awesome. He’s just havin’ a good old time.

I forget why now, but rocks start falling, probably because Vegeta’s powers cause the ceiling to break apart. Moai takes cover behind his throne...

...but a rock ends up killing him anyway. I woudn’t think that’s a vital area, but what do I know about Arlian anatomy? It’s kind of fitting that Moai should die like this, in his own throne room/gladiator arena, cowering behind his throne. He thought it would protect him like it always had done in the past, but in the end he met a power that didn’t respect anything he had accomplished. The Saiyans ignored his royal robes and saw only a fool, and so he died a fool.

Atla shows up and praises the Saiyans or liberating his planet from Moai’s tyranny. You know, he could have followed them up here and helped out. They were all in the same cell, and Vegeta and Nappa destroyed the door and killed all the guards, so what took him so long?

The Saiyans just sort of look at him, and then they get back in their spaceships.

I’m not sure why they even bother flying across the surface. Maybe they’re still surveying the planet, but it’s a crappy planet no matter what angle you view it from. At last, Vegeta gives up and they head back into space.

But before they leave, he gets out of his ship and decides to leave a going-away present. How does Vegeta breathe in space? That’s one way you can tell which ones are filler scenes. They usually play faster and looser with this sort of thing.

On the surface, Atla and Lemlia are reunited at last, and it looks like everything’s going to be okay from now on, thanks to those two heroic aliens who...

LOL JK, Vegeta blew up the whole planet.

What’s so great about this is that Arlia kind of deserved to die. Not in the strictest narrative sense, but from a metanarrative viewpoint, it was just a really dumb planet. Any world that could fall under Moai’s rule probably didn’t have much longer to live anyway, and it’s almost like Vegeta put it out of it’s misery. I’m not suggesting any of this rationalizes Vegeta’s actions. This is a horrible, horrible crime, and Vegeta did it like it was nothing to him. He’s done far worse things with even less compunction.

Even so, he’s not Arlia’s villain, he’s Dragon Ball’s villain, so it’s just satisfying to watch him squash some crappy filler planet that had no redeeming value to the story. It’s like watching your favorite bad guy wrestler clobber your least favorite good guy wrestler.

And the narrator sums it up very neatly. This is what’s headed for Earth. The Saiyans destroyed Arlia like it was nothing, and what can Earth do to avoid a similar fate? Z stands for The End.

But not yet. Not yet.

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #vegeta #nappa #goku #launch #gohan #bulma #krillin #yamcha #moai #atla #lemlia #yedi #dragon ball z #saiyans saga

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dailyaudiobible · 6 years

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06/16/2018 DAB Transcript

1 Kings 14:1-15:24, Acts 10:1-23, Ps 133:1-3, Pr 17:7-8

Today is the 16th day of June. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. And it is a pleasure, like every day, to be here with you, an honor to be able to read the Scriptures around this global campfire that is our community. And where I envision most every day that roaring fire and us just sitting around, kind of coming in out of the dark, warming ourselves, being together. Cause in a very real way that's what's happening. We're never listening to the Daily Audio Bible alone and someone's always sitting at the campfire. So, it's a pleasure and an honor to take the next step forward with you today as we close down another one of our weeks together. We've been reading from the Good News translation this week and we'll continue to do that today. 1 Kings 15:25-17:24 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of 1 Kings, we are rapidly moving generation to generation, following two sets of kings, kings in the north in Israel and kings in the south in Judah. And so, yeah, it gets confusing. And then a prophet will come into the mix and so we can kind of anchor ourselves in the relationship that the prophet might have with one of the kings. So, we sort of see that happen in today's reading as we meet a name that it's unlikely that you've never heard before. Elijah. The prophet Elijah. A great prophet of Israel who is prophesying in the North. Okay, so he's with the ten Northern Tribes of Israel. And he's telling the new king, Ahab, that it's not going to rain for a while. And, so, we will watch that story unfold. But we should note that of Ahab the Scriptures tell us that there was no one worse than him. No one had sinned more against the Lord than him. And the capitol city of the north has now become Samaria. Ahab has built a temple in Samaria to the god Baal. The ruins of that temple still exist in the ancient ruins of Samaria. And they can still be seen today. This is not particularly an easy place to get to right now. Not a place to take tour buses and stuff like that to, but we have definitely gone there and filmed there. And I've seen the ruins myself and we've filmed them. They're found in the Promised Land films. So, there is archeology that remains until today from this time that we're reading about today.

Then we get to the New Testament, the book of Acts. And we kind of started a story that I said has pretty significant repercussions for the early church. And it does. So, Cornelius is a gentile, Peter's a Jew, there were visions, there was a sending for Peter, Peter has come. And it's interesting because Peter comes into Cornelius’ house and so he's like, here I am. You sent for me. What do you want? And Cornelius is kind of like, Well, an angel told me to send for you, so what do you have to say? Quite an interesting way to make an acquaintance for sure. Peter shares the story of Jesus with a house full of gentile people in Joppa. The Holy Spirit falls upon these gentile people clearly. And this forces Peter and the early church that he was associated with to grapple with the fact that God was pouring out his Holy Spirit upon gentiles and they could see it, even though this was a complete reframe of what they thought they knew. They thought what Jesus had done was all in the context of Jewish people. Now they began to understand that the work of Christ was opening up the way of restoration and intimacy and relationship with God to everyone in the world. Now, most of us can be incredibly grateful for that fact because most of us would be considered gentile. And for the most part this isn't an issue. This isn't something we're thinking about every day. But I cannot stress to you the importance of this issue in the early church. This was essentially the first church problem. It was a sincere and significant struggle. And it would take more than an hour to try to tell the whole story, so we'll tell the story as we continue to move through the Bible, especially as we get into the writings of the apostle Paul, which are kind of next up on deck. But I will give you the implications right now because the implications brought about great tribulation and persecution for the early Christians later on. So, in the time that we are reading about in the book of Acts, the entire land was a part of the Roman empire. So, where this is all taking place in the modern-day area of Israel and the ancient area of Israel, this was the far eastern border of the Roman empire. It was their province of Syria. And these Jewish people who had ancient roots in this area, they were permitted by the Roman government to continue to have their worship of the god that they had always worshipped. That's not so unusual. The Romans had a pantheon of gods. Everybody could worship whatever gods that they wanted to worship. But they were sort of like the state gods. The kind of worship that would give your allegiance to the empire, that would bind people together as one group of people. The Jewish people wouldn't do that. They would only worship the God of Israel, which is a little ironic based on the kings that we're reading through and how they worshipped all kinds of gods and were not faithful to the Lord their God. But anyway, the Jewish people would not worship these Roman gods. They would only worship the one true God. And they kind of had an exception. This was sort of tolerated, permitted. It marginalized them. This was Roman territory and it was being built up as part of the Roman Empire, but the Jewish people separated themselves and so they were marginalized by default and then they were suppressed, oppressed but they got to worship their god without having to worship any of the Roman gods to show their allegiance to Rome. This kind of explains some of the context in Jesus life, like why are the Sanhedrin, why are the Sadducees and the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus and all this stuff? Why is the High Priest saying it's better for one man to die for the whole nation than the whole nation to be destroyed? It's because of this kind of context. They have this tenuous kind of thing going on where they are being oppressed and suppressed but they are given religious freedom to worship only the one true God. So not very many Romans wanted to convert to Judaism. It did happen. They were God- fearers and Cornelius in the book of Acts is one of these people. He wasn't a Jew, but he was God-fearing. The implications of the Holy Spirit coming into gentile lives and this opening up to the entire world was going to force a separation that would bring about persecution because up until this point, up until God began to work among the gentiles giving his Holy Spirit, people who followed Jesus were just largely looked at as kind of a weird sect of Judaism following a very specific rabbi into certain specific behaviors and they had some mystical feelings about who this rabbi might have been and revering rabbis goes back into antiquity. This wasn't particularly a new concept. And not everybody knew about Jesus' life. So, these people who were following The Way, the way of Jesus, never really assumed that they weren't going to be Jewish anymore. This was the entire context for their lives and Jesus was a Jewish person and lived within that context. So, it was just sort of like a branch of Judaism and it would have found its protection and religious freedom because of the Jewish people. For the Holy Spirit to come into the gentile lives, and for the church, the early church, to acknowledge, this is not just a Jewish thing, this is a whole world thing, would have immediate set the Jews against them and they would have no longer protected them with their religious freedoms and so then they would have been required, like every other Roman, to have allegiance to the roman gods. And over time that played out and brought great persecution, but that's some context. We have a lot of ground to cover because we look at the book of Acts and we go, that was the Golden age, man. The Holy Spirit was falling everywhere, people were coming to Jesus by the thousands. It was an amazing, amazing time with no problems and everyone was in harmony and unity. And that's just not how it went though, and we will see how that all plays out and how particularly relevant it is to our lives today as we continue forward over the coming months and getting into the writings of the Apostle Paul. So, I think that's a pretty good way to end our week.

Prayer:

Father, thank You. Thank You for another week in Your Word and thank You for all that You have brought us through all these stories. Sometimes it feels like they're coming at us so quickly that we can't keep up and sometimes they are piercing our heart, they are exposing so much inside of us that we need to submit to You and it's a beautiful thing the way Your Holy Spirit does move around the world through Your Word. And, so, we're thanking You for allowing us to be a part of that story. We ask that You plant the words that we've heard from the Scriptures this week into our lives, rooting us in You, guiding and directing our steps in the ways that we should go. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to check it out.

Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible shop. Things like the Promised Land films which will allow you to see so many of the places that we experience as we go through the Scriptures, including Samaria that we talked about today. So, check that out.

If you partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. Thank you for your partnership profoundly as we move deeper into the summer months. There is a link on the homepage. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the give button on the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O Box 1996, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174.

And, as always if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for here is tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi there Daily Audio Bible family. This is Alaska mom. And I don't call very often but I just heard some really sad news. I live in a very small town in Alaska and there was a single car accident sometime last night but it was not even found until tonight. A mother and three children in the car. The mom and the middle child did not make it. The youngest who was about 6 or 7 and the oldest who is about 12 or 13 are being Medevac'd out of town with severe hypothermia and I don't know what else, but if you could just keep the family in prayer and keep our whole town because this will...this will affect our whole town. It's...it's very heartbreaking. Please pray. Thank you.

Hey everybody. It's Margo from Australia. I just couldn't resist ringing again today because I just finished hearing today's reading on the 12th of June and the proverb that Brian read at the end where he said, gold and silver are tested by fire and a person's heart is tested by the Lord. I love that proverb and it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite verses in the Bible, which is in Job of all places. And most of you will know the story of Job and the suffering that he endured. And there's a verse in Job 23:10 and its Job speaking. And he says of the Lord, when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold. And that has always been one of my favorite verses. I have a couple my bathroom mirror. When the Lord has tested me, I will come forth as gold. And I've always found that so encouraging. When we are going through times of suffering and hardship, remember that at the end we want to come forth as gold. And, so, no matter what's happening in your...in your life continue to praise the Lord, continue to bless His name, continue to trust in Him and have faith in Him and say to yourself, when He has tested me I will come forth as gold.

Hi DAB family. This is Diane from Indiana. I'm calling to reach out to Jeanette who called to say her husband, Vince, has Parkinson's disease and is soon to have DBS surgery. I too have Parkinson's disease and have gone through this same surgery. I know exactly what he's going through and how precise this surgery has to be. Please let Vince know that I'm praying for him every day while he goes through this process for physical healing and for God to be glorified through it all. Jeanette, please call back and let us know how Vince is doing. Thank you DAB family for your prayers for Vince.

Hi DABbers. My name is Lynn. I'm calling from British Colombia, Canada. I have a prayer request. I recently had a birthday and I relapsed into alcoholism around my birthday. I have something important to do today and I am worried that I might mess up something rather important because of the physical state that I allowed my body to get into with...with the birthday bender. However, a praise report, because I flagged...May...or...March for this year and just re-listened to, 'be still and know that I am God', and just listening to that along with Brian's prayer has given me such hope for today. Thank you. God bless you all.

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anyway-i-love-vanderwood · 7 years

Text

Harvest Moon AU - Zen Heart Events

Black Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season but Winter

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the bottom section of Aurora Lake, which lies south of the Moonlight Mine. Zen frequently can be found practicing the guitar by the lake’s shores, and you walks in on him doing so. He does not notice you at first, and you watch him practice while musical notes appear above his head.]

Zen: They think I’m crazy. ♪ My heartbeat goes up. ♫

Zen: Words cannot express my love for you! ♫♪

Zen: Did you – ack!

[An exclamation point appears above Zen’s head, and he stops playing as he notices you.]

Zen: <MC>, I didn’t see you out there! How long have you been listening?

Zen: …A while, huh? Well, I understand. It’s hard to ignore my alluring presence!

Zen: What brings you this far out of town?

> [Choice 1] “It’s beautiful out. I wanted to take a walk.”

Zen: Ahh, isn’t it, though? The sound of the wind, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers drifting on the breeze…

Zen: It’s enough to make a man feel alive, isn’t it?

Zen: Whenever I visit to the lake, I remember why I moved to Mystic Valley in the first place. The fresh air has a way of making my soul feel… clean.

Zen: I always come out here to practice. Would you like to listen for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 2] “I wanted to see you, my darling Zenny-zen♥”

(Zen blushes)

Zen: Hahaha, wow! Are you a fan?

Zen: Jeez, I’m so lucky… someone as cute as you was looking for me?

Zen: Well, come on over. I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 3] “I was headed to the mine, when I heard you playing…”

Zen: I guess you’d have to pass me if you wanted to get there, huh?

Zen: I’m surprised you go in there… but I guess there’s stuff you need in the dirt. Ores for your tools, minerals to sell…

Zen: It’s filled with monsters though, right? I hope you’re careful.

Zen: I’d hate to see someone as cute as you end up in the clinic.

Zen: How about you take a break and listen to me for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

Zen: Back-breaking labor can wait a few minutes, right?

[A]

[Zen plays another song, musical notes appearing above his head as he strums. When he’s finished, he looks to you.]

Zen: That’s one of the first songs I learned how to play. What do you think?

> [Choice 1] “It sounded really nice.”

(Zen +200)

Zen: Thank you! I practice every single day. I have to, if I’m ever going to be a success.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 2] “That’s one of the songs in the musical Dandelion, right?”

(Zen +500)

Zen: You’re right! It’s the opening number! Wow, how did you know?

Zen: You must really like musicals.

Zen: It’s always been my dream to be in a production of Dandelion. Or… well, any musical really, haha.

Zen: Singing, acting, being on stage – it’s my dream. And every day, I’m out here practicing until I can make my dream come true.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 3] “That’s not really the kind of music I like…”

(Zen -200)

Zen: O-oh, ahaha…

Zen: It’s from a musical, but I guess that sort of thing isn’t for everyone.

Zen: They’re what I love, though. Musicals.

Zen: There’s just about the singing and the dancing – I feel like you can really feel the heart and soul that the actors put into the production.

Zen: Well, at least…

[B]

Zen: That’s what I tell myself when it seems hard to keep going.

Zen: The road to stardom isn’t an easy one, and I’d be lying if I said it never got rough, but…

Zen: It’s a small price to pay for your dreams, huh?

Zen: I figure you’d understand, given that you took over that old farm-plot and all. It can’t be easy, and it also can’t have been a popular decision among your friends and family.

Zen: I mean, who decides to drop society and run off to become a farmer, anyway?

Zen: --Ah, sorry! Don’t take that the wrong way. I meant it as a compliment.

Zen: My family… wanted me to be plain. Dull. Boring. To just follow along with the crowd, and to be exactly like everyone else.

Zen: I know what you’re thinking! With a face like mine, how could I be destined for anything but show business?

Zen: …But, to them, what was most important... was being normal.

Zen: So anyone who forges their own path and carves their own destiny like you... well! I think that’s a pretty admirable person.

Zen: Anyway, sorry for keeping you. I’m sure you’re busy.

Zen: Come see me any time, okay? ♥ I’m always happy to have an audience.

[end]

[The rest of the Heart Events are under the read more!]

Purple Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the scene to find Yoosung standing by the water along with Zen. They seem to be in the middle of a conversation.]

Yoosung: In the beginning, you used to come out with me every weekday after practice! Then, it started being every other weekday…

Yoosung: And now that Rika’s gone? You never help me with the Community Center! If I didn’t know better, Zen, I’d say you didn’t care anymore.

Yoosung: But that can’t be true, right?

Yoosung: Of everyone in this town…

Yoosung: You’re the person… who still dreams the most about the day when everything is finished and you finally have an auditorium to perform in.

Zen: That’s true, but…

Yoosung: But what? But you’d rather not get your hands dirty and instead let me do all the work?

Yoosung: Is that it?

Zen: No!

Zen: Yoosung, do I seem like a lazy guy to you? It’s not that at all!

Zen: It’s just…

Zen: V already… told us to stop working on it. And he has the deed - without his approval and that damn cat-mayor’s permission, we can’t even think about opening the building!

Zen: Yoosung, I want a stage more than I want to keep breathing.

Zen: But we can’t do anything until we convince the two of them! Otherwise –

Yoosung: I thought you liked breaking the rules!

Yoosung: Liked flouting authority, liked proving that everyone else’s opinions didn’t matter! When did a stupid piece of paper start scaring you?

Yoosung: How are you going to get famous if you don’t have a stage to play on?!

Zen: …

[The two of them finally notice you, and sweat-drops appear before both of their heads.]

Zen: <MC!> God, you really have a habit of walking in on things, huh?

Yoosung: U-uh, hi, <MC!>

Yoosung: I’m sorry, Zen and I were just… talking about the old community center…

Yoosung: You know, that big old ruined building a bit north of the bakery?

Yoosung: Back in the day, Rika, V, Zen and I used to have all of these plans of fixing it up and using it to hold town-wide events like classes, art-shows, and, y’know, plays…

Yoosung: Things that might encourage more people to live here and help the townsfolk connect with each other…

Yoosung: But all progress has stopped, and the woodwork has been left to rot.

> [Choice 1] “Do you want help fixing it?”

(Zen +500)

[An exclamation point appears over Yoosung’s head.]

Yoosung: What, really? Is that a serious offer?

Yoosung: Yes, absolutely! It honestly gets really, really, really depressing working on it all by myself!

Yoosung: …So depressing that I sometimes skip out on it and play video games instead…

Yoosung: Come on! I’ve hauled the tools up there already, and I brought a cooler full of soda, too!

Zen: W-Wait!

[Question marks appear above Yoosung and your head.]

Zen: Er, well, I guess I can take a break from practice, too…

Zen: Let’s go buy a pack of beer, though. You can’t drink soda when you’re doing construction work!

Zen: That’s just lame.

Yoosung: That… kinda doesn’t sound safe?

Zen: Oh, come on, it’ll be fine. It makes things more fun!

[You walk off screen with Zen and Yoosung. The screen goes dark, and when it comes back, the clock has been set to 6PM and you’re outside the community center with Zen and Yoosung. You can control your character now, but if you talk to them before leaving, you get some unique dialogue.]

Zen: Don’t worry, I’ll get him home. Jeez, he really can’t take his booze, huh?

Yoosung: Zen, your hair is so pretty and your skin is so soooooft… I want to wear it…

[end]

> [Choice 2] “You should probably just let it collapse. It’s kind of ugly.”

(Zen -500)

Yoosung: It’s, it’s not ugly!

Zen: It kind of is…

Yoosung: That’s only because no one will help me fix it! It’ll be like a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon when it’s done… you’ll see!

[A sweat-drop appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Look… if it means so much to you, I can come help for a little bit.

Zen: But we have to get V to agree to the repairs. Okay? Otherwise, I’m just going to spend my time practicing.

Yoosung: You know he’s never going to agree to that…!

Zen: It’s our best shot. There’s no way the mayor will intervene; that guy doesn’t care about anything other than cats and money.

Yoosung: Sigh…

Zen: Hey, maybe one day one of your chickens will lay a golden egg and we’ll just be able to throw tons of cash at Jumin.

Yoosung: That’s geese, and I already tried that!

Zen: …What.

Yoosung: Yeah! The wizard on the hill said if I got a goose and did the macerana in front of it while balancing a melon on my head and jumping up and down, it’d lay a golden egg after a month!

Yoosung: But it didn’t work!

Yoosung: Maybe I didn’t do it right...?

Zen: S-seriously, kid…

Yoosung: Anyway, let’s go!

[Yoosung and Zen walk away, but Zen stops by you before he goes off the screen.]

Zen: Sorry <MC>, I won’t be able to play for you today.

Zen: It might be a lost cause, but Yoosung is my friend. I have to help him out occasionally or he gets pretty hard to deal with.

[end]

Blue Heart Event

Time: 6PM-11PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Meteor Hill Peak

[Meteor Hill is where the Wizard 707 lives – and it’s also the best stargazing spot in town! When you enter the area, the camera pans up to Zen standing by the very top of the mountain, and you walk up beside him.]

Zen: Oh, hey there, <MC>…

Zen: Sigh…

[Choice 1] “You look sad. What’s wrong?”

Zen: Sad? Hmn. I suppose I am a bit gloomy, but nothing is wrong, don’t worry!

Zen: It’d be crime against the world itself if anything bad happened to me. ♥

Zen: I was just thinking about some things, that’s all.

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “That’s not a very energetic greeting.”

Zen: Haha, sorry, you’re right.

Zen: Hey there, <MC!>

Zen: Is that better?

Zen: It’d be horrible for me to deny you my beautiful, smiling face. Though… isn’t there something tragically beautiful by a gorgeous, sad man under the stars?

[A laughing face appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, the sky is so clear tonight… why don’t you join me?

[You walk up and sit beside Zen, and he turns to face the sky once more.]

Zen: Looking at the sky makes you think, huh? About how small everything is, how tiny and insignificant we are compared to the stars…

Zen: Yet, we humans have managed to touch them, haven’t we? We’ve launched rockets to the moon, we’ve made telescopes that can see distant planets…

Zen: And through art and literature, we’ve managed to, as a species, achieve heights that our ancestors could only dream of.

Zen: Beautiful paintings. Music that can move you to tears. Acting that takes you into another time, another place, that’s so convincing that it makes the characters appear real.

Zen: We’ve made light of the constellations; we ourselves have become stars.

Zen: Sigh…

Zen: Do you ever think about how the people that might be watching the same sky as you? People you’ve left behind, people who might not even remember that you exist…?

[Choice 1] “I do.”

Zen: You should tell me about them sometime. I’d love to hear about the kinds of things you think about in the darkness of the night.

[Choice 2] “I don’t.”

Zen: No? That’s probably for the best. It means that you’re not chained by your own regrets, that you can face the present without looking behind you.

Zen: Myself, on the other hand…

Zen: …

Zen: I’ve left a lot of people behind over my life.

Zen: My friends. My… family.

Zen: They didn’t believe that I could amount to more than a “pretty-faced, shallow thug”, so one day, I – I got on my motorcycle and just drove. And drove. And drove until the city was behind me, and all that I could see, for miles and miles, were green, rolling fields.

Zen: I didn’t have a lot with me. I only brought my jacket, my guitar, and a small knapsack filled with some of my clothes and my wallet.

Zen: I started living simply, just playing and singing in towns. I’d buy a bit of food - whatever I could afford - with the tip money…

Zen: And then I moved on.

Zen: I don’t know what I was looking for.

Zen: I don’t know if I was even looking for something, in the end, it was more like… it came looking for me.

Zen: Have… I ever really told you about Rika?

[You shake your head.]

Zen: Well, I came to Mystic Valley on a rainy day in the summer. It was pouring, I was soaked through, and I didn’t have enough money to stay anywhere. But! It was warm, so I thought, oh, I’ll just find someplace to wait out the rain and just sleep outside.

Zen: Hehe, can you imagine that? I was kind of like the prince of the forest in those days… sleeping under the open air. It was nice, sometimes.

Zen: I mean, sometimes it wasn’t, but look on the bright side, right?

Zen: Anyway, you know how the restaurant has that great porch? Well, I took shelter under there, and since I was bored, I brought out my guitar and started playing.

Zen: After a while… someone came out and saw me there, dripping on one of the chairs and playing away without a care in the world.

Zen: It was Rika.

Zen: She was astounded. She told me my music was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard, and she dragged me inside to introduce me to V. And V, that guy could really fret up a storm, you know? He got me a change of clothes, something warm to eat, and he also offered me a place to stay.

Zen: Free of charge. What a guy, right?

Zen: Anyway, they were both so excited. They asked me a million questions about myself – who I was, where I was from, what I was doing out here – and when I said I wanted to be in show business, Rika said…

Zen: “V! Let’s let him play here! He’ll bring in customers!”

Zen: …Those were really fun days… the restaurant was packed whenever I’d play. Everyone was laughing… I brought smiles to all their faces.

Zen: Even that damn mayor came out of his ivory palace to listen. Haha.

Zen: We’d even talk about how, when the community center was all fixed up, I’d even be able to put on plays… I could have a whole theatre-troupe, and achieve my real dream of telling a story on stage…

Zen: …

Zen: …But… that all stopped when she died.

Zen: V just… retreated into himself.

Zen: He didn’t… ask me to stop playing, really, but whenever I tried, I just remembered when Rika and V used to be there at the counter laughing, and…

Zen: After she was gone…

Zen: …

Zen: It… made me think of my parents…

Zen: And how they said everything about me was just temporary. My pretty looks, my hopes and dreams –

Zen: “Why on earth would you want to be an actor, Hyun? Even if you do make it, which you won’t, people will forget about you as soon as someone new comes along. Why not do something that’ll make a permanent difference in the world?”

Zen: And – even though I didn’t want to – when I remembered them smiling, I asked myself…

Zen: Did… I really leave anything lasting, even when people loved me?

Zen: Because in the end, those smiles disappeared.

Zen: And now, I’m nothing.

[Choice 1] “You’re not nothing!”

Zen: Haha… That’s sweet of you to say, <MC>. And it’s not really fair of me to whine to you about all this; you do keep visiting me. You are a fan. And please, believe me, I appreciate your support more than you know.

Zen: When you smile at me…

Zen: When you look at me as I’m playing…

Zen: When you visit me, day after day, and sit beside me by the lake…

Zen: I really… feel it. How much I love this place. How much I love being able to touch people with my voice.

Zen: I want to be heard, <MC>.

Zen: I want to be listened to.

Zen: I want to tell people the things they need to hear, the things that will make them smile and laugh and feel like the world is alright.

Zen: I want to be the light for those who are struggling.

Zen: I want to show them there’s something worth fighting for!

[go to B]

[Choice 2] “You should keep trying.”

Zen: Keep trying? I’m not… sure what I’m trying to do anymore.

Zen: What did I think would happen…? I ask myself that all the time. I feel like such a wash-out. Do I really have any actual talent? Part of the reason I wanted to be an actor was because women kept telling me that I was so beautiful I sparkled, and that I ought to be on the stage, but –

Zen: I don’t want to be looked at because I’m pretty; I wanted to be looked at because I have something to say!

Zen: Something for people to hear!

Zen: Something that, when people listen to it, makes them feel!

Zen: I want to make people happy!

Zen: I want to make people smile!

[go to B]

[Choice 3] “Why don’t you go back to the city?”

Zen: That’s a fair question to ask. If I want to make it big, then playing in a small town probably isn’t the best route to that, right? Abandoning this place, going back and trying my hand at the theater business…

Zen: It makes sense. But. Something about that – I just can’t do it.

Zen: Mystic Valley has its problems; but it gave me a place to call home when I couldn’t find one anywhere else. Rika, V, the entire town – they liked me because my talents brought them joy. It wasn’t shallow, it wasn’t just because of my appearance…

Zen: They heard something in my voice that they loved. Not my face; my voice.

Zen: For once, I felt like I was heard. And now? I want –

Zen: I want people to judge Mystic Valley not by appearances, but instead by its heart!

Zen: I want everyone to remember what’s so good about this place!

Zen: I want to put it into a song, put it into a story so I can convey it to them, what I feel! And to help them remember how they felt, once!

[B]

Zen: I want - !

Zen: …

[Zen stands up, and then exclaims to the sky - ]

Zen: I want everyone to feel like they can wish again!

Zen: What am I doing, sulking up here on top of a mountain? Man – what have I been doing all these months?

Zen: Playing by myself in the woods, waiting for people to stumble across me and discover me because I’m too afraid of bringing pain rather than joy with my work?

Zen: What the heck; that’s dumb!

Zen: You know what, <MC>? I’m going to march right down to the bar and tell V, straight up, that he needs to let me play there again!

Zen: We need to hold concerts there again!

Zen: Sure, something bad happened, but we can’t be sad forever!

Zen: Sure, the town is having trouble, but –

Zen: There are beautiful things out there, waiting to be seen!

Zen: Like me! Like you! Like the stars – I want everyone in this town to remember that they can be happy!

[Zen pants, and then turns back towards the path leading down the mountain.]

Zen: <MC>, thank you! I feel like I’ve been born again as a new man.

Zen: It’s gotten so dark, so please, let me walk you home. After that…

Zen: I’m going to go talk to V.

[The scene ends with a heart appearing over your head and you walking back down the path with Zen. After this, Zen’s schedule will change, and he’ll start routinely playing at the bar.]

[End]

Green Heart Event

There is no event at the green heart level, however to see the final two heart events, a token of affection must be given in the form of a ‘heart gem’ to the object of your affections. This makes the relationship ‘official’, and the rest of the town acknowledges you as dating your chosen candidate.

Zen: Is this – is this for me?

Zen: Really? Really, really – you’re giving this to me?

Zen: <MC>, I could kiss you! Can I kiss you? I really want to kiss you!

Zen: Goddess, you have no idea how many times I’ve imagined this happening. You confessing your love to me... and then me sweeping you off your feet and carrying you off to the moon!♥

Zen: Ahh, I’m happy! I’m so happy! I want to go tell everyone that <MC> likes me!

Zen: Me~♥ Me~♥! I’m the luckiest guy in the world!

Zen: <MC>, let me take you on a date today! Anywhere you want; my treat!

Zen: I’ll do anything at all for the cutest, sweetest person in the world.

[Hearts appear over the both of your heads, and the scene fades to black. When it comes back, you’re standing outside of your farmhouse, in the evening, with full energy.]

[Note: After this heart event, if you interact with the ‘journal’ in Zen’s room, it’ll be filled with love poems and sonnets.]

Yellow Heart Event

Time: 8AM-4PM; Any Season.

Weather: Any

Location: Meteor Hill

[You walk onto the screen to find Zen in front of the door to the Wizard’s house. When he hears you, he turns around and an [!] appears above his head.]

Zen: <MC!> Just the person I was hoping to see!

Zen: This has to be fate. Come on! Let’s get our fortune told together.

[You and Zen walk into the tower… Where you’re greeted emphatically by 707, whose voice resonates through the house even though you can’t see him initially.]

Seven: Ooohh!! What’s that, I hear? Is someone knocking at my door and summoning me, the magnificent wizard Seven-oh-Seven?!

Seven: Well, actually, you didn’t knock, which is awfully rude.

Seven: How about you try that again?

[Zen turns to the door, and though he doesn’t leave, he knocks on it.]

Zen: Is that better, oh Great Wizard?

Seven: Much, thank you!

[Seven suddenly appears, sliding down banister the spiral-staircase which lies in the center of the ground floor. When he lands, he poses and sparkles.]

Seven: What can I do for you, humble children of men? What great secrets can I reveal; what darkness needs to be banished with the unrelenting force of light?!

Seven: Tell me, oh noble petitioners, so I may aid you in your quest for glory!

Zen: Pffthaha… I just want the usual, Seven. Though I was hoping you could have a two-for-one special? See, I have my partner here, and…

Zen: Well…

Zen: I’d like our compatibility rated.♥

Seven: A compatibility rating? Oh joy!

Seven: And may there be joy to you both! At least, if the stars will it.

Seven: Sit down, then! And present your offerings, so I may be compensated for my just and true work.

[Zen walks up to Seven.]

Zen: Here you go, pal. Fresh from the supermarket.

Zen: I got you two packs since there are two of us.

Seven: Ah, the sweet nectar of life! The ambrosia of the gods! Liquid manna straight from heaven –

Seven: PhD Pepper!

Seven: This will do. Now, we’ll begin!

[You and Zen sit together in front of Seven’s crystal ball, and he walks on the other side, beginning to make hand gestures. The screen darkens a bit, and the blips of Seven’s dialogue get a different cadence.]

Seven: Now, let us peer into the future…

Seven: The future of you and Zen…

Seven: Abra-cadabra, alakazam, make me more than what I am, show me the heart of the golden land…

Seven: Bim-bam-boom!

Seven: . . .

Seven: The stars… have spoken…

Seven: Hyun Ryu…

Seven: <MC>…

Seven: Ah, what happiness is this…? It’s so profound, I can almost taste it.

Seven: Yours is a relationship that fills the other with love.

Seven: Stability. Support. Inspiration. You work harder for the sake of the other, and through that work, you both make the world a better place.

Seven: Wherever you go, your love will plant the seeds of new beginnings… not just for yourself, but for those around you.

Seven: Yours is a love that will touch others who view it. And it will be viewed by others!

Seven: A life of seclusion, of being a recluse… is not an option to you. And neither do you want it to be…

Seven: Because through being seen, you’ll ultimately make others happy.

Seven: You see each other for the beauty in your spirits…

Seven: Ahh, it makes me jealous just to look at you!

Seven: If I had to give you a compatibility rating…

Seven: It would be the fluffiness of a rabbit’s fur! Very soft, very nice, would definitely pet again!

Seven: (Though, it’s nothing compared to my beautiful Elly!!)

[Seven’s blips turn back to normal, and the screen lightens again. A heart appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Hear that, babe? We have the wizard’s blessing!

Zen: This is such great news!

[A heart appears over your head.]

Zen: Thank you, Wizard! I’m in your debt.

Seven: I can only tell you what the stars have been telling you all along. But, you are welcome!

Seven: Now go! Be free! Be happy!

Seven: And sing of your love, to anyone that’ll listen!

[You and Zen walk out, but the camera lingers on Seven for a final line before going dark.]

Seven: Heh-heh-heh… he’s going to be unbearable from now on. Oh well! That’s for the rest of the town to deal with.

[End]

Pink Heart Event

Time: 6PM-12PM

Weather: Any

Location: Señor Saguaro (V’s Restaurant)

[This heart event is preceded in the morning by you getting a letter. It’s from Zen, saying that he’s set up a special concert at V’s restaurant… and he’d like you to attend! You can walk in any time after 6, and the event will be triggered.]

[Zen is on the stage, and the camera follows your character as you walk up and take a seat at one of the tables near the front. Zen doesn’t stop playing, and finishes up the song before addressing the audience – which is pretty large. Larger than any of his performances so far.]

Zen: Thank you all for coming out here tonight. It really means a lot to see so many faces out in the crowd!

Zen: Especially those of you who are smiling and in love.♥ That’s my favorite kind of expression in the world!

Zen: …I’ll be honest, in the past, I sometimes hated looking at couples. There’ve times when I’ve been jealous of other’s happiness...

Zen: Times when I’ve been sad and confused about what to do…

Zen: And times when I’ve just wanted to give up and say, ‘you know? My dreams aren’t worth it!’ but, in the end…

Zen: There was someone beside me who told me to keep trying.

Zen: There was someone beside me who kept pushing me to succeed.

Zen: And that, my friends –

Zen: Is our local farmer, <MC!>

Zen: Everyone give <him/her/them> a round of applause for being a stellar member of the community, an excellent human being, and, dare I say it –

Zen: The best partner a guy could ask for.

[You blush as the crowd reacts in various ways. Some laugh, some clap, and some shake their heads because Zen’s kind of a moron.]

Zen: Anyway, this goes out to you, babe.

Zen: …I really, really love you.

[Zen begins to play another song – which is a finished version of the one he was singing in the very first heart event - and the screen fades to black after it’s completed. When it comes back into view, you and Zen are standing outside of Señor Saguaro, and it’s very dark.]

Zen: Thanks for coming tonight. I really appreciate it.

Zen: And, uh, sorry for gushing about you in public there, I just really couldn’t help myself.

Zen: …So… I’ve, uh. I’ve been talking to some people in town.

Zen: And – uh. We petitioned Jumin…

Zen: And while he’s still saying that we don’t have the funds to make progress on the community center, he did say that he has some pretty big rooms in his manor that we could use to practice, and, well.

Zen: Maybe put some small shows in, too.

[Choice 1] “That’s exciting!”

Zen: Isn’t it? A place to work that isn’t out in the middle of the woods! It’s like a dream come true.

Zen: Jumin says he has some props we can use, too!

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “Maybe Jumin’s not totally heartless after all.”

Zen: Pft, I wouldn’t go that far, he said he’d want some of the proceeds from the show to go to the town coffers.

Zen: …Though, on second thought…

Zen: I guess… he probably would use that money to help the town, huh?

[A sweatdrop appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, I’d really love it if you came to some of the practices.

Zen: Maybe… you’d even want to try acting yourself?

Zen: No pressure! But… it’d mean a lot for you to be there.

Zen: I’d like you to see how far I’ve come.

[A heart appears above both your heads, and then Zen leans in and kisses you.]

Zen: …Thanks for being you, <MC>.

Zen: Shall I walk you home? I think it’d be a good way to end the night.

[Another heart appears over your head, and you and Zen walk off together.]

Marriage:

After seeing Zen’s final heart event, you can propose to him using a Prismatic Letter Opener, which is a longstanding tradition in Mystic Valley. A few things change after marrying Zen. He moves in with you, and he’ll practice on your farm instead of going out to the lake. He and Yoosung also start working on the Community Center as part of your daily routine. Zen also will write you letters that you can find on your night-stand in the evening, telling you how much he loves you and appreciates you.

After marriage, an event chain is unlocked with V and Jumin regarding the community center, and that starts the post-marriage content of fixing it up.

#mysme #mysme headcanons #mystic messenger #mystic messenger headcanons #mysme reactions #mystic messenger reactions #mysme imagines #mystic messenger imagines #long post #mystic messenger spoilers #mysme spoilers #zen #harvest moon au

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i-w-p-chan · 7 years

Text

Miss- err, Mr. and Mr. Croft, Part 9/Legend, Part 1

Important Author Note: Unless it is specified who says which part, the dialogue typically alternates between Tsuna and Hayato.

WARNINGS: OOC, Language (there is a lot of cursing), Violence, Indiscriminate Killing (Tomb Raider Typical Killing- applies to humans, animals, and mythical creatures), Dialogue Heavy, Set In The Tomb Raider Games 'Verses, So May Not Make A Whole Lot Of Sense If You Don't Know TR (unless you, like me, don't mind that), Uses Dialogue From The Game, Collection of Snippets/Drabbles/Scenes Featuring Tsuna's And Hayato's Adventures In The TR Games, Beware Of Unexpected Mood Whiplashes, Ship Teasing, Slight BoyxBoy (why do I even warn about this anymore?), Platonic 5927 (To The EXTREEEEEEEME!), Snark, Badass Tsuna And Hayato, Badasses In Dresses, Perverted Swords, Cute Hammers, And As Always: Shameless Self-Indulgence/Ridiculousness.

Disclaimer: Don't own TR or KHR.

Legend

"You know, I think you both forgot your climbing gear on purpose."

Tsuna giggled, "What would give you that idea?"

Hayato gasped, mock-offended, "I can't believe you're grouping me with that."

Tsuna sniffed, "You wish you could get you a piece of this." Tsuna leaned back, hanging onto a ledge on the side of the mountain with only one hand, completely ignoring the straight, very dangerous drop down, and gestured to his own body.

Hayato groaned and put his forehead on the ledge; and then he pulled away to mock-gag.

Hayato climbed the ledge, "Alister, meet Tiwanaku. She's a lovely pre-Incan civilization, currently in ruins."

"Delighted."

Hayato looked around, then back at Tsuna who was still dangling from the ledge, "Are you going to dangle forever?"

Tsuna huffed, "Glad I have your attention." Tsuna pulled himself up the ledge, rising into a handstand, continuing into a slow, deliberate flip forward, and steadily landing in a standing position.

"Show off."

Tsuna preened.

"That… was too close."

Tsuna and Hayato watched the rock slide past them, "It's fine, Zip. We had worse close calls."

"Yeah, like that one with a giant T-rex."

Hayato and Tsuna shuddered in unison.

"Is that a skull of a monkey or a person? Spooky."

"Do you really want to know?"

"Well, I don't want to know."

"Looks like you'll be going forward."

"Yes. But how?"

"With patience and persistence." Hayato looked pointedly in Tsuna's direction.

Tsuna huffed, "Alright, I get it! No literal punching through the walls and doors in ancient ruins."

"Glad we got that cleared up."

"Man, this place is weird and complicated."

Tsuna shook his head, "You weren't there for St. Francis Folly."

"Or the Coliseum."

"Or Midas' Palace."

"Remember the Cistern?"

"And Khamoon's Obelisk?"

"You two, I get it, stop referencing your old adventures."

"But it's fun~"

"You two in one piece?"

"And still breathing."

"Technically, we're two pieces."

"Sure didn't look like it."

"Why, Zip, Tsuna and I have been working together for years. Synchronized dodging and acrobatics is just the tip of the ice-berg."

"The dais looks exactly like the one from the chamber all those years ago."

"Yes." Hayato narrowed his eyes, "Now, who are those people?"

Tsuna smiled, his eyes cold, "How about we go and see for ourselves?"

That was when one of the mercenaries on the other side of the bridge noticed them and shot at them. The bullets sailed harmlessly in the space between Tsuna and Hayato.

"Hold your fire!" Ordered a man from next to the mercenary, "Lara Croft!" The man waved at them.

Hayato raised an eyebrow while Tsuna narrowed his eyes on the blonde who started to walk away from the man and headed to the helicopter off to the side.

"I've been hoping I get to meet you." The man then turned towards the mercenaries, "At ease. We're just gonna talk." The man then walked across the bridge; Hayato walked forward to meet him halfway in the middle of the bridge, Tsuna right behind him.

"I'm listening," Hayato said as he and the man stopped at a distance from each other. Tsuna stopped as well, his eyes still trained on the helicopter.

"Have you found a piece of this?" The man took out a piece of black metal with engravings on it. The piece was very familiar.

Hayato let out a controlled breath. That piece greatly resembled a part of the sword sheathed in the stone dais where Amelia disappeared.

"Is this what led you here?"

"Where did you find that?"

"It doesn't matter." It did matter, Hayato's grip on his guns tightened, "What's important is what it does. Do you know?"

"What I know is my business!"

"So, you don't then. That means you don't have the piece." The man turned back and then towards them, "Amanda said that you were sloppy. You should have paid more attention in Paraiso!" He said as he turned around again.

"Amanda?" Hayato turned to Tsuna, whose eyes were narrowed at the helicopter near the dais, "Amanda's dead. What the hell do you know about Paraiso?"

"We're going to Paraiso?" Hayato carefully observed Tsuna.

"Yes."

"Do you think Amanda Evert may not have died down there?"

Tsuna nodded, "Which begs the question of why she hid away if she survived. Why didn't she approach us? Or contact us?"

"She wouldn't if she thought that we left her to die."

"We did? We did, didn't we?"

"Tsuna, you were hurt. I couldn't save both you and her at the same time. Especially with the place filling up with water. Between you and her, you know which of you I'll always choose." Hayato stared intently at Tsuna.

Tsuna stared back, "Well, yeah. I know. I'd do the same."

Hayato patted Tsuna on the back, "Alright. Let's head to Peru."

"There is only one bike."Tsuna headed towards the bike.

"Heyheyhey! How about I drive and you watch out for any mercenaries?"

"But you're a slow driver, Hayato."

"Humor me."

"… … … …fine!"

Hayato stared down at the ground where the hole they descended through in the dig all those years ago was boarded up; a quick look at Tsuna showed him in a similar state: remembering the creature down below- covered in black smoke, with glowing eyes and sharp claws.

"Tsuna-"

"No attempting to force a bond with strange mystical creatures. I get it, Hayato."

Anaya looked between the two worriedly.

Hayato stared at the shoe in Tsuna's hands, "Oh."

"It's been unlaced."

"She… survived."

"Now we know that without a shadow of doubt."

The two shared a look, "We should go look for her."

"After we're done here."

"Right."

"The tip was broken off."

"Hey! That-!"

"Yeah!"

"We've seen this before!"

"In Japan!"

The two shared a look and grinned, "Time to visit your country of origin, Tsuna."

"Heh. A classic meeting with the Yakuza. Eh, Hayato? Wouldn't that be funny."

"Hush, you."

And then the call from Anaya came.

"He wants to meet us at Nishimura's?" Tsuna's eyes sparkled.

"…" Hayato observed Tsuna's excitement, "You like Nishimura."

"Huh?" Tsuna looked at Hayato, while Anaya side-eyed Tsuna with an amused look, "Well, he's a nice guy."

"'A nice guy' huh?"

Tsuna rolled his eyes at Hayato and returned his attention to Zip, ignoring the snort and muffled laughter coming from the other end of the line, "Takamoto doesn't know that we're friends?"

"Nope. All he knows is that Nishimura's hosting a corporate party tomorrow night and you'll meet him there."

"Fu~" Tsuna smirked, "Better and better."

Hayato sighed fondly, "Great. Now he's got ideas."

Tsuna merely turned his smirk in Hayato's direction.

"We'll be heading there straight away."

"I need to find something to wear first!"

"Of course, Tsuna."

Hayato and Anaya shared a look and burst into silent laughter.

"What happened last time you and Takamoto got together?"

Tsuna made a face, "Do you have to phrase it that way?"

Hayato ignored him, "He was trying to pass off forged relics from the Asuka period, and conventional reason doesn't work with Yakuza." Hayato smirked and looked at Tsuna who smirked back at him and fluttered his eyelashes as he adjusted the low neckline of his little, black dress.

"But you let him go."

"Hey, Hayato, how's my hair?"

"You look fabulous, Tsuna."

Tsuna preened.

"And now we're going to have a useful conversation," Hayato told Zip, "It's turned out quite nicely."

"Now." Tsuna beamed, "Let's go~"

"At ease, Tsuna. One would think you have a crush on Nishimura."

"So what if I do?" Tsuna sent a coy look towards Hayato, completely ignoring the choking and coughing sounds accompanied with muffled chuckles from the communication device.

"Fine. Let's go meet your crush, Tsuna."

"Welcome, Tsuna-kun, Hayato-kun. You have been enjoying my little party?"

"We're enjoying it very much, Toru-kun." Tsuna smiled.

Hayato wanted to melt into the ground just to not third-wheel for Tsuna, but he couldn't bring himself to do that because he had to chaperone. So he contended himself with letting Tsuna do all the talking.

"When Takamoto arrives, however, it may cause you some inconvenience."

Nishimura walked over to them and put a hand to Tsuna's bare shoulder, looking at him, over at Hayato who merely nodded, then back at Tsuna, "Take care. He is a very dangerous man when his interests differ from yours."

Tsuna's mouth curved into a smirk, his eyes were half-lidded, "You'd be amazed at how persuasive I can be, even with dangerous men."

Hayato skillfully covered a snort.

"I am convinced." Nishimura smiled at Tsuna, "I am dangerous too, you remember."

Tsuna's smirk softened into a smile.

"But please, enjoy the party while you can." Nishimura lightly patted Tsuna's shoulder once before letting it go, "And good luck."

After the two exited the office, Tsuna sighed, "He didn't even look at my dress."

"I think it's difficult to not look at your dress."

"Action dress rip? You're doing action dress rips now?"

"Yes."

"Like the fanservice wasn't enough already."

"What fanservice?"

"Never mind."

Hayato took off his suit jacket, "Maybe I should have worn a dress, too."

"The suit is not good enough for mobility?"

"Yeah. I think a dress with side-slits, maybe something with Chinese design, would have been better."

Tsuna and Nishimura chuckled.

Hayato huffed, "Yeah, yeah. Laugh all you want. Now, Tsuna, the roof?"

"Look at that bike~"

"I'll-"

"I'll drive."

Hayato nodded frantically, "Okay!"

"HOLY SHIT THERE ARE DOGS!"

"YOU JUST KILLED THE THREE YAKUZA WHO JUST CAME AT US WITH A FUCKING GRENADE AND YOU'RE FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE DOGS?!"

Tsuna leaned back slightly and raised an incredulous eyebrow, "Wow. Angry much?"

Hayato threw his arms in the air and stormed off.

"Hey! Wait!"

Tsuna and Hayato dodged the green energy ray aimed their way, shot off by Takamoto directly from the sword fragment attached to the top of a staff like a blade of a spear.

Tsuna grinned, summoning his flames and shocking Takamoto, "Now we're talking, eh?"

Hayato used the distraction to climb up a pole to reach the upper area where Takamoto stood, and raised his rifle.

Tsuna and Hayato turned towards the direction the sound of the helicopter was coming from.

"Nishimura's got a chopper outside waiting for you."

"Oh, Toru-kun." Tsuna put a hand to his chest, "You're my favorite."

"What am I?" Hayato petulantly crossed his arms over his chest, "Chopped liver?"

"Hush, you. Let me enjoy the sight of my knight in a pristine white suit."

"Yeah. All you're missing is the white dress. But maybe the black dress is more fitting?"

"It's still a little early to be talking marriage."

"We can always get into the postcard business."

Tsuna gestured towards the magnificent waterfall in front of them, "So many wonderful views I would love to take a picture for. I agree."

"Look, there."

"Ugh. I see them now."

"Shall we go see what they're up too?"

"Isn't that why we're here in the first place?"

"Now, let's jump."

The two jumped forward, diving into the waters below, in-synch.

"Or," Zip added, "You can get into the Olympics for synchronized diving."

"There is that, too." Tsuna chuckled.

"Tsuna, in the Olympics?" Hayato snorted, "He'll get a kick out of picking extravagant diving techniques."

"Only if you can shoot this far."

"Well, I can fire farther than that."

"Tsuna, down boy."

"Ah. The classic get the traps functioning again to be able to continue. Heaven forbid that we can easily pass with no traps in the way."

Tsuna looked at the four sets of rotating blades, two at the bottom and two at the top. Two sets rotated to the other end of the hallway, while the other two rotated towards the other end.

"Reminds you of anything?"

"Yeah."

"Egypt," The two said in unison.

"What happened?" Tsuna asked, worried about the silence from the other line of the communication.

"I don't know." Hayato furrowed his eyebrows, "But I don't like it."

"Let me show you." Rutland used green energy to float up to a platform above him.

Hayato and Tsuna shared a look; the energy looked very similar to the one Takamoto used.

Tsuna then looked at Rutland, "How about I show you?"

Tsuna summoned his flames.

"What?"

Hayato shot at Rutland, "Pay attention~ You don't want to get hit by a stray bullet or something similar, do you?"

Rutland looked from Tsuna to Hayato, "You-!"

"He sees~" Tsuna cooed, "Now… back to business."

"Well. Off to Kazakhstan."

"I don't think I need to tell you to pack warm?"

"No," Tsuna said, "You don't. But I intend to be cold."

"Can you do that? Be cold, I mean?"

"You'd be surprised."

End chapter 9

#miss- err mr. and mr. croft #khr #khrtr #tomb raider #sawada tsunayoshi #gokudera hayato

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skycopcom-blog · 5 years

Text

Producers of Chernobyl TV series present their shooting locations in Lithuania

Shocking, authentic, breathtaking - that’s how HBO’s new TV mini-series Chernobyl is described around the world. The bigger part of it was filmed in Lithuania in 2018. The first episode attracted almost 2 million viewers and presented the country as immersed in surreal and mystical Soviet atmosphere. Those who want to experience the near past no longer have to go to Ukraine to see Chernobyl - for Lithuanians, it’s as simple as going outside. That’s why claim compensation company Skycop is inviting you to a tour of locations that entranced viewers worldwide and helped Chernobyl’s ratings unseat such heavy-hitters like A Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad.

Chernobyl in Lithuania: tens of locations, hundreds of filming hours

The explosion on the night of 26th of April 1986 seared the event into human memory with the radioactive flames of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s 4th reactor. Critics agree: the mini-series that came out three decades after the events that inspired it should also be enshrined in history.

HBO and its partners shot the horrifyingly detailed show in Lithuania in the summer of 2018. The success of Chernobyl is no surprise to the many members of the Lithuanian cinematographer community that worked on the project.

“I don’t want to brag, but I was not surprised by positive reactions. After reading the script, it became clear that Chernobyl is well written, revealing the global tragedy through the eyes that witnessed it,” said Jonas Špokas, CEO of Baltic Locations, the company that managed Chernobyl’s filming locations. “That’s why I knew that the viewer will empathize with them and feel it all. The series were hugely ambitious, and the director, the script writer and the designer all put in effort to take Lithuanian suggestions into account, since they wanted it to be as authentic as it can be.”

It was for the sake of this authenticity that Jonas and his crew carried out a meticulous search of filming locations. The work began back in autumn 2016, as Pripyat, Chernobyl and Moscow had to be recreated almost entirely in Lithuania. That’s how the Soviet era was restaged at places as far apart as Pravieniškės and Visaginas - in total, over 40 different location can be seen in the series. There were around 1000 hours of filmed footage.

Moscow in Kaunas: the director thought he was dreaming

You can start touring the Chernobyl Lithuania in Kaunas. The city that’s known for its interwar architecture was perfect for creating the Soviet Moscow you can see in the series.

However, one of the most memorable moments came from the magical scene in episode 1, where the locals in Pripyat are standing on a bridge, completely unaware of what truly happened at the nuclear power plant. The radioactive fallout that swirled on the screen like pollen created a palpable feeling of both mystery and calm.

“The scene was shot at M. Gimbutienė Street in Petrašiūnai. There’s an abandoned water-supply bridge there. Director Johan Renck said that he ‘could not have even dreamed’ of it,” said Jonas. “He was looking for a spot that seemed to emerge out of nothing. This bridge is just like that: purposeless, it seems have neither a beginning nor an end. Built over a railroad track and meant for the water pipes running from the Petrašiūnai cemetery, it’s abandoned and decaying.”

There’s more than one such mystical location in Kaunas. “The apartment of protagonist Valery Legasov, we found it by accident, and it was filmed in an impressive art-deco building at Vytauto Ave. 58,” said Aureliuos Silkinis, who assisted the shooting with his company Kaunas Film Office. “The creepy 6th clinic in Moscow, the one which firefighters from Pripyat were brought to, was recreated in the former 8th building of Kaunas Technical University at Kęstučio St. 27. It’s now privatized. The KGB prison and the work room at the nuclear research institute were filmed at the radio factory located at Savanorių Ave. 66.”

Chernobyl was also filmed at the former helicopter maintenance hangar at Europos Ave. 27. The 4th episode scene of firefighters dousing houses with chemicals was staged on Chemikų street in Kedainiai.

Pripyat, reborn in Fabijoniškės, puts Lithuania on the map

Next stop on the Chernobyl tour of Lithuania - Vilnius. However, you must visit Pravieniškės on your way there. “We filmed there as well. It’s a unique town, devoid of any tourist traps; you’d never think to visit it. However, it’s a must-see for those pining for the Soviet atmosphere,” said Jonas.

Once you reach Vilnius, you should forget everything you’ve heard about its historic landmarks. It’s the northern Fabioniškės district that’s currently the most famous spot in Lithuania. Called “Fabai” by the locals, this part of Vilnius appeared in Chernobyl and became famous from New York to Chelyabinsk, albeit under a different name, that of Pripyat.

“It’s a very symbolic and cinematographic district,” said J. Špokas. “It reflects the idea of Pripyat, of idealized Soviet city of the future, quite wonderfully. Fabioniškės is a symmetrical district, which is great for the current trend of translating the architecture of that era for the big screen: the forms are aggressive, there’s a lot of concrete and grayness.”

When talking about Vilnius, J. Špokas claims that any district further away from downtown can have the same charm as Fabijoniškės. “However, I’d like to single out the impressive [former] cultural center of Ministry of the Interior, located at Žirmūnai St. 1. I adore the building, even if we only used it to film the Pripyat hotel restaurant, and the scene where the three volunteer divers are selected,” said J. Špokas.

Visaginas: the place to model a nuclear explosion

The Chernobyl tour of Lithuania continues to Didžiosios Kabiškės village in the Nemenčinė municipality. According to J. Špokas, the locals here and at the Laišaičiai village in Vievis municipality could not cut hay for the entire summer, as they had to maintain the image of abandoned settlements around Chernobyl.

However, something special truly awaits once you head to Ignalina. The trip may only last for one and a half hour, but you are travelling into history.

“All the power plant environments you the in the series - except for the ruined bits - were filmed at the Ignalina nuclear power plant (IAE),” said J. Špokas. “The firefighters driving towards the fire, the divers going into the pipes, the miners coming in to dig the shaft - it’s all here, as the atmosphere at IAE is unique, impossible to recreate anywhere else. However, it’s also a site of strategic importance for Lithuania, so filming there was not easy.”

During the day, one can visit the IAE with a guided tour. It’s not easy to get into one, but anyone can try. J. Špokas also suggests seeing nuclear power plant control panel-simulator at the Visaginas training center - it’s identical to the one in Chernobyl and the IAE.

The set designers, the real one - for the training of power plant employees, made the one in the series. The simulator allowed the staging of various scenarios that may arise during the operation of the IAE, even an explosion. Today, visitors can even push the legendary emergency protection button AZ-5.

“Seeing the IAE is much more interesting than visiting the real Chernobyl. Sure, the real spot is more authentic and emotionally impressive, but it’s only a ruin,” said J. Špokas. “At the IAE, you can really feel how big and complex a nuclear power plant is. Nothing else in Lithuania can match the sheer scale, importance and size you experience when you see the reactors and walk above them.”

Chernobyl: some scenes actually filmed in Ukraine

“Some scenes we could not film in Lithuania were filmed in Ukraine,” said J. Špokas. “The scene where the miners are encouraged to go to Chernobyl were filmed in Kiev, at the Nuclear Power Plants and Engineering Thermal Physics Department. There was also the scene where the Belorussian scientists Ulana notices the increasing radiation background. Also, only in Kiev could we find some of the backgrounds of the size we needed for Moscow.”

“In Kiev, we had the luxury of shooting Mi-8 helicopter scenes. There’s only two of them in Lithuania and they’re always on rescue duty, so they could be called away at any moment,” said J. Špokas. Overall, the filming in Ukraine took 20 12-hour shifts.

“We also went to the Chernobyl zone to see how some of the old villages look like,” said J. Špokas. “However, it’s not a good place to film, it’s very remote and offers nothing you can’t find in Lithuania. It’s all abandoned, while we needed Pripyat to be alive. You can’t really stay in the Chernobyl zone for too long, the filming equipment is really sensitive to radiation.”

However, if you were planning to visit Chernobyl in Lithuania, but were left with nothing else to do but re-watch the series at the airport terminal due to a disrupted flight, hit Skycop up! The Soviet era is in the past! The rights of air passengers are protected by Regulation (EC) 261/2004, which lays down rules for flight compensation. With Skycop , you can claim up to €600 for cancelled, delayed or overbooked flight. Back in the days of Chernobyl, that much money would have taken 4 months to earn!

#chernobyl #chernobyl series #chernobyl series filming

0 notes

whitewolfofwinterfell · 7 years

Note

Previously you said that you didn't think Nina delivered a very strong performances of Katherine/Elena, and since I've seen other people comment about that too, it would be interesting if you could dive deeper into that? I haven't watched the finale, except from the SE scene (who I personally think was just as good as all scenes between Paul and Nina / Stefan and Elena) and Stefan and Lexi's scene, so I can't really make a stand point on the matter

To be honest, it’s difficult to distinguish between the performance being poor and the writing being poor, because I do feel like Katherine and Elena didn’t have enough adequate screen time for us as viewers to be able to reconnect with them. Bringing them both back for just one final episode seemed so rushed and I think that partly plays into the reason why the performances felt so poor. I mean, I’m pretty sure Katherine only got three scenes and Elena a few more than that, but still barely any real screentime or dialogue. Her main scene was basically the final scene where we had her voice over as she wrote in her diary, but to be honest, after the direction the show headed in after Elena was gone it felt kinda wrong to have her finishing the show, even though she was the one that opened it and was always the main character. But to delve deeper into this I’ll analyse Katherine and Elena separately, because it’s just easier that way. I also won’t really discuss how the writing affected it, because I’ve already explained that I do feel the poor writing contributed to it, but you asked specifically about Nina’s performance, so that’s what I’ll focus on.

Katherine: Her portrayal of Katherine was so much worse than her portrayal of Elena. I’m assuming it’s because Katherine is more of a challenge to play because she’s so different than Nina, which Nina herself has even said in the past. It didn’t even remotely feel like the same Katherine to me. I have to admit, that the small details did affect my perception of her being Katherine and by that I mean her appearance. I understand that Nina is a real person off-screen that has changed and aged since she last played Katherine in season 5, but she just looked completely alien to me. Firstly, what was that hideous wig!? I’m still in shock at how bad it was. Her hair line was like 10 inches further forward than it was supposed to be and apparently there’s hairdressers in hell, cos her hair was a damn lot shorter than it was when she died. Even her make-up didn’t look right. I know Katherine’s signature look is the dark eyeliner and red lipstick, but it just looked so trashy. Then there’s the issue of Nina’s body language. The walk, the hand gestures, the posture, it was all wrong and none of it felt like Katherine. Katherine stands up right, when she walks she struts in an almost seductive and arrogant manner but there was none of that. The exaggerated facial expressions are one of the main things that have always separated Katherine from Elena. Usually I can tell just from seeing a gif whether it’s Elena or Katherine based on the way Nina is moving her lips when she speaks, because with Katherine it’s much more pronounced and dramatic. Nina did try and do that, but she didn’t go far enough. Her face looked stiff a lot of the time and the expressions were just lacking. Katherine has always been a character that communicated a lot physically, so through her expressions, her gestures etc. and all of that was stripped back completely. Then there’s the eyes and the smile. That vindictive and cunning smile Katherine had was no where to be seen and the glint in her eye to go along with it was also gone. Basically, Nina put on a deeper voice and did a more pouty face than she would as Elena and that was it. But everything that we know Katherine Pierce to be was gone in that finale and I wish they would’ve just left her alone instead of resurrecting her for absolutely no purpose.

Elena: Again, the first issue I’m obviously going to mention is the same as Katherine - her appearance. The wig was atrocious and that alone was enough to make her look nothing like Elena to me. Nina’s strongest performance throughout the entire finale was by far the scene she had with Paul. There was real emotion in that scene that felt genuine. Other than that, I can’t really criticise her performance of Elena much more than that, because she didn’t particularly do anything wrong, it just didn’t really feel like Elena to me and I do put that down to the writing and time.

I know I said I wouldn’t talk about the writing, but I can’t help myself haha. I understand the writers wanted to bring Nina back for the finale since she was a part of the show for so long and played two of the most important characters, but in a way it didn’t fit for Elena and Katherine to come back. In regards to Elena’s character, she was already up in the air anyway, because she’d been pretty poorly written since she became a vampire. It’s like the writers got confused between vampire and human Elena and she lost her personality and identity because of it. She was one person in season 4 when she first transitioned, another in season 5 and another in season 6, then in the last 2 episodes they made her human and did a complete 180 on her character by trying to make her the exact same Elena she was in season 1. Then she slipped into a coma and suddenly woke up in the finale, so we had all of 5 minutes to try and get to know who she was again and it just didn’t work. To be honest, Nina did ruin the show by leaving in season 6 and we all know it. The ending we would’ve gotten if she would’ve stuck around until the end would’ve been a million times better for certain. The writers have basically just winged it for these last two seasons to squeeze the final bit of money and life they could out of it before bringing it to an end. But Nina should’ve never left and this finale just proved why.

As for Katherine, her character’s story ended a long time ago. They already unnecessarily dragged it out by making her a passenger in Elena’s body, which really served no purpose but to bring her back again for that pitiful finale was just wasteful and pointless. Katherine’s story had already had closure and although bringing her back could’ve been epic if it would’ve been done correctly, it really sucked.

In the end, I basically think Nina’s return ruined the finale. I could write a million alternative endings I’d prefer to see, but this is just one of them:

A villain (not Katherine) threatens Mystic Falls for who knows what reason (the writers always find some pathetic, small reason and turn it into a big one). Stefan, Damon, Caroline, Bonnie, Matt and Alaric all work together to defeat the evil.

The person that dies is Elena.

Right after they’ve defeated the villian everyone comes to the realisation that Elena is really gone and they’re all grieving for Elena

We get a sweet Defan moment where they confess their love and cry over Elena being gone, but we can clearly see their relationship is finally on track and stronger than ever

At the same time we get a sweet Baroline moment where the girls grieve for Elena too

After that, Stefan and Caroline come together and just sit together in front of the fireplace taking comfort in each other

In the meantime we cut to a Bamon scene, they’re maybe watching Steroline from a distance and Damon comments on how lucky they are to have each other. They basically chat about losing Enzo and Elena and their shared grief of simulatenously losing their partners and best friends.

Some time after, maybe a week or two, we see Steroline go on honeymoon to distract themselves and just get a break

Bamon decide they should go on a roadtrip to deal with their grief and just rediscover themselves. We see them driving off in Damon’s camaro.

We jump forward 10 years or so and get a similar montage to what we got in the actual finale, of Matt being sheriff with Vicki and Tyler watching over him, Bonnie is with Ric and Caroline and they’ve set up a school for magical kids because of the girls and because Bonnie is inspired to use her magic for the purpose of teaching other witches. Damon arrives in his camaro with Stefan, who is dressed in a doctor/paramedic uniform. Damon goes right up to Bonnie, slips his hand around her waist and kisses her, whilst Stefan goes to Caroline and does the same.

Like honestly, I would much rather have seen that than what we actually got. I just feel like despite all the constant Elena mentions, the show actually outgrew Elena in those two seasons that she was gone and the characters that stayed until the end deserved to be the ones that got the happy ending and were there to see it out. It kinda felt cheap that the characters that essentially carried the show for the last two seasons were completely cast aside and Elena who had been back for all of two seconds stole the show and took front and center stage. The show basically reinvented itself during seasons 7 and 8 and I do completely understand why the writers wanted to go back to the roots and try to recapture the essence of season 1. I thought I’d want to see that myself, but I can’t shake the feeling of how wrong and out of place it all felt. With how things developed and progressed, to go back to Elena at the end felt like taking a thousand steps back. Watching the finale really hammered home to me that it wasn’t about Elena like I first thought. It wasn’t even about Stefan either. It was about all of the characters that were left, the ones that had been on the show since the beginning and been on the complete journey. Elena wasn’t one of those people.

And I’m aware that I’ve gone off on so much of a tangent, so I’m going to end it there. But my main point is that Nina’s performances were so terrible because the writing was terrible and the writing was terrible because there was just no room for Elena (or Katherine) in the finale and the writers forced it. How could Nina perform to the best of her ability when she hadn’t played those characters in years, the material she had to work with was so bizarre and OOC and when she was basically stepping into a completely different world of TVD than what it was when she was on it way back in season 6?

#answered #my meta #tvd meta

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sherristockman · 6 years

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A Quest for Meaning Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola The film, “A Quest for Meaning” — created by Kamea Meah Films, the same film company responsible for “Symphony of the Soil” — follows two childhood friends as they travel the globe in search for the meaning of life. Questions about the collective beliefs that have shaped Western civilization are investigated, as are the changes in consciousness we now see as more and more people are becoming inspired to live more in harmony with themselves, each other, and the natural world. Where do we, as humans, belong, if we’re not part of the natural world? And if we’re part of the natural world, how can we survive its destruction? The American Dream Needs an Overhaul Marc, a bottled water salesman in New York City, was living the American dream. His job — convincing Americans that bottled water was a worthy luxury — paid well; he had everything he thought he wanted. After a 10-year separation, Nathanael (the film’s director and cameraman) visits Marc in New York City. Thinking Marc seemed a bit out of place in this “high-life,” Nathanael left him with several environmental documentaries “to shake him up a little bit.” Marc admits he had no intention of watching any of them. But, as fate would have it, a broken foot left him with little else to do. Right after that, the financial melt-down of 2008 hit and, along with the rest of us, he realized that the greed of a few had placed the future of the entire planet in jeopardy. “I was now convinced that the system was incapable of providing a solution to the problems it had created,” he says. “And as a water salesman in Manhattan, I was also part of the problem.” To ward off cynicism and depression, Marc left everything behind and began to search for the answers to his questions. On the way, he convinced Nathanael to join him and record their travels, and together they set off on a journey that shook the foundations of their beliefs and the principles by which they lived. Without Nature, There Is No Life In the film, their journey takes them to India, where locals have managed to revitalize the economy following the closing of mines by investing in agricultural education and tools. As followers of Gandhi, they promote the concept of “swaraj,” which is the idea that you are responsible for yourself and the world around you. You must be a good steward. To learn more about Gandhi and his views on economy, they attend a seminar on “Gandhi and Globalization” held by Dr. Vandana Shiva. Originally trained as a physicist, Shiva became involved in a movement to protect the forests of the Himalayas. She began writing about ecological problems, and the rest, as they say, is history. Shiva is now one of the most well-recognized faces of the organic farming movement. “Things are changing,” she says, “but they’re changing in the wrong direction because the most prominent change is driven by giant corporations [that] are turning everything into a commodity. There’s no people, no nature, no culture, no values. The change we need is a change that helps us recognize that if we continue on this present path … humanity will annihilate the conditions for its living on this planet.” As noted by Shiva, large corporations are very good at eliminating small farmers, but they have no viable plan for how to feed the world once all small farmers are gone. “Recognition that nature is the condition of our being alive is the shift we need to make. We have to stop thinking about nature as wilderness, and think of it as the condition for life,” she says. For many, the way they reconnect with nature is through food — planting, tending, harvesting and eating what they’ve grown. Or, at the very least, it’s knowing where the food comes from and how it was grown, “making sure nature’s contribution has not been abused by corporate greed.” In other words, it’s about making sure the food you buy has not been genetically engineered (GE) or doused with chemicals that destroy the environment and harm wildlife and the farmers themselves. One of the most harmful effects of GE seeds is often overlooked. By making seed sharing illegal, large GE seed corporations have made farmers completely dependent on their GE seeds — and the chemicals designed to accompany them. The financial strain has led to an epidemic of farmer suicides in India, as crop failures can quickly lead to financial ruin, burying the farmers in debt they cannot pay off. Historically, you could always trade seeds with your neighbors, but patented seeds must be bought anew each year, and prices just keep going up. Creating a Cyclical Economy As noted in the film, “You cannot have unlimited economic growth on a limited planet. You cannot have infinite growth in a finite world.” The current system cannot be fixed; it must be replaced with a new system that takes only that which is required, and returns to the earth something that supports the continued cycle of growth. Shiva notes that nowadays we hear a lot about “green consumerism,” but what needs to be questioned is the very idea of consumerism itself. “The reduction of our identities to that of consumers is part of the problem,” she says. “Recovery of our identities — as creators, users and makers of things — is part of the solution.” Part of this also involves regaining respect for physical work, which you gain when working in the fields or in your garden, growing your food. The common view that corporations are our sole means of support is equally fallacious. We don’t need corporations to live, eat and put a roof over our head. Nature — fields, forests, plants, rivers, rain — and human communities working together, are what provide lasting security and generate livelihood. “Money is just a means of exchange, it’s not real security. So, people don’t need to fear.” Shiva adds: “Overall, my vision of another economy is, in every place, people producing in sustainable ways, generating livelihoods and meeting their needs. Decentralized economies everywhere … [not this] crazy world where everything has to be manufactured in China, and everywhere else people sit unemployed. And because they’re unemployed and have no money, the only place they can shop is at a Walmart, because they bring their stuff from China and sell cheap. What we need is a shift from this idea of false cheapness that has a very high cost for the planet and people, to an idea of authentic affordability [with] low cost for the planet and low cost for the people.” ‘Reformatting the Hard Drive’ While Marc set out to make a film about alternative lifestyles, just a few days at Shiva’s ashram completely changed how he viewed the world. “It completely reformatted my hard drive,” he says. “Blinded by progress and technology, [the Western world] has completely lost touch with the essential things in life.” These essentials include not only respect for the natural world, but also the spiritual world. An Indian yoga teacher stresses the idea that modern science and spiritual science are not mutually exclusive, but need to be balanced because, while you can buy the things you need, you cannot buy happiness. That you must find and generate from within, and there are spiritual principles, spiritual sciences, that can help you find what you’re looking for. From India, the journey continues to France, where they interview a farmer who again stresses the importance of reconnecting with nature. They also talk to a sociologist who reviews the history of human connection to nature. While man’s fate used to be closely intertwined with nature and hinged on the ability to live in harmony with natural laws, over time we learned to dominate nature, and our dominance eventually led to our becoming disconnected from it. Connecting Mind-Body-Spirit — Becoming a Human Being Rather Than Being a Human Doer In Mexico, the pair investigate Central American culture and spirituality, and talk to a medicine man who points out that societal change always begins with individual change. We have become indoctrinated by corporate advertising and have largely forgotten how to think properly. For example, if you do not want to be ill, you must stop thinking about how to treat disease and start thinking about what it takes to be healthy. Thoughts are a creative force, so be mindful of where you place your focus. The investigation into consciousness and self-awareness continues in Guatemala, where they speak to Chaty Secaira, a meditation instructor and mystic, about the nature of reality. “We see only one side of creation,” she says. “We see only what is visible. But there’s a whole other side that is invisible, that can only be seen with the eyes of the soul. You have to open your heart and open your mind in order to allow this level of perception.” Meditation is one way of connecting with your authentic self and the invisible part of creation, and the filmmakers set out on a rigorous spiritual program of meditation and fasting in the Guatemalan jungle. “Inside every person, there is some of [the] divine element,” Secaira says. “Our mission is to unify ourselves with this divine element.” Science Confirms Our Interdependence Back in San Francisco, the pair follow the path of reason, searching for answers in modern science. Astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan agrees to answer a few of their questions. “Twentieth-century science has only just discovered, or rediscovered, what Buddhism has been telling us for 2,500 years, namely the concept of interdependence,” Thuan says. “Everything is connected.” Ever since the 1950s, scientists have increasingly been confronted with evidence that we are “made of stardust; we are children of the stars.” The atoms that make up your body “are made from the nuclear reactions of the stars.” According to Thuan, “If it weren’t for the stars, we wouldn’t even exist.” What this means is that we’re not only interdependent with nature here on planet Earth, we’re also interdependent with the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics also tells us that there’s no way of breaking this intrinsic unity. Once two particles have interacted, you cannot break their connection. Separate them by millions of light years, and they still respond in tandem; what happens to one happens to the other — instantaneously, and without any information transfer between them. In other words, there is only one thing in this universe, and we are all “it.” “The conclusion I draw from this is that science is not the only way to observe reality,” Thuan says. “There are other windows into reality.” The Root of the Problem Cassandra Vieten, director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, adds, “Many of the problems we face … are grounded in limitations in our human consciousness.” While egotism is rampant, we’ve not taken it to the next logical step, which is to realize that self-preservation demands that we include everyone, not just a few that we deem worthy. “Inequity of resources, violence, war, climate change — they spring from the way we view the world,” Vieten says. She also points out that we typically don’t realize we’re looking at the world through our own filter, our own world view; we simply believe we’re seeing the truth. One of the things contemplative practices such as meditation allows us to do is recognize that “thoughts are just thoughts, beliefs are just beliefs, and they’re not truly who we are. They’re just … working hypotheses.” She gives the following example: During meditation, you may come to realize that you view the world as a dangerous place, and that this view has colored your actions since childhood. This insight then offers you the opportunity to choose to see differently; to shift your world view. What if the world isn’t a dangerous place? Then what would I see, think and do? This kind of self-awareness automatically leads to shifts in thought patterns and behavior. Values change, and along with it, your relationship to yourself and others change too. “Listening to Cassandra … I realized the beliefs I had built my life on had totally collapsed during this trip,” Marc says. “They had been replaced by new hypotheses, like the gut feeling that the world is not just made of matter, [and] that chasing after money and social status leads us away from what is really important.” However, the world around him didn’t conform to these new ways of looking at the world. Everywhere he looked, he saw messages “inciting people to consume and pollute.” How Collective Beliefs Take Shape The next stop on their journey is a visit to Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., who discusses how collective beliefs emerge and take shape. In a nutshell, there are three perennial questions that drive collective world views: How did we get here? Why are we here? How do we make the best of it? When the population accepts the answers to these questions provided by some authority, that authority by default becomes the “truth provider” to all other worldly questions as well. The church was the truth provider for a long time, and the spiritual reality was paramount. Once science began providing the answers, the spiritual world was relegated to the proverbial broom closet. Science said, you don’t need spirituality because the world is just a big machine. There’s no evidence “spirit” is anywhere to be found. We got here through random mutations, and there’s no purpose for our being here since the whole of creation was a big accident. To top it off, we were given the evolutionary theory of “survival of the fittest.” It’s a tough, mean world out there and you have to fight to survive. So, life became all about the struggle to get to the top and stay there. The world of today is the end result of these beliefs. Fortunately, these beliefs are now changing. We’re starting to see that we got here through adaptive mutations — the ability of an organism to adapt to its environment. Since we’re an interdependent part of nature, it becomes obvious that, as creative thinkers, we are here to create and maintain harmony, and that the only way we can survive is through cooperation. Competition and separatism is what’s killing us, both individually and as a collective. We still live in an oligarchy where a few people make a lot of important decisions, most if not all of which are driven by capitalism. These rulers naturally promote their own continuation, but their days are numbered. Slowly but surely, we’re starting to transition into a whole new world view built on cooperation and interdependence. It’s up to you to be this change. As Marc says, “To change the world, you have to change your vision of it. And in order for this change to take place, we are all called to evolve.”

#VitalityPath

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