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a-edgar-allan-hoe · 3 years

Text

The Last Chthonian

Bucky x Reader, Sam x Reader, Zemo x Reader

Part 10

A/N: I can’t believe I’m already on part 10 for this series and to be honest it’s fun to write. And in all seriousness, the tumblr mobile app needs to allow you to put a read more link. But anyways love you all and let me know if you would like to be added to the tag list! Mwah! 🖤🖤🖤

Summary: Imagine being Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, the night and the moon, doorways and crossroads, creatures of the night, and ghosts and necromancy. You stumbled upon Earth many centuries ago and since then have resided on the foreign planet. During the recent years you created an alias for yourself to hide your true identity, and after the war against Thanos you chose to live out your days in the Scottish countryside, until a certain trio appear at your doorstep one day.

Warnings: language, some violence, and blood

“Im sorry, did you just say Madripoor?” You blinked at Zemo, dreading the destination ahead of you.

“What’s up with Madripoor? You talk about it like it’s Skull Island.” Sam questioned, looking between you and Zemo.

“Imagine Mos Eisley from Tatooine but without the aliens and blasters.” You tried to make an analogy. “In other words, a shithole. And to be honest, I’d rather be in Mos Eisley.”

“It’s an island nation in the Indonesian archipelago. It was a pirate sanctuary back in the 1800s.” Bucky explained to Sam.

“It’s kept its lawless ways.” Zemo added before turning to James. “But we cannot exactly walk in as ourselves. James, you will have to become someone you claim is gone.”

You had a feeling Zemo would suggest all of you going in with different identities, and being the only woman in the group, you already had a wild guess you weren’t going to be ecstatic about yours. You looked to Bucky with a frown on your lips. You knew what Zemo had meant towards him, and you didn’t know how it would affect him to transition back into the person he tried so hard to deviate from. Bucky saw the sympathetic smile you gave him, and he returned it with a look that reassured you that he would be fine.

“Y/n.” Zemo now spoke to you, tilting his head to meet your eyes. “I’m sure you are aware of the conditions.”

“Zemo if you...” Bucky trailed off as he glared at him, silently warning him to watch what he says next.

Sam and Bucky kept their eyes on Zemo, waiting to hear what his suggested persona for you was and ready to beat his ass if he dared to suggest something that would be demeaning to you.

“No way in the pits of Tartarus. I am not going in as an escort.” You voiced with a clenched jaw. “And if it’s eye candy you need, you have Sam.”

Sam gave you a surprised look from your comment, flattered to have you recommend him to be the designated eye candy before going back to the topic at hand. “Hell no Zemo. You’re not having y/n pretend to be an escort.”

“I’m afraid Sam is already going as someone.” Zemo sat back with his hands folded in his lap. “And don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on having you go as an escort, it isn’t befitting of a baron like me. Plus, I figured it would be uncomfortable for you, so I was going to suggest you act as my fiancé, if you are willing of course.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, pondering on the subject. You were a bit relieved in all honesty. But to pretend to be Zemo’s fiancé and be in close and almost physical proximities with him?

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to y/n.” Sam uttered to you.

“I’ll do it.” You confirmed.

“Are you sure?” Zemo asked you again, making sure you were comfortable with acting the part.

“I thought Zemo might step out of line with this one, but we don’t want you to do something that will make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m sure. I’ve had to do things I wasn’t comfortable with plenty of times in the past.”

Once you had all landed, Zemo decided to stop by a place so that you all may get dressed. You had already packed a dress and a pair of heels with you just in case for situations like these, since this wasn’t the first time you had to dress up for a mission. The dress you wore was a black, burned velvet silk slip-like dress with the velvet print being dark red roses. The dress wasn’t too tight to be constricting of movement and fit perfectly around around your curves. If the situation should arise that you needed to defend yourself, you needed the freedom to be able to move. Going down, the fabric flared slightly at your hips, brushing barely against the floor with your heels on. The skirt was slightly sheer from the bottom of your thighs and down with the floral velvet print, and had a slit going up your right thigh, perfect for kicking and concealing your dagger. The top torso portion of the front of your dress was a spaghetti strap cowl neckline that stopped just above the curve of your breasts, allowing for just a bit of cleavage. Your back was left bare, stopping at your mid back with thin straps that came across in a pattern. Your dress almost had a Grecian/witchy look from the way it draped over your chest and hips. It wasn’t too formal or too scandalous, it was elegant and classy, and showed just the right amount of skin where it wouldn’t be too revealing.

Even though you completely loathed and detested heels of any kinds, your heels were fairly simple, made of black velvet with straps that came across your ankles and toes. You dreaded heaving to wear them but at the same time you’d stick out like a sore thumb if you wore your docs with these. Perhaps you should’ve brought your nicer sandals, but it was too late now. You kept on your mother’s necklace and wore a set of amethyst drop earrings, throwing on a silver cuff bracelet on each wrist. Your hair was let loose to conceal your short sword that you hid on your back underneath your dress, the hilt resting right between your shoulder blades. You prayed that having your hair down would cover the scars and the sword you had on your back. But you were mostly focused about the scars, you failed to mention them to the guys about it since it was something that was hard for you to share. The only makeup you had on was some eyeshadow and mascara to darken your eyes, very little blush, and a lip tint.

The last thing to do was to put on some perfume, so you spritzed on your favorite oil based one that you had from Olympus on your pulse points. The scent was filled with incense-like scents like dragon’s blood, sage, crushed red roses, sandalwood, ghostly white musk, absinthe, almonds, and heady gardenia. It wasn’t as harsh as the common alcohol based ones, this one was more earthy and ancient, and every time you wore it, the scent lingered and heads turned. You gave yourself a once over when you were done, taking in a deep breath before heading out to join the others.

You became nervous as you saw them gathered together, talking amongst themselves as they haven’t noticed you yet. You rarely ever wore dresses these days, especially of the kind you were wearing now which left you feeling bare and exposed even though the dress wasn’t at all much revealing. So as you approached them, you couldn’t help picking at your fingers in anxiety.

The men turned at the sound of your heels clicking against the ground, and when they laid their eyes on you, they couldn’t help but gawk with their mouths parted open, as if they had seen the most beautiful creature to ever walk the earth. You chewed on the inside of your cheeks as you saw how they stared at you.

“Wow.” Sam was the first to say something. “You look like a million bucks.”

“What? Never seen a woman in a dress before?”

“No, I’ve just never seen you in a dress before.” Sam answered. “You’re always dressed like some hippie/librarian, with your bands shirts, sweaters, plaid pants and jackets.”

“Haha vary funny.”

“Also since when did you have muscles?” Sam noticed as he poked your bare arm. “And since when did you have a tattoo?” He observed the mark you had on your upper right arm, right below your shoulder. It was the mark that was given to you to signify your Olympian status and what you represented. It was about the color that henna left behind after you wiped the paste off your skin, the color of ginger and bronze. The center of your mark was a lightning bolt, which represented a child of Zeus. Below that was your symbol, the torch and the triple moons.

“Since when did you start asking so many questions? But yeah, I’ve always had muscles Sam, I was trained in combat since I was, you could say 9 years old in human years. Also, technically everyone has them, it’s what allows us to move and lift things. And that.” You pointed to your tattoo. “Is my goddess mark, not a tattoo. Every Olympian god has one and they each have their personal symbol that represents them.”

“Wait, so you’ve been trained since you were a kid?” Bucky looked at you to clarify what he heard as they all started to head out.

“Technically, everyone on Olympus starts training that young. Then, when they become of age, a tournament is held to display their skills, following a ceremony after, to celebrate their victory.” You explained as you walked beside them.

The four of you were currently walking on the bridge that led to Madripoor. You could see the city’s skyline out in the distance, the cyberpunk like buildings lighting up the night sky.

“Do you need my coat?” You heard Zemo say beside you, making you look at him.

“Sorry?”

“Do you need my coat?” He repeated himself, referring to how your arms were bare against the cool night. “I wouldn’t want you to get cold.”

You stared at him, stunned from the kind gesture as you tried to form words to say. “Oh uh.....I appreciate the gesture, but I’m fine actually. I’m not that cold.” Though you didn’t want to admit it, you actually would’ve liked to try on his coat, because in all honesty it was a damn nice coat.

“We have to fix this.” You heard Sam say with irritation visible in his voice. “I’m the only one who looks like a pimp.”

“Only an American would assume a fashion-forward black man looks like a pimp. You look exactly like the man you’re supposed to be playing.” Zemo mentioned as he pulled out his phone to show Sam. “The sophisticated, charming African rake named Conrad Mack, aka the Smiling Tiger.”

“He even has a bad nickname. Hell, he does look like me, though.” Sam observed the photo.

“You smell this?”

“Yeah, what is that? Acid?” Sam sniffed the air as you did the same.

“Smells rancid.” You scrunched your nose at the smell.

“Madripoor. No matter what happens, we have to stay in character. Our lives depend on it. There’s no margin for error.” Zemo instructed as a black car pulled up in front of you. “High Town’s that way. Not a bad place if you wanna visit, but Low Town’s the other way.”

“Let me guess. We don’t have any friends in High Town.” Sam remarked as he opened the door for the back seat.

“Y/n. A moment please, if you will.” Zemo uttered to you.

You stopped in your tracks, seeing Bucky and Sam stand on either side of the car doors, looking between the two of you and especially Zemo, with caution. You nodded your head at them, signaling you were fine and that they can get seated. And though they sat themselves inside the car, that didn’t stop them from keeping their eyes glued to Zemo to make sure he didn’t pull anything stupid.

“What’s the issue?” You turned to Zemo, giving him your attention.

“Since you will be portraying my fiancé, there’s a certain key element you will be needing to complete the image.” You watched as he pulled out a ring from his coat pocket, displaying it in front of you. “If I may?”

You stared at Zemo blankly before nodding your head and holding out your left hand for him. You knew this was only for a show, but you couldn’t help but stiffen as he delicately held your hand with his gloved one before slipping the ring onto your ring finger.

“There.” Hi smiled softly at you, his hand still holding yours. “Now you look the part.”

The two of you stood there for a moment, his thumb brushing against your knuckles, leaving behind a trail of warmth as he gazed down at you. Zemo swore he could have gotten lost in the violet swirls and gold flecks of your eyes forever, which now sparkled against Madripoor’s lit up skyline, the neon city and the places he’s visited not even coming close to the beauty he held before him.

You tried not to blush under his gaze as you gave him a polite smile before slipping your hand out of his. “I should probably change my eyes huh.” You remembered, changing your eyes to a normal color known to earth. “Should I hide the scar?” You asked him, referring to the one on your face.

“I think you should leave it. It suits you, and besides, you never know who might recognize you without it.”

Nodding your head at him, you headed to the car and settling in beside Bucky as Zemo followed, getting in the passenger seat in front of you. In the car ride there, you glanced down at the ring Zemo slipped on your finger, it was definitely a beautiful elegant ring, with a rose gold band and a pear cut garnet in the center that had diamonds that accented the bottom. Once you arrived in the city, you walked through the neon lit streets beside Zemo while Sam and Bucky followed behind. You loosened up your body as you went, swaying your hips slightly as you tried your best not to walk like a bodyguard and look threatening as everyone’s eyes followed the four of you strolling through the streets.

“Here we are.” Zemo announced, stopping in front of a bar before speaking to Bucky in Russian. “Ready to comply… Winter Soldier?”

As you went in, Zemo leaned in to whisper in your ear, his warm breath tickling your neck and startling you as he spoke in a hushed tone. “I want to apologize in advance, forgive me.”

You looked at him with furrowed brows to question what he meant until you felt his gloved hand slide across your back before resting on your waist, pulling you closer to his side. You noticed how his hand fumbled after brushing across your sword as he gave you a questioning look. What was that on your back? Did you really conceal a full on sword on your back underneath your dress? On your way to the bar table you saw people stare as you went through, some of them gawking in surprise at Bucky, or the winter soldier as he was now portraying, while the slimy men in the area roamed their eyes over your body hungrily. Zemo noticed your uneasiness from the way your muscles tensed, though your face didn’t show a sign of it, and glared at the men who dared to lay their eyes on you, only pulling you closer to him to prove that you were with him while Bucky and Sam noticed this as well and positioned themselves where you were blocked from the view of your peers, allowing you to breathe a little better as you approached the bar.

“Hello, gentlemen.” The bartender greeted you all. “Wasn’t expecting you, Smiling Tiger.”

“His plans changed.” Zemo answered for him. “We have business to do with Selby.”

“The usual?”

Sam nodded his head.

“And for the lady?”

“Um Something fruity.” You answered with a flirtatious smile, silently hoping they had something like that on the menu and that you hadn’t blown their cover by ordering the wrong drink.

The bartender handed you what looked to be a pineapple martini and you internally thanked the gods for your sheer bit of luck, taking the drink and thanking the bartender with another smile. You watched as he went to work on Sam’s drink, pulling out of a jar what definitely was a snake. You gulped, your stomach feeling nauseous as you saw the bartender cut open the dead snake, taking out its guts and throwing it in the shot glass. You were mortified to say the least, snakes were one of your symbols and you had owned plenty of the gentle little creatures. You shot Sam a sympathetic look once you saw his expression.

“Cheers.” Zemo held up his glass while Sam stared at his before gathering the courage to drink it all in one go. If Sam wasn’t going to throw up, you were going to do it for him.

While your eyes were trained on Sam’s expression, you felt someone breathe over your neck before feeling a clammy hand graze across your ass.

“Hey baby-“

Your eyes widened before you grabbed the wrist of the man behind you in one quick motion, twisting his arm to an unnatural position as you yanked it away from your body, causing the sleazy looking individual let out a yelp of pain. You would’ve crushed his wrist like crumpled paper if Zemo hadn’t put a cautionary hand on your arm as he whispered to you. “Careful now.”

You let go of the man’s wrist before shoving him aside like a pile of garbage. If their identity wasn’t at risk of being revealed, Zemo, Sam, and Bucky would have gone over there and beat the guy up after you were done with him.

“I got word from high. You ain’t welcome here.” You watched from behind Zemo as a bearded man approached him.

“I have no business with the Power Broker, but if he insists, he can either come and talk to me…” Zemo gestured towards Bucky.

“New haircut?”

“Or bring Selby for a chat.”

The man glanced between Zemo and Bucky before leaving.

“A power broker? Really?” Sam turned to Zemo.

“Every kingdom needs its king. Let’s just pray we stay under his radar.”

“Do you know him?” You asked.

“Only by reputation. In Madripoor he is judge, jury, and executioner.”

Another man was approaching in your direction, most likely to kick you all out or worse, and after following your gaze, Zemo turned to Bucky, speaking to him in Russian just as the man laid a hand on his shoulder. “Winter Soldier. Attack.”

You stood back, watching as Bucky grabbed the dude’s arm and twisted it back. You refrained yourself from intervening as Bucky took down the men that fought against him.

“Didn’t take much for him to fall back into form.” Zemo commented to you and Sam.

Bucky slammed one of the men down on the counter. And as you heard the clicking of guns being loaded, your defensive mode nearly kicked in as you almost reached for your sword before Zemo stopped you.

“Stay in character or the whole bar turns on us.” Zemo whispered to you both before turning to Bucky and speaking in Russian again. “Well done soldier.”

You let your arm drop back down to your side, not a single change in your expression as you eyed everyone around you.

“Selby will see you now.” The bartender spoke up after getting off the phone.

Zemo gave him a thanks, nodding you over and holding out his hand for you to take as you went to his side again, Bucky and Sam following after you. You went through a back door, going down a dark corridor with Zemo’s hand on your back as he guided you through.

“You should know, Baron. People don’t just come into my bar and make demands.” You heard a woman’s voice speak, turning your head to see an older woman in a suit with short white hair lounging back on the coach with her security around her.

“Not a demand. An offer.” Zemo sat down on the couch before waving you over when he saw you standing near Sam. “Come sit schatzi.”

You straightened up, plastering a smile on your face as you went over to him. Selby’s eyes followed you curiously as you placed your hand in his, your eyes rapidly moving in nervousness for what area would be the most appropriate area to sit. Were you......were you supposed to sit on his lap? Is that how couples work? No, that would be inappropriate. Before things got awkward, you quickly plopped down on the empty spot next to him, crossing over your leg in a way so that it draped over his, leaving your thigh completely exposed from the slit in your dress, save for the dagger that still remained hidden. Sam and Bucky widened their eyes at what you just did, while Zemo stiffened at this sudden movement from you as you also draped one arm around his shoulders, bringing yourself closer to him. Were you even doing this right?

“A lot has changed since you were here last.” Selby observed the two of you before her eyes landed on your ring. “Who’s this pretty little thing?”

“This.” Zemo looked at you with a loving look, throwing an arm around your waist to draw circles on your bare back, while his other hand rested on your thigh, leaving behind a trail of goosebumps on your skin as you felt shivers go down your spine. “Is my fiancé. Gorgeous isn’t she?”

How long has it been since you were this close and personal to someone? The last you could remember, women still wore corsets and people still rode carriages. You felt your body heat up from being this close to him, and from the way he stroked your back. How was a mortal man able to leave you feeling like this? If he was able to send shivers down your spine with the mere touch on your back with his gloved hand, you wondered how it would feel to have his bare hands on you, just skin to skin. And if you were being honest, you never really were a fan of cologne but his smelled of a deeper earthy tones with hints of musk, and you were surprised and almost ashamed to say you liked how he smelled. You returned the same loving look to Zemo, trying to make it as believable as possible as you ran your fingers through the hair on the back of his head before placing a kiss on his jaw close to his ear. Sam and Bucky couldn’t believe their eyes at the scene before them, the same you who preferred to be a hermit and didn’t go on dates because it involved human interaction, was cuddling up to none other than Helmut Zemo himself. Zemo’s breath faltered a bit from from your touch as he swallowed the lump in his throat, struggling not to break character. Being this close to you, he was able to get a whiff of your perfume and my goodness, Zemo felt as if he could drown in your scent, you smelled like the heavens, not overbearingly sweet, but dark and luxurious and even seductive. Is this what vampires and sirens smelled like when they lured people to their deaths? You raised a brow at Zemo, your heightened senses were picking up on his breathing patterns and heartbeat. Was he getting nervous?

“Extremely.” Selby commented, smirking at the two of you before roaming her eyes over your body. You could feel her taking you in but you kept your eyes trained on the side of Zemo’s face. “Where did you pick this one up? She looks like a fighter.”

“As they say, why not get a woman who can do both. She was part of the Sokovian armed forces, I met her through there.”

“By the way, I thought you were rotting away in a German prison. How did you escape?” Selby added after finally taking her eyes off you.

“People like us always find a way, don’t we? I’m sure you’ve already figured out what I’m here for.”

“You’re taller than I’d heard, Smiling Tiger.” Selby turned to Sam with a flirtatious grin, using her hand in a claw like manner as she let out a purr. “What’s the offer?”

“Tell us what you know about the super-soldier serum.” Zemo got up off the couch, going over to Bucky and holding his chin between his fingers. “And I give you him, along with the code words to control him, of course. He will do anything you want.”

“Now that’s the Zemo I remember. I’m glad I decided not to kill you immediately. Yeah, you were right to come to me. Arrogant, but right. The super-soldier serum is here in Madripoor. Dr. Wilfred Nagel is the man you wanna thank. Or… condemn, depending on what side of this you’re on. The Power Broker had him working on the serum, but… things didn’t go as planned.”

“Is Nagel still in Madripoor?”

“Oh. The bread crumbs you can have for free, but the bakery is gonna cost you, Baron. And before you get all cute, don’t think you can find Nagel without me. But.....” She turned you with a sly smile which made your insides turn. “Throw her in with the package and you have yourself a deal.”

Zemo, Sam, and Bucky turned to look at you with dread upon hearing her words. This wasn’t at all part of the plan.

“No, no no. That wasn’t the deal.” Zemo stepped over to where you sat, blocking you from her. “She’s not for sale.”

“Why not?” Selby raised her brow at Zemo. “I’m pretty sure a man like you could pick up someone else to be your plaything or fiancé or whatever. I like this one in particular.” She turned to you again.

“That’s not-“ Zemo started before he was cut off by Sam’s cellphone vibrating.

You breath was caught in your throat and it felt as if the room had dropped in temperature. You could feel the tension floating around the air as everyone’s eyes were trained on Sam now, making you sit up straight and uncross your legs so that they were planted firmly on the ground. Your hand rested on your thigh just above where the hilt of your dagger was as your eyes darted around the room, watching each and every person like a hawk about to swoop down on its prey. You had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years

Photo

Only in a Sitcom

Fandom: WandaVision Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Jimmy Woo Rating: T

Summary: Darcy has no idea what the hell’s going on with this WandaVision thing, but neither does Jimmy. It’s kinda fun to have somebody to binge-watch alternate reality TV with.

read ch. 1 one / 2 two / 3 three / 4 four / 5 five 6 six / 7 seven / 8 eight / 9 nine / 10 ten 11 eleven / 12 twelve / 13 thirteen / 14 fourteen 15 fifteen / 16 sixteen / 17 seventeen / 18 eighteen

this fic is now complete!

Darcy, Jimmy, and Monica have been working their way across Westview in as straight a line as possible, knocking on every door in every cute little cul-de-sac in their path. It was Jimmy who asserted they should never put their backs to a dangerous situation, but Monica who overruled that statement, pointing out that they were more likely to stay focused if they didn’t keep staring at the fight in the sky.

Darcy thinks they were both right. There’s a tingle rippling up and down the back of her neck, like she gets when she’s up in the middle of the night, spooked by shadows her anxious, overtired mind is too eager to turn into monsters, but the heebie-jeebies give her the energy to work quickly. She takes on an entire crescent on her own, readying people for a departure she’s certain they’ve been longing for. As she’s coming out the crescent’s other end, she realizes the Hex is getting brighter; the red storm clouds are being sucked back into themselves to leave a thin daylight.

Standing at the corner, she watches Jimmy and Monica emerge from the street opposite. Darcy jogs over, wincing. Wanda could’ve put orthotics in these Escape Artist boots. They’re blistering her feet.

“This has to be a good sign, right?” she asks, motioning to the calm skies.

“Look,” Monica instructs. She jerks her chin and Darcy and Jimmy follow her line of sight to see Wanda, Vision, and the twins coming up the main road.

Darcy gasps.

Wanda’s gone from bumming-around-the-house sweats to battle-ready chic. With her armour-like bodice, gloves that leave those magic fingers free, and an usually-shaped tiara framing her forehead, she’s both intimidating and otherworldly. But she’s smiling. Darcy would call it a sad smile and it hurts her heart to see it, even though she doesn’t understand.

As Wanda passes them with her hand held fast in Vision’s, she turns her head to nod at Monica. It’s in her eyes too, the same thing that’s in her smile. Something tired but present. Gone are the comedically darting glances of her persona as the bumbling new girl in town and the frazzled energy of a mom trying to corral a couple of superkids. It looks like she’s finally letting go of the illusion/delusion.

“Can we do anything for her?” Jimmy asks as the family continues on down the middle of the street.

“No,” Monica says. “The rest is for Wanda to do on her own.”

“We might as well head back towards the center of town,” Darcy says. “We don’t need to waste time at the edges. They’ll be the first to wake up.”

She points to where the Hex is shimmering on the horizon. The seconds pass and the shimmer looks messier, a weave of overlapping wires fritzing with energy. The edge is coming closer, but unlike when Wanda pushed the boundary farther, closing it around Darcy and her S.W.O.R.D. nemeses, this isn’t menacing. Wanda’s powers are no longer looking to consume more territory, they’re contracting. Faster than the incoming wave of the walls, the Hex goes dark. The red glow is intensely magical in the sudden night.

The three of them fan out, hitting the houses in their new route, and make their way back to the town square. They’ve been telling everyone to remain in their homes until they receive further instructions to evacuate, but Darcy spots a figure on the sidewalk by the department story. It’s Agnes, except… not as they saw her lately. No wild hair or billowing, layered outfit. No levitation. Darcy’s wary in the face of the woman who appears so much like her former self, the one supposedly under Wanda’s control. This Agnes has a damn Peter Pan collar poking out of her sweater! She couldn’t look much less threatening.

“What do you think?” she asks Monica when she joins her.

“I don’t know.” Monica peers across the street at Agnes in the dark and when Agnes notices, she flashes a wide smile.

“Well, maybe we should— Hey, no, wait!”

But the Captain strides across to meet Agnes. Darcy almost follows in her idol’s wake, but she quickly remembers that Monica has powers to protect herself that far exceed the right hook Darcy used to drop Agent Handcuffs. Whatever Agnes’s deal is, Darcy knows she’s an entirely different kind of beast from an asshole S.W.O.R.D. agent.

“What’s going on there?” Jimmy wonders, coming up beside her.

Thanks to the stress of trying to speak to as many citizens as possible in a short amount of time, including looking dozens of people still under mind control in the eye and aching for their lack of agency, the fear of and for Wanda as she witnessed that clash in the sky, and, really, the car crash that’s still pretty recent, Darcy reacts to her boyfriend’s presence by wrapping her arms around him tightly. With his tie pressed to her cheek, she feels him hug her back.

“I don’t know,” she says, carrying on the conversation without pulling away an inch, “but Monica’s finding out.”

“Agnes looks like an average Westviewer again. It’s disconcerting.”

“She must’ve been faking right up until she went head-to-head with Wanda.”

“And now she’s one of them for real.”

“Seems like,” Darcy agrees.

When Monica returns to confirm Agnes’s newly mind-controlled status, Darcy peels herself most of the way away from Jimmy, leaving her arm around his back, beneath his FBI jacket. He rests his arm around her shoulders.

“I don’t know what we do with her,” Monica says, hands on her hips. “We can’t undo what Wanda did, but do we leave Agnes here in Westview, trusting that she isn’t able to hurt anyone? Do we bring her in?”

“If it’s beyond our power to help her, maybe we just leave her here,” Jimmy suggests. “Wanda knows where she is, so we let Agnes stay in a place she can be found when or if Wanda decides to release her.”

“It’s tricky,” Darcy says slowly. “Agnes is capable of doing so much damage, and I’m sure she’s going to get good and angry while Wanda has her trapped inside herself. You and I know how that feels,” she says to Monica. “But that Agnes is secure—as far as we know—inside Sitcom Agnes, like little Agnes nesting dolls. I don’t know if this is the kind of punishment she deserves for pushing Wanda to the brink, but I do know it’s not going to be pretty if that inner Agnes is unleashed with nobody around to mitigate the consequences.”

“Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division,” Monica says softly.

“Hmm?”

“S.W.O.R.D. That’s what we’re supposed to stand for. I think, without Tyler Hayward around, it’s high time S.W.O.R.D. went back to its roots of trying to understand exceptional people, circumstances, and technology instead of just attacking them.”

“Sounds as though you might have a plan, Captain,” Jimmy says. Darcy glances at his face and catches his small, knowing smile.

Monica beams back.

“The former Director may have kicked me off the base, but I’m still S.W.O.R.D. and I still believe in my mother’s original goals for the organization.”

“Hey, it’s your legacy,” Darcy says. “You have my vote for Director.”

“You want to put Agnes under S.W.O.R.D. observation?” Jimmy asks.

“Not just Agnes. Not if Wanda’s willing to listen.”

With the sky rapidly lightening, Monica roughs out a plan that involves a partnership between S.W.O.R.D. and Wanda Maximoff. A partnership because any other dynamic would surely fail. After what they all witnessed today, it’s obvious that someone as powerful as Wanda can’t be held against her will. In exchange for Wanda making reparations to the people and town of Westview (not the least of which will be repairing all physical damage, which Monica knows Wanda’s capable of, since there’s no longer a Monica-sized hole in her living room wall) and an agreement to be held in the custody of S.W.O.R.D., under the leadership of Director Monica Rambeau, Monica thinks she has plenty to offer Wanda.

“You think she’ll do that deal?” Jimmy asks.

“That’s my question too,” Darcy says. “I mean, without the deal, Wanda can go where she pleases, right?”

“But she’ll be alone,” Monica counters. “We know what her loved ones mean to her. That’s what all this has been about—Wanda doing whatever it takes in order to go through life less alone.”

“What can you give her?”

“Vision,” Jimmy says abruptly. “The other one, the one who left. You think he’ll be back.”

“I think he’ll want answers,” Monica agrees. “Whatever Hayward did to him, he did at S.W.O.R.D. and I’m betting that Wanda will see that’s her best chance to reunite with Vision.”

“Vision will come back,” Darcy says, putting it together, “and Wanda will be there waiting.”

“And in the meantime, we use her expertise as we continue our work in a… more transparent vein. Give her access, keep her busy.”

“Keep her happy,” Jimmy cuts in. Monica nods her acknowledgement.

“Yes. Show her what it’s like to help people again. What better way to remind her there’s more to the world than her artificial paradise than to have her consult on the work we’re doing in space?”

“If you need somebody to sell Wanda on the space angle, I’m your girl,” Darcy volunteers.

“I’ve already had some ideas about that,” Monica promises with a smile.

Her eyes focus beyond Darcy and Jimmy and they turn to see what she’s looking at. Black hood drawn up over her head, Wanda’s walking back into the downtown. Alone. Darcy hopes that the fact that she’s black-hatted doesn’t mean she’s already decided against working to redeem herself to rejoin the good guys.

“You better stay in touch too,” Monica tells Jimmy, shifting as she prepares to intercept Wanda.

“If you reach out to Darcy, I’m sure I won’t be far,” he says. Darcy’s heart performs quick, happy thumps.

With that, Monica walks purposely towards Wanda. Darcy watches her cautious body language and Wanda’s tension in response to being accosted, but there isn’t any visible escalation. When FBI vehicles and the team Darcy assumes belongs to Major Goodner roll up the street, Wanda doesn’t flee. Darcy looks to Jimmy.

“You better go take charge,” she suggests.

He gives her a bashful smile.

“I will in a minute. The evacuation should run like clockwork after all the prep we did. With the Hex removed, everyone’s free.”

“They’re free, I’m free…”

“Are you free Saturday?” The smile’s a little slyer now.

“After all this, I don’t even know what day of the week it is,” Darcy admits, “but yes.”

He laughs.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, twisting to face him as his hand moves from her shoulder to her waist. “Quiet night in watching TV?”

“You know, I think I need a break from TV for a while. How about a movie?”

Darcy grins.

“You buy the tickets, I’ll buy the snacks?”

“Deal,” Jimmy says, and smiles against her mouth when he ducks his head to kiss her.

#my writing #Only in a Sitcom #wandavision #wandavision spoilers #Darcy Lewis #Jimmy Woo #Monica Rambeau #Darcy Lewis x Jimmy Woo #Darcy x Jimmy #Vision

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razorblade180 · 4 years

Text

Rosebud Prologue:The first move.

In times of despair and sorrow there are fundamentally two options. Wallow in it, or move forward despite through the pain. A wise person would recommend escaping one’s own personal suffering. A wiser man would ask the question nobody else does. When you move forward, what happens to things left behind? They don’t fade away, not always. Sometimes...they try to keep up.

It was just another day. Ruby was doing dishes while her fourteen year old daughter, Carmine, held her baby brother in her arms. The little monster was enjoying his bottle while his happy sister hummed Gold to him. Ruby couldn’t help but feel all warm inside. Carmine had been doing everything and more to help out. This past year could’ve been way harder without her, but now things had fallen into a decent routine. More importantly, Ruby could say goodbye to sweatpants again and hello to corsets! Her body was back in action like it was before pregnancy. Loving her children had no limits but it felt heavenly to not feel like a balloon again. Jaune never complained though. Most likely because it meant it was his turn to whip her into shape. The sneaky husband loved helping with her stretches.

Ruby put away the last dish and dried her hands. “Wanna switch off?” She asked, clearly seeing Carmine enjoy her current duty. The girl shook her head no. “I’m fine feeding Garnet. Just another role as big sis!” Her smile practically reached her eyes. Ruby noticed Carmine had her red contacts in. “Going somewhere soon?

“Yep. When dad gets back with groceries I’m gonna head out to do a bit of patrolling. Thought I’d stop by Sun’s place and see if Aero wanted to join. He gets snippy if I don’t at least try and convince him to join.” Ruby laughed, that was pretty on brand for the boy. “Just don’t go around town starting trouble. I’m tired of the cops telling me you’re playing vigilante.” Carmine couldn’t help scoff at such exaggerated claims. “How’s it my fault I happened to encounter a gang leader in his hidden base of operations? It was poorly hidden. Besides, the cops haven’t called in weeks.”

Ruby’s scroll immediately starts ringing with the Vacou police department ID on it. She turns to Carmine and sighs. “Listen, I was wild like this too, but not this wild.” Carmine raised an eyebrow. “But...I haven’t done anything. In a while, or that they can prove…” she hoped. Ruby only shook her head tiredly and answered. “What or who did Carmine break?” The officer laughed lightly before it faded off. “No no, this isn’t about Carmine. One of the stations a couple of miles out of the kingdom to the neighboring towns called our department. If I’m correct, you were very close with Maria Calavera, yes?” Ruby moved away from her kids and spoke lower. Maria had passed away several years ago. It was the first time Carmine looked so hurt. “Yes, is everything okay? Did something happen to her house,”

“Her home is fine, but not her tombstone. Apparently some punk kid decided to defile it. The cops are wondering if you can drop by and scare the punk into proper shape. You know how people get when they meet you. Also you take care and technically on it, so pressing charges have to come from you.” Ruby was still processing someone disrespecting a grave. To what gain? Maria had no more enemies. Not to mention that her grave wasn’t in a cemetery. It was moved to a hill near the outskirts. “Yeah I’ll show up. I can’t promise I won’t scare the kid to death though. I can’t believe a person did such a thing. This world I’ll tell ya; give me a few minutes to head out. Have them with me so they can admire their work before I make them clean it all up.” Ruby hung up and let out a sigh. There was always something.

“Everything okay?” Carmine asked. She walked towards her mother and held Garnet's adorably chubby face in front of Ruby’s face. It was impossible not to smile at it. “Hehe, I’m fine. Looks like a certain baby is fine too. I might have to put this boy on a diet!” She poked his tummy and patted Carmine’s head. “I gotta go to your abuela’s gravesite. Somebody was messing with it and I gotta give them a stern talking to.” Carmine looked as stunned as Ruby did, then her face scowled. Ruby had seen that before. “Nah ah, you can not come and beat them up.”

Carmine poked her lips out. “You’re no fun. I guess I’ll keep the house safe with Garnet then.” As if she had a choice. Who else was gonna do it!? She stopped pouting when Ruby kissed her forehead. Carmine wanted to rub it off but her hands were full. “Mom!” Ruby stuck her tongue out childishly as she walked away. “Lock the door! You dad will be home soon.” The front door was closed and the house became a little more quiet. “Well it’s just you and I now.” Garnet blinked his eye at her curiously before spitting up a little on himself. Carmine closes her eyes to collect herself. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

xxxx

The trip to Esperanza from the outskirts of Vacou was only a couple miles; not a real problem for someone who walked all the way to Haven. Ruby reached Maria’s small and festive hometown in about half an hour. It was still rather early for everyone to be out and about but noise and smells of food sizzling filled the air all the same. Ruby always liked this place. She spotted the tree that stood proudly on the hill on the other side of the town. Even from here she could see some limbs had been broken off and some kind of fabric flowing off of it. “Why would-ugh, teenagers.” Ruby groaned. Under the tree she could see a cop and another individual draped in a black hood. Now she was even more confused. An over eager fan or hater maybe? Many people around here loved Maria and her legendary status. Ruby wasted no time racing up to the vandalism, catching the raven haired officer off guard. Her emerald eyes bugged out at the sudden appearance.

“Gah! Wow, you’re faster up close. You should come with a bell.” Ruby chuckled at the statement. “I bet the grimm would love that idea.” A closer look at the tree revealed more damaged limbs and roughed up ground. Ruby turned to the cloaked figure who avoided her gaze. They were taller than Ruby expected but that’s all she could decipher. “Care to explain why you felt so compelled to ruin a memorial? Disrespecting the dead is pretty low.” She said firmly, crossing her arms for more affect.

The person hid further in their hood. Ruby waited for any possible response but there was only silence. They looked at the ground and dug their right foot into the dirt. The cop touched Ruby soldier. “He’s been pretty silent since I caught him red handed. There’s a mark on the back of the tree they spray painted. I can’t make sense of it but I was hoping you might be able to. For all I know, no gangs use that tag.” Ruby pointed star the culprit. “Don’t you dare try to run. We’re not finished young man.” He nodded. Ruby backed away slowly. There were always a few that tried running. It was as if they forgot what her semblance was.

A few steps from her and the cop told her that the dude was just gonna stay there. She finally turned around to examine the tree. “You said the back right? Gangs spray paint all the time so I might not know what….” her voice drifted into silence as she reached the other side of the trees. She had to take a few steps back to make sure she was seeing things okay. “This-This is…” words still eluded her as Ruby stared at black spray paint that perfectly made the image of a queen chess piece. Ruby could feel her face lose its color. “Cinder…” it was as if her name was a trigger for disaster. The tree suddenly was cut into by a blade that pierced the other side. Ruby was barely able to dodge the surprise attack, getting a clear view of the weapon. It was a scythe. Their culprit was holding a standard scythe that counted swinging at her. A small smirk was visible on the young man’s face as he came at her in full force.

The scythe constantly spun in his hand as he tried to swipe Ruby.The woman was done being surprised however. Ruby easily ducked and whipped out Cresent Rose. “Wanna play huh? Fine.” She hissed. Fighting first and asking questions later was something Ruby could get behind. She gripped the pole of her weapon tight and swung horizontally. The force alone caused enough pressure to push her opponent back while the blade barely scratched his torso. He had good reflexes. Ruby blitzed behind him and slashed him back before disappearing and reappearing in front of him. Ruby spun the bottom of her scythe and clipped his chin, then took a shot to thrust it forward. The sharp metal end would’ve connected to his face if an unexpected bullet didn’t hit Ruby in her arm. She turns her head to see the cop’s gun trained on her with deadly accuracy.

“What the hell are you-huh?” The emerald eyes of the cop turned pink and brown along with her hair. A familiar mischievous laughter comes from the old adversary as she twirls the gun and watches Ruby avoid the opponent in front of her. “Hey Rubes! You’re looking good; filled out quite a bit. I know your husband must like that.” She fired a few more bullets at Ruby’s feet to keep her moving as the red reaper was easily out classing the man in black, but he was nothing but persistent. He forced Ruby to jump by sweeping her feet and shoulder bashed her to the ground. Expert or not, Ruby was only so big. She quickly recovered by tumbling backwards and dashed towards Neo. For the first time in a long time, an ache more deadly than any blade pierced Ruby’s heart. Ruby couldn’t help but be bombarded with the memories of seventeen years ago.

“WHERE IS SHE!?” Ruby screamed at the smirking woman. That smirk pissed her off to no end. Not again, they’re not taking anything again. She swung Crescent Rose downward at Neo’s face, but quickly spun it sideways to shoot herself towards the right. The cloaked figure sprinted in front of her and blocked a horizontal slash that looked like it would’ve hit air, but wouldn’t. The Neo behind her shattered and the real one poked her head out from behind the man, happily surprised. “Damn, nothing gets past you anymore huh? Saw right through me.” Neo tried getting off another shot. “Still fast?” One bullet fired at close range only hit a rose petal. Instincts told Neo to push her partner out the way and duck. It was the right call. The edge of a scythe blade had been dropped and yanked backwards where Neo’s neck was. “I’m faster…”

Neo’s partner swung the end of the shaft to Neo to grab a hold of then Yanked her to safety behind him. “Phew, thanks darling. Told you she was the real deal.” Neo finally stopped smiling and glared at Ruby. “That’s What makes this next part so satisfying.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a detonator. Ruby’s body tensed up and her assault was halted. Neo’s thumb rubbed the top of the bottom rhythmically. “Guess where the bomb is?”

Ruby didn’t even flinch. “Leave the townspeople out of this or I swear-”

“Times up!” Neo hit the button and Ruby gasped. She went to dash at Neo but was hit in the side with a scythe from behind. The image in front of her shattered as she stumbled into it. An anger growl left her throat as Neo laughed. “Hahaha, kidding! This trigger does nothing.” She tossed it to the ground. “Still gullible after all these years. How are you not dead? Oh wait, others die for you.”

“Little…” Ruby grit her teeth and fired round after round at Neo. The cloaked man spun his scythe to deflect each one. He jumped forward with a downward slash but missed. Ruby spun in a tight vortex of petals that kept his feet fry the ground. She hooked his scythe with hers and yanked it out of his hands then hurled it Neo; not a shred of concern was seen as Neo leaned to the side and caught it. She turned to wink but saw Ruby behind her partner with the man on one knee and gripping the pole off Crescent Rose in an attempt to remove it from his neck before Ruby could choke him out. Neo pointed her pistol again but didn’t pull the trigger. With most of Ruby’s body behind his, it wouldn’t be a good idea to test her aim.

“Heroes take hostages now? That’s so cold”

“You would know.” Ruby pulled harder. “Must mean a lot to you if you’re not shooting. Where’s Cinder?”

“What? Am I not enough for you? Is my vengeance second rate? I thought you’d like me more after all we’ve been through.” Neo pouted.

“LAST CHANCE! OR-” Neo dropped the gun and yawned. “Or what? You’ll strangle him? That would be a terrible way to end a reunion, right Dustin?”

Just like that, Ruby felt her body go numb. “D-Dustin?” She muttered. Her grip accidentally loosened and the man ducked under the metal bar against his neck and rolled away in less than a second. The ground beneath Ruby trembled. Vines armed with thrones shot from the dirt and wrapped around her legs, waist, arms, and neck like barbed wire that pulled her down to her knees. The pain drained and felt a numbing, but Ruby could only stare at the black roses that bloomed on them slowly as the man walked towards Neo and grabbed his scythe. He looked back at Ruby who stared in disbelief, tears flooding her eyes. “D-Dustin…?” She repeated, her voice cracking. Ruby watched the man pull the hood off. Suddenly the world didn’t seem real. Her body felt ice cold with only the warmth of her tears on her face that came from silver eyes that became dim and cloudy; a perfect reflection of the ones in front her. Including the red and black hair. The difference being it was on a face that reflected not just her, but the man she married. It was only once, but Ruby never forgot that face. The face of the boy that made her a mother. The face she mourned for more times then she dared remember.

He finally spoke, “Hey mom. Glad you can make it.” The weight of cold and dense bone gripped Ruby’s shoulder. There wasn’t a nerve in her body that didn’t feel like fire and a heartbeat that didn’t sound like a boombox in her eardrums. If she was trembling before then she was now. Ruby didn’t even bother looking up. The shadow on the ground was enough. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s been quite some time since I met your mother in person. Isn’t that right?” The hand grabbed Ruby’s chin and turned it up to the right. Now Ruby had no choice but to look.

Cinder stood there looking down. Her previous outfit was ditched for dark purple leather pants and a black shirt that faintly glowed a deep fiery red like her heels. Not only was her arm different, looking fully formed and in case the bone armor grimm is known for, her eyes weren’t the same. One remained the same as before. The one that was never harmed. It was the injured one that made Ruby’s mouth run dry. The eye, it was silver as well. “Why don’t we catch up a bit? Normally I’m on a time crunch but since everyone is held up….” She turned Ruby’s head to the left and let her see what she had been missing out on. The wind around Vacou had picked up and turned a dust storm. In it, Ruby saw thousands of red eyes and the sign of fire. Alarm sirens blared seconds later.

“My gods…” Ruby gasped.

“Got to love subterranean grimm. Just have them move slow enough and a little magic to tip the weather in your advantage, then boom. Ambushed without a warning.” Cinder finally let her go sauntered over to Neo and Dustin. “Unfortunately it’s more smoke and mirrors than an actual bang. Tragedies on the scale of Beacon’s are hard to replicate. All you kids have grown up now and everywhere. It’s a pain in the ass. This event was just made to keep us uninterrupted.” Ruby tried struggling through the vines but could barely move. Every shift made her wince as they tightened. Not only that, but she actually felt weaker. They were doing more than restraining her. Cinder found amusement in the struggle. “Your son’s semblance is pretty annoying, isn’t it? Best not to move. Dustin, don’t over do it. I still want my fun.”

The pain eased and her strength was less inhibited. Ruby still couldn’t believe what was happening. She stared at her child who stared back, despondent. “Dustin, it’s me. I’m-”

He silenced her by tightening the single vine on her neck quickly. “I know exactly who you are.” Anger and vigor flooded his eyes in a glare that could only be seen as murderous. “And I have nothing to say to you.” Cinder rubbed his back. “Don’t mind him. You know how teens are, all rebellious and angry.” This situation was going so well she couldn’t help but laugh. “That being said, he’s grown into such a fine young man under my-”

“Ahem!” Neo said loudly. Cinder rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Under our guidance. He’s been quite helpful. Killing silver eyed people and learning their abilities has been far easier when he started helping out. It’s a shame, getting old that is. I used to go collecting by myself. Now he brings back the prizes for me sometimes.” Cinder rubbed the side of her face and saw Ruby shiver in shock. Their attention to each other was disrupted by a flashing light from Ruby’s pocket. The girl tried struggling again as Cinder reached for it and pulled out a scroll. Today got even surprisingly better all thanks to a home screen. “Oh well you look at that? Carmine was a person we expected to hear at least once, but I had no idea about the third one. What a handsome boy.”

Dustin’s body tensed tightly. “What…?” He muttered. Cinder tossed him the phone and sure enough, there the baby was with the rest of the family. Brand new silver eyes and all. The photo was blurred as Carmine’s name came up as the scroll rang. There was no hesitation in answering.

“Mom! Vacou’s being attacked and dad still isn’t back. Garnet is fine and no grimm are heading this way yet but-”

“CARMINE! TAKE YOUR BROTHER AND RUN!” Ruby screamed as loud as possible. Dustin hung up and looked at Cinder and she nodded. “Time for a family reunion.” She snapped her fingers and a nevermore descended from the sky for Dustin to jump on and head towards his brother and sister. Even with him gone, his vines still had a grasp on Ruby. It was weaker but the numbing pain still ran through her as she finally forced her way out of the ones around her arms and neck; air and sensation tried to fill her being again as she fell on her hands and knees. “My son, what did you do to him?” She raises her head with tears running down her face. Moving now would be stupid. Ruby had no choice but to recover.

“Me? You make it sound like I brainwashed him or abused him. No, no such thing.Granted it wasn’t my idea to keep him. The boy would’ve been dumped in a grimm pool or something if I had my way, then Neo had to step in and proposed a better idea.”

“Disguising as your nurse was far too much work to just have it end with a dead newborn. Besides, even I have my limits unlike some people” she glares the hell out of Cinder. “I can play the long game. A missing son returning to his family to erase it? That’s way more interesting don’t you think?”

Cinder circled around Ruby, watching the girl carefully as she indulged herself with explaining how a day like this could happen.“You asked me what I did to him. I did the only thing that made sense. I told the truth.” Ruby’s face softened. Her eyes scanned the ground as she tried to understand. The truth? Cinder groaned, “Boring I know, but a lie this big would be impossible. Ruby Rose, a name known by every last goddamn soul on Remnant. Between that and Dustin’s features, he’d figure out that he wasn’t ours sooner or later, so I told him exactly who he was. A child stolen by a hero's worst enemy. You should’ve seen the way he wept for you. I told him all I could. How incredible your reputation was to the masses and how you would be remembered throughout history for all time along with your friends. Surely a hero that elite would rescue their son, right?” She smirked, Cinder could see Ruby get pale from the implications.

“He...was waiting for me.” Ruby’s voice crackled and shook. A stark contrast from the laughter Cinder had. “Hahaha, oh he did more than wait! Time after time, your son tried escaping. Each attempt meant him killing grimm that I didn’t even have to influence, and each time it was up to either me or Neo to save his life. His will was quite astonishing, his mind sharp. He tried for years until one day...he actually escaped.”

“What?” Ruby wasn’t expecting Cinder to say that. “He escaped?” Cinder pulled out a scroll and nodded, “He was young too. Barely twelve if I remember. At this point I was at my wits end. I thought my choices were to cut my losses or kill him out of spite; Never did I expect him to come back with a look in his eyes I’ve never seen. The anger for his situation had changed. All because of one simple little thing.” The scroll was flipped around for Ruby to see. “Remember this day?”

Of all the things that Ruby expected, a picture of her from an old news photo wasn’t one of them. It was her holding Carmen up proudly after the girl’s first tournament. Her daughter had entered a jr competition at eight and took first place. Cinder put the scroll away. “Apparently he made it all the way to that event. Imagine the look on his face, seeing you smiling so purely with the sister he had no clue about? All that faith he put into you...and it meant nothing. Congratulations, how’s it feel to move forward? It brought him closer to me. My sweet Dustin.” Cinder and Neo fawned dramatically. Their laughter grew as Ruby’s anger rose. Her blood started to feel like it’s boiling and vision started to blur. Her eyes started glowing before flickering in and out constantly as she tried her damnedest to eradicate Cinder to no avail. A pounding in her head started forming that made her grip it. Cinder bent down and tugged hard on Ruby’s hair to stare right into her face with complete disdain. “That’s right Ruby, hate me. Hate me as much as I hate you. This isn’t about justice or preservation. Your anger vs ours. Let’s see who edges out.” Cinder backs away and blasts a wave of ice that only freezes then shatters only the vines. Crescent Rose is stabbed into the ground next to Ruby. This day was unavoidable. These feelings had been building a festering for years. Not just because of Dustin. Beacon, Pyrrha, the friends she’s hurt; the despair Cinder brought into Ruby’s life was too much and too often. Ruby had enough. She pulled herself up off the ground with her scythe. Eyes devoid of light beamed into the two pairs of glimmering evil as the clouds darkened the sky. Ruby could only think of one thing.The only thing that Cinder had thought about for ages.

“I’m gonna kill you.”

xxxx

The sounds of thunder and gun fire raged through and electrified the air as Dustin rode the nevermore. He looked back to see a concentration of wind and varying elements coming from where he left. “Looks like they’ve gotten serious. Time for me to get my party started.” He would be over Ruby’s house in a matter of minutes. Karma was finally gonna come knocking on her door. “A shame she won’t see this. Alright, time to see what my little sister I made-” a sudden pressure and force came upwards that hit like a canon. Next thing Dustin knew, the nevermore no longer had a head and was swan dive to the ground. He quickly jumped from the bird and rolled onto the sand to break his fall. Carmine watched the whole thing while cleaning grimm blood of her blade several feet away.

“I’ve never heard mom sound so panicked before. Grimm herds aren’t anything we haven’t handled before so I knew there was more to the situation; but what exactly is the more?” Carmine couldn’t make out his face from distance but the scythe on the sand and cloak were more than enough to be off putting. She stepped closer cautiously. The color of his hair and eyes immediately made her stop and jump back, placing her sword in front of her body as he stood. “Stop! Who are you?” He patted himself off and looked at his sister. Admittedly, he was caught off guard. This was already more interesting than he anticipated.

“What on Remnant possessed you to take out a grimm mid-flight? I doubt you noticed me.”

“A lone grimm going after a house outside of the kingdom when its friends are having a blast inside is pretty freaking suspicious. Now answer my question!” Her body tensed. Carmine didn’t know why but she felt as if his gaze alone might swallow her up like a pit of tar. There was no mistaking that color. His eyes looked fogged and hazy but they were definitely silver. Then there was his face. Carmine never imagined Garnet would look like grown up but this man’s face would’ve been pretty close.

“Huh, figures they never mentioned me. It was probably too shameful and humiliating to reveal such a major example of arrogance.” His words felt like venom and on the verge of being unhinged, yet maintaining a low tone of composure as he grabbed his weapon. “I think you already have a good guess on who I am, or do you need a closer look?”

Carmine saw the man vanish in the blink of an eye. She quickly rose her sword in front of her in a block that covered her entire body. A clash of metal crashed right into it and rattled her arms from the force. Now they were face to face with a similar look of intensity. “I….I don’t understand what’s going on!” Saying that this was unnerving was an understatement. Carmine has a job to do though. The longer he was with her, the further her clone was with Garnet. The only regret was splitting her sure evenly. Fighting an unknown opponent could go wrong.

“It’s simple really. You’re not the first born child of Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose. That kid got snatched by a witch.”

Carmine’s world felt like it stopped. “Cinder Fall.”

“Bingo.” A vine shot from the ground and wrapped around Carmine before flinging her. Dustin followed up with a leaping downward strike but Carmine corrected herself mid-air yo block it. “Heh, look at you…” his hand slid to the bottom of his scythe and started swiping side to side against Carmine’s defenses. Each contact made sparks fly and her arms ache from the weight of the attack. She couldn’t take it anymore and ducked under the next attack to get in close. Both opponents were no stranger to the limitations of a scythe or had to overcome them. Carmine knew he was likely to pull the entire thing back by bringing his hand to the top of the shaft, so she jumped straight up and grabbed her curved blade, Stamen, from both ends and swung it down to have it drop like a guillotine. The impact left a small crater where Dustin stood before he jumped out of the way. She had no expectations of hitting him but she needed breathing room. It was her turn on offense.

Carmine shot off three aura slashes before pursuing him. She watched closely as his scythe spun to block the attack and leaped over him to get a hit in from behind. More vines shot up and stabbed her hand before connecting. A low hiss came from her. This was obviously his semblance but knowing it’s function was hard to tell. More shot up around her in a circle. A simple spin cut them down to size easily and she unleashed a flurry of rapid attacks that clanged and bashed against his scythe when she wasn’t missing him entirely.

“Geez, maybe I overestimated. All the talk about my little sister and this is it?”

“Big talk from someone fighting a kid, and we’re not family!” Carmine swung at his left torso but was stopped dead in her tracks when he grabbed the blade with his hand. A jab to the throat made Carmine choke on her own breath as Dustin twisted her arm behind her then put her in a choke hold. Her feet barely scraped the sand as she desperately tried to breathe. Carmine could feel his breath on her ear as he whispered angrily through his teeth.

“Don’t act stupid and face the facts. It’s the least a sorry excuse for a replacement; don’t even have silver eyes like our brother.” He squeezed her wrist so tight she could feel it start to give. Stamen was dropped as she tried not to scream. “As for the age difference, three years ago I was already filling graves. What do you do? Rule over the talentless? Tournaments are useless. Just like you.”

Carmine squirmed and bit her lip till she bled. Screw the pain and his words. Weak was the last thing she was, and she was gonna prove it. “LET. ME. GOOOO!” Carmine felt a pop in her wrist as she jerked forward, hard. Her feet stomped the ground and two rose clones appeared on each side, the first grabbed her sword and drove it against Dustin’s ribs. The blow broke his hold on the original by pushing him back. The second clone grabbed his legs so he would fall backwards. It worked. Dustin’s head hit the ground and he stared up to the sky as the first clone did the guillotine drop the original did earlier. “Take this!!!!” It screamed.

Dustin hit his fist against the ground. Vines shot pierced right through the clone then swooped low to stab the other. With the last of its strength, the first clone tossed the sword to the original as she watched her clones go limp; their bodies faded as black roses bloomed the vines. Maybe it was their manner of defeat, but Carmine started to sweat. She hadn’t even realized she picked up her blade and was backing away from the man surrounded by a garden of death. A gut feeling told her that being trapped in those spelled the end.

Her semblance was info Dustin knew nothing about. To see it was genuinely surprising, but nothing he had to fear. Not with Carmine looking like a deer in headlights. “Do you know what black roses symbolize?” Carmine didn’t answer. Instead she pulled out the second part of her weapon, Pistil, and combined it with Stamen. The blade curved downward while the collapsible tactical baton connected to the hilt to make her scythe. Dustin felt a surge of excitement run through him. Another surprise from his sister. “HAHAHAHA! Oh please don’t tell me you’re about to challenge me with that?” He laughed hysterically, his calm demeanor completely shifting to nothing short of rage. He stabbed his scythe in the ground. “Rotten Rose will ruin you.”

“Rosebud hasn’t failed me yet.” Carmine got low and held on with both hands. Her right wrist aches but adrenaline and necessity demanded its use. Carmine needed all the reach she could muster. Dustin was done talking and put up his hood. Alarms, screams, explosions, even the wind blowing felt muted to Carmine. The only thing that mattered was the reaper in front of her. She was going to get through this and reject those black roses. Today wasn’t death day. Not for her. The vines shot straight at her. Carmine shredded through them like a blender by twirling Rosebud. Two more vines from each side forced her to jump straight up. She pulled a trigger on the shaft of the used to be tactical baton. A slug round recoil sent her back to the ground where a massive sweeping attack severed the vines. It wasn’t enough.

Her brief rest was interrupted by more sprouting from the ground around her. Another gunshot sent her out of the center before they all stabbed her from every side. More and more dove in and out of the ground like serpents chasing prey. Dustin stood motionless as his sister fired herself in any direction she could to avoid a strike. Occasionally she was forced to stand her ground to cut several before dodging again. She tried to hide it, but Dustin could see the fear in her eyes. He was gonna force it out of her. A wall of thorny vines walled off Carmine from back stepping again. Dozens of vines came from everywhere in the front. The fear he wanted didn’t come. Carmine grit her teeth and started slashing through them head on.

Chunks of plants flew everywhere as Carmine hacked angrily through them. “Haaaaaa!” The girl could only scream through the pain as thorns scraped her skin like a million stabs. “Just...a little...more!!!!” She refused to stop until a swing cut through to the other side. The sight of Dustin’s shocked face spurred her on. Another gunshot was sending her straight at him with Rosebud’s blade eagerly awaiting to connect with his throat. “You’re done!!!!” All her force went into swinging the blade; too much strength in fact. Dustin simply leaned back Carmine completely whiffed. Her momentum kept her body rotating. In the moment her body had turned away from him, her eyes could only see the blood stained thorns she borrowed through. Carmine’s anger subsided and was reminded of the most basic rule of fighting. Keep track of your aura. Her mistake for forgetting was an instant and excruciating pain that crossed her from each shoulder down to the opposite hip. It all had happened so fast yet time felt slow as the ground seemed to rise to meet her.

Carmine laid face down on the ground. Her back started to feel wet. Like if someone was pouring something warm on it, something thick. Tears filled her eyes seconds later when the shock of it all was met by the stinging of sand and reality.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH~”

Carmine couldn’t stop screaming in agony. Her arms did her best to lift her but her right wrist gave out. Everything was giving out. There wasn’t a muscle that wasn’t shaking in her body. There wasn’t a thought of anything anymore with the sound of creeping plants and footsteps approaching while a shadow loomed over her. The silhouette of her blood dripping off the scythe that was ready to draw more. The shaft of it flipped her battered body over for her to stare into the eyes that should’ve been preserving life; but all she saw was them asking for hers. Was this despair? Carmine never felt anything like it before. For the first time in her life she felt powerless, weak. Her tears ran down her bloody and soiled face. “Pl-Please…” she said, quivering. “ I don’t wanna die…” she shut her eyes and lost all sense of self. “I DON’T WANNA DIE!!!”

“CARMINE!!!” Multiple people cried out from a distance. Dustin turned his dead and was immediately blasted by a laser gun in the face that knocked him away. The current of electricity stunned him momentarily as he saw three more people. Two of them he had heard and learned about. The leader of team SSSN and his partner. The third was an unknown boy with bird wings that picked up Carmine while the other two stood in front of them. “Sun and Neptune. What are the odds the partners of a disbanded team are hanging out today of all days? One of you doesn’t even live on this continent.” He glared at Neptune.

The duo immediately recognized the man in front of them and gasped. No way they wouldn’t. Neptune gasped, “Is that…?”

“No way…” Sun said. He looked back at an injured Carmine then to Dustin. No doubt about it. He clapped his hands together and summoned clones. Now wasn’t the time to let his guard down. “I don’t know how you’re here but I’m not letting you go. Aero, get Carmine far away from here.”

“Not on my watch!” Dustin dashed forward immediately. Neither the clones or pro huntsman were quick enough to stop him blitzing the both of them. He reached to grab the boy holding his sister, then poof, nothing. It was like magic. Dustin blinked and they were gone. They went from right in front of him to already being in the sky, several minutes away. Whatever happened wasn’t speed. He didn’t know what that was, but it was definitely the boy’s doing. He looked back at Sun and Neptune who were charging at him in full force. Dustin clicked his teeth and sighed. Play time was over. “Two pro huntsmen like yourselves is way more than I bargained for. Especially after my other reunion, sorry.” A faint light in the distance caught his eye while planning his exit. Whatever it was had speed and was heading towards the storm over Cinder’s battle. “If I was a betting man…” Dustin used his vines to left himself into the air and grab a passing nevermore to ride, leaving Sun and Neptune in the dust.

“Damnit!” Sun yelled.

“Never mind him, let’s get back to town and help.” Neptune said, seeing the light. “Jaune’s gonna be pissed.”

xxxx

Aero was flying as fast as he could to the medical station set up. Finding Jaune or his friend would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. What he wouldn’t give to have a healing semblance right now. The blood that came from Carmine and dripped down his arms as she wept in pain was burning a memory into him he didn’t want to ever see again.

“Hang in there Carmine! You’re gonna be just fine. Your clone found my mom so don’t worry about Garnet. He’s perfectly fine.” He told her to ease whatever pain and stress he could. The way she clung close to him wasn’t inspiring any change. Carmine kept weeping and shaking.

“Hurts…” she winced. “It hurts so much.” Aero felt a lump in his throat. The boy kept flying with all his might. The tears of the strongest person he knew weighed heavily on his heart the entire flight.”

xxxx

That fight against Reaper and Maiden wasn’t fairing too much better. Neo could attest to that as she laid on the ground, aura flickering and writhing in pain. The normally dry, dusty air was soaked with pouring rain thanks to Cinder. Neo picked herself up painfully slow and could barely keep track of the hundreds of petals and embers that danced in the air over panicking villagers. Who would’ve thought Little Red would’ve grown into such a warrior? To Neo, both Cinder and Ruby might as well be freaks. She watched Crescent Rose carv through ice thicker than a goliath’s flesh and slam into Cinder. The woman went right through the already destroyed memorial tree before recovering with a tiny cyclone of lightning and fire that enveloped Ruby. That too was immediately reduced to nothing. Fortunately, Ruby looked tired. Her own aura and breath looked to be draining.

“Looks like this might be it.” Neo aimed her pistol. “Sorry Cinder, I get the kill-” the blur of bright light raced into view and then before Neo. Her eyes were witnesses to the shining white aura of a furious knight with a sword poised to strike her neck. Any time to move was erased to her as the blade was swung. The force would’ve been enough to take her head. The only thing stopping that was Dustin’s scythe between them that went unnoticed until now. Dustin’s arms went numb but his face remained stern as he stared at his father inches away who was lost for words.

“D-Dustin?” He uttered in disbelief. The hesitation left Jaune open for Dustin’s vines to grab him and throw him towards Ruby. The battling women had finally realized company had arrived

Dustin helped lift Neo to her feet. “You alright?” A pinch on the cheek and a nod told him that was a yes. Cinder landed near them while still facing Ruby and now Jaune.

“Why are you back?” She growled.

“Things got complicated, more huntsman. Time to go. We didn’t come here from a swan song.”

“Like hell! I’m just getting started.” Cinder made a bow and arrow out of lightning and took aim. “Ruby dies today.”

Not if Ruby had anything to say about it. She was ready for another exchange of blows but her anger was quelled when the sight of fresh blood was washing off of Dustin’s scythe. “Dustin, what did you do?Where’s Carmine and Garnet!?” Jaune was still shaken by who he was seeing. How was this possible? The sight of Cinder and Neo enraged him but the words Ruby said were brought to the forefront of his mind. “Carmine? Sun and Neptune should’ve-”

“I never saw Garnet.” Dustin interrupted. “As for Carmine...I’m sure she’s in shock by now. Fortunately for her my full swing wasn’t possible with how close she was. All blood, no lasting damage. Well...that’s not true. Trauma is tricky like that.” He smirked at his parent’s mortified faces. Dustin touched Cinder’s back. “Let’s go! We’ll kill them later. That wasn’t the point of this anyways.”

Ruby and Jaune tried their best to ready themselves as their son stepped forward and pointed at them. “Mark today. The peace you’ve cultivated in my absence will fall as easily as your daughter did, by my- our hands.”he declared. Ruby wasn’t even sure who she was looking at. The face she remembered was not covered in a hate and tragedy that mirrored the two by his side. Her heart couldn’t take it, it wouldn’t. Ruby was about to try and grab him when a shriek filled the air. The villagers down below were being trapped and attacked by vines. Ruby looked at Dustin. “Stop this!”

“You can either stop it yourself, or chase us. Choose fast. It’s not healthy to be wrapped too long.” The nevemore more extended its wing for them to walk on. He watched Ruby take another step before tightening his grip on screaming children. Ruby and Jaune looked in conflicting frustration before Jaune went to help them. “Ruby! I can’t do it all alone!”

Once again Ruby was asked to make the choice to chase her child or do her job. Grief filled her as she looked at him then stared at Cinder in seething hate. “Your head will roll if it’s the last thing I do.” Ruby threatened, joining Jaune to save the people. The nevermore took off and Cinder angrily aimed her bow before Neo blocked her sight with her umbrella.

“Don’t. Let’s not give them more reasons to hunt us now. It’s like Dustin said. This was just our first move. Break their world, then their lives. We waited this long. Just look at our handy work.”

Cinder watched the chaos of a small town and kingdom struggle with her grimm. To say it didn’t make her smile would be a lie. Yeah, she needed more of this. “It’s no Beacon, but it’s a damn good place to start.” Cinder looked at Dustin with more pride than she knew how to deal with. “Oh how I have high hopes for you. Do keep making your mothers proud. Dustin bowed respectively and watched the ruin along with her.

Finally a new game had started and the first move was theirs. Dustin couldn’t wait for his next one. “Here’s to a speedy recovery Carmine… Your big brother will be sure to visit.”

#rwby #rwby au #rwby rosebud #jaune arc #ruby rose #rwby lancaster #carmine arc rose #sun wukong #neptune vasilias #dustin arc rose #cinder fall #neo politan #aero amitola

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anangelicday-mrwolf · 3 years

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Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 33 – Nice to See You at Last, You Rat

“Lady Lunark...?”

The voice could not be softer, but the werewolf warrior jerked as if she were touched by fire.

In turn, she caused an almost identical motion in the young warrior who addressed her.

“Uh... Your order, please...”

She turned her head, doing a terrible job of hiding that she is dreadfully keen on her leader’s mood.

Lunark directed her eyes towards the two rookie warriors, who were just as conscious of her as they stared in waiting.

They happened to be standing in one of Union’s facilities, officially dubbed as “dispository.”

Based on the Union dictionary, “disposal” comes with a definition different from its counterpart in the civilian world.

The process of disposing something does exist, but irredeemable, permanent disposal is a highly rare case in Union.

Because it is Union belief that even the most useless, outdated file or source could one day shine in the future.

For this reason, every file or source deemed “to be disposed of” follows two steps: (1) its online copies are deleted, and (2) it is duplicated into physical, hard-copy format to be disposed-slashed-stored.

And this is when a dispository comes in handy.

Although she was once an elder of the Union, Lunark could not remember the last time she was at a dispository.

She was back to her main task: discovering and shutting down Union’s facilities, especially those that were in possession of Crombell.

She remembered how she could only suck her thumb as she came across one facility after another already shut down by someone else.

However, for once she landed upon a facility with its doors locked, not sealed for good.

Which is why the three young warriors assigned for today’s mission seemed clueless about what to do.

“First we must get rid of all evidence that could hint our presence. Judging by the location and the order of shutdown for each of the facilities we ran upon, the rat who had been ahead of us all this time will be here. So let’s get ready for our guest.”

The warriors immediately got busy, and so Lunark was given time to get engrossed in her thoughts.

Her reasons were hammering her head that she should not let herself get distracted when she is outside for business, but her head was beyond her control.

She could not help but recall once again the conversation she had prior to this trip.

*****

In spite of the invasion by Union’s weapons against noble heads of clans and failure in initial activation of QuadraNet, werewolves regained peace.

Or rather, they could shake off the confusion, which unfortunately did not apply to everybody.

For instance, a certain werewolf who ended up thwacking her human crush’s lips with hers was still very far from peace.

The problem was that she had to make it so obvious that something was bothering her, and wherever she went she made the occupants tiptoe with nervousness.

In the end, Muzaka summoned her in privacy for a talk.

“Are you really planning to zip your mouth for good?”

“...I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, my lord.”

“Playing pretend, are we? Well, I should’ve known, based on your atmosphere for the past few days.”

Her eyes were sore, and her tongue was tied. However, her head had never been nimbler.

‘What do I do? Did he notice that I’ve feelings for Frankenstein?’

Lunark was aware that Muzaka does not take kindly the relationship between human and wolfkind. She would not be surprised to find out that he was outright opposed to the idea.

And she would rather make herself Maduke’s stepdaughter than to have Muzaka look into what lies in her heart.

Plus, she knew Muzaka would rather give Maduke a peck on his face than to offer his blessing for her and Frankenstein.

“Is it because of Frankenstein?”

And just like that, Lunark started to wonder if she should start calling the dead werewolf daddy.

Muzaka smirked at how Lunark’s face turned stony.

“Honestly, it’s not that hard to guess. There were only a very few changes in our land lately. Union’s invasion. That blondie’s visit. And trouble with the QuadraNet. But since that blondie happened to have gone around the time you changed, anybody would be able to guess he did something to you. So, is it because of him?”

Despite knowing that silence is definitely not the remedy right now, Lunark could not utter a sound.

Muzaka, on the other hand, was quite unfazed by her silence, which made her question whether she should take it as a good sign.

“I’m sorry, but I say no.”

Muzaka yielded what Lunark had been predicting from him all this time, although the fact that she saw this coming did not stop her mind from crumbling to pieces, to the very bottom of her stupefied body.

“I know I don’t get to play a vote in your relationship. And it’s not like I have power to officially ban you from a relationship. But if I dare give an advice, I do not think this is recommended, Lunark. And I’m sure you know why I can’t say yes. Racial difference serves as no bars in love. I truly loved Eileen, and Ashleen was a gift like no other. To me, they were my entire world.”

Lunark could feel her heart throb as she watched how Muzaka spoke of their names without the slightest flinch.

She could not imagine how many rakes in heart and how much the magnitude of pain he would have gone through until his own family’s names turned mellifluous upon his lips.

Which is why on the other hand, she felt guilty as hell. She actually made Muzaka bring out his deceased family.

“However, our story did not meet a happy ending. Yes, there were bastards that intentionally set fire upon our path. But it does not change the fact that our story is a masquerade of blood, tears, and death.”

Muzaka’s voice remained as placid as it was, but Lunark could not even dare make a face that she wanted to comfort him.

“And as far as I know, I am the starting point of our kind’s taboo regarding relationship with humans. It’s been alive ever since my first era of reign. And I do not wish to see you suffer even little by eyes and ears against relationship with humans.”

“My lord...”

This time Lunark spoke; she did not want to keep her mouth relieved of its duty for the rest of their meeting.

Nonetheless, she could not manufacture any sound afterwards.

“And I have a practical reason as well. As you’d know, Frankenstein is in no situation to get involved in a relationship. Let’s be frank here – and I’m not trying to accuse you – you don’t think you can strike up a good relationship with him at this moment, do you?”

Lunark’s chest seized even harder; this time Muzaka sounded much more legitimate.

“And it looks to me that your feelings are already taking effect upon you. Need I remind you, you’re a warrior – the most influential one, next only to Garda. You should know that you have tons of work allocated to you, and I believe you’re smart enough not to make yourself a hindrance in our kind’s pathway due to unrequited love. However, should you make yourself a hindrance because of your feelings, I must take proper measure as your lord.”

Muzaka sounded strict, stern, pulling down Lunark’s head even further towards the ground.

Lunark even felt dizzy because his words were as veritable and unbreakable as they could be.

The only reply she could produce was a confirmation, a gratitude, and a promise to be careful.

Her reply was halfhearted, but he would anticipate her to stay true to her words.

And she knew that. She knew that awfully well.

*****

Now that she returned to her field work, she could see that Muzaka was right.

She happened to be agonizing over her feelings at the very scene where she is supposed to get bustling.

She virtually scolded, slapped, and slammed her head to knock it off. She recognized the problem, and she wanted to fix it.

Alas, an elephant is bound to dance in one’s head the more they try not to think of it.

‘Frankenstein... What would you tell me if you figure out what’s with me?’

Would he poke fun at her with that oh-so-impish face, making a condescending show of how he did not expect her to fall for him?

Or would he snap at her that he will have none of her feelings whatsoever?

Lunark could only roll her eyes in her shoes, hopelessly tied to her heart racing to the far end away from her head. That was when the new warriors returned to her.

“Lady Lunark...”

“We just finished the job.”

“Now what should we do?”

Lunark barely managed to hide her wince and answered them.

“Now let us wait. Brace yourselves, all of you. It could take us hours, days, or weeks until we get what we want. But we are not leaving empty-handed. This time we will catch that rat still going about and nipping away what should be our duty.”

Lunark regained her stance as a senior warrior, tall and proud and authoritative.

The new warriors, overwhelmed by her posture, bowed their heads in mixture of anxiety and motivation.

“Now, positions, everybody. You know what to do.”

The three werewolves sang “understood” in synchronization before they jumped into the air, and Lunark followed suit, sneaking into the corner of the dispository that provides the best view of the entire space.

She wished, however, that they would get to stay as long as possible.

She knew that there is no good in taking so long until they could leave.

Yet she wanted to return as late as possible; otherwise she would get to meet Frankenstein again rather too soon.

Lunark grit her teeth in the lowest volume she could pull off, feeling how her lips would boil with heat every time she thought of him.

Sadly for her, it turned out that Lady Luck was certainly not on her side for the day.

She could hear clicks of heels, drawing nearer and growing bigger every second.

In reaction, her muscles tensed with automatic alertness.

After she waited to make out the profile of someone who had been ruining werewolves’ tasks all this time, she got to stare at and scan from head to toe the said someone.

Then suddenly, the visitor’s head violently rotated to a corner of the dispository, and Lunark’s eyes enlarged as she reminded herself who happened to be hiding there.

Bam! Came a thundering noise and a groan of pain.

“What are you? Who do you think you are to spy on me? Well, doesn’t matter. I don’t know how you found me in this place, but you saw my face. Which means you just earned yourself a death sentence.”

Clenching the least competent warrior in the room by the throat, the unknown figure sliced the air with her other hand.

Thud!

Dust and wind were whipped up one more time, along with the impact from Lunark’s feet, when she jumped in just in time to stop a potential carnage.

“And who do you think you are to lay that filthy paw of yours on our warrior? I hope you’re ready for your consequence.”

The woman’s eyes twitched, in clear recognition of the former 5th Elder.

“Nice to see you at last, you rat. You might wanna call your parents right now; you won’t be going home tonight.”

As Lunark bickered, Helga did not even cringe, instead squinting her eyes in a way her eyeballs would bulge out with hostility.

(next chapter)

At last, Muzaka noticed lol. And at last, Lunark found Helga. I may be the writer, but I feel kind of bad for throwing Lunark into two troubles at once. I really wish I can write something fluffy for her very soon! By the way, “dispository” is my creation for this fic. There is a reason why I came up with this facility; however, I will save the reason why for later, for as of now it could serve as a spoiler. Please stay tuned to find out why!

#korean webcomic #korean webtoon #fanfic #noblesse #frankenstein #lunark #frankensteinxlunark #wolfsbane

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catlordewrites · 4 years

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An Enigma of Broken Wings: Chapter Seven

Reeling from the Time War, the Doctor finds comfort in a mysterious creature that no one has ever seen. Things get more complicated when he discovers that this kindred spirit is a member of one of the most feared species in the universe.

This story can be found on Ao3 and fanfiction.net.

Chapter One - Previous Chapter - Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

The officer arrived in a five wheeled car just as the last rays of sunlight began to fade. Her name was Prekdawnik-Ska, and she was an unpleasant looking Ablerrion. Every detail, from the way her red crest caused her brow to furrow to the large blaster that hung from her belt was angled to make her appear intimidating.

She wasn’t very pleasantly mannered, either. From what the Doctor could gather from her one or two word responses, Ska thought that the whole idea was stupid, dangerous, and a waste of time. Ska had drawn the short straw, and would rather be anywhere other than chaperoning two tourists around town after dark. The iInvestigators had scoured the town from top to bottom for weeks, and she had never seen anything. In her opinion, there was no chance that the killer would show his face to more than one person, which rendered this particular excursion pointless.

But despite her distaste for the assignment and the Doctor’s mild irritation at the officer’s sidearm, the three piled into the five wheeled cruiser and set off into the night.

“Where are we going?” Rose inquired, unhappy and feeling a bit excluded in her place in the back seat.

“Where the last disappearance took place,” the Doctor stated confidently before turning to Officer Ska. “Where is that, again?”

“Moroldford Corner,” the grouchy alien grunted.

“Moroldford Corner,” the Time Lord repeated to his blonde friend as if she hadn’t been able to hear.

“Yeah. I’m not deaf, right?” Rose retorted.

“Right. Sorry.”

“What’s Moroldford Corner, anyway?”

“Care to answer that, Officer?” The Doctor diverted.

The alien sighed. “Oldest part of town. Abandoned for decades. Run down buildings. Trees. Glocnappenspaian graves. Not much, really.”

“Why was it abandoned?” Rose asked.

“Landscape changed. Now everytime it rains, the place floods.”

“So what was the person that disappeared doing there?”

“Dunno.” Ska rolled her broad shoulders carelessly. “Exploring, probably. Their species usually enjoys that sort of thing.”

The cruiser whipped around a corner and skidded to a stop. The trio unbuckled and slipped out into the cool night air.

“Alberrions don’t, I take it?” The Doctor inquired, closing the car door and taking a few steps away from it, unkempt grass and mud squelching under his feet.

“No,” Ska snapped, sounding almost offended at the notion. “We’re practical. They’re not. No wonder it took so long for them to advance.”

The Doctor produced a flashlight from one of his many coat pockets. “What d’you mean?”

Ska pulled her own light, a bright orb-shaped lantern, from her belt. She activated it with a twist and a shake. “Their species has existed for nearly… a million years? They’re old. Should be advanced. But they’ve only had what can be called a complex society for around sixteen hundred. Hell, they didn’t even have a written language until nine-hundred years ago.”

“Don’t think very much of them, do you?” Rose concluded, keeping close to the Doctor.

“No, I don’t.”

They were at the top of a slope, looking down into a wide valley. Through the darkness, the Doctor could just make out the shapes of crumbling stone buildings being eaten away by woodland to the left. Large mossy trees with dense foliage were scattered in clumps throughout what had clearly once been clean-cut, but now in the process of being reclaimed by nature. The small moon and stars were only visible in brief spurts due to the patches of heavy clouds beginning to creep across the sky.

To the right of the slope, separated from the town by a small clearing was a very, very old forest. In Glocnappenspaian culture, they marked graves using saplings with a granite headstone at the base. The very old cemeteries, like the one in Moroldford Corner, were distinguished by gnarled, monolithic trees that stood dozen of feet high, with hundreds of headstones poking out from within.

“Rain soon,” the Doctor commented, beginning to pick a path down the hill and towards the abandoned buildings.

“Obviously. It’s always raining on this damn planet.”

~0~0~0~ . . ~0~0~0~

By the time it began to rain, the trio had been in Moroldford Corner for over an hour, and they hadn’t had the slightest bit of luck. No monsters. No murderers. No kidnappers. Not the slightest thing to suggest anything was amiss, despite the place just being plain creepy. But it was an abandoned town-graveyard combo on a dark, stormy night, so a certain degree of creepiness was expected.

For Rose, however, it was just plain fun. She’d always loved haunted houses, graveyards, and horror movies. She loved the thrill, the feeling of her blood pumping and goosebumps forming on her skin, almost as much as she loved making other people be frightened with her. Historically, this other person was Mickey, who absolutely hated anything remotely frightening, no matter how much he insisted otherwise.

After nearly an hour of wandering about and nothing to show for it, Rose suggested that they split up. Several times. Despite being abandoned, Moroldford Corner was big. As the weather moved in brandishing the threat of flooding the valley, it made sense to cover as much ground as possible.

Eventually, despite repeatedly stating that they were safest as a group, the Doctor was forced to agree. He wanted a chance to check the far side, anyhow. At their current rate, it could be hours before they covered the entire Corner, and the lowest parts of the town could be underwater by then. He would go to the edge of the ruins alone, as it would be faster, and work his way back to meet the other two. The Time Lord’s parting words were to insist that Rose stay with Officer Ska.

Rose promised, and the Doctor set off.

Ska, however, still wasn’t nearly as concerned as the Doctor was. She still didn’t think that the killer, if he or she had ever been in this section of town, certainly wouldn’t hang around the scene of the crime. With this in mind, the Investigator didn’t worry too much when the young blonde drifted away to explore on her own.

~0~0~0~ . . ~0~0~0~

Rose’s trainers scarcely made a sound on the dusty stone floor. She was investigating one of the houses that was situated at the edge of the clearing, directly across from the overgrown cemetery. While many of the structures that were left in Moroldford Corner were on the point of collapse, slowly being sucked underground by the never-ending floodwaters, this particular house had remained untouched, more or less. It was located higher up the slope than the rest of the village, and therefore better preserved. Broken down and forgotten furniture still slumped in the corners, and panes of extremely dirty glass remained in the windows. Most importantly, it still had most of its roof.

Rose pulled down the hood of her jacket and wiped water droplets from arms, beginning to share Ska’s sentiments about the climate of this particular planet. A storm was rolling in. The young blonde had been listening to the distant peals of thunder and far away flashes of lightning, counting the seconds between the two in order to determine how far away the worst of the weather was. Unfortunately, it was getting closer, and she’d yet to hear back from the Doctor, who was presumably still on the opposite side of the Corner.

Trying to ignore how damp she was, Rose shivered slightly against a chill and held the small lantern Ska had given her near her hip. It was dim and didn’t do much good, but was enough to prevent the blonde from tripping over anything. She could just make out the lumps of stone strewn across the floor, chunks of the ceiling that had collapsed over time.

She picked her way gingerly across the front room to the window. It was far too dark to see anything out of it. She held her orb up to the glass, but it only illuminated the several decades worth of dirt and dust that had collected on either side.

Lightning lit up the night sky, allowing the young woman to have an unobscured view across the small clearing and into the crumbling forest-graveyard beyond.

Rose turned away, directing her attention to the warped remains of a desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the window light up once more.

She stiffened.

It had only been for an instant, but she could have sworn that a shadow had been cast across the decrepit room.

An inkling of fear flickered in her heart, putting her every nerve on alert. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She strained her eyes against the darkness, waiting for the next flash of light with bated breath.

Lightning flashed once more, illuminating the outside world.

Her blood froze.

There was a shape in the window. A person. Broad and tall. Staring in at her through the cracked glass.

Rose gave a strangled cry of shock and tried to back away. Her heel snagged on a lump of rubble, twisting it painfully and sending her crashing to the floor. She banged the back of her head, causing her vision to swim. She immediately tried to regain her footing, but was only able to make it back to her knees. Rose frantically tried to see the creature in the darkness, tried to see if it would try to come inside.

Lightning flashed again. The shape was gone. It had moved.

Coming to get her, Rose thought.

“Doctor!” She shouted as loudly as she could, her own voice straining her throat. “Doctor!”

“Rose!” The Doctor called back, but he sounded far away.

Rose scrambled for her orb, which had rolled across the room when she fell. Her hand made contact with it a second before a pair of powerful hands grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.

A small scream tore from her, which ended when she spun around and found herself staring up into Investigator Ska’s scowling face.

“What’s wrong?” Ska demanded.

“Was that you?” Rose snapped, concealing her fright with anger. “What kind of police work is that? Scaring the life out of people. Very funny. Do you get off on it?”

“What are you talking about?” The Alberrion retorted, ridged brow furrowing deeper in confusion.

“That wasn’t you?”

“Wasn’t me where?”

“Outside, looking in that window there.”

The Investigator studied the widow in question for a moment, then shook her head. “Couldn’t have been. I came around the back.”

They stared at each other, both registering the implications.

“There’s something out there!” Rose whispered, gazing back at the window with reignited dread.

Ska’s hand flew to her weapon. She unholstered it and held it at the ready.

“Stay here,” the Alberrion instructed, whirling around to head back out the way she came.

“You can’t shoot it!” Rose argued, trying to follow. Her ankle twinged in protest, causing her to wince.

Misunderstanding, Ska laughed. “This baby can blow a hole in a Asteroid-proof shuttle craft. One Glocnappenspaian psychopath is nothing!”

With that, she vanished into the night.

“You can’t! Don’t--” Rose called, but her plea fell on deaf ears.

A few seconds later, the sound of running footsteps intermixed with that of the rain pelting the increasingly muddy ground. Puddles were spreading across the valley, merging together and deepening as the already soaked earth refused to absorb a single drop more.

“Rose?” The Doctor called, sounding worried and slightly out of breath. “Rose!”

“Here!” Rose limped to the doorway that Ska had vanished through moments before.

“What happened?” The Doctor came sprinting into view, completely soaked. He skidded to a halt a few feet in front of her, immediately reaching out to support her upon seeing she was limping.

She took his arm gratefully, using him as a crutch. “I think I saw it.”

The Doctor turned to face her, hair scattering water droplets across her head. “What does it look like?”

“I dunno. It was just for a moment. Sort of human, I guess.”

A manic smile spread across the Time Lord’s face. He laughed. “Congratulations, Rose Tyler. You’re the only living person that has actually seen the Adjudicator and lived to tell the tale.”

Rose couldn’t help but share in his excitement. She grinned until the Doctor turned serious.

“Why are you hurt?” He demanded.

“Tripped.”

“Where’s Ska?”

“She went after it.”

The Doctor groaned. “That’s Alberrions, for you. Gung-ho. Shoot first, ask questions later.”

Rose nodded urgently. “She’s got a gun. Said it could destroy a space shuttle, or somethin’.”

“We’ve got to stop her. If she shoots at it, it could ruin our chances at making peace with it.”

“It won’t want to talk,” Rose summarized.

“Exactly—”

The Doctor was interrupted by Investigator Ska shouting frantically from somewhere in the trees within the cemetery. Her voice was indistinct and panicky. The sound of an energy blast sliced through the sounds of rain and thunder. And another. And another.

“Or she could get herself killed first.” The Doctor leaned Rose against the house. “Stay here!”

The Time Lord hurried back out into the storm, sloshing in the ankle deep water, ignoring the wind that buffeted him as he ran.

“Investigator Ska!”

The Doctor scoured the woods, dodging headstones and ducking around trees. The sounds of the firing blaster were much closer now. He caught a glimpse of the final shot through the trees, heard Ska’s frightened shout.

The Time Lord slowed down, senses on high alert for the smallest movement or sound through the rainfall.

“Ska?” He called again. “Are you there?”

A small light caught his eye. Round and fairly bright, but half submerged in the bog. He picked it up carefully, brushing away the mud and leaves caked to it. Ska’s lantern.

“Ska?”

He walked on, looking for the slightest sign of the missing alien, desperately hoping not to stumble upon her lifeless body. The sounds of the storm were muffled, the massive umbrella-like trees keeping out the worst of the rain and absorbing sound with the carpets of moss covering their trunks. The Doctor held his breath and listened to raindrops thundering against the canopy high above his head. All else was silent.

“Hello?” The Doctor called out into the trees, this time addressing the creature, which he presumed was still close-by. “I’m the Doctor. I believe we’ve met before. This doesn’t have to keep happening!”

He listened intently for a moment before continuing. “I can help you! Believe me, I can. But you have to tell me what you’ve done with Ska. Investigator Ska, the shooty one. I know she comes on a bit strong, but…”

The Doctor stilled, staring at a headstone. It was shaped differently than the others. Larger, but not crafted with nearly as much care. The name was barely legible, a date scrawled beneath it, indicating the person buried underneath had died some four hundred years prior to the current year.

Sadness and frustration weighed down on the Time Lord’s old heart, so much that he didn’t bother looking up at Rose until she had managed to limp through the trees and up to his side.

“I told you to stay at the house,” The Doctor complained, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen,” Rose scoffed. She leaned against the headstone for support. “Where’s Ska?”

“Gone,” The Doctor concluded grimly.

“Gone where?” Rose demanded, eyes wide.

The Doctor didn’t answer directly, just nodded to the headstone she was leaning on. “Ska said that this was a Glocnappenspaian cemetery. Makes sense. They stopped burying people here nearly fifty years ago. The Alberrions didn’t arrive on this world until thirty years after.”

Rose stared at the stone. Not quite getting it. “So?”

“Not really a Glocnappenspaian name, is it?”

The headstone read: P. Ska

~0~0~0~ .

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grimmseye · 5 years

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A Little Evil — Chapter Two

Read on Ao3

How Venomous gets his favorite minion.

Chapter Warnings: Violence (specifically against a child. Many people get hurt in this chapter). Negative Zones are run by villains and don’t have good moral standards.

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The Meeting

He is six months into his quest to engineer the perfect minion.

Six months is a longer struggle than he’s faced in a long, long while. Ordinarily a challenge would be exhilarating, something to finally pour some passion into. He craves anything that would occupy his mind, but for once the challenge is unwelcome. Venomous has made no progress.

Rats, cats, birds, lizards, snakes, plants, a few dozen other bases, all have amounted to a waste of time and resources. He’d even taken humanoid embryos to treat, but none of them survived a few days out of their tanks. They didn’t exhibit the necessary sophistication and were duly discarded, or their organs began to shut down, their cognitive functioning regressed. Nothing was working.

Venomous, apparently, still lacks the ability to create life with just his own hands. The moment he starts toying with strands of DNA, programming nonlethal viruses to rewrite the genetic codes in every last cell, something goes horribly wrong.

He’s probably going to end up disposing of yet another half-grown creature tomorrow. Somehow, the thing’s cells managed to induce the virus’ lytic cycle, and its cardiac cells are rapidly lysing at this moment. Another failure amid all of its predecessors, and this marks a brand new problem for him to decipher.

It isn’t working. He’s hit a roadblock. Can’t make his powers stronger, can’t bring them back, can’t even build his own minion from scratch. All his failures have compounded to him having no powers and no strength and no friends and no name and no no no fucking nothing —

Venomous snarls to himself, grimacing down at the sidewalk. He’s tired of venturing into these negative zones. The next villain to try to jump him is going to be on the receiving end of his newest creation — the result of octopus tentacles treated with special steroids and given an independent neural network. Given the right stimulation, they grab, crush, and tear whatever is in their grasp — the more struggling and screaming, the more aggression behind each move.

The thought makes him smile and give a soft laugh. That would be fun. He hopes someone might try it now. He just needs to determine how to clearly exude both weak and wealthy to lure someone —

The thought is interrupted by a sudden scream of pain. It’s a common sound here, and Venomous doesn’t so much as bat an eye while continuing down the block. What does catch his attention, though, is the cacophany that follows — shouts, angry, “Get that fucking brat!”

A kid? His eyebrows rise. Venomous veers towards the noise instead of away, telling himself it’s idle curiosity. Maybe something opportunistic rearing its head, yes, that’s it. He can always use more humanoid blood samples. An impromptu spinal tap may be in order as well.

He saunters around the perimeter of a large building — some kind of laboratory, though its exact field isn’t clear from the outside. There’s an undignified yelp, a man screaming “ I can’t fucking see!” in a way that suggests he may have just lost an eye. Venomous feels a smile creep over his mouth and kicks up the pace, very much wanting to see the carnage now.

There’s a high-pitched, furious shriek that splits the air, all senseless noise. It nearly drowns out the bellow of “I’m gonna break your fucking neck!”

The screaming is suddenly choked off. Venomous rounds the corner.

Out here is what seems to be a collection of guards wrangling a small child. A shock of white fur and washed-out pink hair is flailing in one’s grasp, a hand closed around her neck. Squeeze too tight, and those tiny vertebrae would crack.

Now, Venomous is probably certifiably evil at this point, may even show up on a POW card of his own soon, but he’s not a monster. Kids can be put down, knocked aside, those rookie heroes need to be driven back from the scene before they get any significant power. But he’s never had patience for those who go too far. World domination sounds lovely, but there is a line.

Venomous pulls a ball out of his pocket and a bottle of water, dousing the dark-green orb. When he feels its smooth exterior start to squirm, undulating in his grip, he gives it an underhand toss. It sails over the heads of these goons in a smooth arc, bouncing twice on the concrete before erupting into a mass of tendrils.

Shrieks ring out. Venomous strolls forward, lifting his palm to his mouth to sink his sharpened teeth into the meat of it. Blood bursts around his fangs and pools over his skin. Most of the goons are lucky enough to tear themselves away with little more than some bruises, maybe a sprained ankle or a dislocated arm as the tentacles try to seize their prey. Two get caught in the thick of it, a series of cracks sounding amid their wails of pain as their legs are engulfed and constricted.

He’s not necessarily a sadist, but he can appreciate someone getting their just desserts. Attempting to murder a child — that’s far beyond villainy.

And speaking of the child. She drops, not even enough breath to scream. Venomous breaks into a jog before his creation can seize a new thing to break, casting his wounded hand out in front of himself. The taste of his blood has the tendrils calming and parting for him, letting him pick his way through without complaint so he can scoop the creature up out of harm’s way.

She’s tiny. Fits into the crook of his arm, her white fur stained bright red around his mouth and paws. Her breath comes shallow and quick, face pinched in abject terror. As Venomous extracts himself from the tendrils, leaving them to finish off their prey, red eyes snap open. Albino, then.

She squeaks, and then bares her teeth. Before she can try to bite, Venomous pushes her head down, fingers safely tucked away from her mouth. “None of that,” he scolds. “I just saved you, you shouldn’t be so rude.”

“Down!” She screams — or tries to. Her voice is cracked, and the sound makes her gasp and cough. A frown pulls at Venomous’ mouth.

“Shhhh,” he soothes, kneeling down. The last of the screams have been smothered at last, leaving them in blessed quiet. Those out on the street are likely and rightfully minding their own business. “You’re bruised at a minimum, don’t strain anything. That was very impressive though, kid. A bunch of tough grown-ups, and you send them screaming.”

Even in her exhausted, terrified, angry state, that gets a smile cracking briefly over her mouth. Venomous chuckles at her weary glee. He sets the child down in front of himself, remaining on his knees. He supposes this is it, then. His heroics for the day are over — he has places to be.

The child rubs her throat with a paw, wincing. “Why’d you do that?” she croaks. Her eyes narrow, mouth stretching into a sneer. “You a hero?”

Venomous gives a faint shrug. “Nah, not a hero. But those guys were just…” He pondered the right explanation. “... the kind of people I really wanted to see suffer.”

Her eyes go wide. Not fear, as he might have expected. They’re shining.

It’s a look he hasn’t faced since the death of Laserblast. Something curls in his chest, not a bad thing.

He tamps it down, clearing his throat and getting to his feet. “Well,” he says, awkward. “... Bye.”

Venomous turns to head back onto the main drag, hands sliding into his pockets. He needs to pick up a new shipment of illicit materials if he doesn’t want his next commission to be late. Someday he’ll figure out how to get shipments into the neutral zone, but until then it’s regular flights here and doing the smuggling himself.

He’s two blocks down when he realizes he’s being followed. There’s a soft, “Watch it, brat,” that catches his ear. Venomous halts, head swinging, just in time to catch the little rat child ducking behind a newspaper dispenser.

Oh hell no.

A frown twists his mouth as he picks up the pace, crossing another street (no actual signals, just firing a laser gun into the road until the vehicles stop trying to hit pedestrians). He turns his head. There she is, pretending to study a sign. Another block down. Turn. She ducks into an alleyway.

Venomous grimaces. He could just ignore her. She could follow him all she wants, eventually he’ll just get on a plane and she’ll be out of his hair.

Something has him pacing back towards her. He comes to the break between buildings, finding the alley she’d ducked into. There’s a dumpster back here, open — and a frizz of matted pink hair peeking over the rim.

It twitches as he comes closer. “What are you doing,” he drags out, watching the fluff jump before her head pokes up.

“Nothin’,” she rasps, glaring as though to dare him to argue. She clutches a tattered-looking doll in her arms. Doll is generous. It seems to be scrapped together from garbage.

“Following me, you mean,” Venomous corrects.

“Nuh-uh,” she shakes her head, or tries to before even that little movement makes her wince. She glares at him. Venomous stares back. He raises an eyebrow, their gazes locked for several moments before she cracks. Stubborn. Brave.

“Fine!” She spits. “I wanna see you — you’re strong! I wanna be strong. Then no one’ll mess with —” She gasps and breaks into a coughing fit. It looks agonizing, her paw clutching her throat and her eyes brimming with tears when she’s finally able to wrangle it into control.

She’s got spirit. She’s a fierce little beast. She’s smart enough to speak coherently when he’s certain she’s had no formal education. She follows him for the purpose of observation, learning.

Venomous gets an idea.

“... Okay,” he says, already feeling like he’s going to regret this. “Tell you what, kid. I’ve been needing a minion.”

Her eyes narrow, but she inclines her head for him to continue. He smiles as he says, “You want to learn how to be like me? Come with me. I’ll teach you everything you want to learn. How to read, write,” she makes a face and he changes his tune, “and just how hard a big man can fall.”

Something shifts in her hair. He wonders if she has ears to match her whiskers and tail. There’s that glimmer in her eyes, but it hardens again, glowering at him. Distrust. Clever, too. “What d’you get outta it?”

“A minion,” Venomous says, and shrugs. “Someone to help in the lab. And look at me,” he gestures to his skinny frame. “If a big guy grabs me, and I can’t reach my weapons? I need someone to save me.”

And that’s what seems to do it. The mistrust melts out of her face. She’s just a little kid, after all. She’s exhausted, hurt, scared. Venomous offers a hand, even if his skin crawls looking at the garbage she’s perching in. “So — what do you say, kid?”

She stares at his hand, at his face. A smile cracks across her mouth. Her eyes are glossy, and he does not know what to do if she cries. But her paw clasps his hand and she beams, voice hoarse and shaking as she says, “You’ve got a deal, boss.”

#professor venomous #fink #ok ko #my writing

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raptured-night · 5 years

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The Meta of Supernatural & The Many Meanings of “God as the Author”

Ask Supernatural fans what magic formula might be at work for the popular series to have lasted for what will be 15 seasons, with a total of 307 episodes aired as of April, 2019 (with a projected 327 episodes after the final season, which is set to begin in October) since it first aired in 2005 and one of the answers they might give (besides a deal with a certain crossroads demon) is the series ability to be so wonderfully meta. While Supernatural certainly has had its share of dramatic episodes, character deaths, and tear-jerking moments (particularly for those of us who have yet to master Dean’s art of the single perfect tear) it is also a series that is not afraid to poke fun at itself. Almost as if in answer to its critics who would question how Supernatural has managed last for so long when other series (many of which, like Supernatural, also came armed with a charismatic cast and compelling characters) have come and gone, episodes like The French Mistake (6.15) and Fan Fiction (10.5) exist not just as fan-service or a love letter to the fans but as an unapologetic bit of self-parody intended to highlight all the best and worse of what makes Supernatural what it is.

Supernatural stands as one of the longest-running sci-fi/fantasy television series in American history and one which, I would argue, can credit much of its success to its willingness to, in the spirit of Team Freewill, break the rules, break the fourth wall, and not just wink at the fans but eagerly wave them into their world and invite them to come and join the family. Ultimately, for all of its credible faults (for it is certainly not without them; the series has been aptly criticized for everything from queerbaiting to misogyny to poor representation for women, lgbtq+ people, and poc characters at different points in its 15-year run and some of the actors have revealed themselves to be problematic as well, such as when Mark Pellegrino, who plays Lucifer, accused minorities who called for tolerance of being “rigid and intolerant”) it is the willingness of the writers to take risks (at least as far as introducing creative content goes) with meta episodes like the aforementioned The French Mistake (6.15) or Fan Fiction (10.5) (to provide only two of many such examples; seriously the show has so much material it is a well-known joke that Supernatural has a reaction gif for everything) and crossovers like the Scoobynatural episode (13.15) that keep old fans returning each season, draw in new fans, and even manage to catch the attention of some of its usual detractors and/or skeptics alike.

However, in the Season 14 finale, Moriah (14.20), which saw the return of Chuck/God the meta-game was not only out in force but out in form. As fans of the series will know, Chuck Shurley was first introduced in Season 4 of the Supernatural series as a “Prophet of the Lord” (4.18; The Monster at The End of This Book) who came to the attention of the Winchester brothers after writing a series of books (a.k.a “The Winchester Gospels”) that chronicled some of their lives up-to Season 4 under the pseudonym Carver Edlund. By the end of Season 5, many fans had already begun speculating that Chuck was, in fact, God in disguise but it was not until Season 11 that the popular fan theory was confirmed in episode 20, Don’t Call Me Shurley. Nonetheless, even before Chuck was officially revealed to be God, the writers had already laid the foundation for what I would argue is one of the best examples of Supernatural meta. For Chuck as God is nothing if not a nod to writers who act as gods/creators of their own universes (just as I once theorized that Becky Rosen was a parody of the sort of extreme, even toxic fan that one can expect to encounter in most fandoms). Through Chuck, the writers of Supernatural have been able to effectively satirize themselves and communicate a certain self-awareness yet again (e.g. When Metatron tells Castiel that God is “...a bit of a misogynist” I couldn’t help but think of the longstanding criticism that the writers of Supernatural have received for continuously fridging female characters or portraying them as two-dimensional love interests, although it must be said that acknowledging the issue is not the same as actively correcting it).

That being said, the Season 14 finale took the satire of “God as the Author” even further and once again brought it full circle to include the fans. In the last few moments of the episode, when Dean makes the decision not to kill Jack, the exchange that follows sets the stage for what will be the final season of Supernatural in a way that could not have been more fitting. Indeed, I would argue that a strong case can be made that it was always going to come down to a final battle with God/Chuck, the author of the Supernatural universe. Notably, when Dean makes the decision not to kill Jack, Chuck/God objects by telling him, “This is not how the story’s supposed to end.” This immediately draws Castiel’s attention (”The story?”) and is meant to jar the audience after such a dramatic moment between Jack and Dean. Arguably, Castiel’s question is a signal or cue to the viewer that they should begin to question if everything that transpired moments before was not manufactured by Chuck/God “the author.” That is, the writers are intentionally pulling the viewers out of the story of before and drawing their attention to the fact it is inauthentic in the way that all fiction is, in that it is ultimately “a story” created by an author.

Indeed, Chuck/God confirms as much when he follows up by saying, “The gathering storm. The gun. The father killing his own son. This is Abraham and Issac. This is epic.” His reference to Abraham and Issac ties into the title of the episode, Moriah, which was the name of the mountain that Abraham took Issac to sacrifice him in Biblical scripture (although God stopping Abraham does open the episode up to interesting speculation as to whether Chuck/God actually wanted Dean to kill Jack, “the end,” or if there might have been more to his machinations that we did not get to see due to Dean and Sam’s rebellion). As a bit of comical tongue-in-cheek, the fact that Chuck/God would appear to be recycling one of his “greatest hits” with Dean and Jack could also be subtle recognition of the fact that because Supernatural is one of the longest-running sci-if/fantasy series in American television history and has covered so much material the writers of the series are at a point where they have to work much harder to avoid recycling the same content rather than come up with new and original ideas. The fact that Sam, Dean, Castiel, and other characters of Supernatural have also acknowledged the existence of a “cycle” where one of the Winchesters (or honorary Winchesters) dies and the other(s) proceed to move heaven, hell, purgatory, “The Empty,” and earth just to get them back also supports the idea that Chuck/God recycling his material from Biblical scripture was a fun bit of self-deprecation. There is also the tongue-in-cheek parody of the “BM moment” in Fan Fiction (10.5), which further illustrates the penchant of the writers to acknowledge recurring, even predictable, patterns in their storytelling.

I digress, however, as what follows once Chuck/God has clued the Winchester brothers and Castiel into the fact that he orchestrated the events that led up to Dean confronting Jack with the plan to kill him is one of the most revealing pieces of meta. Sam acknowledges that Chuck/God has “been playing” them all along, then goes on to say, “Our entire lives. Mom, dad, everything. This is all you because you wrote it all, right? Because, because, what? Because we're your favorite show? Because we're part of your story?” In Sam’s criticism, the fourth-wall is effectively broken, as he is not just referencing Chuck/God’s “Winchester Gospels” at this point. In fact, he notably goes from referring to Chuck/God as an author (i.e. ”This is all you because you wrote it all, right?”) to accuse him of also joining the rest of the Supernatural fandom in being a loyal viewer (i.e. “Because we’re your favorite show?”). This is meta within meta, as Supernatural is being taken from the “Winchester Gospels” or Supernatural books that Chuck/God wrote in their canonical “verse/world,” into a whole other medium or realm, i.e. television. In doing so, the fans/viewing audience of Supernatural who remained dedicated to the series; who continued to urge the network, writers, and other powers that be to keep Supernatural going from season to season; and who may have contributed to building up the fan-base by adding their own creative fan fiction and fan works are all included in the writer’s meta fueled tongue-in-cheek tribute to Supernatural’s long-running success.

In true Supernatural style, Sam and Dean’s confrontation with Chuck/God not only represents Team Free Will/The Winchesters’ rebelling against God but the characters of Supernatural rebelling against “the author” and “viewer” of the “road” their story has traveled “so far.” Ultimately, the dedicated fans of Supernatural who, like Chuck, tune in each week and have yet to tire of the story of these characters --indeed, who genuinely continue to hope for new and more “epic” seasons-- are all included in the joke. Which is why I would argue that it is not only fitting but inevitable that the final antagonist that Team Free Will would go up against would be Chuck/God the “author” and “viewer.” I predict that season 15 may stand as a love letter and tribute to the fans of the show in the best and most ironic way possible, by acknowledging the Supernatural fan-base (who, I think it’s safe to say, would be just as happy if Supernatural never came to an end) by subtly linking them with Chuck/God as either the antagonist they must go up against if these “wayward sons” are ever to “find peace when [they] are done” or the successors to Chuck/God and solution to the problem that he may present them with.

Indeed, after Chuck/God attempts to dismiss Sam’s accusations as “crazy” and “stupid” what transpires after only speaks to the major shift these characters are already prepared to make in order to break the cyclical pattern they have always been on. Notably, Chuck offers to bring back Mary Winchester if Dean shoots Jack with the gun he made for him. As I have already observed, the series has long acknowledged the repetition of the Winchesters when it comes to saving each other, yet this time when given the opportunity for Dean to once again save Mary and bring her back he not only refuses in what stands as a monumental shift away from the predictable Winchester cycle but also doubles down on the accusations that Sam previously made:

“No. No. My mom was my hero. And I miss her, and I'll miss her every second of my life but she would not want this. And it's not like you even really care. Cause Sam's right. The apocalypse, the first go around with Lucifer and Michael? You knew everything that was going on. So, why the games, Chuck? Huh? Why don't you just snap your fingers and end it?”

Importantly, Dean specifically references the events of Seasons 4 and 5, which are not only when Chuck/God was first introduced as a character (not to mention a certain “Angel of the Lord”) but are popularly regarded as two of the most defining seasons of the entire Supernatural franchise and would go on to set the tone and standard for every subsequent season that followed. It is only after this call-back that Dean berates Chuck/God for not intervening and challenges him to “end it.” Almost as if responding to some of the critics of Supernatural who have long argued that the series should have ended in its 5th Season, Dean ironically seems to be echoing their criticism in his challenge to Chuck/God the “author” and “viewer” who does not want the story to end. Indeed, as Chuck becomes more defensive, Sam takes up Dean’s criticism by vaguely referencing everything that came after Season 5: “And every other bad thing we've been killing and dying over. Where were you? Just sitting back and watching us suffer? So we can do this over and over and over and over again? Fighting? Losing people we love? When does it end? Tell me?” Once again, Chuck/God is not just being accused of being the author of their suffering (i.e. “Fighting [...] [l]osing people [they] love”) but of “sitting back” and being a viewer of it “...over and over and over and over again” without any suggestion of an end. It is at this point that Chuck/God appeals to Dean; pleading with him as a viewer of a “favorite show” that has announced its final season might: “Dean, don’t do this.”

However, Dean is not moved by Chuck/God’s entreaties and has this to say, “Yeah, we're done talking. Cause this? This isn't just a story. It's our lives. So, God or no God, you go to hell.” Spitting in the face of Vonnegut’s 6th rule for writing fiction (i.e. “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”) Dean is the man who rebels against God in the Supernatural verse and, beyond that, he is also the fictional character who rebels against not only his author/creator but the viewers who may derive entertainment from his life and want it to keep going in a cycle of violence and loss “...over and over and over and over again.” Just as many authors have lamented the occasion when it seems a character or characters assume a life of their own and refuse to cooperate with the plot they had planned for them, Dean, as a character, is asserting his independence from his author/creator by rejecting the idea that his and Sam’s lives are “...just a story.” Furthermore, one could even argue that, as the Supernatural franchise could be described as something of a larger phenomenon, so too is Dean seemingly insisting that anyone who would downplay the significance and impact of his and Sam’s lived-experiences over the years by saying it is “just a story/work of fiction” can effectively “go to hell.”

Faced with the rebellion of Sam and Dean, Chuck/God finally takes matters into his own hands and effectively validates the Winchesters’ accusations (“Have it your way.”) by “snap[ing] his fingers” and “end[ing] it” in the exact way that Dean and Sam challenged him to do, ultimately killing Jack in the process. Not unlike an author attempting to force their plot to work when the characters refuse to cooperate, Chuck/God demonstrates the ultimate deus ex machina and proves that the earlier set-up he had planned for Dean to sacrifice himself by killing Jack was seemingly as unnecessary as the Winchester brothers claimed. It is evident that Chuck/God could always have ended things himself but as the author/creator he did not want to, presumably because it was less entertaining than having the Winchesters and Castiel do it in his place. As Castiel kneels on the ground beside Jack, Dean attempts to advance on Chuck/God to stop him from killing Jack but is easily thrown back. It is Sam (perhaps fittingly given it was also Sam’s killing of Lilith that set the stage for the conflict with Lucifer in Season 5), who thinks to pick up the gun Dean had dropped earlier and turn it on Chuck/God as he is walking away, that sets the stage for what I would argue is one of the better Supernatural finales in recent seasons.

Without hesitation, Sam fires at Chuck/God after calling to get his attention and manages to hit him in the shoulder. Although the greater damage seems to have been inflicted on Sam, the fact that the viewer does see a clear bullet hole in Chuck/God’s clothing and that Sam received reciprocal damage does suggest that there may have been some damage done. Regardless, Chuck/God is clearly angered and with an exhale delivers these final, ominous lines: “Fine! That's the way you want it? Story's over. Welcome to the end.” Cue the sky going dark in a symbolic fade-to-black as Motorhead's “God Was Never On Your Side” poignantly begins to play while the dead burst out of their graves in true apocalyptic fashion.

With the involvement of Billie, who has been an incredibly interesting wild-card and a breath of fresh air since she first appeared in Supernatural (11.2 “Form and Void”), and her plans for Jack alongside the other lingering plot threads left over from Season 14 (such as the question of how Castiel’s deal with “The Empty” will be resolved or the matter of Lucifer still being awake and trying to escape from “The Empty”), the finale of Supernatural Season 14 also left viewers with the suggestion of what the major conflict of the final season might be. However, as we saw in Season 11 in the battle between Chuck/God and Amara, we must ask ourselves how Team Free Will --who, for the last ten years, have faced off against everything from mythological gods, monsters, angels, demons, the personification of Death, Hitler, British invaders, God’s sister, and even the devil himself and come out on the winning side-- hopes to win against someone whose death would seemingly mean the end of their world. It begs the question, how can these characters exist without their author? What happens to them once “the author,” be it Chuck/God in-verse or “the powers that be” behind Supernatural out-of-verse, has/have stopped writing and closed the book on their story with the declaration of “The End?”

One possible answer might be in the writer’s decision to include the fans in with Chuck/God in the last few minutes of Season 14′s finale. Similar to The Neverending Story, another popular fantasy of the 1980s with a meta-driven narrative, could it be that the unaddressed threat of “The Empty” (comparable to “The Nothing” of The Never-Ending Story) combined with the characters’ battle with their author/creator/god will all culminate in a literal Death of the Author scenario, in which the torch of Supernatural will find a way to be metaphorically passed on to the fans within the narrative for them to symbolically “carry on?” That is, rather than leave fans with a fade-to-black ending, wherein Team Free Will and the world of Supernatural that the viewers have come to love for so long are all cast into the nothingness of their own kind of “Empty” once off-air, could the writers be aiming for a conclusion that functions as a final narrative twist that would acknowledge the significance of the fans and their contributions to the lasting power and presence of the Supernatural fandom? After all, while the dedicated fans of the series have undoubtedly heaped their share of angst and suffering onto these characters in their many works of fan fiction, the number of times it could also be said that their stories of hurt ended in sweeter moments of comfort, a fix-it fic, or a happy ending with a heavy side of fluff could be taken as recognition from the writers of just how beloved and cherished these characters are to their fans and that they are safe being left in what may well be even better, kinder hands.

Alternatively, it is also possible that Team Free Will/the Winchesters will remain true-to-form and choose to go out on their own terms. In which case, the recurrent trend of “The Empty” being built up as something to be feared may well be flipped on its head, at least metaphorically. If “The Empty” comes to represent the greater fear of the potential “nothingness” of the final denouement waiting at the end of the long road they have traveled, then Team Free Will’s decision to embrace it, or at least a symbolic version of it, could be the meaning behind the meta-style conflict between the Winchesters and “Chuck/God as the author” in the Season 14 finale. Indeed, it may be that peace for the “weary heads” of Team Free Will/the Winchesters is something more conclusive, especially given their own rebellion against a god/author/viewer who would expect of them nothing more than a never-ending cycle of death and violence.

Ultimately, we will all have to wait until the new and final season of Supernatural airs to get concrete answers to any of the theories and questions that we may find ourselves asking, yet I couldn’t help being intrigued by layered meta of Season 14′s finale and what it could mean going into Season 15. Will the show conclude with the rise of Team Free Will as they take their own narrative out of Chuck/God/the author’s/the viewer's hands and close the chapter on their “story” once-and-for-all? Or, will they not only find a way to bring about some kind of “Death of the Author” resolution when it comes to Chuck/God but also solve the problem that “The Empty” currently seems to represents for them in a way that allows the fans to wave them off as they drive down yet another long stretch of road together in the Impala knowing they are at peace, exactly where they belong, and that the rest is up to them (i.e. the fans)? I suppose we will all have to tune in when Season 15 of Supernatural airs in October to find out but until then fans of the show will just have to “carry on” and keep the theories coming!

#supernatural #spn #spn meta #spn family #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #chuck shurley #spn season finale #spn season 14 #spn season 15

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heyhowyadoingpally · 6 years

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it’s been forever since i’ve done one of these, huh?

i figured i’d bring this little series back from the dead (pun intended) for october, but i’m not gonna be looking at one pokemon at a time - i’m gonna do mass reviews.

that’s right, i’m going to do a bunch of super quick, rapid-fire reviews of pokemon. more specifically, different pokemon types. even more specifically, three pokemon types.

i’m gonna review all - yes, all, including half-types and secondaries - the posion, dark, and ghost types, in that order. i would have thrown in one more, like bug or psychic, but i think i have enough as it is to last until halloween. although, if there’s a good enough response and, for whatever reason, a demand for either of those two types, i might do one more.

just to clarify, if a pokemon is two of the types i’ll be reviewing, i’ll be placing them in the review of their first type. i.e. if there’s a ghost/dark type, i’ll be putting it in the ghost type review.

yes, these are going to be LONG fucking posts. so sue me.

with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Spooky Halloween Special Part 1: Pure Poison

#023 - Ekans

there really isn’t much for me to say about ekans. he’s really a product of the first-gen’s shtick, which was having the first chunk of the pokemon be more like mundane wildlife than anything else. and that’s something i’m more than okay with; you need mundane wildlife to balance out shit like fire-breathing anteaters and living, floating magnets.

that being said, i adore ekans’s design. there may be a good amount of pokemon out there that are based on real-world animals, but not many of them heavily resemble the animal they’re based on.

ekan’s look is so subtle yet it just works, from the reptilian eyes to the ring around his neck(?), and even the rattle at the end of his tail. hell, i never even noticed the thin lines going all the way down its body until now! maybe they could be segments that somehow help is slither around easier? who knows!

RATING:

i love ekans, but it’s not something that i would absolutely go crazy for. i gave it the extra half-point because, again, it’s one of the cooler “realistic” pokemon, imo.

#024 - Arbok

in the simplest of words, arbok is just plain awesome.

making ekan’s next stage be a cobra just seems fitting: a pokemon as “average” as ekans definitely would evlove into something weirder than a typical snake, but not too weird. cobras are pretty weird, but not too weird. it goes hand in hand.

it’s a little sad that arbok doesn’t retain some of the subtle qualities its predecessor had, like the eyes or the big ring, but it makes up for it with the kickass hood. i’m sure like everyone knows this, but in the first few games the little design on arbok’s hood differed slightly, because they’re arboks from other regions.

RATING:

again, i love its look, but it’s not an absolute favorite.

#029 + #032 - Nidoran

i vaguely remember how awesome i thought the idea of this one pokemon with genders was. of course, now pretty much every pokemon has some minor detail that differentiates their sex.

i love their cute little faces!!! they’re like adorable little rabbit-things with poisonous barbs!

oh, yeah! they’re poison types! so poison is incorporated into their design, right?

...kiiinda?

the pokedex states that nidorans have poisonous barbs sticking out of their backs, but they don’t really look like barbs. they seem more like really dull dorsal fins or something. like, if your tried to hug one of them the most pain you’d get is an uncomfortable poke more than anything.

RATING:

a neat concept for a pokemon, but the execution of the “poison” aspect didn’t really shine through.

#030 + #033 - Nidorina and Nidorino

these two changed, and for the fucking better.

i love the idea that when certain pokemon evolve, it’s really just them maturing, and the nidos did a fantastic job with their second evo. they look a lot more dangerous, but still not quite “barb-y”. i do love how the nidorino seems to naturally crawl on all fours while nidorina stand on her hind legs. it’s those subtle little things that i like.

RATING:

tbh i really don’t have much to say about these guys that i already said about their first forms. they’re more-or-less improved versions of both nidorans.

before we continue and before you say anything, yes, i’m one of those types of people who have a hard time hating any pokemon. the worst you’ll hear from me is that i’m not a fan of certain ones, but they’re nice efforts nonetheless. plus, i have a strong affinity towards the types of pokemon we’ll be looking at, anyway, so this is more of an excuse for me to gush about cute monsters.

#088 - Grimer

GOD where do i fucking begin???

this was the starting point for when pure poison (not quite yet for the half or secondary type!) pokemon really started to take advantage of the concept of...well, posion.

basically, from here on out, i’m going to be gushing a lot about the pure poison pokemon.

if you’ve been following/have known me long enough, you’ll know that i fucking adore any sort of outlandish, blobby monster. sure, most of those kinds of monsters out there are just the same thing over and over, but for some reason i never get enough of them. hell, my favorite animal is basically just a blob with a vague body shape!

everything about grimer is just so pleasing to me: the dopey expression, the little glob of goop dripping from its lip, the nubby hands...it’s even purple, my favorite color!

not to mention the fact that grimer is literally living sludge, one of my all-time favorite concepts for a monster. probably bc i associate any kind of goop monster with swamps, and you all know how much i fucking love those. i think we need more sludge/toxic monsters in our lives. i know i do.

RATING:

let’s face it: you all saw that coming.

#089 - Muk

you know, i didn’t think there was any way that you could improve a living pile of toxic waste, but game freak proved me wrong.

muk took everything i love about grimer and somehow made it significantly better. it genuinely feels like a grimer that grew larger and nastier through years of absorbing more waste and refuse. the strand of slime connecting the “lips” is a really neat touch!

the more serious expression on its face makes me think that it hates its own existence, like it somehow just knows that it should not be alive. it’s a sad idea, and surprisingly not the darkest ideas that the pokemon franchise has ever delved into. but we’ll probably get more into that with later entries in this series.

RATING:

grimer and muk were, for the longest time, my favorite pokemon, period. that was, of course, until a certain gen 5 creature was introduced and immediately stole my heart. but, again, that’s one of those things we’ll get to soon.

#109 - Koffing

if i had never gotten into pokemon, or even monsters in general and you tried to describe certain creatures to me, i’d think these were some of the dumbest, most batshit ideas ever put on paper. koffing sounds like a weird or dumb idea, but the way a floating orb that spews toxic gasses is presented here is so fucking original.

i’ve always found it fascinating that we associate the color purple with anything poisonous. i suppose it stems (no pun intended) back from certain toxic plants having purple coloration? idk, i’m not an expert on these things.

as a little kid, i loved koffing, which i guess goes to show that i haven’t changed since then lmao. but what’s not to like about it? that’s a face that you can never say no to. koffing wants some cash so it can go out with its friends? go ahead! it wants to have pizza for dinner tonight instead of a casserole? sure thing!!! it wants to start an underground meth lab to rake in the dough to support its family? right on!!!

i especially adore the little skull-and-crossbones on its belly(?). it’s a really neat, subtle touch that didn’t even need to be on there but works so well. i especially love that it’s not just a standard jolly roger kind of crossbones that you’ll often find on monster/creatures that’re poisonous; it’s just the vague shape that makes it really feel like an animal might be able to evolve such a strange pattern on its body, which fits the semi-grounded-in-reality feel gen 1 was trying to go for.

fun fact: some real-life animals, especially insects and arachnids, have skull-shaped patterns on their backs!

RATING:

a perfect example of a pokemon that exemplifies its type.

#110 - Weezing

weezing is either a really ingenious - yet dark - metaphor, or just a really, really cool concept. or both.

i’m probably not the first person to think of this outlandish idea, but i think weezing might be some sort of weird, “hidden message” behind koffing and, more specifically, weezing.

lets take a look at this round, adorable, little cutie:

it’s associated with toxicity and poison

it produces a gas that’s unpleasant to inhale

it has a second “head” growing on its side (with a cute little “starting crossbone”!)

both faces look quite glum

now, what in real life relates to to these aspects? what thing or things in real life are associated with being harmful or toxic; produce a gas or gaslike substance that, when inhaled, is unpleasant; can cause those exposed to it to develop large, potentially lethal lumps inside their body; and makes people quite glum?

hmmm....i just can’t think of any real-world items that could cause such dangerous, life-altering side-effects.

jokes aside, i’m more than certain i could just be pulling this connection with tobacco out of my ass. it sounds more like one of those edgy creepypastas from back in the day than anything else.

RATING:

this is the closest i think we’ll ever get to a pokemon with a fucking tumor, and whether or not it was intentional weezing’s design reminds me of real-world issues.

(m)

(f)

#316 - Gulpin

after koffing and weezing, pure poison type pokemon were few and far between. it’s a shame, since a lot of the pokemon that are solely poison are just so damn cool, even when they don’t quite show off the “poison” aspects you’d come to expect.

at the same time, i’m glad we currently only have a few amount of pure poison types out there; it makes them feel more special, like a nice treat you’d get every-so-often.

the first pure poison pokemon (how’s that for alliteration!) to appear since gen 1 was gen 3. there was an entire generation that skipped out on having really cute babies. those were surely dark time. at least they up for that with an abundance of other cute pokemon.

that being said, the first pure poison we get after a long, dark and empty era is an absolute cutie! again, i’m a sucker for round, blobby creatures. they always just look so soft and huggable! i think if i lived in the pokemon world, gulpin would definitely be one of those critters i’d snuggle up with.

you know, i really don’t know much about gulpin other than its adorable appearance. i’d really like to find out why its a pure poison! maybe i should see what the pokedex entries from the games have to say about this little cutiepie:

o h .

RATING:

gulpin’s a really neat concept, but the idea of something small and cute that also has an insatiable appetite isn’t something entirely original, and nor is it the first time a character in nintendo followed that same idea.

(m)

(f)

#317 - Swalot

listen: i LOVE swalot. but it’s the kind of love where if i sort of bring that up in a conversation people immediately assume i love swalot because of the same reason that a good two handfuls of people do.

i’m sure you can guess why some people love swalot more than others based on both its name and its rather...erm....interesting eating habit:

i told you that pokemon can get pretty morbid.

i’m really not the sort of person who "points out” something made for kids but with some sort of “underlying fetish material”, but swalot here is one of those few things that make me raise an eyebrow just a little.

but, uh, let’s look at this big cutie in a different, more wholesome light, huh?

designwise, swalot looks fantastic. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: i love evolutions that look like a genuine life cycle. i can see gulpin being this sort of nymph that grows over time into this huge, squishy, toxic thing with an insatiable appetite. it almost sounds like the premise of a 1950s b-movie.

even though it’s not a major change, i love the coloring. again, it gives me the impression that young gulpin’s flesh darkens with maturity into a swalot. it’s great.

a detail that i never noticed until getting the pictures for this review is that if you look verrrrry closely, both gulpin and swalot have a faint pattern all over their bodies. it reminds me of how light looks reflecting in the ocean, all broken up like that.

RATING:

potential vorebait aside, i really love swalot’s design, even moreso than gulpit.

#336 - Seviper

there aren’t as many real snake pokemon as i’d like to think, but the ones we do get are pretty rad.

while ekans and arbok have great designs and are always gonna be near and dear to my heart, they never quite felt pokemon-y to me. yes, they were in the first gen and are revered as classics, they seem just too normal to me, you know? like they were literally just purple snakes.

i’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but when you compare them to the outlandish creatures from later generations, they aren’t all that unique. i still love them to death, of course.

seviper, to me at least, looks like what you would mentally picture if someone told you that there was a snake pokemon: it retains the basic idea of a serpent, but takes some creative liberties.

idk why but i really love the eyes it has. they sort of compliment its almost-smile, like its just about to pull a harmless prank on someone and is anticipating the gag. what a smug bastard.

according to the every pokedex, seviper’s best quality is that the entire species has had an ancient rivalry zangoose, another pokemon, for years. from what i can tell, zangoose is supposed to be based off the real-life mongoose, so what we have here is the age-old battle between snakes and mongooses (mongeese?) in the pokemon universe. that’s pretty awesome. i wish they could find more ways to tie in real wildlife habits and instincts like that.

RATING:

overall a good bean with a good design.

#568 - Trubbish

ohhhhh man. ohhhhh boy oh man. we’re at my favorite evolutionary line ever. i’ll try to keep this as contained and condensed as possible.

i’m not sure what it is exactly about garbage monsters, but i adore them a lot. maybe it’s because you can get really creative with how you design the? idk.

i’m surprised it took until gen 5 to get a real trash pokemon. grimer and muk may have been associated with filth, but trubbish and garbodor are the living embodiment of garbage. like, you look at them, and you know exactly what their shtick is.

i’ve seen a few garbage bag monster before, but trubbish is probably the absolute cutest one i’ve ever seen! look at those big, curious eyes!!!! look at that cute overbite!!!!! look at the little feet made from the bottom corners of the bag!!! it’s such a cute little baby!!!!

unfortunately, not a lot of people share that opinion. and that’s okay. because you’re allowed to have your own fucking opinions on the internet. there’s some pokemon a lot a ppl like that i’m not too crazy for, so sue me. i’ve got my little compost child and that’s okay.

RATING:

is this cheating? i don’t think it’s cheating.

#569 - Garbodor

here it is! the best fucking pokemon to have ever existed!

you might be thinking i saved garbodor till the end on purpose, but i’ve just been reviewing these by the order they appear on the pokedex. besides, there’s just one more after this, so you don’t have to suffer much longer.

GOD i love garbodor so much. everything about it is so creative and fun and cute. i’m so glad it kept the face from when it was just a trubbish. what a cutie!!!!

i love how the garbage bag is sorta draped over its body, like the bag somehow filled up with so much trash that it burst open. i also really love how both of its arms are doing their own different things. it really gives the idea that garbodor wasn’t trying form a perfect body, just a body that works. but the greatest part of this huge baby bean are those cute little pigtails!!! god bless it for looking so cute!!!!!!!

i wanna hug garbodor so badly!!! even if it smells like garbage!!!!

RATING:

i love that funky little compost

#803 - Poipole (aka UB Adhesive)

i haven’t played ultra sun or moon, so the new pokemon in that game are still...well...new to me.

one of the new ultra beasts introduced in the games, poipole has already stolen my heart and i don’t even know it that well. it’s got all of my favorite color combinations rolled into one - blues and purples and pinks!

being an ultra beast, poipole hails from ultra space, and, apparently, from a city in ultra space called ultra megalopolis. jeez, game freak sure loves using the word “ultra”.

i really can’t say much since, again, i’ve never played either of the ultra games, but i like what i do see.

i would have wrapped up this review here, but looking at the pokedex entries for it turned out to be a fucking road trip:

poipole goes from adorably-loved to a fucking sociopath.

alright, i like this cutie even more.

RATING:

for some reason, i still get surprised whenever a new pokemon game has creative and original monster. you’d think they would have blown their wad in the first few gens, but so far they haven’t done so.

that wraps up the first part of this little “review series” next time we’ll be looking at both half-poison AND secondary poison, all in the same post. how terrifying.

...i’m sincerely sorry if you had to read through all of this

PREVIOUS POKEFART: Weedle Line

NEXT POKEFART: (it’s not out yet you dip)

#pokefart reviews #pokefart halloween

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breitzbachbea · 3 years

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(p1) okei, what i think I can gather about you from your art/writing,(bare in mind i haven't read your long fics/most drabbles yet tho). Your 200+ OC's of different nationalities show you want to live in a thousand cultures, have a thousand lives and live in every part of history, but as you cannot, you have 200 OCs which is almost like containing 1000 souls (very relatable tho).... But 200+ OCs and your longest AU's are massive, show yeah 👀👀 And you enjoy ships that bicker... cos....

(pt2) cos the intimacy needed for that is HUGE. You love the 'i love you, i hate you, but i cannot escape from you' -> bonus points if it's history, language or culture that ties your ship together. Additionally: -completed devoted to the one they love (and would suffer for them) is a dynamic that interests you -u think the italian language is hot af -i get the feeling that michele is either how u want to be loved (idyllic love), or michele is how you love, cos that's your comfort ship (sic/ire)

1. That's pretty accurate! I have this fear that I'll never have enough time on this earth to do what I want (but I've been working on getting rid of that fear. There's enough time). I'm so fascinated by the world that we're living in, what used to be and how it relates to what is. The endless multiplicities of identity that a group can contain or even an individual.

So indeed, I make OCs based on what I learn about the world and in turn the OCs give me a good way to interact safely with the knowledge I find. It's a perpetuum mobile of creativity and knowledge.

And history is just the entirety of human experience on this planet, so trying to breathe some more life into it via Historical AUs is one of my favourite ways to engage with it. I love writing term papers as much as trying to apply the scientific findings to actual people. (I think one of my favourite things may be Sexuality in the res publica AUs, the do's & don't's that aren't the same as they are now. I freed Michele & Lovino from their catholic guilt, only to immediately constrain them with the class & gender expectations of the Roman Republic lmao).

2. I never thought about it like that, but yes! I enjoy bickering because it's an admission of closeness! You can't have friendly bickering if you're not close! (Which is why Hugo & Alois Are Like That. I enjoy them constantly mocking each other greatly, but it's never friendly and it always ends in a mess).

My family had and has its shares of problems, but I know that we love each other. Immensely. We're also that kind of family to constantly poke fun at each others, so I think that's why I instinctively resort to this kind of dynamic, with any kind of close relationships. It's not the ONLY one, because that would be boring, there are so many more ways to express love and it naturally doesn't suit every kind of character.

(I just remembered when we were at the lunch table and my dad spotted a magpie on the stable roof.

Mom: " ... why are my curtains pulled back again?"

Dad: "So that I can watch magpies.")

Here are some more non-romantic examples from my work/with my characters:

AA(The last one was a response to a tiktok that was basically "Asking your nice friends for fashion advice vs asking your mean/honest friends for advice")

3. I DO love the "i love you, i hate you, but i cannot escape from you". Maybe also for personal reasons, we're not getting that private on here. It's one of the inherent tragic aspects of Hetalia that has fascinated me for a long time: They're human and they feel like humans, but they lack part of their free will. They somehow have to survive entire lifetimes, loving and hating and remembeand worse, they have to bear decisions they themselves don't necessarily make. The relationships they form with the only other people like them, whether it'd be bonds of platonic, familiar or romantic love, the only solace and stability might have, may be snatched away from them. It can turn to hate or grow cold or another nation can disappear afterall and there is nothing they as individual people could have done about it. It's a double-edged sword - You tie yourself to someone who could be your raft as well as sink you to the bottom of the ocean.

I inevitably ended up keeping this kind of relationship in my "Like Father Like Son" Universe. Now, quick disclaimer - I am not saying they are solely the victim of their circumstances. They're all criminals in my AU and I have zero patience for making excuses for the Organized Crime. I worry greatly about the problematic aspects of my work and am well aware of them. The last thing I ever want to do is actively romanticize the Mafia. I want to add for the following part, too, that I draw as much on the real world as possible, but the structures of the organized crime in LFLS are a little more reminiscent of Monarchy or Aristocrazy.

With that out of the way however, the worldbuilding in LFLS mirrors their existence in Hetalia. Escaping their position would come with great dangers, even though their existence as is will never allow them true happiness. They're different from the people around them and there is a special connection between the Hetalia characters as bosses here - All of them inherited this position. They all basically suffer under the same yoke, they all are faced with the same difficulties. And, like in Hetalia, some of their decisions are out of their control. Business overrides their private life. They have to look out for their own people and families, for their own survival, so they may hurt the ones they love. And yet, and yet, they cling to one another. Try to make it as functional as possible. Take the pain for the relief. It's not pretty, but it's fascinating as an onlooker and fictional tragedies are also a great outlet for one's own emotions.

4. That also kind of ties in with "completed devoted to the one they love (and would suffer for them) is a dynamic that interests you". Hells yeah it does, because two people losing themselves is beautiful. Yes, it can be toxic, yes one should take care of oneself and have boundaries. But unconditional love is something I believe we all yearn for and I hope I one day get to devote myself to someone else again, as much as is healthy.

Again, it's also not just perfect for lovers, but for siblings and guardian figures. Paddy would lay his life down for Harry, Charlie & Soph. ("There's no pain that I won't go through/Even if I have to die for you" - Starset; "I love my children more than anything in this life! I will chose their happiness over mine, every time!" - Slightly changed version of Congratulations from the Hamilton Mixtape).

Gilbert who's so eager to be here for Ludwig and to protect him; to take anything off his brothers shoulder that he can.

And on the romantic side, is there anything better than two people simping head over heels for each other??? Or when a character wants to kiss/fuck another one so bad that it makes him look stupid??? I also love more quiet, more serene relationships, but to appreciate their calm, you have to make a storm to compare them to. All storm or all calm only gets you bored and exhausted.

5. Hell yeah do I think the Italian language is hot af, who'd disagree with me? It also unlocks emotions that were previously unavailable when I listen to Italian music. (German does the same. There is just something to each language that it can express certain feelings in a way like no other). YOU tell me that you listen to Shimmy Shimmy by Takagi & Ketra and aren't hypnotized by Giusy's voice. No other soundtrack for my Sicilians, Greeks and Turks fooling around on a beach and being highly erotic with each other.

6. Hm, this may be tying in with 2 again. I think I'm more of a Harry, personally, to be honest! (Nerdy, got aggression problems, cheeky, hothead, can't really cook). I think SicIre is my comfort ship because it's the type of love my parents had. It's what I am most accustomed to and there's also just a beauty in not caring what the rest of the world has to say and doing your own thing. And Harry isn't the prettiest bloke on the block and will probably never think of himself as beautiful, but that is fine because Michele looks at him like a sky full of stars. And the entire world can tell him Michele's a bastard, Harry won't listen to them. From a hetalia standpoint, these two are islands who had to suffer a lot from foreign occupation and being regarded as backwards & weird. Sicily tries to keep the autonomy it has and makes sure that others know they aren't like the mainland and Ireland fought hard for its independence from the British empire. From a LFLS standpoint, Harry embraces Michele with all of his past baggage and jagged pieces. Harry is the first person Michele never fell out of love with, the only one, and he's here to reassure Harry that he is worth caring for every step of the way.

#beareplies #amber #wow this was LONG lol #about me

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Deadpool 3: The MCU Questions and Connections

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Deadpool is coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While the X-Men Cinematic Universe fizzled out as Disney bought out Fox, it doesn’t take a marketing genius to remember that Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson is a license to print money. Much like JK Simmons reprised his role as J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man: Far From Home, we’re once again going to see Reynolds as Deadpool because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! And even if he was broken, Deadpool has the innate ability to fix hims—

Sorry, got lost there.

They aren’t just going to reintroduce the character like Jameson, though. We’re getting Deadpool 3 and it’s going to be rated R. This will be a sequel…but in a different continuity than its first two films. Interesting novelty.

Deadpool 3 is the ultimate wild card because we don’t really know how it’s going to really work. Just the idea of Deadpool 3 being part of MCU canon fills the room with elephants. So while we have a long time to wait on this, here are some questions that arise about Deadpool 3.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR CABLE?

We got one Thanos joke in Deadpool 2, but if Cable’s coming back, then expect even more references to Josh Brolin’s other big Marvel role.

Cable’s a tough nut to crack here. On one hand, he was such a major fixture in Deadpool 2 and it felt like a given that he’d be sticking around as Deadpool’s long-suffering gun buddy. He even chooses to stay in the present and save Deadpool because he feels he can fix the future by making a better world.

Watch everything Marvel and more on Disney+, right here!

But…what future? Cable’s future is null and void at this point. While Deadpool 2 didn’t go into canon connections, Cable’s father hasn’t even been established in the MCU. Not to mention the headaches that come from mixing and matching X-Men-style time travel and how it works in the MCU.

He’s too big a name to just ignore, but he’s also going to be a square peg in a round hole.

WILL X-FORCE BE CONSIDERED THE FIRST MUTANTS OF THE MCU?

Deadpool 3 doesn’t have a release date, but realistically, it can’t be showing up any earlier than 2023. We’re going to have two-to-three years of a stacked Marvel movie release calendar going on before we get to see Colossus and the others again.

Now, they haven’t announced any X-Men movies during that time (yet), but that doesn’t mean that mutants won’t be popping up. We all know that making mutants work as a concept in a superhero universe that’s been around for nearly a decade and a half is something that’s going to need some thought, but if they do figure it out, they could always sprinkle characters into different movies and shows. For instance, it would absolutely make sense for Mystique and/or Rogue to show up in Captain Marvel 2.

There are even rumors out there that a certain tentacled, Soviet mutant will be making his debut in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Man, did they really go thirteen X-Men movies without giving us Omega Red and his MUTANT DEATH FACTOR?

Then again, there’s also the possibility that X-Force and the like won’t get any real screentime, focusing just on Deadpool, Vanessa, and maybe Dopinder.

WILL THE CONNECTION BE PART OF THE NARRATIVE?

Even from the original screenplay, Deadpool and its sequel were really loose about its connections to the other X-Men movies. Deadpool mentions he doesn’t know which Xavier actor he’d be meeting, established characters are extremely different from their previous appearances (Deadpool included), and even the X-Men’s public status as superheroes isn’t really something you see in the main movies outside of the first act of Dark Phoenix. Good luck figuring out how Wade’s movies tie into X-Men movie canon.

It would be absolutely forgivable if they kept that loose approach with the MCU. The difference is that the MCU is actually coherent. The X-Men movies are a gigantic pile of contradictions and retcons that leave you with a bunch of jigsaw pieces that just don’t fit well. Even when they tried to fix it all with time travel, they still screwed it up immediately after.

Also, why the hell did nobody age between First Class and Dark Phoenix?

Movies

Is New Mutants an Ending for the Fox X-Men Universe?

By Gavin Jasper

Movies

The Many Loves of Deadpool: 14 Ladies Who Loved the Merc with a Mouth

By Gavin Jasper

Ahem. So anyway, the MCU has its cracks, but its pride comes from the fact that the movies and some of the higher-profile spinoffs tie together and do it well. You’re more likely to see Deadpool 3 play ball a little more specifically with the world around him.

But how important is this change of scenery? Is it an unexplained alteration that we aren’t meant to question and barely notice or is it going to be part of the storyline? This is a time when we’re already getting WandaVision, Spider-Man 3, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness so close together and they’re all about exploring and mixing realities. For all we know, Deadpool might even show up in the Doctor Strange 2 post-credits. It would make as much sense as anything.

WHAT BIG NAMES ARE GOING TO GET ROASTED?

Deadpool’s already made references to the MCU here and there, like doing the Hulk lullaby to Juggernaut, fighting on a Helicarrier, being old friends with a guy whose very identity is tied to being from HYDRA, and whatnot. What happens when he goes full ham? Are we going to see Weasel recast with Ed Norton or Terrance Howard?

But really, we have dozens of movies to go on. Lots of stuff to poke fun at. Did he lose Vanessa again due to the Snap and then get her back? Is he unsure whether or not he’s allowed to talk about Venom? Is he going to be meta about the fact that it’s probably for the best that a Ryan Reynolds character didn’t show up until after the Scarlett Johansson character was killed off?

WHAT SMALL NAMES ARE GOING TO GET ROASTED?

Making jokes about Thanos and the Infinity Stones is one thing, but I’m into the obscure jabs. There are rumors going around about certain Netflix Defenders characters popping up in MCU projects, such as Daredevil being in Spider-Man 3. That means I only want Deadpool to dig deeper.

While I wouldn’t be against seeing knocks on Runaways or Cloak and Dagger, the real target I’m interested in is Inhumans. Inhumans, the property that Marvel spent years and so much effort trying to overshadow mutants with only to absolutely fall on their face when the movie was changed to a TV series and then flopped in its first season. The kind of project that is supposedly one of those “never bring it up or you will be fired” blunders.

Hey, they put that series on Disney+. Might as well give everyone a reason to check it out.

WHO WILL BE THE VILLAIN?

Deadpool’s rogues gallery hasn’t always been too impressive. During his defining Joe Kelly run, his big bad was T-Ray, but following writers proceeded to phase him out of importance. Even though Ajax was from the Deadpool comics, he was mainly there for one story arc before getting killed off (he did get briefly resurrected after the first movie came out, but even then only had one appearance). Deadpool 2 had Juggernaut and Black Tom, who were more plug-and-play X-Men villains in general who only had a limited connection to Deadpool himself.

Really, if anyone’s going to be the villain in Deadpool 3, it’s Mr. Sinister. Deadpool has dealt with him a few times in the comics and he was, for whatever reason, the main villain in the aggressively mediocre Deadpool video game. Thing is, if Deadpool 3 is the last true gasp of the X-Men Cinematic Universe as it transfers into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then it’s probably going to be the big villain that they spent several movies building up (X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, New Mutants, and technically Logan) only to never have him appear.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Besides, it’s not like Sinister is above fourth-wall breaking humor. You could loosely base the story on What If #100, a story where Sinister became aware of his fictional nature and tried to break free from its imprisonment.

Why should Deadpool have all the self-aware fun?

The post Deadpool 3: The MCU Questions and Connections appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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dexcidium · 6 years

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So I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now… my review so far of Fate/Apocrypha. Keep in mind that I’ve read all the way up to the translated LNs, which is only up to the end of volume four, as well as this being written prior to the ending of the anime. As of now, it’s only up to episode 23. Let me preface this by saying that I love Fate. The lore and that distinct writing style ever so present within the series. The (mostly) well represented servants within the series. The character interactions, the relationship between servant and master, and everything else in between. That being said… I’ll keep this part short because I am prooooobably gonna go on and on forever on my thoughts later on.

TLDR: The concept was interesting, hype and it had some really great hooks. However, it felt flat on so many of its percieved promises and then… he happened. Sieg is a black hole that made Apoc so much worse than it actually is. Everything is fucking weak overall aaaaaand once again, FUCK YOU SIEG. YOU WASTE OF SPACE AND TIME.

I promise it’s not too long.

Not at all.

Right, let’s get this out of the way. I think Higashide can be a good writer. There were some good characterisation throughout Apoc, as well as some genuinely well written moments. However, there were many failures on his end as a writer. And it only became more evident in the anime. I’ll get to that later. First of all, let’s start with what I liked about it.

Jeanne(Light Novel): Those of you that know me know how much I adore Jeanne. And since FGO was a waifu game, I initially only liked her for her looks. No hiding that fact. But as I read more and more, getting sucked in to the hell that is the Type Moon wiki, I started to like her more and more based on personality. Again, those that know me know that I find these vanilla heroines extremely boring and bland. (SorryArturiaIjustreallydidn'tlikeyouoryourstoryarcinFSN). But of course, since this is TM, there was bound to be more than meets the eye. Like goddamn, she’s a literal saint. Probably the most well known in the world even. I expected her to be a goody-two-shoes and nothing more. But BOY was I wrong. Jeanne: *prays for hours everyday*. Also Jeanne: *exorcises 1000000 unborn children, suggests to crash a plane into the gardens without even blinking*. Her constant struggle of being called a saint and rejecting that very premise was frankly quite shocking because of the established facts about how much she loved God. There was divide in her character. And suddenly she wasn’t this benevolent, all-loving saint anymore. She was Jeanne. A religious girl who fought for her beliefs, and died fighting for them. The world imposed to her a title that she didn’t necessarily want. But her characterisation ends there… at least the actual interesting parts. Oh don’t worry, I’ll get to *that* later.

The Red Faction: Boy these guys were fun! The Red Servants felt much more organic and light hearted compared to the other faction. Granted that part made sense since Darnic is a literal Nazi. Anyway… these guys were just so much more fun. From Karna’s literal and metaphorical roasts, to Shakespeare’s loud and outspoken cravings for tragedy, to Achilles’ constant and flirtatious admiration towards Atalanta (AKA the woman who beat up his dad), to the crazy, fucked up and manipulative asshole that is Shirou (not Emiya) Kotomine. They were just fun to watch. I could go on about the tinier details but that’d make this shit even longer… MOVING ON!

Kairi and Mordred: Oh boy these two are just… perfect. A father son combo like no other. And an absolute joy to watch. They filled a void sorely lacking in each other’s existence. And you can clearly tell that by their interactions. Kairi was edgy and cool but unlike someone like Kiritsugu, he was easy going and didn’t take everything so seriously. A cool dad. And Mordred… god I love this little scamp of a knight. Mordred is adorable in her own little way while being cool and badass like her master/dad. They were just a fun duo to watch in the series where master and servant interaction was rather lacking of interesting dynamics. These two just worked. And they worked well.

The premise: basically any other HGW times two. Goddamn was the set up cool. That’s all, really.

Right, so this is the section where I shit on Apoc from both a viewer’s stand point, as well as from a narrative and structural stand point. To stop myself from going on an even further tangent, I’ll be talking about Sieg last. Other than this part. Let me just say that he is pretty much directly linked for like… 70% of this show’s major flaws. But again… that comes last. Lets start off with the stupid points in Apocrypha and the disastrous end of the first volume. I’ll also be comparing it to the anime, which was a hot mess. Not quite garbage. That came later.

So… the characters. Way too many of them. It was evident that Higashide could not handle such a large cast. It was basically what a normal grail war was times by a factor of two and then add a little bit more. So what did he do? Take out half of the masters by having Amakusa straight up manipulating the entire thing. A good move I’d say… but there was still too many for him to handle. It was all over the place. But frankly, he handled the earlier parts quite well in the LN. There was, however, a gigantic lack of characterisation for many of the earlier characters. Of course those were the same characters that pretty much needlessly died off for shock effect. For example, Siegfried (henceforth shall now be known as Siegfriend) had me going “this makes no sense" rather than “YOU KILLED SIEGFRIED. YOU MONSTERS". And as a writer, if you can’t make your audience feel the emotion that you intended them to – then you’ve failed. And the series is plagued with these rather stupid deaths. A lot of them felt pointless and held no significant impact on the overarching narrative. They just died. And I didn’t feel anything. The delivery felt weak and half-assed, played for fake emotion.

And speaking of deaths, Darnic and Vlad’s… no that, that was fucking stupid on top of a pile of stupid. Well, this felt like actual lost potential. Unlike a certain other character… Darnic was being built up to be the main antagonist… and he felt like he would have been a good one. If not for the structure being a battle royale-ish. And it is one because people pretty much did their own thing pretty early on in the story. Getting back on track, Darnic and Vlad had a relationship akin to Tokiomi and Gilgamesh from Fate Zero. And that is the servant being more of a master than the actual master. This was good as we were seeing a variety if servant/master dynamics. Darnic, however, was no pushover. This man had been established to do whatever it fucking takes to get what he wants. And he had been succeeding too. Just what grand scheme was he about to pull off- aaaaaaand he’s dead. Dude talked a lot of shit… nothing happened. Not even a lasting impact. He just became one with Vlad and that was it. What the fuck was that? There wasn’t any sort of intelligence or cunningness that he had displayed before. Oh and poor Vlad. Man, he was the real victim here. This part I actually felt for. Because he became what he didn’t want the most. The Legend of Dracula. A vampire. And not one of Nasu’s myriad of vampire OCs. The OG, Count Dracula. It was meant to be an actual tragedy… yet… it left no impact. So when Darnic’s BRILLAINT plan of fusing his and Vlad’s soul together, while activating his Legend of Dracula NP, he was made out to be this near unstoppable being that needed all these powerful heroic spirits boosted by a command seal to be stopped. But really… he wasn’t. Fuck, he didn’t even kill anyone important. And no one at all in the LN. I was expecting him to pull some Hellsing Ultimate bullshit and turn the entirety of Trifas into a ghoul-infested city. But nope. Nothing came out of it.

He ends up getting fucked over by the ACTUAL main Antagonist, Amakusa Shirou Tokisada via baptism rites. This was meant to make him look powerful or whatever. Except the entire fight scene is really dumb because if you know anything about vampires, they have very specific weaknesses. Two of those are the sun and holiness. And not just any weakness. Deathly weakness. AND WHO DO WE HAPPEN TO HAVE!? The most famous saint in the world and the son of a sun god who literally has sunlight woven into his skin. This whole thing was made even more stupid but the fact that the initial plan in the LN was to wait until dawn for the sun to come out. Also in the LN, Jeanne was poking away at Vlad using her holy spear which she did not do in the anime. By the way, Jeanne can do the exact same thing as fuckboi Shirou. Only even better because she’s an actual saint and a Ruler. Plus she used Baptism Rites to exorcise Jack as well. Seriously, Karna could have hugged Darnicula to death. This whole scene is stupid, man.

Continuing the stupid death trend, Avicebron and Adam… god that was stupid. Roche you say? Who? Kid was barely a character. He was made to be killed. He had no build up. No actual back story. And barely a personality. In short he didn’t matter at all. But dear god, this fight was meant to be the Cthullu fight equivalent. Yet again, this was somehow even more anti-climactic and even more boring than the Darnicula fight. Again, nobody important died. They’re killing for the sake of killing. And it was just fucking weak man. I barely felt anything. Other than the seething hatred and boredom of course. And again, it was meant to make somebody else look good. Our “protagonist". Anyway, this fight was dumb and boring. Some good animation in the anime though. I will give it that much.

And this was the point in the series that everything pretty much got thrown out the window and it was evident that it wasn’t going to get any better. Jeanne lost her neutrality, literally 2/3rds of the Ygdmillenia family didn’t even really matter in the end, the Red faction’s fucked off to cross the border or something, Sieg is a super special servant/master hybrid rolled into one with super special BLACK command seals because he’s the super special protagonist aaaaand Jack’s fucked off back to Reika. Who at this point also barely has a personality and back story. But still way less than most people that have already died. And that’s just sad man. I, as part of the audience, couldn’t give less of a shit about any characters except a set few. If I didn’t know most of them through Grand Order already, I would have dropped this shit ages ago. And dear god, Jeanne still doesn’t have an established personality besides existing for SHIGGU-KUN in the anime. The LN does a far better job with characterisation. Even if it is still a heaping dumpster fire. And then they do pretty much nothing except side quest to kill Jack and exorcise 10,000 babies. Which, despite feeling like a loose end that they had to tie up despite being in a rush to go after the Red faction, was actually my favourite scene in the LN due to the fact that it completely changes the reader’s perception of Jeanne. Of course the anime version sucked ass.

Right, continuing on… this scene. It did not work for the anime. And I’ll have to start by explaining that Jeanne’s characterisation does not exist beyond Sieg in the anime. A lot of her characterisation outside of that was cut. Which is a damn shame because she became what I hated the most in an anime character. Bland, generic, no real motivation, no established personality yet somehow still being out of character whenever that shithead Steve-kun is around. Not only was Jeanne no longer the Jeanne I knew, she was replaced by bumbling tsundere who blushes for a wet sock. It was cheap and boring. And this fucking harem Romanian romance BS that was happening was so fucking out of place. It was evident that Jeanne had barely become a character anymore. She was just waifu bait like Astolfo now. Putting that aside, even in the LN, Jeanne still becomes a mess. While I have not personally read the last volume since it has not been translated, I have read summaries. And my god is everything stupid. I’ll return to this part once I cover the long awaited shitfest…

WARNING. As this is my personal review, it is very opinionated. And as you can probably tell… this is very personal.

Sieg. Oh you waste of space, you don’t fucking deserve that name. Like every both of his being, it’s half assed. I mentioned that Sieg was a blackhole in the beginning. And that’s because he sucks up any bit of good in this series whenever he’s in a scene. Good characterisation from well established characters? NAH LETS BEND OVER AND LET SHIGGU KUN WIN AND HE WILL BE LOVED FOREVER AND EVER BECAUSE HE’S SO GOOD AND PURE AND INNOCCENT YOU GUYS. Right, now that that’s out of the way. It’s time to dive into exactly why this dude is such a demerit to the series overall.

First and foremost, he disrupts the entirety of the story structure. While it could have certainly worked, it most definitely did not here. Sieg’s role in terms of plot devices was to centralise the story as a whole. However, Higashide went too far and just… ended up giving Sieg far too big a role. This, in turn took away a lot from the rest of the cast. Not only their screen time but their whole character. Yet despite all this “development" he was getting, he still barely had a character. Some may say that was the point. Sieg is indeed a blank slate that was meant to learn as he grew. But the thing is – he never did. Instead, there was this identity crisis that was never really addressed in the actual narrative. However, as it stands… the whole fiasco was extremely pointless. Sieg remains a flat character and his entire goal was immediately solved the episode after he decided to do it. Worst of all, there was no sense of struggle. Not even a spec of it. He just sorta did it. And my god was it so boring to watch. Even after when he’s trying to get his morals straight, it basically boils down to him asking people if killing was bad. And it just kept dragging on and on and on and on! And in the end… nothing came out of it. By the time they were about to go and attack the Hanging Gardens, barely anything changed. Basically, it was a giant waste of time.

And of course, we have to address Siegfried. While certainly, yes, you could argue that tragedy is the very essence of Siegfried’s story. Even in his own legend we were only told of his story through a series of flashbacks. In Apocrypha, Siegfried’s suffering continues. He has a shit master, he can’t even fucking talk, his brotp moment gets cucked by the fetus, and he never actually gets anything that he wanted. And as a result; he was sorely undeveloped. Then he fucking dies. It was meant to come off as a heroic sacrifice but… there was nothing there to latch on emotionally, as well as making no sense. For one, at this point everything about Sieg was just to make the audience feel sorry for him. That’s it. Nothing else. Secondly, the homunculus and Siegfried had no real emotional connection. They literally just met. Hence, making the sacrifice feel… well, emotionless. They try to reason it off with some BS about Siegfried doing something selfish… but it was still a selfless action. So I never bought it as a proper reason. Now keep in mind, that I personally was trying to keep an open mind about Sieg when I began reading Apoc. I had heard bad things and the stuff that people were saying pretty much embodied everything I hated in a protagonist. Except… it was a lot worse. Sieg is a lot worse. At this point in time, I didn’t even hate Sieg yet. He just had little to no presence or relevance, nor even a semblance of a personality that I did not give a Rin’s ass. Then… Siegfried tore his fucking heart out – his own heart out, literally and made Sieg…. eat it? It was… really stupid. Because A: Servants’ spiritual cores are their hearts and they wouldn’t be able to even move without it the moment it gets torn out. And of course before he dies out Siegfried gets his only redeeming moment… chock one up to poor pacing…. yay. So just when I starting to give a shit about Siegfried, he’s out of the picture. For this… thing. And as someone who’s aware about the consequences of having a servant’s body part attached to another human being (AKA Heaven’s Feel), I was expecting some consequences. Horrible, horrible consequences. But…

Nothing.

But I’ll be generous and gloss that one over since it wasn’t established in the plot here.

Now I may be going on and on about expectations and shit but that’s because literally everything in Apoc was trying to outdo Zero/FSN. Let me go on a tangent for a bit and explain. Twice the masters, twice the servants, a more exciting and dynamic premise. But in actuallity, every bit of delivery was extremely weak. A lot of it was just below par. I was promised something great but even as I continue to lower the bar, Apoc continued to limbo under it.

Anyway, back to that useless sack of shit. The anime didn’t really have this but my god… the following moments is what made me hate Apoc right then and there. So in the Light Novel, Jeanne senses a new disturbance due to Sieg’s unique (*rolls eyes*) existence. So as she investigates, she goes and talks to the black faction (they fucking skipped the theological debate between Jeanne and Vlad in the anime btw), until she finds Sieg.

Then she collapses because of Laeticia needing food still cuz host body and all that. So far I was buying it. Then Sieg carries her. O..kay? Then blushing… Uhhhhhhh…. and when they finally reach a village and was allowed a room for the both of them… it devolved into a generic light novel plot.

They had to share a bed.

Girl blushes.

Dense protag is dense.

UHHHHH

WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? You’d think I was kidding but this id exactly what happens. And it was this precise moment that my expectations drastically dropped to near zero. It came out of fucking nowhere. I don’t get why they’d not-so-subtly force this shitty romance between characters who just met in a primarily action-focused novel. It wasn’t even good. I could open SAO and whatever other clone and they’d do it just as badly. And it was at this moment that Sieg became the worst thing about Apoc for me. But ohohoho… just as you think it’s hit rock bottom, it somehow goes BELOW that.

GO BELOW AND BEYOND. MINUS ULTRAAAAA!

Okay, so skipping a couple of events, Jeanne fucks back off to the main battle where the Red Faction actually gets their shit together. She does nothing but run around for the entire volume. Like. Literally does nothing except save wet sock’s ass. Anyway, while everyone else is having rather personal battles with Chiron fighting his former pupil, Achilles, the two Lancers/Aces of them having one hell of a fight and arguing their religious beliefs, Fran confronts fuccboi Shirou and gets screwed over by Shakespeare’s NP (and we get to see her real struggles as well as a bit more on how Caules is as a master), Astolfo being a loser as always, Atalanta being… whatever she was doing, she doesn’t really get interesting until after, and Mordred being the shitty driver she is, giving Kairi a heart attack. Right so before this gigantic fight happens, Sieg finally decides that he wanted to save his homunculus buddies. Which is a fine motivation. …that got immediately solved because everyone else was too busy actually fighting. Zero tension or risk here. Anyway after one of his major character motivations gets solved so stupidly easily, he decides to pull a Shirou Emiya (only a lot worse and he doesn’t make sense) and fight the servants. In which Mordred immediately kills his ass but is the only one that does damage for some reason (gotta make him seem useful and interesting), despite Fran doing next to no damage. The servant. Doing no damage. But this guy did. O… okay. So he gets killed, I rejoice like Kirei when he hears an Emiya is participating in a HGW on Christmas day, the evil is defeated, the world is a better pla- and he’s alive. Once again. Not even an episode later. Absolutely no tension. Do you see what my problem is with wet sock as a character? There’s almost no stakes for him. No proper emotional connections to a lot of characters. Characters die for him to live. Said characters who have never even had a conversation with him prior. So tell me how am I supposed to feel? Certainly not satisfied or even happy. In fact I’m frustrated that a far more interesting character died so that this bland fucko could live. And it doesn’t even make sense! He gets a fucking power up too for whatever fucking reason. So Fran accidentally zaps him back to life when she sacrifices himself to kill Mordred. Now he has command spells that are black (because HE’S SO SUPER SPECIAL YOU GUYS). And he can now turn into Siegfried.

What kind of stupid writing is this? It makes no sense. Progression is fucking stupid. No explanation. No proper emotional connection. No proper stakes. No risks. And above all else… there’s no entertainment. I’m so goddamn bored. And I’m already sick of our main protagonist. And he takes up a lot of the time. I can’t connect to this character. Even if I can’t relate to his struggle, I should be able to at least feel for him. But I didn’t. Because I know that somehow, someway, he’ll BS his way through it with fake struggle that has no tension. Wet sock is lacking in every single area. And him being the protagonist highlights his shittiness as a character. Honestly, he could have worked if they didn’t have a forced romance or if he was the main character. He could have provided the view of the homunculus. Instead Toole, who barely appears, does a better fucking job of that more than the guy that takes up half the screen time. And at this point, I’d rather have him gone completely rather than try and make him even remotely interesting. Even his introduction was sketchy to me. It was just a whole lot of “FEEL SORRY FOR ME. ARE YOU FEELING IT NOW MISTER KRABS? ARE YOU REALLY FEELING IT??????”. But I didn’t. I didn’t know shit about this fucko. Why should I care? There was nothing to latch on to, no emotional hook. Not even an interesting characteristic. And he never develops one. Instead, I feel like he just steals shit. Just like him receiving Siegfried’s heart and taking half his name, his entire character is half-assed. Not quite a self insert because there isn’t a power fantasy to be fulfilled. That sort of fantasy is immediately ruined because he literally turns into someone else. Can’t really project yourself onto someone who turns into someone else. A terrible MC due to him bullshitting everything and surviving everything with no real consequence to him. He just makes the story terrible by his sheer existence.

Right, so going back to one of my earlier points. That scene with Jeanne, Atalanta, and Jack. A very pivotal moment for Jeanne and Atalanta. Jeanne, who was a revered saint decides to confront Jack the Ripper, who is the embodiments of one part of the legends where he killed pregnant ladies or something. I don’t exactly remember all the details with Jack. Anyway, the important part is that Jack is made up of a bunch of unborn souls. Children. And Atalanta, whose wish is for the happiness of all the children in the world, sees all this. The horror of the tormented children, not even a chance given to live. She’s hit right at the core of her being because she was abandoned by her own parents on a mountain for not being a male in her legend. So Jeanne’s decided that she can’t save these children. They’re already long gone. Of course Atalanta was forcing her own beliefs towards this revered saint. It seemed that to Atalanta, saints were miracle workers, they could do crazy things. And historically, yes, that was exactly who they were. And as Jeanne rejects the very notion of being pronounced as saint, saying that she was nothing more than a village girl who answered god’s calling, she demolishes Atalanta’s view. The Archer’s entire world. And with the baptism rites going, Atalanta screaming for her to stop, and Jeanne following her own set of beliefs… it was a very personal moment for all of them. In the anime, Sieg was there for some reason. He literally just took up screen time. He feels like he was just there. Added absolutely nothing and just wasted time. And this annoyed me because this was a very personal moment for two other characters. Yet this wet sock is just… there. Intrusive. Like he needs to be included in everything. It was an absolutely well done scene in the LN where Jeanne’s beliefs are far more established and she actually has personality outside of Steve-kun. Where he wasn’t there.

Basically what I’m saying is Apoc is really good when he’s not around. Seriously, it’s so much better. Achilles’s fight with Chiron was very personal, so was Achilles’ fight with Atalnta. When it’s personal, it’s good. Sieg has no personality or history with others. No emotion. No relations. Nothing. Just stale bread that’s winning against people who have nothing to do with him. And I can’t help but get frustrated at this goddamn show for that.

OKAY: Lightning round of shitty wet sock things:

Spends a fuck tonne of time asking people “are humans bad hurr durr” and comes out with the solution that he basically wants to be hero of justice and protect humanity or whatever. It’s never stated in the anime but this is what Siegfried wanted. So he’s stealing personal character motivations too. Waste of episodes that could have been used developing far more interesting characters.

Jeanne (in the anime ESPECIALLY) only exists to be his love interest. She isn’t allowed to be anything more. And her big character revelation is that she loves Sieg(big surprise). She acts against her neutrality a lot of the time because of him. When she strongly declines picking sides at the very beginning. The reasong for this is that he has nothing to do with the war. BUT GUESS WHAT? HE DOES BECAUSE HE DECIDES TO GET INVOLVED IN IT. So there is no reason to protect him. She acts against her own beliefs so that she could be waifu bait for this fucko. They say it’s all Laeticia or whatever but to NO ONE’S surprise, it was Jeanne all along (yaaaaay….).

He becomes more Siegfried than Siegfried. Well in life, Siegfried could spam Balmung as fast as he could swing it. But he can’t do that as a servant of the Saber class because it’s a big Noble Phantasm. But guess whaaaaaat? Sieg can do that because he apparently also has galvanism from Fran for some fucking reason, and to pour more salt on the wound, he can upgrade Balmung to EX Rank using a command seal. Which, mind you has never been done before nor foreshadowed. Karna’s Vasavi Shakti was still more powerful thought because this dude don’t play around for some ho. And ya’ll know how much of an asspull this was.

Speaking of that fight, from what I’ve heard in the LN, he actually had a clear shot of Siegfriend’s back but for some reason didn’t decide to take it. I can’t 100% confirm this but if that was the case, that’s another thing of making characters act OOC. Karna would never let someone win a fight. And this is him with a time limit while wet sock has a shroud from Jeanne that auto heals him, a bunch of help from a bunch of other people. Yadda, yadda, yadda, ass pulls. He wins the fight. Fuck off wet sock-kun.

Jeanne, for some ungodly reason is unaffected by really personal things like her mother talking to her and reasoning that she shouldn’t have gone off to war, seeing her fellow Frenchmen die in the hundred years war, and even seeing the room where her best friend murdered a bunch of kids after her own death. Yes, she knows it’s all fake. But when Shakespeare shows her images of Sieg burning at the stake instead of her and his decapitated head… she freaks the fuck out. Why? She knows it’s fake. She’s known this dude for like a week. You could argue that she feels personally responsible for involving him in the war. But once again. This doesn’t make sense. Sieg chose to involve himself. He chose to fight. He chose to fight a riskless war because he’s the main character. Of course in the shittiest reveal ever, she realises that she wuuuuuuuvs him. Fuck right off. AND DON’T GIVE THAT ‘LOVE WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS’ SHIT.

SPEAKING OF THIS BULLSHIT. There was this utterly stupid scene in the Light Novel where Sieg and jeanne see a couple or whatever. There was a baby or something. And Sieg asks Jeanne if servants could get pregnant. Of course, since she looooooooves him so much, her immediate thoughts were “DOES STEVE-KUN WANT TO IMPREGNATE ME!!??!?!?!?”. I wanted to hack out blood when i heard that was a thing. Thank god that it wasn’t in the anime.

He cucks Jeanne out of killing Shiroumine, the big bad antagonist of the series. The anime and promotional material is making them out to be rivals when they have zero ideological battles, have never even spoken to each other before, nor an allusion to some sort of rivalry at all. It just happens. At this point Sieg doesn’t even have any command spells and he pulls Blasted Tree(Fran’s NP, yeah he stole that too) out of his ass. Kill stealing bitch. Reported. Blocked. Emailed Harada. Email Jeff Kaplan. Perma-ban pls. Basically, Shiroumine was a shit villain because his plans weren’t really clear. Salvation of humanity was too broad in a sense on how the actual fuck he was gonna pull it off, and it wasn’t explained all too well. And with Sieg being the contender for the shittest protagonist I have ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on, the main villain just became… fucking boring. I say villain but he was an antagonist. A direct result of bad character writing.

The so called romantic ending is an even shittier version of one of the endings in the Fate route in FSN. Like it’s a straight up copy. Imagery and everything.

Oh yeah, he turns into a dragon for whatever reason. Comes out of nowhere. Like zero build up. Then he fights monsters for the rest of his existence on the other side of the world or something. It’s really stupid. It’s meant to feel heroic but I don’t feel that at all. When a heroic sacrifice that’s meant to make me feel all sorts of emotions, makes me laugh instead, you’ve done a shit job at writing.

There’s probably more that I can’t remember at the top of my head. But there’s only so much that I can complain about. Oh who am I kidding, there’s a chat in one of my discord servers that we spend all our time at least a couple times a week on how shit this fuckhead is. He’s that bad, honestly.

To conclude, Apocrypha could have been great. It had a lot of promise. But it failed on nearly every end. The grandiose battles fall flat because nobody actually cares about a lot of the characters since more a lot of them are severely underdeveloped. And despite the narrative spending the most time with him, Steve-kun was a massive failure of a main character. He was a shounen protagonist in the wrong genre. Actually, he’s a generic light novel protagonist in Fate. And it didn’t work. Because fate is so much more deeper. So much lore. And I love that crazy, well thought out world. Wet sock-kun doesn’t have a place in it. Not in a narrative like this. Not in a world where depth can go seemingly forever. And especially not against characters who have actual strong personality and rich histories. And so, he fails. Sieg fails. The actual self-inserts of a character like Hakuno and Guda do a better job at fulfilling their role than an established character. And that’s fucking pathetic. I had more fun reading through Hakuno’s nurse fetish and Guda’s snarky attitude. Honestly, it is tiring. I was constantly frustrated at Apoc. I still am. The anime will be ending soon. And I’ll probably just laugh at how bad it is.

I won’t rate it or whatever. I’ll just say to not bother. But if you love fate, then go for it. There may be characters you saw in Grand Order that you want to know more about. And the servants are absolutely great. But honestly, just go read their source material. You’ll have more fun with that. But if you’re like me and are a salty piece of shit… the welcome to the club. There’s a lot to gnaw on.

Right so before I get massive flack for an opinion piece that I decided to write, and before anyone says that 'If you’re not going to say anything nice then don’t say anything at all'… I’ll just say to fuck off because it is my very right to speak about a creative piece. I’m not critiquing a person. I’m critiquing their writing in my own little colourful language. Critiquing a professional work, mind you. I wouldn’t do this to a fan work. And again, it’s an opinion. You don’t have to agree with it. If you liked wet sock then more power to you. I just personally thing that he’s the worst thing in the Fate franchise. Though people do say that Manaka is worse. I doubt you can limbo under something that’s like negative bajillion on any scale. Sieg just managed to offend me so hard when almost nothing does these days. And honestly, that’s an achievement on its own. Golf clap.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing this. But hey, maybe I’m just a petty little shit who got his waifu cucked by a fetus, amirite?

#[...ooc]#i had a lot of fun writing this #i'm probably gonna get alot of shit later on for this but fuck it #come at me bro #ok to reblog

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thesummonerofaskr · 6 years

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Salt 3: Fire Emblem Fates, the Story

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I decided to go ahead and make this since I am currently sick, agitated, and ready to rant about something. I've poked fun at Fates' narrative or outright insulted it before, but I've never said anything about why it's bad. Why is that? Well that would probably be because most Fire Emblem fans are expected to hate Fates' story at this point and so saying that you hate it is just a given. But you know what? I can do better then that. I've done it twice already, so why not? Now to be fair, I will admit I'm a bit spoiled. My first Fire Emblem game was Path of Radiance, a Fire Emblem game considered to have one of the best stories in the series this side of Genealogy of the Holy War. So when I went in and played Awakening, with its fun-yet-busted gameplay and yet still flawed narrative, I was slightly disappointed. I still love Awakening and how it helped save the series, but I'm not above saying it could've been better. Still, when Fates, or rather "if," was announced, I couldn't help but fall in love with the premise. Two families, two different storylines, and a choice to make on which side you would follow? The ability to customize your own personal fortress? It sounded like a dream come true. But then the game to the States and... it crushed sales. You know why Fates gets all the seasonal units in Heroes alongside Awakening? It's because those games sold well, so of course they're going to get more attention whether we like it or not. However, Fates did disappoint... a lot... with the execution of its narrative. I feel like we all convinced ourselves that this was going to be the best game ever only to get something sub-par, which to the hyped up fan can end up being the worst thing ever. Where did Fates fail and how can it be improved? Well that's what I'd like to explore.

Prologue: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It

Fates may not have been the best game in the world, but it certainly wasn't the worst. If you ask some people in the fandom about Fates, they'll get onto their high horse and tell you that everything about Fates was horrible, there wasn't a single redeeming factor, and it single-handedly ruined the entire franchise to such a degree that it took Echoes being made to save it. (And if I ever get around to beating Echoes, I'm sure I could make a rant on how little fun I've been having with it, to the point where I can't beat it.) Those people are... exaggerating. So before we jump into the negativity, I'll offer some positives. For starters, much as with Awakening, I found myself getting attached to a good majority of the characters. Sure there were exceptions (Niles and Hayato), but there always are and that doesn't necessarily make the characters bad for the purpose they were created. Secondly, the village customization was everything I hoped it would be. Yes, I did enjoy playing around with the My Castle feature. I've always been a bit of a world builder, driving my interest in RTS games like Age of Empires and the original Warcraft, and even a small little thing like this got me thinking on how to make my castle pretty. Gameplay mechanics introduced in Awakening were fixed. Pair Up mechanics were no longer broken and allowed you to be more strategic regarding both offensive and defensive measure. Archers and Knights were made not only useful, but amazing, and so characters you wouldn't have used in other games suddenly becomes amazing in this one. Personal skills now exist and even a few of those aforementioned people will turn around and say they would bring personal skills back for future installments. The music... why would people even hate the soundtrack? It was absolutely beautiful. As a sucker for both Japanese and Celtic music, I can certainly say there was not a track in this game that I despised. And I know that some people like how battles get their own music in other games before Awakening, but I've never been fond of that. It feels like I don't get to hear enough of the music in game before it switches over to Battle and back, again and again, until the Enemy Phase... Thanks Echoes. Also, dagger weapons... I hope those return next game to be honest. I don't expect there to be a duality like in Fates, but I do hope there's at least some manner of throwing debuff weapon.

Perhaps this wasn't the most eloquently written paragraph in the history of the world, but I did want to at least start off on a high note... now let's delve into the topic at hand, shall we?

Chapter 1: Pre-Determined Destiny

One of the first issues with Fire Emblem Fates was how it was advertised versus how it was shipped. One of the things we saw leading up to the game's release was how there was going to be a choice between which side you wanted to affiliate with. Would you stand with your blood family, the Kingdom or Hoshido, or the family that raised you, the Kingdom of Nohr? It was a question that actually got a lot of people both excited and competetive, a light battle that I'd only seen in the Warcraft fandom, though not nearly as tense and hostile as Alliance vs. Horde to be fair. But then tragedy immediately struck when it was revealed that to make your choice, you had to purchase the right game for it, split between Birthright and Conquest. That's one hell of a way to make this seeming question lose its meaning. The first five chapters are spent introducing you to both Nohr and Hoshido and by Chapter 6 you're supposed to make your decision based on what you know and how you feel, but that will only work if you had purchased the Special Edition of Fates or, more realistically, if you'd ended up paying the extra $20 to put the other side on your 3DS digitally. Otherwise you'll end up with a 50% chance on whether you now want to side with the kingdom you bought ther version for still or if you'll end up like "wait no I actually want to side with the others," but you can't because this is the version of the game you paid for, kiddo.

It stank of greed to a lot of people and there were even comparisons made to Pokemon as a result. Now to be fair, these comparisons are still completely incorrect. Birthright and Conquest, and the third story released later in Revelations, do in fact tell different stories. There's more major differences in the narrative then which units you get. But it overall came up to $80 in total. Couldn't you have just put Birthright and Conquest on the same cartridge and then made Revelations cost $40 on its own then? Well no, that still would've pissed people off and for good reason. I feel bad for cartridge owners who wanted the game. I heard there was a way to get both on cartridge for $60, but I bought all my Fates content digitally, so I cannot confirm. There's no real way to improve this because it was on Nintendo's marketing for giving the illusion that the choice came in game, not immediately based on version.

Chapter 2: The Avatar of Salt

Honestly self-insert characters are the worst. In a game like The Legend of Zelda, it works because the story takes a backseat to gameplay and Link doesn't need to be anything more then the silent hero who will save the day and bring peace to Hyrule no matter what the challenges are that come to test him. Fire Emblem doesn't get that luxury. Being a tactical RPG that weaves both story and gameplay together as important as the other, it needs characters that can serve to further the narrative while still being interesting and enjoyable. None should be more so then the main character of the game, especially if they're a major talker in the story. RPGs like Suikoden and Persona can get away with not having the main character say much because the focus goes into secondary characters more so then the primary one and so you can enjoy them more extensively, watching them interact amongst each other as well, but Fire Emblem doesn't often bring secondary characters into the main narrative and usually reserves their development and storyline importance for supports to look into. Awakening and Fates are especially guilty of this, with the former utilizing mainly Chrom, the Avatar, Frederick, and Lissa over anyone else. In Fates, it would be the Avatar, Azura, and the royals. So it is important that these characters at least be able to carry the story well enough and... they don't always. But Awakening gets some leeway in that its self insert Robin, while plot integral enough to be a flaw on Awakening's story, is not the main character. That would actually be Chrom. Fates' Avatar, Corrin, serves as both the self insert... and the main character. It goes about as well as you expect.

Many consider Corrin to be the worst lord in the series, more so then even Roy, Eliwood, and Gaiden!Alm before Echoes turned him into a good boy. A lot of this is because of how static Corrin is. In the first five chapters, Corrin is given some leeway because they are still sheltered and naive. They were raised by the Nohrian royals, who are not complete monsters like their father, and so of course they would be horrified at the thought of executing prisoners for fun. After being kidnapped by Hoshido and shown around, they would of course expect to die, be confused by their circumstances, and only after a horrific traumatic effect bringing back their memories ends up disturbed by what happened to them. These five chapters were better storywise then the rest of the game by far because after choosing their side and going through an admittedly heartfelt battle... they seem to just settle in and end up a static character. Whether it's the justified avenger in Birthright or the suffering deceiver in Conquest, they never really show any change in their character. There's no major development for them as they have to stay in a certain role that is easy to insert themself into, even though in some cases they also fail in this.

Revelations is the worst in this regard. Corrin keeps their naivete to the very end. This gets them into a lot of trouble with a certain character who ends up betraying the group, yet this behavior is never called out on. In fact, their overtrusting nature is commended and encouraged, which I suppose is natural considering the fact that they were manipulated by both Hoshido and Nohr in their own right. Obviously Nohr was manipulating Corrin into believe they were of Nohrian decent, but Hoshido, or rather... only Ryoma, never bothered to let Corrin know the truth that they were adopted. I suppose they would want Corrin to remain the same way. It gives them further leeway over Corrin in the future.

I know there are people who like Corrin the way they are, especially the female Corrin, though how much of that is between her looks and the fact that one out of all six voices has the best performance in Chapter 5's cutscene and it's her default voice I don't know, but if I had to change the story without removing Corrin in order to preserve the original premise of choosing one of your two families, I would definitely have Corrin "mature" throughout each path in a different way. In Birthright, I would have them start off as bitter towards Garon for what happened to Mikoto, but still not hating Nohr and so being angry at characters like Hinoka, Takumi, and Oboro for their constant racist tendencies. As they progress, however, they see what Nohr has done to their people and so they feel that Nohr would be much more prosperous under Hoshidan rule. On the other side, Conquest's Corrin would still want to change Nohr from the inside and that would be the ultimate goal regardless, but going into Hoshido, they would notice all of these goods, all this food and luxury, that Hoshido's been hoarding to itself. They might think conquering Hoshido would be good for Nohr in more ways then one and so feel less sympathetic when going through the battles. Revelations' Corrin is such an enigma that I feel like the game would need to be drawn out longer to justify everything that happened in it. Corrin gets both families working together half way in, so I guess they would feel that being the same would work out. I guess you can't win them all.

Chapter 3: Black and White, for what is Gray and Grey?

Whenever you play a Fire Emblem game, you usually see multiple perspectives. The enemy's side has good people in it and so you might be inclined to sympathize with them to a degree while the good guys still have to deal with issues of internal corruption and strife. Tellius did a good job with this as there were people within Daein who could not stand Ashnard's rule despite being forced to follow him, such as Jill's father, while Begnion had its internal corruption in spades between the massive racism against Laguz that allowed slave trafficking to progress as far as it did, especially in the hands of senators like Oliver. Radiant Dawn furthered this by having Daein in such a state of suffering to Begnion after the war in the first game that our heroine Micaiah is leading a revolution within. Even Awakening did this to a small degree in its first third with the character Mustafa, a Plegian general who had been touched by Emmeryn's words after her death, offered to shelter Chrom and the Ylisseans if they surrendered, and who allowed his men to leave if they so desired because of how hard they found it to fight with the knowledge of what they'd done, though none of them ended up leaving after his compassion and so chose to fight and die for him.

You'd think with Fates' premise, it would be the perfect Gray on Grey story, with both Hoshido and Nohr having its goods and bads. Unfortunately that is not the case. In many aspects, it looks incredibly like Hoshido did nothing wrong and does nothing wrong ever while Nohr is essentially Nazi Germany. Hoshido wanted to stay out of a war. They even have a barrier around the country that makes enemy soldiers lose the will to fight, keeping everything seemingly peaceful. What a bloody MacGuffin that barrier is, but hey, the Nohrians found a way to combat it by calling upon the Faceless, soulless creatures that can rampage villages even in the barriers, though they are so monstrous they can even kill the mages that summoned them if not properly controlled. I wonder who the baddies are in this situation.

For starters, Hoshdio's food hoarding needs to be addressed by the Nohrian royals as a reason for Nohr to invade. Nohr's conditions as a practically barren wasteland where food cannot easily grow also needs to be brought up. Hoshido also needs an equivalent to Hans and Iago. Some might point out Kotaro, but he is not actually a part of Hoshido and so does not count. Even if they cannot be as bad as the aforementioned two, they need to be a driving force of antagonism that can make Hoshido at least look less then perfect. Perhaps their racism against Nohrians can make Oboro look like an equal opportunist. Or maybe they act nice on the outside, but are secretly plotting to usurp Mikoto and take the throne for themselves. Speaking of which...

Chapter 4: The Father, the Mother, and the Holy Spirit

What are the similarities between Mikoto and Garon? You might say that there is no simlarity, that both could not be more different in any single manner. But after Chapter 5 and in Revelations, there are two simlarities between the two. They also share these simlarities with Sumeragi. Both are dead and possessed by Anankos. This causes Mikoto be removed from the story and it is the reason why Garon is an old tyrannical cunt more one-dimensional then the inability to conceive the horizontal and vertical. These characters are nothing more then wasted potential. The former gives Corrin their memories of Hoshido back with her death and the latter is a walking giant with a sign pointing at him in neon letters saying "I'm basically Ivan the Terrible in Fire Emblem!" Certainly there must be ways to make better use of them, yes?

The first step is avoiding that anime urge to kill off Mikoto. That's right... don't have her die. Instead, let her remain the driving force for Hoshido as she is injured so much she cannot keep the barrier up, but otherwise remains alive. You might argue that this wouldn't be fair to Nohr as Garon is already the way he is and that it goes against the pre-determined ending of both Ryoma and Xander being made the kings of each country respectively, but it would also allow us to build up Mikoto more then just this "perfect messiah" figure in a similar vein to Emmeryn and maybe even make her more memorable as a character. Now in Revelations, she might get killed and brought back just because it is what it is in that damn story, but in Birthright, there's a chance for her to grow as a leader when she learns of how Nohr has been suffering and so does not hesitate in offering diplomacy when Leo is instated as King. In Conquest, we could see her being the driving force for Ryoma to be as uncharacteristically desperate to get Corrin back as he turns out to be, encouraging him to do whatever it takes, even if it means forsaking his honor. Sounds rather ruthless, I know, but hell hath no fury like a mother scorned after all.

But what about Garon? Well Garon's issue is that he has no traits outside of being evil. What he used to be like is all told in supports. And we all know that "show, don't tell" is the golden rule of writing, so why is Garon nothing but evil when an Anankos possessed Mikoto is able to act kind and loving? My proposal is that Garon is shown to have a more loving side. For instance, what if he actually expressed happiness that Azura was brought back as opposed to... brushing her off? It would be heavily out of character to how we know him now, but it would definitely fit the descriptions of him as a loving father we've been told by Xander, Camilla, and Leo. It would also make putting him down all the more sad in Conquest when we're revealed to his true form, building onto the whole "tragedy" feel that it's supposed to have all the way through as opposed to this cathartic break until possessed Takumi. "But then why would he be evil? Why would he want to conquer Hoshido?" If diplomacy failed and Garon was pushed to that point in life, he might've kept his new perspective on conquering in death. He has men like Hans and Iago around to give him the results he needs and they could be seen as the ones manipulating him into doing evil, except Corrin and Azura know the truth thanks to that crystal ball. All I'm saying is that making Garon less of a twat would give Nohr that push it needs to be more reasonable a pick. As opposed to picking it because your brothers are hot... oh, and about that...

Chapter 5: Genealogy of the Holy Fate

And now the Jugdral fans will tear me apart for that joke. Time to jump into the triggering topic of incest. Now I'm going to go ahead and make this section mercifully short, even if it still requires a trigger warning, but what I am going to say is that these supports were an utter mistake. For starters, on Hoshido's side, you initially believe you're blood related to them. Why is Mikoto writing letters to everyone but Ryoma on the off chance that they fall in love with their middle sibling? What kind of mother does that? That's just stupid. And even though Ryoma knows the truth, he should still see Corrin as a sister regardless. They're in-laws. Are you kidding me? On the Nohrian side of things, they may not have ever been blood related, but Corrin was raised there for so long that them developing any feelings for the Nohrian siblings is even closer to developing feelings for an actual brother and sister then it would be for Hoshido's side.

It's amazing that the actual incestuous couple is more understandable then the pseudo-ones. Corrin and Azura together were a very popular pair when they were first revealed in the same vein of Chrom and Robin being a popular pair. Two main characters, very close together, it all ends up working out in that manner. The problem is that Revelations drops in one line something that isn't stated in any support conversations, world building lines, or any part of the story apart from that one line, that one sentence of dialogue from a dying Mikoto that killed an entire ship. "Azura's mother and I are sisters." Corrin and Azura barely knew each other as they were raised in entirely different kingdoms. They were perfect strangers until Mikoto stated this. Now they're first cousins and so the once beloved ship is so problematic that your previous posts praising it are probably getting you anon hate even now unless you delete them.

The solution to this is obvious. Remove the ability to S-Rank them. Add in a few more characters if you need to, but no more Azzurrin, Corriander, Corryoma, Camillin, Hinokin, Takurrin, Correo, Sakurrin, and Corrlise... no more weird ship names in general to be honest.

Chapter 6: We Must Go Deeper

I love the children units of Genealogy and Awakening. I feel they bring in some neat personalities in the latter's case and in the former's case continue the story in a way that was never done before. However, Fates' case is... horrible. Just simply horrible. In an attempt to recapture some of the glory from Awakening's use of the children, without understanding why it worked in Awakening the way it did, the children units in Fates are literally child soldiers aged up to a proper age in Fates' equivalent of Hyperbolic Time Chambers. Sure they weren't intended to be, either in-universe or from the perspective of the writers, but that's sure what they look like when their presence is entirely optional, has no bearing on the stories whatsoever, and their existence is justified with one of the worst concepts I ever seen... the Deeprealms.

The Deeprealms as a construct are disgusting and unncessary. Their existence and the unit's use of them is actually harmful to the likeability of every single character in the game. They essentially place their own children in these pocket dimensions to be raised away from the horrors of their war without considering the ramifications of doing such a thing. It worked in Genealogy because they had no parallel dimensions to store their children in, having them sent to other lands away from where the fighting would be and them only growing after years of development proper. It worked in Awakening because the kids came from the future and so had already been through a world without their parents because of how Awakening's story functions. In Fates, however, they tried to combine the two and what we get are children who grow up with abandonment issues because that's essentially what their parents did. They abandoned the kids in worlds that have time streams that run slower then "the real world's" and caused them to age exponentially quicker from their perspective as a result. From this, we get Rhajat being older then her own father, Velouria being expected to break away from her parents despite barely getting to spend time with them and becoming obsessive to the point of... see the above chapter, Percy hating his father and considering him a villain, Asugi wanting to escape his identity as the next Saizo, and various other examples. Sure some of the kids continue to love their families like Midori, Soleil, Ophelia, Caeldori, and Selkie, but you'd still have to question if said families deserve it.

As much as we make like these characters, it would overall be better if they did not exist at all. It would cease being a stain on the first gen characters. If they had to exist, there could be DLC for them as opposed to them being in the base game.

Chapter 7: The Vallite Expedition

Valla's story is the worst story of the three. Conquest can still be enjoyable. Birthright is cliche, but simple. Revelations, however, is a story that utterly suffers from its incompetence. The characters are all swift to join Corrin's side due to the "chapter limit" that the games consistently hold themselves to, the Hoshidan and Nohrian conflict is explained to be the machinations of a bigger threat to life itself, and everything that we know from the previous two games no longer manages to be an issue because now there's something bigger we can blame. Revelations is to Fates what the end of Mists of Pandaria was to Warcraft and Anankos is essentially this game's Garrosh Hellscream. Why even worry about moral relativity, economic issues, and the bonds of family when it was all a dragon's fault?

Valla boasts bad writing from beginning to end and culminates in an asspull of epic proportions. It's true you see Anankos name dropped in Conquest, as well as get to see Valla proper, but neither of these needed to really be in the game. Anankos didn't need to be a thing. And if he did, then he needed more development or needed to be mentioned by Garon more. After all, Anankos is a very important character. He's Corrin's father for fuck's sake. Sadly Valla couldn't get any world building at all though because of a coincidental curse that kills anyone who name drops it. Really makes building it up into a proper threat difficult, doesn't it? It's a world you can't talk about unless you go there. So when you go there, you have no idea what to make of it because you've never heard about it before. And then you can't tell your friends or family about it because it'll kill you if you do, which means Corrin has to convince a bunch of people to jump into a bottomless canyon without name dropping it, except they're totally prepared to name drop it and die... only for said people to say they'll trust Corrin entirely.

Between that, Corrin being encouraged to remain trusting to the point of insanity, Anthony existing, the sentence that made a popular ship incestuous... I'm not sure there's even a way to save Valla. It pisses all over the premise that got people excited for Fates to begin with, that these two families who have good reasons for going to war want you to join only one of them to fight the other. Why do that when you can have both and fight against a big evil dragon?

ENDGAME: The Path is filled with Legos

I am by no means a professional writer. I've considered multiple ways to salvage Fire Emblem Fates' story. I've seen people say there is no way to salvage it and that it should burn. I've seen people state the only way to save it is to remove Corrin from it and make it more like Radiant Dawn with the two kingdoms being playable and having their own tales. I've seen people state the game is fine as it is already and that not too many changes need to made except removing the Deeprealms. I've seen people not mess with the story and only mention how much they hate the weapons now that they're unbreakable thanks to the stat issues on them. Fates is a game with many opinions on it because of how controversial it is. I suppose one could argue that this is a good thing. Fates will always have people talking about it. Even if it's mostly critique and anger, it's still publicity that'll get people looking at it. And if they find that they do in fact like what they see, that's another Fates fan added to the pool, which is not a bad thing.

For better or worse, Awakening saved the franchise and Fates made it popular. You can argue that this sucks because the S-Support and children somehow "makes it a dating sim." I take it as another chance, a potential to see more stories utilizing the Fire Emblem formula, and it's not like this salvation turned out to be for the worst. We got Heroes, which is currently going through some turbulent times and yet is still one of the best gacha games made. We got Warriors, which may be surrounded by controversy concerning its roster and yet is still a fun experience. We got Echoes, which I may not have personally enjoyed, but I've seen a lot of people happy for it and stating it has one of the best stories in the franchise. And we have Fire Emblem 16 coming out for the Switch at some point.

Fates' story is... problematic. It's very irritating as you expected a manga writer to do better then what he did. But I suppose if it didn't exist at all, things would've been for the worst. So I still love Fates. I still respect what it did for the series. Just... not enough to not make this post.

#ooc #michele rants #fire emblem fates #incest trigger #because one of the parts brings that up #this was longer then expected

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lumenizampel · 7 years

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silver gray (ash/tyra)

( @paladinsheadcanons cause they gave me some ideas. )

I had some free time. I might write more idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I apologize in advance for some errors, I haven’t written anything in a long time.

"Nice pelt."

Tyra looks over herself, like she did not remember wearing said item. Upon her shoulders is a wolf pelt, brown and grey. It looks way more eye-catching compared to her usual bear pelt, and to be honest, Ash thinks it looks better on her than her old one, but she can't tell that, can she?

The huntress smiles. "Thank you. I have been attempting to wear varieties, recently, now that it’s winter."

"Oh? Do you just have a lot of fur pelts lying around your home?"

"I hunt and make cloaks on a regular basis." Fingers pull the fur cloak closer to herself, running her hands through animal hair as she explains. "Some of them I sell, some of them I keep, like this. There are just amazing stories with things you make yourself."

Oh, how Ash knows those. Tyra has already told her a lot of tales, some less grandiose than ones you hear from war veterans, but still worth listening to. She would listen to Tyra tell all sorts of stories any day.

"You might wanna tell them to me someday." Ash timidly pats the fluff of fur near Tyra's neck. "Damn, these are soft."

The huntress just laughs. "Maybe next time we hunt together, you can take down one for yourself!"

"I've tried before, but I guess you always beat me to it."

“That’s because a hunter’s first kill is important, so it has to be challenging! No fun if I just give it to you outright, that would be boring.”

“Well, I’ll get it soon.”

Tyra smiles, but later had to excuse herself due to some issues she have to take care of. Once she has fully left, however, Ash finally felt her heartbeat pound against her chest.

Ash has spent a lot of time with Tyra, and it is honestly starting to feel like something else entirely. She cannot put words on it, and yet it feels… certain. Special. Something she felt like giving something into.

She’s not even sure if she knows. Ash has not told anyone, but she has made a lot of efforts to become closer. She follows everytime Tyra invites her to hunt, she listens when she tells a story, she invites her to train and eat out and hang out, and she tells when she asks what’s wrong. Tyra considers her a friend, a very close one. But Ash is not sure if it can be pushed any farther.

She doesn’t mind if she never knows. She’s happy with everything and where they are. But she feels like pushing the boundary a little farther with something. Just one thing to show off with--

Oh…. yeah.

A pelt. An animal. Her first kill. It is the most important thing to a hunter, she says?

Then it is the most fitting thing she can give.

She didn’t even think twice before she runs to the one person she knows she can ask for help.

Ash underestimated this.

Lian was kind but teasing over her advice, and it made her regret asking her for help. She was a bit curious on Ash's apparent interest with the huntress, but she later on decided it was better to not ask.

Ash had gone with Tyra in several hunts, and has learned a great deal from watching her, however she is to admit that sometimes she gets distracted with the wonder that is the woman with her, and sometimes ends up forgetting half of what she says or what she does. There is a certain strength that comes with hunting, and a certain intelligence to survive what feels like an unjust mother nature. She considered it training everytime she followed Tyra around to hunt, but Ash regrets not listening a little more closer.

The second Lian took out a crossbow to lend her, Ash started feeling like it is not a good idea. She can use a crossbow, sure. But it has been years since she last put her hands on a trigger that is not her cannon's.

"I trust that you know what you are doing." Lian passed the crossbow to the war machine's hands. "After all, you're the one following our dear huntress around."

"Yeah, yeah, I do."

Despite Lian's snarking, Ash pushed through with the hunt, anyway. She picked out a set of leather armor that does not make much noise, a coat to protect her from the snow outside, made sure she had enough crossbow bolts, and proceeded with the hunt.

Soon, Ash has found herself a beautiful silvery gray wolf. She can already imagine it. Tyra would look so amazing with that.

Tracking it was easy. The snow muffled her footsteps. Getting a good shot was also somewhat easy, once she remembered how to use a crossbow. Killing it is as easy as aiming and firing.

But that was the problem, Ash discovered -- she now has a wolf with a crossbow bolt wedged in its eye. Now what? She has yanked out the bolt from the wolf's eye, cleaned everything before the blood attracts unwanted attention. She rummages through her pack, and she realized to her horror that she left her knife behind.

... Now what?

Ash can't just leave this here. She worked so hard for it. But attempting to carve and skin the wolf with her limited supplies will turn out horrible -- she knew in herself that she is not that skilled.

Hell, even if I did have the knife, I doubt I can skin it as well as she can...

Her only option was bringing it back into the base…

The war machine finds her way back in Crosswind Hold, dead wolf in hand and snow on her hair. She hid it in cloth and padded it with whatever snow she can find, but now she looks like she's carrying around a dead, freezing body and she was trying to clean up her act. She soon finds her way into her room, and drops her game on the table.

‘I'm such an idiot.’ Ash looks at the wolf carcass on her table as she unwraps the cloth and the slightly melted snow. It's as dead as she remember it, but it is starting to look funky. ‘I should have at least asked if Tyra wanted another wolf. What do I even do with this? What if she doesn't fucking want it? It's my first kill I'm giving her, that has to be something, right? What the hell do I even d--’

Someone knocks on her door. Ash slaps the cover back on the dead animal in surprise.

"Hello?"

The door creaks open, and a familiar face peeks in.

"...Tyra? What are you doing here?"

The huntress opens the door a little more, obviously debating about going in. "Did you not call me? Lian told me you were looking for me."

... Lian. Of course.

"...yeah, that's true."

Tyra enters the room, but she pauses as she saw Ash, still in her snowed-in coat and beet-red from the cold. "You went out."

"I just got back." "Well, since you're here, I might as well... give you, because I have no idea what else to do with it... uh..." she fumbles with words like she didn't know how to use them. "I have something for you."

"Which is...?"

Ash motions to the dead wolf, and takes off the cover. "Uh, well... I hunted this--" she gestures to the wolf like she is showing off something else that is not a dead body-- "And I want you to have it."

Tyra did not answer. At least, for a few moments.

She looked at the carcass of the wolf, then at Ash, then at the wolf. Ash grew scared, unsure of what she thinks. Tyra just looked at the wolf for a solid minute.

"I was planning to make you a new pelt," Ash explains. Oh man, she thought, this is not turning out well. She can feel her voice falter, and she can definitely feel Tyra looking at her like she needs an explanation. "But I did not know what to do with it. I'm...not as skilled as you, I could not skin it, I lost my knife somewhere along the trail, and--"

"You killed...?" Tyra gestures to the carcass, speaking after a few moments.

"Y-Yeah. Just earlier. I just got back."

Tyra walks past Ash and steps closer to inspect the wolf. It felt like an exam, Ash thought, turning around to watch her say whatever she wants about her handiwork. It's like she is judging how well the kill is.

The huntress pokes on the wolf's head. "You shot it in the eye. That's... that's actually very impressive."

"It is?"

She pauses, looking at the wolf again.

And then Ash sees her wipe tears off her cheeks--

"Tyra, are you crying? I'm sorry, did I do something wrong?"

And then she laughs. Tyra giggles and laughs and tries not to cry, and she held onto Ash trying to ground herself. Worry is written all over Ash's face, unsure how to react to this.

"You're so good, you're so very good, and you're giving this to me, oh, that's so very sweet of you, I don't even know what to say--"

"It's a gift! For all your niceness and being cool and all that! God, I'd love to explain further, but this is all I can think of--"

"That's your first kill! And you're giving it to me?"

"Y-yeah." Ash smiles. She had no doubt about it before, but it is true -- she learned a lot. And she enjoyed all of it with her, and she would go on more hunting trips as much as Tyra likes. “I thought you’d like it. Do you--”

Her coat-wrapped self is suddenly enveloped with more warmth as Tyra wraps her arms around her torso. She could not tell, with the weird noises she’s making, if she’s crying or laughing. But she assumes it’s a good thing, that she did indeed like it. Ash wraps her in her arms, and she can feel all the fatigue from hunting melt away. “Yeah, I guess you do like dead wolves as a gift, huh?”

“It’s from you.” Tyra’s voice was muffled by the coat. “It’d always be great.”

Oh.

Oh shit.

That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever told me.

"Now come, come, let's celebrate!” Tyra pulls away from the hug, but her smile is ear to ear, excited and expectant. “Get off that coat, let’s work on this thing! Your first kill must look cool and taste great, too!"

Ash have not seen Tyra until a few days later, walking into the match, smiling from ear to ear. Upon her shoulders is a wolf pelt, silvery gray. It looks way more eye-catching compared to her usual bear pelt, and to be honest, Ash thinks it looks better on her than her old one, but she can't tell that, can she?

Who is she kidding? Of course, she can.

Many of the other champions have praised her for it, and Ash always overhear her saying it is very dear to her everytime someone asks. Her pelt makes her look like a noble she did not deserve to have upon her presence, and the fact that it is suddenly such an important item to her makes her feel butterflies.

"Dear."

Her thoughts were cut short. Tyra twirls a little, showing off the cloak. Ash just smiles, answering whatever question Tyra was about to ask. She always looks amazing, but Ash feels a sense of accomplishment and pride to be able to hunt something Tyra of all people would wear.

"I have something for you."

"Which is...?"

She takes out a necklace. Tied on it is a half a fang of a wolf. That wolf, if her guess is right, judging from the size of it. It matches the pendant of a choker around her neck, one that she didn't notice until now.

"It took me a while to cut, but I think it looks perfect as is, yes?" The huntress sets aside her rifle to adjust the length of the leather strings, before placing it around Ash's neck.

"Your kill." Voice soft, she pats the half fang. “Still your kill. Next time we take one down together.”

It’s now Ash’s turn to smile.

#paladins champions of the realm #paladins fic #paladins ash #paladins tyra #ashra #sometimes izzy tries to write #HI I HAVENT WRITTEN IN WHAT FEELS LIKE TEN YEARS!!!!

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thesportssoundoff · 7 years

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Eight Weeks Later, What Can We Conclude About The Dana White’s Tuesday Contenders Series?

When the UFC announced its decision to put on a special run of five fights a week every Tuesday under the (skirt around the rules) Dana White Tuesday Night Contender series label, plenty of people were intrigued. Some obviously questioned the intentions behind the concept or the application behind the show but the MMA community agreed to give it all a shot because why not? Best case scenario, a bunch of new talent would be discovered in a fresh hip format designed to boost up the ranks of some slumping divisions. Worst case scenario, some fighters who were earning crumbs on the regional scene would get the opportunity to earn a bit more money and a hell of a lot more exposure. Even if the idea of fights in a gym with Snoop on commentary seemed simply too far fetched to fathom, we all gave it a shot. So what have we learned as the UFC and Dana White walk towards the final episode for the foreseeable future?

There is a hopelessness at two divisions of great importance

Each DWTCS episode features a fight either in the light heavyweight or the heavyweight division. Each time without fail, those fights are generally the worst fights on the entire episode. Even when those fights are finished, the action leading up the finish proves to be dull and even at times unwatchable. Through 35 fights, 2 heavyweights (with one more planned next week) and 6 light heayweight fights. Of those 8 fights, 2 of the fighters who won those fights got signed with one of those guys getting immediately shimmied down to middleweight which means that 8 fights have produced 1 fighter at a division of need. The UFC has been running shows for two months now and determined that a single light heavyweight was worth signing and no heavyweight of note is out there. Or at least out there competing on the radar which opens you up for DWTCS. Compare that to the fact that they've had 6 bantamweight fights and 3 of those winners have been signed. I don't know what the solution is regarding fixing 205 and 265 lbs but the Contender Series surely doesn't seem to be it.

The Value Of New Commentary Voices

Jon Anik is a tremendous lead analyst for the UFC, acting as a smartened up Mike Goldberg for traditional UFC broadcasts. At the same time, Anik is but one guy and asking him to do 40 events a year plus all of the ancillary broadcasts can tire out anybody. The UFC took two guys who weren't professional live fight commentators and gave them a test run. The same was said for Yves Edwards (which is cheating a bit since Yves has called regional MMA before) and Paul Felder. The Dan Hellie/Yves Edwards broadcast was okay-ish but the Paul Felder and Brendan Fitzgerald combo is really good for two newbies calling their first fights. With Brian Stann and Joe Rogan likely not here in 2018, the desire to find a color guy for these broadcasts has to go up. Cruz is very good analytical but I wonder if MMA fans can go for his more laid back style of calling fights. Cormier sometimes feels like a bad Joe Rogan; dipping into personal anecdotes and bad jokes to kill time and Florian's just bad at the gig. Felder has the potential to fill that role in time. Furthermore new voices and new ideas should always be filtered into a sport that LOVES to live as if it's on the cutting edge of something new. Why NOT use a platform to give new people a chance?

The talent at 125 is out there, the finishes are not.

The UFC has had 7 flyweight fights to this point. Of those 7 fights, 3 ended in finishes----and 2 of those fighters were signed. The last fighter is almost certain to get a call up. 125 lbs has a reputation where decisions are almost always expected so guys who finish fights will always have a leg up. Brandon Moreno is not as good as say Henry Cejudo or maybe some of the other more talented 125 lbers but he finishes fights and the guys who do that will always be fresh in your mind. There's a lot of talent at flyweight still filtering into the MMA world but the bar is high enough as is. Not finishing fights just feeds the narrative.

Raising the bar on regional MMA

These are essentially regional fights. Fighters who compete earn a one shot of 5K win or lose. We all know horror stories of regional fighters earning $300 bucks on shows televised on AXS or what have you. We've read the ticket sellers dilemma which is the equivalent of when the guys who put up the most posters for indie shows get to wrestle (and often times get hurt). Hopefully the DWTCS gives some of these fighters a little bit of leverage to earn MORE money down the line.

So what didn't work?

The post fight sit around

I know it's engaging television for some folks and the raw emotion from the guys who are getting contracts is truly great sometimes but can't we get that WITHOUT the shots of guys sitting there realizing their dreams are either on hold or just flat out not going to happen. Don't think we entirely need all of that.

The Production Team

The UFC's production team has always been at least pretty good. The DWTCS looks almost like a bit of a scab crew was working on it given the technical errors. There was an entire episode where guys were talking during the video packages, graphics were late on arrival and the commentators sounded lost while trying to lead from one plug to the next. It's sharpened up a bit but I think we can all agree that if you really want to do something different then maybe you need to sharpen up the production quality or perhaps even scrap the whole squad entirely.

The venue/ambiance

Live fights are fun. Live fights with a live audience should be fun. Live fights in front of family members just seems so TUF-y. I know there's nothing wrong with that (and I imagine it'd look stupid to book a 5,000 seat arena with just 50 people inside of it) but it just carries too many Ultimate Fighter vibes to feel like a clean slate. It's like when ECW would run before Smackdown instead of its own small venues designed to simulate the original ECW experience.

Not Enough Women’s Fights

Simply put. Over an eight week period, there are two WMMA fights on these events. I don't want to suggest they raid Invicta again but that's unacceptable given the weeks worth of fights. Let's try to connect that for the next run.

So besides more women fights, what else can be done going forward?

International Fights

@theanticool had a good idea here. The UFC kept it entirely to fighters based in North America which was probably a book keeping related travel expense decision. I get it. Still let's try to expand this sport. About once a month, the UFC runs an event overseas where you could in theory do a double shot with a --blank- Night Contender Series the night before and then the live event the next day. Look at the markets like Latin America and Asia (China specifically) that probably have a fair bit of underdeveloped underexposed talent. Wouldn't it be easy to just hold a show for the fighters not in the UFC the night before to maybe stumble upon something you might've missed?

Snoopcast Modifications?

The Snoopcast has been one of the more controversial aspects of DWTCS. If you've ever watched an MMA show with your average casual buddy, you've essentially heard everything Snoop's ever said in some form or fashion. Fighters who get knocked out are mocked/laughed at in some respect, wrestlers who make boring fights get chewed up, dudes with wacky haircuts/tattoos/nicknames are joked about and if it's a good fight, all technical analysis goes out the window for some variety of "oh shit this fight is crazy!" or something or another. That's essentially what the snoop cast is. It's a drunk/high Snoop drinking on air and goofing about MMA with Urijah Faber left to act as the point man/recovery lead. It's enjoyable but I could do without Snoop poking fun at fighters who are KO'd or joking about how they got slept. Still...if you watch an event with an MMA casual/novice/non-fan, that's what they do. What were you folks expecting?

To me, the problem with the Snoop Cast is that Snoop really can't do this every week. By week 5, I had already heard enough references to "The Blood Bank" or "What lullaby do you want me to sing you to sleep to?" to last me a lifetime. Doing this every week is tough especially for a guy whose funny may not stretch quite as far as people imagine it to stretch. I'd like to see them treat this similarly to how they treat the actual broadcast and just have a revolving door for people other than Snoop for Urijah Faber to commentary with.

Something For The Losers

I get it. The idea of the Contender Series is all or nothing* in a sense. The winners get a contract* and the losers are fucked. The problem is that we've seen some genuinely good, truly worthy fighters be on the losing end of some great fights thus far. Steven Peterson had a great fight with Benito Lopez and the same can be said for Manny Vasquez in his fight or Austin Arnett or so on so forth. It can't just be out of sight out of mind for the losers, ya get me?

#MMA #UFC #DWTCS #Dana White #Fights #Fight Pass

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kendrixtermina · 7 years

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5w4 Gothic

- You drop a 3 word latin sentence in causual conversation. At the prompt of your mildly confused co-worker, you try and translate it to english, and it becomes seven words, except, you realize, those couldn’t possibly suffice to precisely encapsulate what the sentence means in its original contexts, how exactly it fits into your conversation and how much thought you put into picking out the most fitting description for the subject matter. They ask you to explain in your own words; You paraphrase, and suddenly, the sentence becomes an entire paragraph. You try to say “hammer”, but out comes “manual, multidirectional short-term pressure device”. Your co-worker gives you a long, silent look whose meaning you can’t discern. You wish faces were as easy to read as latin.

- You’re never sure if you’re hungry, having a sad, or dying of cancer. You assign each possibility percentages and keep them updated through your day.

- Over time, you have found that you absorb information best when it’s presented to you as a logical, self-contained explanation. Some things are often explained that way; Other topics, not so much. For example, how to talk to people without somehow pissing them off. You’re getting a little frustrated - Why don’t people just explain these things to you? More importantly: Where is everyone else getting this information from, since they don’t seem to have that problem? This might merit further investigation.

- “We only remember 30% of a given text” . You remember your teacher saying it, and you’ve read articles than confirm it; At the time, you speculated that your rate must be subtly higher, and that it may have been a ploy to get you to put up with all the boring repetition. Only during your last introspection session did the true horror dawn on you; You thought that the more you read, the more you absorbed, the more you would know, but that is not so. Time eats on your precious reserves, every night, bits and pieces are sorted out by some arcane algorithm; Even without counting the horrors of sleep and the odd drunken blackout, you probably do not recall most of your life. Yet, your neurotic habit of feeding yourself with random trivia does not cease, but you are now aware of the futile, consumerist nature of your endeavors. You take a scientific magazine, shove it in one ear, and wait to it to come out the other. You are torn between chiding yourself for that gross violation of anatomy and admiring the beauty of that metaphor.

- You heard your boyfriend making noise in the living room, walking back and forth, grabbing what sounds like china and also the door hinge. Is he grabbing the leftovers, or making something for himself? Is he not satisfied with the quality of your cooking? Does he wish that it be served at more regular frequencies? You want to leave him his freedom because you believe in retaining yours, but you’re forced to stifle the stupid irrational displeasure over the sense that one of your skills is being questioned. You want to offer to cook, to prove that you can do it right, but you also really don’t feel like cleaning up the kitchen first; But giving up a duty that you took upon yourself seems like admitting incompetence. He suggests getting a dishwasher; You say that it seems to be overkill for two people, but as you have no rational reason to protest, you end it with, “Well, it’s your money.” You hope he will not demand that you talk to you again today

- You live in a hamster cage. You think it is elegant and functional and like how the water tube looks sciencey. The first time someone said it, it could be dismissed as a fluke, but by now, you’re forced to conclude that your appartment is considered “small”. You do not think it is small. You think it’s just large enough. Why do they think you would want a larger one? You never nagged them with such a demand and in fact made sure to assure them that you are perfectly satisfied, though perhaps not enthusiastically; Then again, it’s not like such enthusiasm would have been warranted over a simple room.

- One day, you realize that you have never cried at a movie. That schocks you, albeit mildly and vaguely. You fear for your Angsty Deep Person credentials. You do not understand. After all, you care a lot about fictional universes. You spend all day analyzing their brilliance and playing out fanfic scenarion in your head. Eventually, you slightly tear up as you rewatching an episode of your favorite Sci Fi schow in the middle of the night, in your room, by yourself. You consider that a sucess.

- As a child, you were nicknamed as the “walking Dictionary” on at least three separate occasions. What they do not realize is that every time they said that, it drove a sharp icicle into your fragile little heart. Yet, some warped sort of pride keeps you bringing up this incident. Perhaps it might be relevant or useful to someone? Or so you delude yourself.

- You change your current obsession to “enneagram”. It’s almost like one of these edutainment games that combines something hard(peopling) with something fun (theoriring.) You furrow your brow as you read the description. do not think you’re a minimalist; There is, after all, a poster of the periodic system on your wall and an anime figurine next to your laptop.

- You once spent sixty full minutes rambling to your classmates about some awesome thing related to your curent obsession. There are stars in your eyes, and there is life in your animated gestures. You move with confidence because you know exactly what to do. You feel as if that is one of those moments where you are most yourself. Later, your teacher informs you that no one was listening or caring, and that you are selfish for speaking about rambling on about that no one else is interested in. You do not talk to your classmates again.

- You don’t know why that is, but people just don’t like you. Wherever you go, you stand out. You don’t now what causes it or how to prevent it. “Oh, do you suddenly have feelings too?” says one person. “Yeah you have a lot up here, but nothing here *points at chest*” says another. You’re confused and uncertain. You only wanted to share something that you loved. You only wanted to inform others of something you would want to know. You’re supposed to treat others as you want to be treated, right? Besides, to have a place in this world, you must be useful somehow, right? You want very bad to be useful. You are bad at many things, and doing the one thing you can do apparently makes you arrogant. You wonder what else you are supposed to do. You are good for nothing else.

- You join the local theatre group and attach yourself to the subset of it that is planning to do a satre play. You always wanted to do Satre, the philosophy and concepts interest you, and it has a nice, deep intellectual touch to it, basically your jam. You don’t look into any of the other groups as you don’t feel that interested in a romcom and are very certain that you want to be in this one. A few weeks in, the group leader pulls you aside- “Your style of acting does not match my vision”, he says. “Besides, I don’t think you really felt at home in our group, I’ve noticed that you always sit a little apart. Perhaps, maybe you’ll feel better in a different group?” You did not feel unwelcome. You really liked the group. Your opinion of everyone in it is vaguely positive. You had no opinion on “group dynamics” at all because you were focussed on theater. You respect his decision as it is based on objective fact and loyalty to his artistic vision. You just wish he had just told you that you suck without making it sound like he was doing you a favor. You want to tell him that you enjoyed your time with the group, but the words won’t come out in your mouth and you are frozen solid in the doorway.

- But hell is others

- You don’t want to be one of these clingy girlfriends everyone complains of, but unfortunately, he’s a social-first ESFJ and this is before you knew typology. You’ve read that men have to have enough free space. He asks you to write and talk more, and you try, but you don’t know what about. You attempted long, deep-onversation letters earlier, but he responded with vague one-liners, even when you tried to referrence the topics you saw him discussing on his facebooks and the radio shows he listens to. You wonder if you are annoying him. Your feeble efforts matter little as he accuses you of not caring about him and tells you that he never had such problems with a girl before. He doesn’t say “freak” but the world is there. You conclude that the golden rule is bullshit.

- You don’t understands why he keeps e-mailing you after the breakup. It makes no logical sense. You broke up for good reasons, and its not like those will magically dissapear because you take him beck. You are puzzled. What could his objective be? You delete all the emails. He probably tells all his friends.

- Even your best relationship involved you once being compared to a robot at least once. Illuminated by the eerie light of your computer screen in the darkened, you turn back to look at him from under the tangle of cables and wires poking out of your skin and reply “Does not compute.” He’s not sure if you replied to him, or to whoever you were currently talking with in cyberspace.

- You would argue that you have a lot of feelings, but then, there come those rare occasions when you actualy talk to people. The documentary you’re watching includes a shot of a decapitated corpse, mudered by her jealous ex-husband amid a mix of very interesting socipolitical factors. “Fascinating.” you mumble. The 1w9 beside you is audibly gagging.

- You mostly eat or sleep when your hunger or tiredness reach a level that impacts your concentration. You have not seen the sun in days. You begin to wonder if it even still exists and concoct an elaborate esoteric theory to explain its dissapearance.

- You are lowkey jealous of people who have calloused hands from their work or specific patterns of muscles from their favorite sport. Not because you remotely like sport, but because it’s evidence of their dedication and devotion. to their passion. The evidence of your dedication is all in your head, and you wonder if that is also true in the figuratice sense. You phantasize at lenght about being an outwardly human-looking cyborg.

- On TV, everyone who talks like you turns out to be an alien or an android. You read through forum discussions where everyone calls them “plot devices” with “no personality”. You would apparently do better to like a “real girl”, like that super-atractive popular 3w4 teen prodigy for example. You delight in the knowledge that you are apparently imaginary, and ponder the philosophical implications of that.

- Your mind is like a sieve - not a regular sieve, but a molecular one, the kind that only allows passage to certain substances and selectively retains others. When you can’t remember your appointments or the names of your classmates, you tell them you have a bad memory, but how are you going to explain how you manage to remember all that random trivia? Far too late, it dawns on you that people think you do not care. You do not precisely grasp what you ability to remember a few words or numbers has to do with caring. You

- At least your cacti understand you.

- You think, therefore you are. You try to explain to people that if you did sports, or small talk, or watch a romcom, or do everything else they keep nagging you to do, you would dissapear. Despite your flawless logical reasoning, people do not seem to believe you. Then, someone disrupts your cncentration, and you scatter into a cloud of Sea Foam, little mermaid style

- You seem to have misplaced your body. You’re not sure where it was when it happened, but you’re certain that your mind was drifting about the edge of the galaxy at the time, or perhaps in that book about ancient athens. If only you could make it back to a time and place where your friends existed, you might possess one of them and write them a note, but they’d only think that you’re an useless child who can’t handle their shit, so it’s probably good that you don’t have any friends.

- You cannot make a sound, and you must scream. Your mouth works perfectly fine, but the are now as distant to you as the stars, and your memory of when this wasn’t so is just as far back as their time-shifted illusions that you once saw in the sky. But since you can think the sound, actually making it is clearly optional

- Clearly, you see only two logical possibilities here: Either Cthulhu is real and you have just fulfilled your life-long dream of meeting him, or you have gone fully and completely bonkers for perfectly ordinary reasons like severe trauma or an oopsie-daisy in your brain chemistry. You hope it was Cthulhu. Your only regret is that you will never find out the truth.

- Where did you come from, and where are you going? You do not know, and because you don’t know, you cannot understand. You have no framework with which to decide where you are now - You might as well be curled up in an old abandoned fallout shelter, drifting at sea in an abadoned ship, or deep undergound in a glacial ravine, with nothing but ice and rock in every direction. You cower all alone, in the endless vastness of time and space, and the flimsy, ephemeral chunk of soul canned in your stinky, decaying flesh is awash with awe of the merciless void, so filled with the magnitude of your own insignifance that you cannot think or feel anything else; There’s not even enough room for that little, distant voice that usually watches and comments on your misadventures with surprising rationality. Whatever lies outside your frail, enclosed chysalis, you finally realize in full just how badly you are terrified of it. Your entire soul consists of nothing else. What were you, originally, before you tried to contain the horrors of the universe in your tiny little head? What are you now, that it refused to fit inside, what are you but this single, naked consciousness?

#enneagram gothic #5w4 #enneagram 5 #im not sure if I got the style right but there was an attempt #type 5 #enneagram

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