1946

There are plenty of legends surrounding Count Dracula. They say that he bathes in the blood of virgins. He has knives for hands and his fangs are sharp enough to cut the very air itself. He can turn into a bat. He can turn into a mist. He’s over one thousand years old, but he doesn’t look a day over fifty.

This, of course, is all bullshit. Count Dracula isn’t real, and Cellbit isn’t even one hundred yet, and he certainly doesn’t look fifty years old. He has a shower and electricity and a radio. He even has an automobile, not that he uses it for anything but trips to town to beg the werewolves to please stop leaving dead rabbits on his front porch.

Still. Maybe living in the crumbling remains of a long-abandoned castle on a hill surrounded by dead trees and graveyards full of empty tombstones and half-disturbed graves gives a bit of an impression. And maybe Cellbit was a bit dramatic when he was first turned, but who wouldn’t be when faced with immortality for the first time?

Quesadilla Island is no stranger to the supernatural. There are the werewolves in town, there are the demons scattered across the island. There’s the talking skeleton that cries if you look at him weirdly. And then there’s Cellbit, “Count Dracula”, the island’s only living vampire.

Quesadilla Island is no stranger to the supernatural. Vampires are a danger to society, and so it’s up to vampire hunters like those from the Federation to make sure the vampires stay under control and away from the more fragile citizens.

And that’s fine, really. Cellbit hates people, anyway. He likes how they taste, but the artificial blood that Mouse magicks up for him once a week is a good substitute.

He likes his castle, and he likes his alone time, and he likes spending said alone time in the secret room in his basement trying to figure out ways to absolutely slaughter the shit out of every Federation hunter on the island so he can live in peace.

Tonight is one such night. The werewolves are all transformed with the full moon, and Richarlyson is with Felps in the Square for the night, so Cellbit is, thankfully, alone. He can polish his knives in peace.

And then he hears a knock at the door for the first time in half a century.

“Hola?” he hears. “Dracula?”

Cellbit perks up despite his best attempts to play at being annoyed. He knows this voice, it belongs to one of the non-supernatural townsfolk. The cute one he’s only spoken to once, and the one he probably shouldn’t speak to again if his drunken memories are anything to live by.

The vampire hunter.

Cellbit immediately rushes upstairs and pauses in the foyer to fix his hair in a mirror. Unfortunately, he can’t see his reflection. Fuck.

He opens the door, anyway, and he tries not to be too obvious with his smile as he leans against the doorframe just oh so casually.

“Hello!” he cheerfully says. “Good evening!”

He immediately internally smacks himself as the hunter raises both eyebrows. Too obvious.

Cellbit clears his throat and repeats in a much calmer voice, “I mean. Hello. Good evening. I was not expecting you.”

The hunter looks him over, and it occurs to Cellbit that this is the first time that they’ve ever spoken. Ever. Of course, he already knew this, but-

The hunter smiles and makes eye contact. “Can I come in?”

“Uh. Sure?”

The hunter winks, and then he ducks under Cellbit’s arm and enters the castle as Cellbit stands there, frozen. What.

“Nice place.” The hunter whistles. “Is it just you?”

Cellbit stares at him, watching as the hunter flops onto the foyer’s most grandiose sofa and kick his muddy feet up onto the seat. The door closes, but neither pays it any mind.

“Ah,” says Cellbit. “Sometimes. Can I help you?”

The hunter shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

He gives Cellbit another once-over, eyes lingering on Cellbit’s neck and chest- uncovered, for once, because his shirt has been left with the top buttons undone, for once, because he was alone just a few minutes ago.

If Cellbit was capable of blushing, he would be doing so. Instead, he buttons his shirt back up and coughs into his fist.

That seems to jolt the hunter back into action because he hops off the sofa as quickly as he had fallen onto it and he smooths down his long red coat and he says, “I want to… ugh, how do I say this?”

He paces a little, hand running through his hair, and then he throws his head back and just kinda blurts it out: “I want to kill Cucurucho.”

He looks at Cellbit, frozen yet again. “Can you help me with that?”

Cucurucho is evil incarnate. It’s also the current head of the vampire hunters of the island, complete with its own personal armory of bullshit tools meant to make Cellbit’s life a living hell: stakes, holy water, blessed weapons. It even has a dagger in the shape of a crucifix, what the fuck?

Cellbit wants it dead. He wants to suck the life out of its unholy abomination of a body and he wants to burn its corpse in the sunlight it holds so dearly. He’s got a thousand potential murders in mind for it, but that’s gotta come off a little strong, right?

So Cellbit shrugs very casually. “Maybe. Why?”

That’s the million-dollar question: why would one of Cucurucho’s own loyal hunters want it dead?

The hunter looks down at the ground briefly before looking back up at Cellbit with absolute nothing in his eyes.

“My son is dead,” he says, very, very calmly. “And so Cucurucho needs to be dead, too. That’s all.”

This is the look of a man already dead.

“Okay,” Cellbit says. He nods, because he, too, is a father. Somehow.

The hunter blinks slowly. “Just like that?”

“What, did you want me to interrogate you some more?”

“I dunno. Aren’t you supposed to hypnotize me or something?”

Cellbit raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to hypnotize you?”

(He can’t, but the hunters don’t need to know that.)

“I mean… maybe? I don’t know how this works, man!” The hunter throws his arms up and collapses back onto the couch in an annoyed huff. “Maybe you’re just going to eat me, who knows?”

Cellbit delicately takes a seat on the closest chair… which so happens to be the one nearest the hunter’s sofa. What a coincidence.

“You know that I don’t eat people,” he scoffs. Not anymore, anyway…

“I mean, sure, but you’re Count Dracula! You’re weird!”

Cellbit blinks. That’s one way to describe him.

“I’m not Dracula,” he says. “You people do know that, right? Like, you do know that he’s copyrighted material. I couldn’t be him if I wanted to.”

The hunter looks at him incredulously. “No mames, who the fuck are you, then?”

What, so they actually don’t know? What?

“Uh,” says Cellbit, a little caught up in how fucking stupid his tormentors really seem to be. “Cellbit?”

The hunter’s eyes widen. “Oh, shit, I knew I recognized you from somewhere!”

Uh-oh…

Cellbit’s glad that he can’t blush, because he’s got a bad feeling coming on based off of the way the hunter actively scoots down the sofa and towards him, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt.

“I was really drunk, but-” the hunter says. “But! I remembered your name!”

Cellbit swallows a lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember yours.”

“That’s fine, you will.”

And that isn’t intimidating at all.

“Because you are the vampire who turned me!”

The hunter pulls back the side of his unbuttoned shirt to show some very sculpted muscles… and two little pinpricks right on his collar still scarring over even three weeks after the fact.

Cellbit’s mouth goes dry. Because maybe he got a little drunk at Forever’s Halloween party three weeks ago, and maybe he hooked up with the most beautiful man on Quesadilla Island for the night. The night is a fuzzy mess at best, and he certainly doesn’t remember turning anyone, but he does remember:

“Roier,” he weakly says. “I am so sorry.”

The hunter- Roier’s- smile is blinding. “Don’t be. Because now there are two vampires on the island, yes? And Cucurucho can’t kill both of us.”

…To Be Continued?

Another Sunny Chapter! Also, I must be finding a rhythm in my writing, as I've NEVER been able to get chapters finished as quickly as I have this month. Huzzah!

As always, credit for the Sundrop headshot goes to wwispie on Etsy/instagram!

May you all have a happy Halloween and a wonderful Samhain!!!

Enjoy!

Ao3: Petals on a Stream of Stars

Act 1, Chapter 8: A Gift to Remember

Wednesday

12:30pm

Sundrop

Sun fought to keep the smile on his face. He knew it. He knew it was too good to be true. The clock ticked well past twelve noon, and here he was, all alone in a big empty daycare. No assistant, no Chrysanthemum in sight. With arms full of plushies far cheerier than he, Sun continued to tidy up, dropping the irritatingly happy toys in a pile without a hint of concern as to how they landed. 

His first thought had been that she’d gotten lost in the Pizzaplex somewhere. A probable guess, considering the common trend when mixing new staff with one convoluted building. But then, first shift had started. The kids came. Still no sign of hair redder than a sunset to come through that door. The odds grew slimmer by the minute, he knew, yet he still retained a modicum of hope. He’d keep looking, keep checking until he couldn’t anymore. 

Though Officer Vanessa made sure that notion left him right quick, flying into the Daycare the moment morning dismissal ended, veins bulging as she had shouted. “Why can’t you do anything right?!? You had ONE. JOB. Why the Board hasn’t just scrapped you two already I’ll never know!”  

Her cruel words stung, as they always did. But in the end… she was right. It was his fault Chrys wasn’t here right now, helping to clean and humming away as she’d been yesterday. How careless, how incredibly dumb he’d been! He should have known to check the lights before taking her anywhere outside the Daycare. Thinking ahead and circumnavigating problems was a part of his job, for fazz’s sake! 

He groaned, and covered his face. He knew what the problem was. He’d been too preoccupied with making a good impression to think of the potential dangers. Distracted by her smiles, her laugh when he made a silly joke with the kids. For the first time in a long while, his smile hadn’t just been a part of his standard dress code. Not even that one small hiccup at the start of the morning could mar their working interactions. Although… did she think, since he cared for children and all their meltdowns, that soothing her was simply a part of his programming? That he didn’t actually care? Did she think him disingenuous, and that’s why she decided not to come back??

No, no, no, that hadn’t been what he’d meant at all! She looked so overwhelmed, that all he’d wanted to do was comfort and calm her down! Anxiety attacks were no joke, whether they were a child or an adult, it didn’t matter! Sure, his programming would have thrown a fit if he’d left her to her own devices, but that was besides the point! He wasn’t faking it, never!

He yanked at his rays, taking the surge of pain which shot through his head as penance. Stupid, stupid, stupid! The gears in his chest ground together, and an ache settled at his core. He stomped his foot, needing to release the distressed energy building up in his limbs. He’d messed up. He’d messed up, and he didn’t know what to do. If Moonie was here he’d know. He would’ve… 

But Moon wasn’t here, was he? Not in a way that mattered. 

His arms noodled at his sides, and he let loose a deep sigh. Things were different now, so very different. He could only imagine what all had happened once Moon came out in the storeroom. There’d been no time to catch him up on everything since his last turn with the body, no time to inform him of who Chrysanthemum was and why she was important. 

Stars, when he’d told her she’d meet Moon eventually, he hadn’t meant in less than half-an-hour!

Yet, Chrys had seemed more or less fine, sloughing the whole situation off like it wasn’t a major deal. Did she even realize how bad that all could have gone? He’d half-expected to find her sobbing and scared out of her mind for goodness sakes! To instead find her so calm and collected, comparatively, and all in spite of being injured was… disconcerting. Something happened between her and Moon, that much was clear, but what exactly, it appeared he’d have to find out on his own. Didn’t seem like he’d get many answers out of either of them, given there wasn’t a single mention of the incident in Moon’s nightly report. How was he supposed to make things right if he didn’t know what went wrong??

Frustrating! Stubborn! Unhelpful!

Still, fixating on what was wasn’t going to change anything. The fact of the matter still remained. If she didn’t come back, then yesterday wouldn’t matter much anymore, would it? He was getting himself upset over nothing. Better to chin up, and get back at it. There were still duties to be done, after all. 

With a forced vigor, Sun puffed up his chest, and marched his way over to the supply closet, grabbing a sticky broom to sweep up the remaining glitter littering the floors after arts and crafts time. Least there was something productive for him to take all these emotions out on.

He swept, and scrubbed, and scrubbed some more, losing focus of the world around him. With a head devoid of thoughts, he could relax some. 

Be good to get rid of all this gunk stuck under the railing. I’ll have to mention to facilities to get me more solvent, this stuff is not coming off easy. Crud’s been here long enough to become as hard as a rock. Maybe a sign might help, or an extra trashcan, give the parents a place to throw their gum out… 

“Sun? Sun! I am so, so sorry I’m so late, I overslept and I—”

“WAH-AH!”

He jerked, pivoting about like a startled cat. The solvent spray he held in one hand flew clear across the room, while the scraper he’d held in the other flew the opposite, hitting the wall with an echoing “clang”. His eyes shot open wide as he stared at Chrys, her face out of breath and looking just as scrambled as he felt.

“Chrys?” His processors lagged, struggling to comprehend the sight of her before him. “Chrys!!! Oh my warm summer days, it’s you!!!”

 He surged forward, scooping her up and spinning them around and around before holding her close in an all-encompassing hug.

“Oof!” Chrys grunted, though she didn’t fight his embrace. “It’s uh—woah, dizzy—good to see you too, Sun! Ack, not so tight!!”

Realization dawned across his features as his mind caught back up to his actions, his demeanor turning sheepish as he relinquished his hold and set her back down on her feet. 

“Ah, uh, s-sorry, about that!” He said, keeping his arms still for her to hold onto while she regained her balance. “Got a little ahead of myself there.” 

Looking her over, it was clear she’d had a heck of a morning. Sweat-slicked skin, hair frizzing, heart rate still within normal range but higher than her baseline. Her face didn’t express any obvious distress, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t bothered on the inside. Humans frequently kept their emotions bottled up. Did she have another breakdown this morning? His worry reignited. 

“Are you ok?? If this was because of yesterday, I promise today will be better, I’m so sorry yesterday even happened in the first place! Just tell me, and I’ll—”

“Sun!” Chrys smiled, reaching out in a reassuring manner. “What are you talking about? Yesterday was fine, you’re fine. Nothing is wrong.” She turned her head away, making a face to no one. “Well, me being this late is wrong, but it’s my own fault. I’m the one who managed to both oversleep AND miss every single bus that comes to my stop. Ended up having to walk all the way here. Least there’s a shortcut through the woods so it wasn’t too bad.”

“Walked?” He finally took notice of the multiple leaves that littered her hair. “Oh Sunshine, why didn’t you call? I’m sure someone could have come and picked you up! O-Or given you the ok to stay home. You should never walk around by yourself like that!”

She avoided facing him, and fiddled with a stray strand of hair.

“Well, uh, you see, that’s because I’m also a bit of a dingus and forgot to plug in my phone last night, so it’s… a little dead right now. Kinda the reason why I missed my alarm in the first place.” She flashed him an apologetic grin. “Stupid, I know. But I stayed up for a good reason, promise.” His eyes followed hers down to her hand, where she held a little white box, neat and tidy and tied together with a red ribbon bow. She held out the item. “It’s for you.”

“For… for me?” He hesitated, only taking the box from her once she re-offered it to him. “… Really?” he asked. Chrys nodded, smile certain. He turned it over in his hands, looking at it with thoughtful eyes. “I’ve… never been given a gift before.”

Shock filled her expression. “Wait, really? That’s… um, well.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, I guess I’ll be your first then. Thank you. For taking care of me yesterday after, ya know. It’s doing alot better than I thought it would after you made me get an ice pack on it so fast.” She pointed to her chin, where only a light sheen of purple could be seen, far kinder than how it had looked before.

“I… I don’t understand. That’s just basic first aid. Anyone should have done that.”

“Then you haven’t met “anyone.” Chrys laughed. “So, thank you. Now, come on! Open it.” 

Her tone rose to a playful tease, a permission he hadn’t realized he’d needed. One last look, committing his first present to his memory bank before taking hold of the end of the ribbon between two fingers and giving it a gentle tug. The bow fell apart easily, and with bated breath, he removed the lid. 

“Wha….?” His smile faltered at what he saw, reaching inside to take hold of its contents, the item dwarfed against the size of his palm. 

It was a friendship bracelet. 

An actual friendship bracelet. Not like the craft ones he made with the kids, full of dried macaroni and cheap clay. No, this one was made with skill, set with different stones all reflecting shades of gold and red, with a single metal charm in the shape of a Sun dangling at the center of the pattern. 

“The kinda orangy-peachy looking ones are Sunstones, the red ones are Carnelian, and the gold, sparkly ones are Gold Sandstone. I thought they suited you.”

He couldn’t speak. The coils around his voicebox tightened, and the rubber tubes that supplied oil to his eye sockets swelled. He couldn’t take his eyes off the simple, homemade piece of jewelry.

“… Sun?” Chrys’s voice drifted in from the corners of his awareness. “You alright? If you don’t like it, I can make you another, however you’d want.” 

Her voice, now small and timid, drew his attention like nothing else could. He looked to her, pausing before he spoke. 

“Like it?” He put all the emotion he could into his next words, wholly serious and full of intent. “I love it.”

The relief that flooded her face, crinkling her eyes and tugging her cheeks into a full-bodied grin, was a secondary gift he doubted even she knew she was giving him. His internal regulator which sat deep in his chest jolted and beat out of sync, sending tiny spasms throughout his endoskeleton. 

She really was prettiest when she smiled. 

“Oh, good! Had me worried there for a second.” She clapped her hands together.

He slipped it onto his right wrist, stretching the elastic thread holding it together to fit his hand through. It dangled comfortably around the ball of his wrist-joint, the smooth beads rolling around without catching or hindering his movements. 

“Thank you, Sunshine. Thank you so much. It’s perfect.”

They shared a moment of warm silence together, him admiring how the light caught against the stones, while she simply took in his appreciation. It was her to first break the reverie, eyebrows shooting up as if remembering something.  

“Oh, I, uh… I also made one for Moon too. His is made out of Moonstone, Blue Sandstone, and Opalite. And, you know, a Moon charm. Wouldn’t make much sense to give him a Sun one too.” She reached around her backside to tug at the zipper of her backpack, and pulled out an identical box to his, wrapped instead with a blue ribbon. 

“Oh, I…” For a rare second, he was without words. He reached for the gift with reverence, taking it from Chrys’s hands with the same tenderness as one would a priceless artifact. “… He’s never received a gift before, either.”

Her cheeks flushed a lite shade of pink, making her freckles darken ever so slightly. “I-I thought I should give it to you, rather than wait to give it to him myself. Who knows when that’ll be, right? At the very least, I didn’t want to come across like I was leaving him out or something.” 

She refused to look in his eyes, but by the way she tugged at the bottom hem of her shirt reminded him so much of when the kids would show him their pieces of art, he couldn’t help but chuckle, her bashful energy endearing.  

“The fact that you thought of him at all is gift enough. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure he gets it.”

Propping open one of the many pocket openings in his pants, he slid the box in, giving it a quick pat from the outside to ensure it settled in there nice and secure. Moon will be blown away when he wakes up to find this, he was sure. Shame he’d have to miss seeing the look on his face when he opened it. 

A wave of relief washed over him, a balm to the tension he held throughout his joints, and he let the feeling settle into his limbs. This was something precious, something new. For one, blissful moment, nothing really was wrong. He wasn’t in trouble. And both he and his brother were remembered, thought of, appreciated. Thanks… to her. 

This bracelet, at least for him, was more than just a token. It would be a reminder. A reminder that they existed to someone outside these walls. That they mattered. He couldn’t bear the thought of taking it off, and as he took a second glance at it, shining against his wrist, he determined he’d just have to be extra, extra careful with it whenever he was working. Maybe Moon would wear his on their other wrist, and they could both enjoy the gifts together! His rays spun, face lighting up as he imagined it.  

A loud “ping” from his arm shattered his daydream, drawing both their attention. Startled, Sun accepted the incoming page before checking who it was that was calling. 

“Sundrop.” The voice on the other end sounded terse, but not angry—a blessing, given whom the voice belonged to. He switched it to speaker mode, to include Chrys in as well.

“O-Officer Vanessa!” He forced a smile into his voice. 

“Last minute scheduling change. We’ve got a Birthday party this afternoon. The Daycare’s PM shift has been canceled, and all parents of the regulars have been called. Start setting up for a level 3, access has been granted for the additional supplies. Guests will be arriving starting at two.”

He stared at his arm, processing, before exploding in a fit of joy.

A birthday party? In the Daycare?!? There hasn’t been one of those in months! 

His hands flapped, and he jumped from one foot to the other. Oh, there was so much to do, so much to prepare! He’d have to rearrange the entire daycare, and pull out all the locked decorations from the storeroom! Blow up balloons, hang streamers. Oh! Grab the banner, that was paramount. They’d also need— 

“Sundrop.”

“Oh!” He’d gotten distracted again. “Yes?”

“Is that Miss Chrysanthemum I see standing there with you?”

He froze. It was all too easy to forget about the cameras, given their relatively new installation. He turned, looking toward the multiple points on the ceiling from where they might be actively being watched from, knowing full well the answer was all of them. From the corner of his eye, he saw Chrys look and find the cameras too. 

“Uh, yes, it is. She just got here!”

“Good. Before you get started, send her over to the security desk. She and I need to have a little chat.”

With a click of finality, the call ended.

Honest KH2 Appraisal

Continuing looking at Kingdom Hearts II from a moderate standpoint, here is a post looking over all the good of the game's tumultuous narrative, because accentuating the negative as described in this post without looking at all the positives does it no justice. Here are the ten major things that went right with the game's narrative:

- The Characters: Even if much of the character writing is a downgrade from the previous two installments, one vital quality is still retained: you like these characters, you feel for these characters, you are interested in these characters and invested in where they end up. As this video points out, it's still a story about Sora and his friends, not about the increasingly incomprehensible Xehanort and his increasingly uninteresting followers. In fact, it's the story that ends the larger story they've been a part of ever since the original game. It's the true end of their journey, and you're with them all the way.

- The Emotion: I find that "melodrama" is something that is very unfairly maligned. It's bad in the wrong place, sure, but in the right place it is highly effective at going straight for our hearts and giving us something memorable, possibly even formative, that will last us our whole lives, more than more "seriously" written things do. And KH2 piles on the melodrama to superb effect, exactly in the way you would want and expect in a Disney JRPG. The convoluted nature of the plot falls by the wayside when you are wrapped up in the emotions - to paraphrase Ansem the Wise, you don't need to wrap your mind around things when your heart already knows them.

- The Balance: KH2 might just be the crowning achievement in the series when it comes to balancing Disney, Final Fantasy, and KH-original elements. Each receives more than their fair share of spotlight, and each is able to interact with one another in perfectly natural ways. So as out of sync as the forces behind the narrative were, the forces within the narrative have never been as much in sync. The KH universe has never felt as unified as this ever again.

- The Tone: Similarly to the unfair rep that melodrama gets, there are many who instantly judge the "early 2000s shonen anime" tone (meaning style, flashiness and Rule of Cool takes precedence over serious subject matter) that KH2 goes with, often upset either because they wanted the first game's tone again or they wanted something darker as suggested by the famous secret ending video from the first game. But there's so much that's good and fun about early 2000s shonen anime when it's done right, and KH2 is an example of doing it right. I honestly think that this tone really works for the series and wish it had stuck to it, rather than deteriorating into the bad, pretentious, self-important shonen anime style that it did.

- The Themes: While continuing the themes established in the prior entries such as hearts, connection of hearts, darkness within hearts and light within darkness, and the power of memories, KH2 brought several new themes to the table such as the nature of existence, what your place in the universe is, the importance of keeping the promises you make, and perhaps above all reunion with friends. And even if the story's writing was wonky, the themes always shine through and are explored and wrapped up perfectly. 

- The Visuals: Masaru Oka's lackluster Event Direction can't detract from how visually grand Nomura's story is, with the imagery on display still remembered by all who played the game even today. Of special note has to be the World That Never Was, which is positively dripping with atmosphere and filled with unique structures, doing full justice to what was glimpsed in KH's legendary secret ending.

- The Sense of Humor: As much as I harp on Nojima for his writing problems, I would be remiss to not praise his excellent sense of humor that he filled his scenario with. Nomura even confirmed a lot of comedic touches like Sea-Salt Ice Cream being a running gag that runs so long that it becomes an important plot point was Nojima's doing. Also notice how the Halloween Town stories are written in a hokey manner like a Christmas special - don't think that wasn't intentional, that's the whole joke and it's hilarious. In fact, a lot of famous "KH2 out of context" moments and lines like "we totally owned you lamers!" seem to be conscious, tongue-in-cheek choices, and done in a way that doesn't offset the emotional sincerity of the dramatic parts of the story. With the KH series often being unable to lighten up these days, this kind of comedic touch is sorely missed.

- The High Points: This story's high points aren't just high, they're goddamn iconic. "Looks like my summer vacation is...over". The Hollow Bastion war sequence and the battle of 1000 Heartless. The stories of Beast's Castle, Olympus Coliseum and Space Paranoids. Timeless River in its entirety. The tough, climactic boss fights against the members of Organization XIII, Disney villains like Hades, and powerful Heartless such as Groundshaker. And of course almost everything that transpires in the World That Never Was. I believe I speak for many when I say that the low points like Atlantica or that weirdo subplot with Cloud, Tifa and Sephiroth are entirely forgivable when high points of this caliber are packaged along with them.

- The Finale: Like I said above, the World That Never Was gives us one of the best finales in video game history. From going through the dark city streets, to the mental duel against Roxas, to scaling the Castle That Never Was and taking down the rest of the Organization, to seeing all the heroes reunite, to the verbal battle between Xemnas and Ansem the Wise before the latter’s heroic sacrifice, to entering a physical manifestation of Kingdom Hearts itself where you slice through buildings, dodge laser fire from a flying mechanical fortress, fight hordes of Nobodies and take down Xemnas, to the final boss fight against Xemnas in the Realm of Nothingness, and finally to the sheer perfection that is the ending sequence. Every character gets a moment, every plot thread is wrapped up in a bow, and the happy ending you've longed for since the first KH didn't have it is finally achieved. There are flaws, but in the grand scheme of things they're nitpicks. This is the most satisfying conclusion the KH series has ever given us or ever will give us. There's just no topping it.

- The Collaboration: Tragically, Nomura took the wrong lessons away from KH2's success and from the criticism its narrative received. Here is what he admitted after KH3's release:

By axing professional scenario writers like Nojima and collaborators beyond Masaru Oka since they get confused by his concepts and stories, Nomura has traded one style of narrative mess for a much worse one. With his name under the "Story" credit, the stories are now even more convoluted, pretentious and badly paced, and now with far less sharp dialogue, less humor, less balancing between Disney, FF and KH-original elements, less emotion and thus less emotional investment, and less characters to be interested in or care about. Just...less FUN. This old post nailed it. Kingdom Hearts III came as close as was possible under the circumstances, but when compared to Kingdom Hearts II, it’s still a noteworthy step down. Regardless of its faults, KH2 is clearly where the KH series peaked.

Since I can't go to RTX and they aren’t streaming it this year but I wanted to do a masterpost of something RvB related, I decided to write a wrap-up of this interview with Jason Weight on The SHizno RvB Podcast. Please go check it out because there was now ay that I could fit everything in here and there’s so much good stuff in it. SO please go and check it out! But anyways, here we go:

Joe had told Jason about the plan for a Donut and Wash season back at RTX, which Jason at first wasn't on board with. But once he began writing it, he got into it and became very attached to Donut. 

When rewatching the show to prep for S17, one scene that took note of was in the caves when Grif was making the Reds not look at Kai when naked… except for Donut since he just paid attention to the Blue’s base. It felt like he had depth in those kinds of moments and it got him to like him. He was very happy to see more people join Team Donut after the season. He feels like only the surface has been scratched for him.

He confirmed that Donut’s innuendo in the finale was intentional (even putting ‘tongue and cheek’ in the character notes) and any made after will likely be intentional by him.

When they talked about Donut and Tucker’s development, Jason joked that Simmons would be next to receive development. So it seems that Jason is at least aware of our desire for a Simmons season XD

The Everwhen was devised essentially as another method of time travel different from the previous methods seen before since doing it the same way again would have been boring. 

The timeline after the paradox in the Writers Room was called Schrodinger’s Ass. 

The version of time travel we got was the third version. Jason spent a month on Verison One, but Burnie had rejected it. Then he, Joe, and Miles devised a second version, but near the end they threw it out and the third version that included The Everwhen was made.

How it worked in previous versions was that Chrovos has made the alternate Blood Gulch as a containment unit type of thing to contain the Reds and Blues as she went backwards in time, giving them a limited amount of time before she reached the beginning of time and… honestly, IDK how to type the whole thing out. But to put it simply, it was very convoluted and thus The Everwhen was made. The first version was also rejected due to being too similar to S9.

Jason is on Red Team! His explanation? “Red Team is an actual team.” 

He really liked the direction that Joe took Wash, especially since him now having a disability gives him a new unique perspective that, even if he doesn’t get to write in the future, he looks forward to seeing the direction that Wash is taken. He also believes that if they focus on Wahs’s rehabilitation, Caboose should have a major role in it. HIRE HIM RT, DANG IT!

Simmons original nightmare was the same scenario and the same joke… except that the one int he UFO was his dad. The higher-ups rejected this since it could come off as, well… incestuous/pedophilic. Which while I think the ‘dad’ bit would have made more sense… yeah, I… can’t blame them for that one. Jason DOES say that in his mind, Simmons feels that he’s in his father's shadow and the scene was supposed to be in a Freudian reference to those feelings.

Genkins was originally not as intimidating int he script. Much of it came from the direction, especially in Episode 10 after he got skewered by the golf club. Same with Wash and Carolina’s scene in Episode 9. He greatly loved seeing the direction that Austin and Josh took with the scenes.

Miles had toyed with having a scene set directly after S13 (he says 10 but I think he meant 13), but Jason felt that it was best to leave that area alone since it had ended on such a perfect note and talked him out of it. Jason also toyed with having the guys see Epsilon’s final message ala Princess Leia hologram and Tucker picking them up/explaining Episolon’s nature. But it was too talky nor did it really affect anything, so they instead went with Tucker re-living Crash site Bravo which was done by Miles.

If RvB ended up a Seinfeld-esque comedy, Grif and Simmons would live together with Grif trying to get Simmons out of his shell. Sarge is essentially Dan DeVito. Tucker would live alone and use his sword to open up beer bottles. Donut would live in a gym due to, in his mind, him having severe allergies and is why he wears the Power Armor all the time. Carolina and Wash would live together and have a dog, and they both suck at dating due to judging the other’s dates (which Jason feels their relationship is brother and sister). Caboose owns the building they all live in. Lopez is maintenance. I want this show now.

Jason reads all the comments after all the episodes, including on Tumblr (I’m going to be so much more paranoid over my reviews now...) and one post he really liked was the idea of an RvB Road Trip since he used to be a roadie.

Jason doesn’t know how the whole Shisno thing came about since it was Joe’s idea. He does say that it used to be spelt ‘shizno’ until they found out how it’s officially been spelt as ‘shisno’. Whoops. They DID consider involving Wyoming’ time distortion unit in the story, but with all the other time shenanigans they felt it would make it too complicated.

Koen Wooten, a 3D Producer at RT, joked about putting time travel into every show from now on. Miles and Jason were unamused XD

He had a lot of fun with things like writing The Labryinth and Kai messing with Tucker

The hardest part was balancing out the time travel and figuring out what to look into and what not to. 

Jason is very used to being a director due to his own show, Starship GOldfish, and his scripts for himself are MUCH longer and detailed than they end up being in the final draft. For, he had a specific way that he wanted to have Chrovos done, so he was Skype’d in to direct Lee Eddy. Speaking of, he pushed for her after seeing her do Gwen from Camp Camp live at RTX 17 and he really wanted to have her in the show in some form.

For RvB Movie Nights, Jason thinks that Grif would like Caddyshack, thinks that Carolina is terrified of horror films like Paranormal Activity (which makes Wash confused) and ends up panic stabbing the TV, Simmons and Donut both do documentaries, Lopez liked Mr. Bean… then after going back to the beginning of time, he hates that kind of media and just watches an aquarium screen, and Kai likes Alien.

For Halloween, Jason would want to dress as the Fishman from S3 of Camp Camp. 

When questioned about the show potentially hitting serial escalation after the Cosmic Powers stuff, Jason talks about how they feel that they have now sealed off from that and can move more laterally again. But he does also feel that there are larger threats out there that affect you more personally, such as everyone trying to kill you which he thinks could be much stronger than fighting some ultra-powerful God. But we’ll have to see where things go from this point.

He believes that moving forward, Doc can be more important since he now is a nice guy with the danger of O’Malley in him. 

He also has seen that fans feel that the Reds and Blues need a rest, which he agrees with. One idea he likes that he did in PSA’s was do some Grif and Sarge bonding since he feels there’s plenty left unexplored there, Caboose helping Wahs rehabilitate, giving Simmons an arc, and Donut exploring the universe to do some world building. He and Joe liked the idea of maybe doing a mini-series, especially since Halo 6 won’t be out for quite a while and doing one can explore some new options. He also brings up ideas for the future like Locus on trial, Wash’s rehabilitation, and Tucker seeking out Junior to bond with him more after what happened in The Labryinth. I mentioned that RT needs to hire Jason ASAP, right?! RIGHT?!

He also feels that there would, ideally, eventually need to be a new villain… and suggests himself cause of him being British. HA! He also really loves villains and if he got to keep being the writer, he would absolutely voice the villain like Miles did as Felix. Although he does bring up the ‘self-insert’ critique but thinks it would be okay since as the villain it would be okay to hate him!

At the end of the interview, Jason talks about how collaborative the entire process had been and how Miles greatly helped him with the writing as well as Josh and Austin’s direction, who he hopes will still be on it. He says to thank them.

Well, that was fun! I will say, Jason hit all of the right buttons for me and I do legit hope that he can come back. But even if he can’t, this was so great and having his contribution was amazing. Thank you again for everything Jason~

So I’m all for IronStrange but like what about Peter and Stephen bonding (platonic of course)??? Like, I’d love to see the Levitation Cloak wrap itself around Peter when he’s saying something dorky or Stephen conjure up a portal and get him to the Avengers tower when he starts messing with ancient relics inside the Sanctum

When Stephen first meets Peter, he’s kind of unsure of the kid

But he quickly learns how sincere and loyal and determined he really is– more determined than half the team, honestly– and Stephen seriously respects that.

Peter’s fascinated with Strange, and asks him a million and one questions about magic and sorcerers and other dimensions whenever they’re together

It’s kind of irritating at first, but after a week it becomes nothing but endearing

And Stephen’s happy to talk and laugh and explain everything to Peter. He’s bright and curious and understanding, and being around the kid makes Stephen feel… at ease, honestly.

Peter almost has an excited meltdown when Strange first asks if Peter would like to come visit the Sanctum

Peter definitely has a meltdown when he knocks over a quarter of the artifacts in the Sanctum

But Stephen simply shakes his head with a smile and reassures Peter that he knocks things over all the time too when his hands start shaking badly. He shows a delighted Peter a fixing spell to repair anything that was broke, and the kid’s worries seem to melt away

(Peter still tries to fix everything else he knocked over, though. Stephen still can’t figure out how to unstick the mass of Scotch Tape Peter wrapped around the Ring of Relinquishment. It’s been weeks.)

Peter’s invited back whenever he chooses

He often shows up to read in Stephen’s library after school, and Stephen sits beside him to help with any homework he has trouble with. He’s a whiz at anything related to science or math, but tends to struggle with history and english. Peter’s eyes always grow to the size of the moon every time Stephen pulls some dusty, ancient tome out of thin air to look up the answer to some convoluted European History essay question

(Stephen could just as easily get up and fetch the book from the shelf– really, it’s kind of extra to open a portal for it– but he loves the amazed looks Peter give him whenever he does casual magic in front of him)

Peter likes to drop by on days he gets out of school early, lugging a take-out bag behind him, and eat lunch with Stephen on the balcony. They chit-chat and share the latest gossip and Peter teaches Stephen Gen-Z slang and humor

One afternoon Peter casually mentions getting picked on, and Stephen whips around, drops his takeout container, and immediately teaches the kid a simple trick for tripping people when they least expect it

“And if If anyone EVER hurts you, give me a name and I promise they’ll be trapped in their locker until they apologize.”

Another afternoon they scrutinize each other from across the table, and mutually decide that they need to figure out how the other’s powers/suits work out of curiosity

And that’s how Stephen ends up covering his own Sanctum in webbing that takes hours to clear away as Peter laughs unhelpfully in the background

(It’s also how Peter ends up on the roof after the Cloak drops him there unceremoniously)

But anyhow when the weather’s nice and they’re not at the Sanctum and Peter has time away from school and superhero-ing, Stephen likes to take him window shopping

They make a game out of coming up with the most ridiculous disguises possible so they won’t get recognized in public

And they never really end up buying anything, but it’s fun to just walk and talk and point out cool things in display windows they pass by

But occasionally Stephen relents, opens a sneaky portal to snag some spare change from Tony, and the two of them buy the most ridiculously terrible thing available in the mall that day

One time they find a paperweight in the shape of a nude Iron Man bust and they absolutely lose it in the back of the office supply store

Peter gift-wraps it and it mysteriously appears on Tony’s desk the next morning

The two hide around the corner from Tony’s office and try to hold back laughter as they listen to him yelling as he opens it

(It’s still sitting on Tony’s desk to this day, holding down any papers that Stephen or Peter give him)

In contrast to Tony, the overprotective dad, Stephen is 100% the Cool Dad

I mean, he’d still kick in anyone’s face in that tries to touch Peter

But sometimes Peter calls him at one (1) am like “Strange? Could you open a quick portal somewhere for me? No questions asked?” and Stephen is silent for a moment and then replies “As long as you have your suit, wallet, condoms, and some pepper spray. Be home by the time school starts. Have fun.”

The one time Peter doesn’t show back up by Stephen’s stated time he learns how petty a magic dad can be

He tries to sneak back into the kitchen around six am, only to find Stephen sitting cross-legged at the table with May and a steaming mug of tea.

“You see May? I told you he’d be back. He just likes visiting a certain friend of his in the dead of night. I made sure he had condoms, don’t worry.”

“MR. STRANGE–”

Honestly though, despite the chagrin, Stephen’s the one Peter goes to for difficult or embarrassing conversations as well

Stephen always manages to be calm, unconcerned, and understanding even if it’s really weird or completely and totally embarrassing

And Stephen’s always ready to be a supportive dad with a fresh mug of tea whenever Peter comes around

Their favorite thing to do is come up with ways to irritate Tony

One time they solemnly agree to speak to Stark in only rhyming prose and Tony nearly loses it with them after this goes on for a solid day and a half

And when Tony’s having a bad day they show up wearing matching “We Love Iron Man!” sweatshirts and give him a group hug

Or just chant “you’re our hero!” outside his window until he agrees to come out of his lab and have lunch downtown with them

Bonus:

Peter definitely wears stupid shirts with sayings like “my dad is a sorcerer” on them, and any Doctor Strange merch he can scrounge up as well

He definitely dresses up as Strange for Halloween and Strange dumps and entire bowl of candy on him

American Horror Story: Murder House | Tate Langdon [ISFP] [4w5]

Idiosyncratic | Creative | Artistic | Introspective (x)

ISFPs live in the present moment and enjoy their surroundings with cheerful, low-key enthusiasm. They are flexible and spontaneous, and like to go with the flow to enjoy what life has to offer. ISFPs are quiet and unassuming, and may be hard to get to know. (x)

***Super unhealthy, obviously.

Fi [Introverted Feeling]: Tate has a pretty skewed sense of morality, but he has strong morals nonetheless. He hates cheaters (e.g., Patrick, Ben), and he believes that “if you love someone, you should never hurt them” (“Pilot”). In his own twisted way, he stays true to this by any means necessary. His black-and-white morals are selective and only extend to certain people, however; Tate will do whatever it takes to protect those he loves and make them happy, albeit at the expense of strangers or people he doesn’t care about. This is evidenced by his willingness to kill Chad and Patrick and then rape Vivien in order to give Nora, whom he sees as his surrogate mother, what she wants: a baby. Tate doesn’t care who he has to chop to pieces (“Home Invasion”) or suffocate (“Smoldering Children”) in order to protect Violet, and even tries to kill an innocent guy in order to give Violet a “normal” boyfriend (“Afterbirth”). Although extreme, Tate is selfless in most of his endeavors; he would rather be trapped in the Murder House for eternity with Violet’s new boyfriend than to see her be lonely, ultimately living up to the standards which he pronounced in “Pilot.” Tate has an innate sense of justice, and will go to extremes to dole out punishment on those he believes deserve it, which includes setting Larry on fire for murdering his brother (“Smoldering Children”). Tate is often able to detect when people are being less than truthful, such as when Ben ends his therapy session early (“Bullshit. I don’t accept that” (“Home Invasion”)), and can’t stand it when people are fake. He is unwilling to give his mother any sort of satisfaction, and actively rebels against meeting her expectations of being the “perfect son” (“Smoldering Children”). Tate wears his heart on his sleeve, and is open about what he loves and hates, frequently telling Violet that he loves her, Constance and Larry that he hates them (“Open House”; “Smoldering Children”), etc., although he typically only expresses his innermost feelings to those he trusts implicitly (e.g., Violet on the beach (“Halloween: Part 1”)). Tate doesn’t always anticipate how people will react to him, initially scaring away Violet with his antics in the basement (“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything!” (“Pilot”)), as well as with his assumption that she would kill herself to be with him (“Smoldering Children”), and later unwittingly provoking Violet to really kill herself with his confession of love (“Piggy, Piggy”). He even fails to understand that Violet wouldn’t want him to kill somebody so that she could have a new boyfriend (“Afterbirth”).

Se [Extroverted Sensing]: Tate is impulsive at best, and utterly reckless at worst. He almost always acts before he thinks. Sometimes, this works to his advantage: he is able to act quickly to save Vivien and Violet from the reenactment of the murders (“Home Invasion”), as well as lead the dead kids who are after him away from Violet simply by running off (“Halloween: Part 2”). Most of the time, however, Tate’s inclination to take action and failure to think things through messes things up… big time. His gut reaction to retaliate against Constance while on drugs results in him burning Larry, committing mass murder, and ultimately getting himself killed. Tate waits until the last minute to tell Violet that she is actually dead, conjuring up a convoluted plan that includes knocking out her dad, killing an exterminator, and convincing her to “commit suicide” again - a plan which is destined to fail due to lack of preparation (“Smoldering Children”). For the most part, Tate believes in what is real and tangible; he is grounded, telling Violet that she can’t control the repercussions of her death forever, and that “it is what it is” (“Birth”). Tate also enjoys getting a physical reaction out of people, attempting to shock Ben with his words about Violet during his therapy session (“Home Invasion”), scaring Leah (“Pilot”), and attempting to scare Violet in jest (“Halloween: Part 1”). 

Ni [Introverted Intuition]: Tate fails to think very far ahead into the future, rarely considering the greater implications of events. He believes that he can both stay with Violet and protect her so long as she remains in the house; what he obviously does not foresee is Violet being a danger to herself (“Piggy, Piggy”). Whereas Violet wonders about what she will miss being trapped inside the house, Tate does not worry much about the future of the world (“Birth”). Nevertheless, Tate does occasionally enjoy infusing things with personal symbolism, telling Violet that he likes birds because “they can fly away when things get too crazy” (“Piggy, Piggy”), and allowing his imagination to run wild in his speech to Ben: “I prepare for the noble war. . . There's something about all that blood, man. I drown it. The Indians believed that blood holds all the bad spirits, and once a month in ceremonies they would cut themselves to let the spirits go free” (“Pilot”). Tate is sometimes able to infer things about people just by observing them (Se), understanding that a little girl in a Halloween costume reminds Ben of Violet (“Halloween: Part 1”), that Constance doesn’t really love Larry (“Smoldering Children”), etc. 

Te [Extroverted Thinking]: Tate is very blunt and matter-of-fact in his statements and evaluations of people, declaring early on in his therapy session with Ben that his mother is unfaithful (“Pilot”), and very explicitly stating the facts of what he believes to be true (also laced with Fi-anger) about Larry’s naivety and Constance’s duplicity at a family dinner: “And thank you for our new charade of our family. . . Lord, a big thank you for blinding the asshole that's doing my mother, so that he can't see what everybody knows: she doesn't really love him” (“Smoldering Children”). Tate wants immediate solutions and is quick to implement his plans, often resorting to murder and other heinous acts for the sake of efficiency: killing Chad and Patrick and raping Vivien to get Nora a baby; scaring Vivien to prevent her from taking Violet out of the house; knocking out Ben and killing the exterminator to stop Violet from finding out that she is dead; and attempting to kill Gabe so that Violet can have a “normal” boyfriend. At worst, Tate is prone to shouting out orders to get people to do what he wants: “Stand up!” (“Afterbirth”).

Enneagram [4w5]: Tate is emotional, melancholy, intense, and above all, cynical; declaring the world to be a “filthy goddamn horror show” (“Pilot”). He is very much focused on his identity as an individual, rejecting what is mainstream by society’s standards in pursuit of what he believes to be true and authentic; he has a disdain for the popular kids at school (“Pilot”) and idolizes high school dropouts (“Halloween: Part 2”). 

✘✘✘  Tate is almost universally typed as an INFP, and while I understand that this is often the type of the stereotypical, morose 90s teenager, Tate’s Se impulsivity is evident throughout the show. The only time he shows anything resembling Ne is during his rambling to Violet on the beach, but this could simply be Fi-rambling about his innermost thoughts and feelings, not necessarily Ne. And especially not enough Ne to erase all the Se he demonstrates throughout the show. 

I may have gone a bit overboard with my analysis on this one. Sorry about the length, but Tate is just such an Fi-dom, so there was a lot to say. Also happens to be one of my favorite characters of all time, so there’s that.

How I’d Ruin It: Batman

(thanks to The Lego Batman Movie for making my brain keep coming back to this, and also for making such awesome goddamn toys for my retail therapy needs)

While I write my own stories nowadays, the old fanfic writer in me resurfaces every now and then in the form of idle thoughts about how I’d handle certain stories I love.  Sometimes these musings lead me to one horrible conclusion: that no matter how much I may love the story in question, I’d be absolutely fuck awful at writing it.  This is because the scope of things I’m interested in writing is significantly smaller than the scope of things I’m interested in reading/watching - my muse is a pickier eater than I am.

Still, no matter how awful and off message my bastardized mental versions of these stories may be, they keep popping up now and then, demanding to manifest as stories are wont to do.  So today I’m going to exorcise one of them by summarizing it to you.

Today, my wonderful readers, I’m going to tell you how I’d utterly fuck up at writing Batman.

I’m a conditional Batman fan, because there’s a lot of Batman media out there and a lot of it is shit - and also there’s so much of it by volume that even reading/watching only the good Batman stuff would take more time than I can spare.  So when I say I love Batman, know that I mean, like, mostly the 90′s animated series and scattered arcs like The Long Halloween that can stand alone, and The Dark Knight, and the Adam West show, and Holy Musical B@man, and some other random Batman stuff.  I only know/like some Batman, but the amount of Batman I like is still, like, a lot of Batman.  Jesus Christ there’s so much fucking Batman dudes.

But I have some problems with Batman, two of which are relevant to this post because they’re also kind of necessary to its appeal.  The first is one that is almost justifiable, although it will undoubtedly sound preposterous to most people: why does Batman have to be so dark?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a horror fan, so obviously I’m not completely averse to darkness in my fiction.  A big part of Batman’s appeal to me comes from how it’s rooted in Gothic Horror tropes.  It’s a comic about a dude who dresses up as a Dracula to fight monster men in a city that’s literally called Gotham, so darkness has to be part of the story.

But jeeeeeesus christ Batman is needlessly dark sometimes.  Does a bat themed super hero really need to be fighting a guy who carves tally marks into his skin for every person he’s murdered?  Is the Joker really more interesting when he’s killing everyone he sees than when he committed clown themed heists?  Isn’t being a crocodile man enough intrigue for Killer Croc, or does he need to be a creepy cannibal too?  Does every villain need to be a murderer?

While the Adam West Batman show is so campy that I can only tolerate it in small doses, it nonetheless makes me pine for a brighter take on the character/series.  It’s kind of nice to have bright colors and jokes and a Batman who doesn’t whine about how sad he is, and villains who are more into making elaborate puzzles and traps instead of finding new ways to mutilate their victims.  I’d love to see it blended with the complex psychology of the darker Batmans - but more on that after we get to problem number 2.

Which is, of course, Batman himself.

Batman can be an interesting character.  In the best Batman stories, I certainly do love him.  But, to be totally honest with you, even at his best, Batman is never the main draw to me in a Batman story.  He’s like the bun of a hot dog - it’d be weird to have one without him, and a lot of the more interesting ingredients would sort of fall apart without him holding everything together, and you’d have a great big sticky mess on your hands, but... I mean, if I’m honest, he’s not the part of this I’m looking forward to experiencing.  Batman isn’t the meat of the meal to me - no, that role goes instead to his villains.

Goddammit those villains are great! Joker, Two Face, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, the Riddler, even the obscure ones like Killer Croc and Clayface, and even the shitty ones like Calendar Man - I just fuckin’ love almost every single one of ‘em, and they’re the reason I keep thinking about how I’d love to just... just utterly ruin Batman.

But when I start thinking of the story I want to tell with those villains, inevitably I remember that, oh hey, I need to have something for Batman to do because, y’know, it’s called Batman for a reason, and my muse just wants nothing to do with that.  And that’s why the wheels always fall off.

Well, that and I have a billion other stories to write, but still.

So here’s how I’d ruin Batman in a brief pitch: My Batman story would star the villains, almost none of whom are murderers, in a version of Gotham where Bruce Wayne died with his parents, and thus has no Batman.

You’d have a Gotham City much like the one in Year One (I hate to reference a Frank Miller comic but it’s easily the most well known framework for where I’m starting here), ruled by a mix of slightly exaggerated gangsters and corrupt businessmen - more outlandish in their evil than the real thing but not quite on supervillain level.  The villains would all retain their origins for the most part, but without a Batman to draw their focus they sort of turn on each other.  It sort of splits into two factions: the Freaks, who are victims/products of the corruption inherent to the city, and the Crimelords, who are the few members of the old/mundane criminal element that adapt to the superpower boom and transition from normal gangsters to supervillains.

The resulting conflict would be the story of a bunch of broken people trying to destroy the system that made them, and the horrible remnants of the old crime world desperately trying to return things to how they are - anarchists vs. tyrants.

Now that we’ve got the basic plot/conflict down, let’s go to what I always focus on first when writing a story: the characters.  We’ll begin with our protagonists...

The Freaks

The Joker - obviously the leader of the bunch, the Joker is probably one of the characters I would bastardize/alter the most.  Nowadays it’s set pretty firmly in stone that the Joker has to be, like, the most evil man in existence.  He’s gotta kill people on a whim, physically abuse his girlfriend, cut off his own face and wear it like a mask, and just generally be a real fuckin’ creep.  But does he have to be that evil?

Well yes, yes he does, it’s what makes him iconic and is basically his defining trait, and without it most of the stories told with the character wouldn’t be possible.  The idea that he’s the villain who gives other villains nightmares is what makes him stand out.  If you lessen the depths of his depravity, you’d ruin Batman.

but does he haaaaaaaaaave to?

Imagine if you will a young, down on his luck commedian named Jack Napier who, in an attempt to provide for his wife, accidentally gets involved with the mob.  They make him dress up as a (fictional) crime boss called the Red Hood for a caper - he has to act the part to get the police off the scent of the real bosses.  Little does he know that he’s a patsy, set up to not only mislead the police but to buy time for the crooks’ escape by getting into a firefight.  He’s shot and falls into some chemicals, gets bleached, and wakes up with a new, much more unhinged state of mind.  Like the normal Joker, he finds the magnitude of his tragedy to hilariously absurd.  Also like the normal Joker, he decides to become an agent of entropy in hopes of dismantling the city that made him a monster.

Unlike the normal Joker, however, the focus of his wrath isn’t a paragon of morality and justice, but rather the corrupt and powerful rulers of Gotham.  He becomes the arch enemy of mobsters, crooked cops, and politicians - people the normal version of the Joker also antagonizes, of course, but not to this level.  Since his nemeses are different, this Joker never defines himself as a force of evil and corruption.  Instead he humiliates - this Joker punches up and brings those in power down a peg.

The “joke” theme because important here, as the Joker ends up creating a lot of schemes designed to ridicule and embarrass his victims as much as destroy them.  It’s not enough to just shoot the corrupt politician - he needs to kill their ego and their sense of power.  This Joker would much rather scare the shit out of his victim with a convoluted and frankly stupid “death” trap than just shoot them - and he’d be perfectly content just splatting them in the face with a vaudevillian pie instead of actually killing them at the end.

He wouldn’t be an out and out hero - he doesn’t go out of his way to save people or anything - but he’d also be a far cry from the “killing dozens of people a day for the sake of proving he’s evil” Joker we get nowadays.

He also wouldn’t be aware of the fact that other people don’t necessarily get the joke - not in the malicious “BWAHAHA I’M EVIL AND I’M KILLING YOU WITH LAUGHING GAS IT’S FUNNY TO ME BECAUSE I’M EVIL” way, but in the “Look, I know you’re technically in peril here but you have to admit it’s objectively ridiculous that you’re being dangled above a tank full of piranhas, right?  I mean, is it even true that they eat people, or is that a myth?  This whole thing’s pretty surreal right?” sort of way.

Harley Quinn - Harley is my favorite Batman character when she’s written well, but sadly she’s normally written absolutely horribly so I’m kind of happy to just fuckin’ ruin this story for her sake.  Part of her problem is that the core concept for her character is “psychiatrist is seduced by patient, subjected to psychological and physical abuse by him, and because of said abuse becomes a supervillain.”  I mean, a lot of Batman villains also have the “horrible psychological problems make people evil” thing going on which is, y’know, horribly unfortunate, but I feel like Harley’s hit harder than most.

But since the Joker isn’t nearly as much of a bastard in this story, maybe Harley can get out with a nicer origin as well?

This version of Harley isn’t the Joker’s victim so much as a collaborator - maybe the Robin to his Batman?  They’re kindred spirits in their love of whimsy and their distaste for how the city is run - Harley in particular has a focus on the corrupt nature of the mental health facility she works at (I mean, Arkham’s not particularly good at its purpose even in the normal Batman universe).  Like Robin, Harley softens the Joker’s war on Gotham’s criminal underworld a bit - she drags him into a more compassionate viewpoint.  Unlike Robin, she’s not a subordinate/ward - while Harley plays on the Joker’s clown motiff, she doesn’t follow his schemes without question, and always argues for a different way of doing things when the Joker’s plans get too mean-spirited.  They’re actual partners in crime, as opposed to the victim/abuser dynamic they had in past fiction.

I realize this is the kind of alteration to canon - y’know, making the main villain sympathetic and a canonically abusive relationship into a healthy romanticized one - that makes people use the word “fanfic” as a pejorative, but, well, I did say this is how I’d ruin Batman.

Catwoman - while the Joker is obviously going to be the leader of the bunch, Catwoman would be the deuteragonist, both because she’s just as iconic and also because she’s probably the closest thing to Batman in this world, and it is still ultimately a world designed to work around a Batman-ish character.  Born poor, Catwoman pickpockets her way into wealth, specifically targeting the most corrupt of the wealthy.  Unlike most of the other Freaks, she has the option of living a normal life, but is ultimately compelled to keep robbing from the rich and giving to the poor (and also herself - look, she has a lot of cats to feed).  Catwoman grounds the Freaks in reality and helps them understand the rules of the system they’re trying to break - and, with her status as an up and coming socialite, is able to give them valuable intel on some of their targets.

Mr. Freeze - honestly you could just transplant the Batman: The Animated Series take on him right into here, because it’s kind of baffling he was considered a villain in the first place.  It takes literally no effort to make him a heroic figure - you just have to remove the more-traditionally-heroic Batman to make him shine.  Mr. Freeze isn’t as daffy and volatile as the Joker, but is every bit as determined to bring Gotham crashing down and to make the corrupt pay for their cruelty toward people like him.  He’s also hilariously serious, providing a stoic counterpoint to the more flamboyant personalities of the other villains.

Poison Ivy - Poison Ivy’s motivation has been “protect the environment, plants specifically”, which is pretty noble to be honest - it’s just that her methods are unnecessarily homicidal.  So, y’know, maybe tone that down a bit?  Less “mind controlling innocent people and murdering them for money to build a plant park” and more “using convenient giant animate plants to halt construction that threatens local parks” sort of schemes.  She’d basically be an environmental sciences themed vigilante - Captain Planet with an aggressive streak.

I know it’s more traditional to pair her with Harley Quinn, but I’d kinda like to try setting her up with Catwoman instead - both of them has this history of being femme fatales/evil seducers of men, so it’d be kind of fun to have a story where they just have none of that at all.  Though pairing her with Harley and making the Harley/Joker relationship purely platonic is an interesting dynamic too...

Killer Croc - he’s a great big crocodile man who lives in the sewers because no one above ground accepts him, on account of him being a big crocodile man and all.  Despite his fearsome appearance and prodigious strength, he’s a pretty swell guy - the gentle bruiser of the group.

Two-Face - like Mr. Freeze, you really don’t have to alter much to make him a good guy.  Just keep Two-Face pointed at mobsters and he works as a hero pretty well.

The Riddler - In this world, the Riddler begins as a cop who, while clever, isn’t corrupt enough to excel in the police department.  His superiors assign him to the Freak case in hopes of getting rid of him (preferably in a fatal sort of way), but that plan succeeds in the worst way, as he ends up defecting to their side.  The Riddler helps the Freaks make their schemes truly bizarre and unpredictable, and helps them get to the bottom of who is truly running Gotham City.  He’s also a smug prick about it, because smugness is key to his character.

Clayface - a star of Gotham’s theater scene, Basil Karlo is convinced to try an experiment age-defying makeup which turns him into a giant shape changing mud man.  He becomes the group’s master of disguise and also ups their general theatricality, and can back up Croc as the muscle in a pinch.

The Crimelords

Penguin - a petty thug with delusions of grandeur, Penguin wants to rise to the ranks of the social elite and goes to great lengths to seem more educated and “classy” than he is.  While he is never accepted by the rich people he idolizes, he continues to do their dirty work in hopes of getting their approval.  He is cunning in a way, though, and rises to prominence throughout the story as one of the few criminals who can keep up with the increasingly eccentric Freaks - probably because he’s basically one of them despite his protests.

Scarecrow - a corrupt psychologist at Arkham Asylum who helps the mafia by providing insanity defenses for mobsters and driving key witnesses insane, Scarecrow’s obsession with fear would spiral out of control throughout the story.  Eventually he’d switch sides to the Freaks when he gets too weird for the oldschool criminals to tolerate, although he’d never be well liked by either side.

Firefly - a particularly skilled arsonist for the Maroni crime family.  Not much more than that.

Deathstroke - the greatest assassin employed by the Falcone crime family, Deathstroke takes himself very seriously, which is to his detriment considering the pack of ridiculous monster men he’s facing in this story.  He has a bitter rivalry with...

Deadshot - the greatest assassin employed by the Maroni crime family.  Deadshot doesn’t take his work very seriously at all and is prone to sarcasm and flippancy.  He kind of loves the fact that the freaks are causing so much ridiculous trouble for his employers, but that doesn’t mean he won’t kill them for a paycheck.

Bane - a mercenary hired by the crime families to take down the Freaks.  Bane eventually switches sides; he may be a bad guy, but he also cares about the downtrodden having grown up in a city not unlike Gotham itself.

Calendar Man - the youngest son of the mafia boss Carmine Falcone, Alberto Falcone is inspired by the theatricality of the Freaks and becomes a holiday themed serial killer, targeting enemies of his father’s business in a misguided attempt to earn his approval.

Black Mask - As the different crime families slowly dwindle in number over the course of the story, Roland Sionis, an underboss for the Maroni family, eventually rises in the ranks (due to his superiors dying) and unites what remains of the mafia under his iron fist.  Deciding to fight fire with fire, he crafts a grim alter ego for himself in hopes of striking fear into the Freaks.  It doesn’t work because he’s just not theatrical enough to pull it off, but he does manage to be a thorn in their side for a while.

Hugo Strange - the chief psychologist of Arkham Asylum, Hugo Strange is an awful, awful man.  He’s also an incredibly intelligent one, master minding many of the problems the Freaks encounter.  He’s not the root of Gotham’s problems, though, as he ultimately serves...

Ra’s Al Ghul - an ancient sorceror who has made and destroyed countless societies in his many centuries of scheming, Ra’s Al Ghul made Gotham City into a nexus of misery and cruelty in hopes of awakening a world ruining entity - i.e. basically he’s trying to bring about Gozer the Destroyer.  ‘Cause why not bring in a bit of Lovecraftian terror to a setting that has a madhouse that makes monster people that’s literally called Arkham Asylum?

And that’s it.  That’s how I’d ruin Batman.

I’ll probably repurpose some of these ideas into other stories like I do with most of my fanfic ideas, but man, this sure is shitty as a Batman story, huh?

Happy First Day to All

With the new year, we thought it would be fun to mark Thedas’ holidays alongside our own calendar.  To do so, we needed to figure out Thedas’ deceptively simple calendar and track it alongside our own. Both have 365 days, but they meter those days out differently.  Looking through the fandom, there seems to be some confusion as to how closely Thedas’ calendar system mirrors our own.  Is it pretty much the same, with the holidays even being similar to our holidays?  Is it inverted since Thedas is a continent in a southern hemisphere?  Does it follow a similar layout to the really ancient Roman calendar that actually started in March?  All good questions, so we thought we would sit down and sort through the possibilities.

Click here for a larger version of the calendar.

Premise the First: Keep it simple, stupid.

One of the first ideas we came to was, if you are going to create a fictional world with a massively complicated lore that can be extremely difficult even for the creators/developers to keep track of, you don’t want things like the calendar system to be convoluted nightmares to figure out.  The writers and developers need to be able to quickly ‘translate’ Thedas’ months into a frame of reference that tells them about the season, temperatures, weather, holidays, etc that would be happening at that time of the year in Dragon Age.  An easy way to do this would be to base the Thedas’ chronology on your own calendar.

The Gregorian Calendar has been adopted by most countries as their secular calendar system.  The Gregorian Calendar has 365 days divided into twelve months.  So far so good.  The two systems match up...to a point.  If you really look at the Gregorian Calendar system is a bit of a mess.  It is a good place to start, but you may want to tidy it up a bit.

Premise the Second: Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Dragon Age, like all fictional worlds, involves elements from our own histories, mythologies, philosophies, and cultures.  The same is probably true of the calendar system.  Like we said before you probably want it to match up pretty nicely with the calendar system you already use, but the Gregorian Calendar is messy, mostly due to shenanigans of the people who created the system it was based on: the Julian Calendar.  (I had a bunch of awesome stories about where the names of each month, and how many days were in them, came from when I was teaching an introductory course to western languages from my Latin background.)  So if you smooth out the bumps in the Gregorian Calendar, what do you get?  12 months of 30 days with 5 left over.  And what should you do with those extra five days?  The obvious answer: holidays!  Hey!  That sounds exactly like Thedas’ calendar!  In this way you end up with a calendar system that looks mostly like your own, but with enough differences to make it feel just a bit other worldly.

In creating this post I experimented with several ways of representing Thedas’ calendar in a way that I could superimpose our own calendar over it so that it would be easy to figure out which days are which in each calendar system.  My first attempt at this resulted in this calendar wheel, which I thought would work since there are perpetual calendar discs that we use in our own world (one of which happens to be on my key ring), but now is clearly problematic.  (Also, can you tell I have been on holiday with lots of time on my hands to do completely ridiculous meticulous fandom work yet?)

Although this alignment didn’t work like I thought it would, it did make me think of something.  Said I to myself as I looked at the placement of the holidays, “That looks like the Celtic Calendar”.  A quick google image search confirmed my thought...and provided excellent evidence of why the extra five days in the Thedas Calendar are where they are:

The holidays of Yule, Imbolg, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain match up perfectly with the placement of First Day, Wintersend, Summerday, All Soul’s Day, and Satinalia.   It seems highly likely that the Wheel of the Year served as the inspiration for Thedas’ holiday system.

Premise the Third: Mix things up just a bit.

While most of Thedas’ calendar can clearly be show to match up with the Celtic Calendar, there are some important differences that through off most of the fans, including me.  I want Satinalia to match up with Yule/Christmas and All Soul’s Day to be Samhain/Halloween, but seasonal timings don’t actually align.

Satinalia, according to the calendar placement would take place closer to Halloween than to Christmas.  It’s a harvest festival.  The descriptions of the the holiday make it sound like a combination of Halloween and Christmas.  In the Feastday DLC, Satinalia is said to be “marked by sumptuous feasts, wild celebration, and naming the town fool as ruler for a day. Amid the feasting, it is customary for friends, lovers, and traveling companions to exchange gifts and pranks.”  The description of the holiday on the Bioware website and in World of Thedas, Vol. 1 adds: “Once dedicated to the Old Goddess of Freedom, Zazikel—but now attributed more to the second moon, Satina—this holiday is ...[celebrated with] the wearing of masks.... In Antiva, Satinalia lasts for a week or more, while a week of fasting follows. In more pious areas, large feasts and the giving of gifts mark the holiday. Satinalia is celebrated at the beginning of Umbralis.” (emphasis added) So basically it is the last big bash before settling down for the bleak winter months.  Sensible.

First Day, on the other hand, reads much more like a combination of New Year’s and Thanksgiving: “The traditional start of the year, this holiday involves visits to neighbors and family (in remote areas, this was once an annual check to ensure everyone was alive), as well as a town gathering to commemorate the year past, accompanied by drinking and merriment.”   (emphasis added)

Wintersend is not placed at a holiday that is typically celebrated in the Gregorian Calendar, but coincides with the Celtic holiday Imbolc (St. Brigid’s Day having taken its place in the Christian Calendar).  In Thedas, Wintersend was “Once called “Urthalis” and dedicated to Urthemiel, the Old God of Beauty, this holiday has now become a celebration of the Maker. It stands for the end of winter in many lands and coincides with tourneys and contests at the Proving Grounds in Minrathous. In southern lands, this holiday has become a day of gathering for trade, theater, and, in some areas, the arrangement of marriages. It is celebrated at the beginning of Pluitanis.”  I think it is fascinating that the Dragon Age Calendar incorporates similar themes to those found in our calendar system.  Many Christian holidays took the place of earlier Pagan celebrations, and the same seems to be true in Thedas.  The Chantry co-opted the Tevinter holidays that were dedicated to the Old Gods, which had probably replaced ancient Elven holidays given that Tevinter’s Calendar is said to have been based on the elven system (according to the Prima Guide).

Summerday sounds a lot like a traditional May Day celebration, which is associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane.  World of Thedas, Vol. 1 notes that Summerday was “Once called “Andoralis” and dedicated to Andoral, the Old God of Unity, this holiday is universally celebrated as the beginning of summer, a time for joy and, commonly, marriage. Boys and girls ready to come of age don white tunics and gowns. They then join a grand procession that crosses the settlement to the local Chantry, where they are taught the responsibilities of adulthood. Summerday is a particularly holy occasion in Orlais. It is celebrated at the beginning of Molioris.”

It is harder to match All Soul’s Day with its seasonal partner in our calendar, Lughnasadh, which was a start of the harvest celebration.  According to the wikipedia article, Lughnasadh “involved great gatherings that included religious ceremonies, ritual athletic contests (most notably the Tailteann Games, feasting, matchmaking and trading. There were also visits to holy wells... and religious rites included an offering of the 'first fruits', a feast of the new food and of bilberries, the sacrifice of a bull and a ritual dance-play in which [the Celtic god] Lugh seizes the harvest for mankind and defeats the powers of blight.  Much of the activities would have taken place on top of hills and mountains.” (emphasis added)  This sounds more like the description of Thedas’ Wintersend than All Soul’s Day, other than the harvest trappings.  

So where did the inspiration for All Soul’s Day come from if not from Lughnasadh?  Probably the next Celtic holiday, Samhain, with a bit of influence from Bonfire Night.  In Thedas, All Soul’s Day “was once dedicated to the Old God of Silence, Dumat. However, since Dumat’s rise during the First Blight, Thedosians turn a blind eye to any old ties between the day and the dragon. The holiday is now known across Thedas as All Soul’s Day and spent in somber remembrance of the dead. In some northern lands, the people dress as spirits and walk the streets in parade after midnight. The Chantry uses the holiday to remember the death of Andraste, with public fires that mark her immolation and plays that depict her death. It is celebrated at the beginning of Matrinalis.”  This definitely reads much more like the traditional Celtic celebration of the end of harvest and the coming of Winter (symbolizing death) even though it falls at the beginning of Fall in Thedas’ calendar wheel.

This correlation leads some DA fans to complicate Thedas’s calendar.  I can overthink things with the best of us, but I really doubt that the developers (who live in Canada) are going to over convoluted things much.   Think of the hassle it would be to figure out what the seasons would be or the month if they had inverted Thedas’ seasons because it is a continent in the southern hemisphere of the planet.  Or if they had shifted the start of the new year to March, ala the ancient Romans, then all of the holidays would match our holidays more closely.  That would make the Thedas’ calendar system convoluted and unwieldy to manage on a day to day basis.  Plus these two tweets from Bioware seems to confirm that Summerday near the beginning of May for us (They place it on May 2, while my calculations say it should be the 3rd.  Meh, can’t be perfect, right?).  So, unless we get future information that changes everything, I think we can safely keep Thedas’ Calendar in line with our Calendar for now.

So there it is, dear fellow fans, a Thedas Calendar that we can all use to keep track of how their dates would correspond to ours.  We are also working on an astrology system that would integrate our astrology with Thedas’.  Because, of course, they have astrology in Thedas!  [At least the Wyrd Sisters like to think so...but then we are weird like that. ;-) ]

(I mean, look at how similar Thedas’ Constellation chart is to ours!  But that is a post for another day...)

Happy First Day to all!!  May the coming year be filled with more joy than sorrow (and hopefully an announcement that DA4 is on its way!)!!

-MM

12/20/2019

Hey, it’s me Keyoka. I haven’t done one of these in a while. Life has been so convoluted and confusing lately and I think I was just waiting for a moment of peace to talk about everything, so here I am... I love College! It’s still really hard, especially being independent. I miss my mommy all the time, and I feel so vulnerable everywhere I go. However, I think I’m getting better at being my own person. I made a lot of new friends, but with new friends comes new drama. First there’s Zion: Zion’s actually really cool, and he is probably my best guy friend right now, but I don’t think I could see myself ever liking him beyond that. I even felt that way the first time I met him, and had said that to Riley, we’ll get back to that. Next there’s Kailan: I knew I liked Kailan from the second I saw him, which sounds really dramatic but sometimes you just know. I do a thing where I scan the room when I walk in and pick out the people I want and he was it. He was always it. He was the only one I ever wanted. Last there’s Brenna: The one that caused all of the problems in our group, but also somehow brings us together. The year started with me getting to know all of them separately, but Kailan and Brenna were getting to know each other separate as well. In the beginning it was very evident that I liked Kailan, however I didn’t really know it yet. I talked about him a lot and I always went up when he went up for partner practices but I never fully understood why, I knew I had a small infatuation for him though. This sound so creepy I’m so sorry. In our Beginning Acting for Major’s class my Professor, Emily Heugatter the love of my life, assigned Kailan and I as scene partners. It was obvious from one of our Meisner practices that him and I had really good chemistry just naturally. So she assigned us a really intimate scene and said go at it. I was ecstatic to have this scene with him, he’s attractive, a good actor, and someone I just genuinely want to get to know. Around this point I met Brenna, and started to become better friends with her. I went to this Halloween party where I became closer with Brenna and it was obvious to me that Kailan liked her but I didn't want to jump to conclusions. However, I could tell he would hang around her specifically. Eventually he left and his best friend Benji had told everyone that Kailan liked Brenna. That didn’t make me feel good but I think that’s when I started suppressing that I like Kailan because I knew he wouldn’t like me back. Then on Halloween Kailan asked Brenna on a date, and she said yes. They worked for a while. They went on one date, and Brenna was his first kiss. I tried to be supportive and doing so I ended up sacrificing my happiness for theirs. I then tried to convince myself that I liked Zion, and when I really actually like someone I do not like telling them. At all. I avoid it at all costs. Well I told Zion that I liked him at a party, and that was strange by itself because I obviously didn’t like him. He replied with “Oh... I’m sorry.” Him and I then proceeded to become best friends, strange I know. I’m glad though. We started this friend group of us four, where we’d meet up to watch some movies and just hang out. Brenna and Kailan had a talk where Brenna said that they should just be friends for a while, but then at a movie Brenna grabbed Kailan’s hand and held his hand. This action confused not only Kailan but everyone else, including Brenna herself. She would say things to me like “I like holding his hand, and kissing him, but I wouldn’t be mad if it were someone else.” I think of that a lot. It makes me really sad because I really think he’s something special and doesn’t deserve what she did to him. He went up to her and said that he can’t just ignore what they started and how it’s unfair to him; she agreed and said that they should continue to date and see what happens. That didn’t last long because the following Wednesday she broke up with him and said that on paper he's perfect but the feeling just wasn't there. She also said one thing that really messed with him: she said “You know never say never, perhaps we could work in a distant future.” That sentence gave him hope. He doesn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve that I mean. He’s so amazing. He gave her compliments, and said that she was just beautiful, and the way he would look at her. He would look at her, look away, smile, and then look back and smile bigger. She made him so happy and it was so strange because she did not reciprocate to the extent that he was giving her and I just wish he were still that happy. I want him to be so happy. I want to see him like that again and it hurts my heart. I love him so much and I don’t know if that’s in a romantic sense or not but just in general. I love that kid so much and what she did to him was not fair. I say this because the Saturday after that Wednesday they broke up Brenna, Zion, and I went on a night drive. Brenna was asked who she thinks is most attractive and Zion was on her list. Zion was flattered, of course, and then later that night she said that we should lay down in the back of my car and watch the sunrise. So we did just that. There wasn’t a lot of room so I was basically under Zion. It was a funny prank at first. Just a hilarious joke that we were going to spoon each other. So we did, but Zion and Brenna liked each other. We played Fuck Marry Kill earlier that night and they said they’d marry each other. Then they got fake married in my car, they like each other. At one point of us laying in the back of my car Brenna took Zion’s arm and wrapped it around her. They cuddled, and I was under Zion the entire time. Al lI could think about was Kailan. I felt so guilty and I wasn't even the one creating the crime. However, I was a witness. Some time went by and Zion and Brenna made out, and confessed that they liked each other. They’re both saving themselves for marriage so it was strange for me to find out that he had fingered her over her panties, and touched her over her bra. Then she gave him a hand job. Then they gave each other head. I have a scary thought that maybe she didn’t like Kailan because he wouldn’t do what Zion is doing. That probably isn’t it, and that’s a little dumb, but it is in the back of my mind. Zion finally brought up the courage to have a talk with Kailan. He wanted to talk to him the entire time, he just didn’t know how. Kailan said that he just wants them both to be happy, which I don’t doubt, but I wish it wasn’t in the expense of Kailan’s happiness. He also asked for his views on certain things which I thought was very strange. He asked for his opinions on the LGBTQ+ and I guess Zion had said that he doesn’t necessarily support it but that it won’t stop him from loving them, and that they’re the first people he needs to show love to. That made me very upset, and I guess Kailan had replied with “Good so we have similar views.” I cannot see Kailan saying that. Maybe Zion, but not Kailan. However, I had a talk with Zion and he had rephrased everything and I feel a lot better about it. Around this time Kailan put together the pieces that I like him. Doing so, he had mentioned that he thinks I like him to Zion and Brenna, and Zion replied with “What made you notice?” Basically confirming it. Well Zion confirming that I like Kailan made Kailan act all weird around me. He’d show a lot of attention to me but not talk to me or look at me or smile at me. He started doing that in our scene during rehearsal too. In the scene he goes in to kiss me and I pull away, and that day he said “I was scared you weren’t going to pull away.” That really hurt my feelings. So I had a talk with him, and I could have done it a lot better but I was in a bad mood because I just felt horrible from it all. It started with me going “You know I don’t matter that much right?” He was so confused. I then said “I mean the fact that I like you. I just want to be your friend... I just want things to be normal. Like we acknowledged it this once, and I’ll get over it, and you’ll get over it, and we don’t ever have to acknowledge it again.” He just apologized and said he doesn’t know how to react in situations like that. A day went by and we were all supposed to hang out but I was going to be late because I had to work. However, I left work early so I could surprise them. While I was driving to Brenna’s house however, she had texted me that Kailan left. I called Kailan and he said that he wasn’t ready to be around them alone. I kept apologizing, he said it’s not my responsibility, and sure it isn’t but I just want him to be happy. I guess he told them that he doesn’t forgive them yet and left. I convinced him over the phone to come back, so he picked me up and we were driving to Brenna’s house. In the car he looked at me, smiled, and said “I just think you’re a phenomenal person.” I said “Thank you?” He said “Like you’re just an amazing person.” I didn’t know what to say so I just said “Thank you?” again. He then proceeded to say “And I don’t know why some people are romantically attracted to some and some aren’t.” I stopped him and said “Kailan we don’t have to have this conversation,” and he said “No, but I want to.” He said “You’re an amazing person, and I love hanging out with you and being around you, and I don’t know why, cause like you’re pretty. I just wanted you to know that I think you’re amazing.” I’m glad we had that conversation but I’m also really not. It didn’t really make me feel that much better, and I think about it too much. I think I’m just hoping maybe he doesn’t like me now because of everything that’s going on but there’s a chance after everything’s done but that’s not a good mindset and I really need to just get over him but he’s such a good person and I don’t know how. Everything I said happened within the span of about 2-3 weeks. A bit later Kailan and I went on a trip to Tulsa to visit Zion and Brenna. I was really scared of the car ride with Kailan being awkward but it wasn’t at all. I also gave him his Christmas gift and he seemed to like it. I hope anyway. I got him a Turtle because I think he’d be a turtle, and he uses a comfort pillow to cuddle with when he watches movies so I figure he could use the turtle instead. He seemed to really like the sweater I was wearing. He and I were also like physically closer than we usually are but I think he’s just getting comfy with me. Like he’d jokingly go in to bite me in photos and stuff. The feeling of his breath on my forehead was weird, but I think about that feeling sometimes which is even weirder. Then at Quicktrip I was asking him for his phone to put in Zion’s shirt pocket and I kept saying please and he kept saying no haha. Then he almost gave in but he like got really close to my face and he was like “I despise you.” I then said please and we made eye contact without saying anything for like another second and then he like broke it and coughed and walked off all awkwardly and weird moments like that I just. I want to know what they mean. Maybe nothing. On the car ride home we were talking about Brenna and Zion dating. He was talking about how he was more mad at Zion and not really at Brenna because he thought Zion made the first move. However, I know things he doesn’t know, and I knew Zion didn’t make the first move. I said “But he didn’t!” and he was like “What?” and I was like “Lake Arcadia, that I wouldn’t tell you. She said she thought he was attractive, and he got interested. Then it was a funny prank. Just a stupid joke. She said we should lay down in the back of my car. So we did. And it was a funny prank to spoon. So we were spooning each other. Then we weren't. And... I was under Zion because there wasn’t any room. Then Brenna took his arm and put it around her. They cuddled for so long on top of me.” I was sobbing through that. I felt so guilty. It felt nice to get it off my chest but I’m sad I told him. I feel like he could’ve gone without knowing. He said, “Yeah and for that to happen the Saturday, and we broke up the Wednesday, is bullshit.” I agreed. He said “That changes perspective, that she acted first.” I think he deserved to know the truth, but I’m sad I’m the one who delivered it. I don’t think it would’ve gotten to him otherwise though. I really just want him to be happy. Overall the Tulsa trip was fun, I think him and I got closer. He told me I could come over if I come down to Mustang and meet his dogs, and his brother. I really want to. I hope he meant that. He and I text sometimes and it feels like he actually wants to be texting me. Like he replies pretty fast most of the time, and he usually holds up the conversation well. He’ll ask me how things are going or whatever I’m doing and if I’m having fun. I don’t know. I just know that I’ve never liked someone this much before and that’s really scary. In other news I told Riley that I was raped. I haven’t told that to anyone, it even took a lot for me to tell people my dad hit me. I consented to the man that raped me but I was 10. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I remember him being on top of me. Feeling him pushing into me. I remember biting the pillow and crying. I asked him to stop he wouldn’t. I consented but I was 10. I didn’t know. I get myself into situations I wish I hadn’t said yes to. That has been on my mind lately because this guy Benji was driving me home and he drove past my house. I said “I guess I never told you where I live so I should navigate you.” He said “No I know where you live, I just didn’t plan on taking you home yet.” He parked in a parking lot and at 4 am he asked me if I wanted to cuddle in the back of his car. I like his best friend, Kailan, and he has a girlfriend and I really didn’t want to but I said yes. I didn’t go into him, he pulled me into him. We were there till 8 am. I say yes but I mean no. I always mean no. I hate myself. I didn’t know what sex was. I kind of knew I just didn’t fully understand. I felt his breath on the back of my neck, I was 10. I was just 10.