#it would probably not be anyone who has lore or far into it and erase all that progress | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

a-for-alternative · 3 years

Note

Hello, A! So I was wondering do you have any headcannons about how you and B were like at Wammy's together? PS. I thought dead men tell no tales lol (sorry about the joke if you didn't like it)

// Oh do I ever... Alternative has such potential to highlight things about B’s character that develops him into the killer of Mello’s novel. The lore surrounding the first generation (and the notion of Mello writing about a dead successor that previously filled his position - his predecessor) is more poignant than I think it was intended to come across but here are some headcanons~

Wammys House:

A & B are the first to receive their secondary alias after which it becomes a kind of right of passage for other successors, choosing their own (though often not official) - to A & B, only theirs will ever be legitimate.

A is introduced to B after only 1-2 years of being at the house

A, before becoming a letter, was taken into Wammy’s due to his intellect but only later is selected as the first attempted L-backup, probably pulled from a satellite home

Alternative & Backup (A’s perspective):

His introduction to B is a pivotal moment for him. After so much loss, he sees this as an opportunity for redemption and a return to a clear path forward, and now it is under threat. B represents for A the physical manifestation apathetic fate, he is foreign in every sense, they cannot even communicate when they are initially introduced. His presence signifies A’s disposability - B is the backup plan for when A fails, like a vulture circling over head, it looms over him like a prophesy he is trying to outrun.. though, B can also overtake him at anytime, relegating him to a future that, from A’s perspective, is neither known nor the success story that he has put so much hope in. The world for Alternative at this point in his life is an unreasonable and precarious place. All he knows, up to this point as a seven year old, is that everything is fragile and must be hard won - and there is no guarantee that one can keep what they have fought or sacrificed to obtain. --- after all, he is in line to replace L and L is about as far from vulnerable as he believes a person can get --- Maybe, B also represents a challenge that requires a level of maturity that he does not yet possess - the inevitable dilemma, that this position is of such consequence to the world, that it needs the best person for it, — and that may not be him...

There is nothing genuine in the sweet smile.

The way he extends an open hand, how his soft, his boyish voice offering “ Hello, Alternative ” …

A feels an unpleasant sensation snake up his spine like a fever’s chill, empathetic aptitude ringing in his ears with all the incongruence rolling off this boy.

His gentleness feels scripted, words trilling out of his mouth- practiced and angular; absolutely, wholly contrived. A has never meet anyone with such an emptiness in their words and actions…

A returns the greeting with a stony, silent stare - I know what you are.

They slide up from the open palm to meet the foreign boy’s gaze - Blue eyes resting soft, knowing and stormy, heaven’s skies empty of angels. Alternative is standing his ground, refusing to pretend they are not here for a reason, telling himself, “I’m not afraid…”

But, he has never seen anyone with such deep eyes.

They are the windows into an empty soul, a black abyss, absolutely apocalyptic…

Alternative is capricious in his treatment of B, vacillating between animosity and empathy- at times he’s even conspiratorial , allying himself with B and undermining their superiors- beginning to identify with B (even in spite of the language barriers). Backup is clever and naïve and careless, and unreserved in a way that A wishes he felt safe to be. B is the only one that can truly grasp what he is going through but he is also very strange... -- Alternative struggles with trials & setbacks that roll off Backup’s back with ease. B is several years into his understanding of his eyes and it shapes how he moves through the world, what he feels is worth his pain, what ultimately just doesn’t matter. A is, in some ways, what B might have become if he were a little more ignorant, spared the ever present reminder that this is all so temporary.

Alternative has many faces that none are as acutely aware of as B- it is why he doesn’t take the quips and backhanded apologies personally. Alternative’s identity has been tailored to his circumstances — so much of it he had to leave behind to become this -- to his superiors, he is mature, disciplined and motivated -- exemplary if not a bit too austere. To those that benefit him, he is considerate and trustworthy- and honest. To those that he fears will take advantage of him, he is an arrogant and harsh - conniving and spoiled. When he is caught without a persona on hand, he is awkward, reclusive, and reserved. Despite this, his cardinal traits are eloquence and persistence, he thinks deeply about his place in the world and who he should be but not enough on who he is — Only B is audience to moments when he is short sighted and immature, when he is undone or humiliated - when he is elated or truly.. afraid of what lay ahead of them. When he is sick or less than who he wants to present himself as, B has been there whether he wanted him to be or not.

Alternative is attracted to B though it is initially a disquieting realization, one even he doesn’t entirely understand. It isn’t that B is unusually good looking or charming — though perhaps A has peculiar tastes that B unintentionally satisfies (I can’t imagine him actually trying)... The level of intimacy involved in knowing someone this long, on such a personal and inescapable level has made B a source of unwavering acceptance, — because he had to be. The alternative would have been sleeping next to someone he would gradually come to despise any who really wants to live that way? Yet, B comes to represent stability and unconditional regard that feels a lot like love. There is a fraternal element to it in that B anchors who he is. B is someone that has a history with him that hasn’t been erased or eroded -- that contradicts A’s perception of the world as fragile or finite - it is comforting to have something seemingly permanent ... and terrifying that he cannot start anew, if he doesn’t like who he is and cannot be hidden in the obscurity that L enjoys.

When B begins to insinuate an interest in something more, A is not initially receptive and becomes genuinely distressed. This doesn’t translate with any logical sense to B, who believes it’s born out of A’s latent fears of realizing his own sexuality... But, by the time they are entering late adolescence, A is more concerned with the prospect of romance and that becoming L is destined to be a lonely path. He sees their childhood in it’s twilight as a tragic loss that cannot be reclaimed or rewritten, and B’s subtle advances as destructive to the purity of their friendship -- but he can’t stay a child forever even if he feels a sense of unfinished business surrounding it and he can’t keep B there either... It takes B’s attention shifting elsewhere for A to begin softening to the idea that B isn't ruining what's between them but expanding on it.

Alternative has experienced depression -- at some point he was prescribed SSRIs, as a part of basic care for successors. While it does alleviate the depth of his lows, he begins to worry that it is dulling the sharpness of his mind, which he has come to see as central to his self-worth. It may have no foundation in reality but A develops an inconsistent relationship with any medication prescribed to him out of those fears. In the end, - there are some things medicine cannot fix...

A few other small things:

- A loves the smell of lavender and grass, it reminds him of his home though as he gets older this memory is more elusive and he begins to wonder if they memories from funeral flowers or even if they are impressions left over from a dreams.. did he even attend his parents funeral?

- A knows they aren’t allowed to take pictures of each other in Wammy’s for good reason but when Y sneaks a camera into the house one summer evening, he is can’t deny there is something precious about having pictures of B perched on the railing of the back steps - his hair sweep by the wind just as he turns his eyes to look, soft unfocused, — like the tender look he gives him just as he wakes up in the morning before he remembers who they are. A traces the lines of his face while lying beneath his bed, where he tucks it between the boards. It’s only a few years later that he will see how much his friend has matured. -- B hates photographs and will place them face down when they go into Roger’s office. Roger has never understood why.

- A drinks his coffee and tea black as tar. B thinks it is terribly bitter but will bring it to him anyway, unaltered. There is something uniquely enjoyable in knowing that B doesn’t need to be told what he likes~

- A is borderline masochistic though perhaps only B has any inkling of it. He would probably never acknowledge it openly... it is degrading to get a charge out of being hurt.

- A loses his faith around age 10 but still believes that he might as well act as though there is a purpose in being good and not just adept and ruthless. The only alternative, from A’s perspective, is to believe that everything he has been through meant nothing and he will ultimately change nothing. And, that may be too painful a philosophy for him to embrace.

- A’s worst injury occurred when he was deliberately shoved off the roof by an irate B ( thatvhe provoked). While it was a watershed event for A coming so close to death and experiencing the consequences of pushing B beyond that point of caring about consequences... For Backup, this a was also critically informative event, an exercise proving the numbers were infallible -- he was genuinely surprised that A survived the fall and, to a greater degree, surprised that he felt regret in having done it ... left alone in their room to wonder for days, searching for the contraband pictures from that summer A had hidden that could prove if A was even still alive....

#death note #beyond birthday #wammys house #death note a #the first child

34 notes · View notes

shyrose57 · 3 years

Note

Brothers anon, im gonna start combing the two separate submissions again cause its getting too short to have them separate I think?

1: His possession messed with memories Ranbob had before, so memories of school friends or playing with Ran were distant to erased. Though after Dreams possession it was also harder to make and keep memories. But thankfully as Ranbob was recovering from Dream and got futher away making memories came eaiser to him, though he'll never get back the memories he lost.

3: Oh he would very quickly grow to regret his decision, but it would be funny. And Benjamin would later admit that while it was annoying and stressful, it was also fun and he was very happy to have his two families meet and generally get along.

8: Everyone is just in shocked silence before Cletus just goes "YEAHHHHHHHHHH!" Oddly happy that Ranboo committed so much arson. Oh definitely, after all the outcasts of society where put there. Of course people would make such negative rumors about Mizu and treat the people as the scum of the earth. Though this also means, people don't know what happened in Mizu, and anyone who knows, view it in a more happy and a "Their finally gone" type of way, then viewing it as the tragedy it was.

Spoons is a card game technically. A group of people sit in a group and everyone gets 4 cards, and you keep discarding at least 1 card of yours to the person on your left, who then does the same to their person on their left, the last person in the group puts a card into a discard pile. The goal is to get 4 of the same cards, and once someone gets 4 of the same cards, that person goes and grabs a spoon in a pile in front of them (let's say there's 5 players, theres only going to be 4 spoons cause there's always a spoon less than the people playing), once they grab one anyone can grab a spoon. And the person who doesn't get a spoon gets a S added to them, once Spoons is spelled the person gets out of the game, and a spoon gets removed to continue the game. Basically for flowers its played the exact same way but with flowers in the middle expect for spoons.

11: I just imagine Dream sulking in a corner as you yell at him and him going like "well I didn't know…" as he kicks a stone. And he wasnt sure what it was, but quickly jumped on the idea that maybe it was the fact that Ran was still alive somewhere, and that that's causing Ranbob to willingly let himself become weak and defy him. Causing Dream to become angrier at Ran and punish Ranbob harder.

----

3: During the brothers fight in the storm, and after everyone runs off to find Ranbob, Ran is left alone. And he decides to just wander off into the storm, not protecting himself from the rain so he does get burnt. The whole time he's lost deep in thought and isn't really paying attention. He continues to wander for a whole day unfollowed (because after the Gladiators and Fishermen came back to the cave after finding Ranbob they are in no rush to find Ran and decide to look for him after the storm passes, which takes a full day) and at some point Raq finds him wandering. Which Raq then uses Rans distraction to his advantage and attacks him. At first only really the gladiators where concerned when they found Ran gone. But once they found him blinded and terrified everyone felt awful and a looming sense of guilt. And everyone continued to feel that way, even after they got the antidote and Ran started to see again.

4: They would just leave Ranbob alone and check in on him every now and again. But generally let him deal with it himself. They'd feel guilty leaving him alone, but they also know that they can't really do anything for him as their not prepared or briefed on how to help him in this situation.

10: Oh definitely, even with Ran blinded they would've been kicked out immediately for fighting, without even a second glance. Dont forget, Ran still cares for his brother. And maybe, losing his sight made him face the side of him that wanted to become family again with Ranbob, maybe it brought enough to light that he just can't ignore it anymore. Mostly only negative potions can be permanent, like posion, blinding, wither, and nausea (I know the last like 3/2 are effects but they've also found a way to make effects into potions.). You already know what a antidote for blindness would be. A antidote for wither would be, a ghast tear (actually a basic ingredient for almost every antidote), blaze powder, and glistening melon to make a overpowered healing potion. Antidote for posion would be ghast tear, swiftness (so it acts fast to get rid of the posion), and the 3rd ingredient depends on what kind of posion it was (posion that has a side effect of constricting or filling the lungs with water? Pufferfish and Turtle shell for last ingredients. Posion that has weakness? Blaze powder, and glistening melon) And antidote for nausea would be ghast tear, and potion of slowness to allow the person to slowly feel better, so their nausea doesn't hit them all at once before disappearing, which can cause them to throw up or have side effects.

13: Thats exactly what they did.

14: Jackie will 100% attempt to fight God and no one can stop him. :) (to be honest im not sure yet, I know I want to do more with Raq and have the idea that maybe he could be the person that finds Dream and gets him out of Mizu, but that's pretty often used in stories and I want to try to think of something more unique. Maybe I'll have it so Raq actually manages to capture the brothers or at least one of them and uses them as blackmail?)

15: When Ranbob was a child and Ran was just a baby Ranbob would often take Ran out of his crib and take him to go watch the fish swim by. When Ran was old enough he'd follow Ranbob everywhere, even a few times he managed to sneak into Ranbobs class room and almost wasn't caught. Ran got extremely clingy one day and managed to gather his haunting all up into his arms and carried them around, even though he was obviously struggling. And Ranbob used to complain about his teachers and idiotic classmates whenever he got home, which is funny when you consider Ran was very impressiable at the time and Ran started mimicking Ranbob, leading to him cursing, much to Ranbobs dismay.

And im curious, do you have any questions that I havent answered? Or do you have any ideas for anything? I'd love to hear whatever you have to say about anything honestly!

Course! I dont have much lore wise other than they go to Kelalen and when they hear Dream is still around they decide to stay back to help fight him. But the idea I have is that Karl is just kinda hanging with everyone I listed, talking about allies or treaties when his time traveling clock/watch starts to go off, and he panics, but sadly in his haste to stop it he makes it worse and it grabs everyone, where they end up in the future. After hours of confusion and explaining they calm down. When 2 days later they find the Gladiator and Fishermen group, at first Karl is strongly against going to then for help, but everyone basically ignores him and go to ask for help. Hours of explanation and proof giving later the GF (Gladiator and Fishermen, got tired of writing it out) group sadly tells them that they cant really help. Until Ran (who was previously gone searching the surrounding area and making sure it was safe) appears high up on a tree (cause I just can't get the image of Ran on a tree and looking comfortable and confident as hell out of my head), and says that maybe Kelalen can help, if not going to Foolish may be a good alternative. Isaac, and Grievous are extremely against going back (at this time a 2 months have past since they left Kelalen)n saying it could be dangerous but Ran just aboustely shoots them down, along with Watson and Jackie agreeing with Ran, and Karls group agreeing to it. They head off to Kelalen. And Jackie is extremely excited at the potential of going to see Foolish finally. And it'd probably be like a sub au where the brothers au is the main backbone for it but at a certain point it separates from the au and becomes its own.

1: Okay, ouch. Can you imagine if Ran brought one of those memories up, and just had Ranbob look confused, or horrified, depending on how quick he realizes what happened? How would Ran react to that realization, both before and after he forgives Ranbob?

3: If nothing else, everyone got some laughs from it-even Benjamin, once his friends were far, far away from his family and not able to teach them more chaos.

8: Cletus, why are you so happy? Do you just enjoy knowing chaos existed back then? Are you an arsonist? What’s up with you?

Also, wow. Not cool, other city people, that’s very mean.

Spoons sounds like it’s interesting, I might try it sometime. Did the group just have those cards on them? What other games did they have?

11: Good, put Dream back in the corner, I’m gonna be yelling more. Because, seriously dude? I know you probably exist solely out of spite, but c’mon. Admittedly, from a certain point of view, it could be considered amusing that your first thought was that Ranbob was making himself weaker out of defiance/spite but like. From a more responsible and mature viewpoint, that’s incredibly stupid, and I-just. Buddy, hate to tell you, but I’m pretty sure that’d just be a you thing. Besides you were in Ranbob’s head, didn’t he think Ran was dead? It doesn’t even make sense. Good lord, I’m half-tempted to get the broom and chase you around like you’re a particularly unruly barn cat.

------

3: First of all, that sounds really scary for Ran. Second of all, are we getting an overprotective arc?

4: Kind of sad, but understandable, they’re dealing with the situation as best they can.

10: Even if the group was provoked by the townspeople? Potions sound really cool, wish I could make those in real life, tbh.

13: W-what do you mean ‘that’s exactly what they did’? Anon, is your friend, like, a legit gremlin? I’m spooked.

14: Foolish takes one look at Jackie, wearing a smile that exactly matched Tubbo’s when he was about to cause chaos, and immediately nopes out of that. He knows that face, and he will not be getting tangled into a fight with a goblin child today, no sir. I’m sure Jackie tries regardless though. (Also, that sounds like that goes horribly, do we get an overprotective ender-sibling, for whoever gets captured or used as blackmail, if that’s what you do?)

15: I love all of these so much, oh my gosh. Baby Ran seeing the fishes and following his big brother around. Poor Ranbob’s face when his baby brother cursed one day, Ran trying to carry all of his haunting. I’m in tears, honestly.

Umm...I can’t think of anything right now, to be honest. If I ever do have a question or idea though, I’ll through it on the Brothers AU tag for you to check out, I guess.

Oh, this sounds really cool. The part about them just ignoring their local time traveler when they’ve just time traveled particularly amuses me, as does Jackie wanting to see Foolish-I feel like Foolish may be a little more than terrified to see both Tubbo and Jackie back, honestly. Why was Ran willing to help them so much? What did they do to offer proof? How did Ranbob react once they proved who they were? How does all the group get along? Are they Ranboo’s haunting, and if so, if Ranboo gets close with his descendants, does he merge his hauntings with theirs? How does the time group feel about the Brothers fighting, and Ranbob’s possession?

#Brothers AU #dream smp #dream smp au #tales from the smp #ranbob #tubbo #ranboo #foolish gamers

19 notes · View notes

houndin-around · 4 years

Text

Covenant | Maul

warnings; slight age gap? I guess, can’t remember if there’s cursing oops, boss-employee relationship

a/n; First ofF I’M DROPPING THIS BC IT’S A SPECIAL SOMEONE’S BIRTHDAYYYYY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENNA ILY<3 @hxldmxdxwn

- I’ve been avoiding dropping this because I’m super self conscious about my writing but oh well here we goooo! This is a more modern AU even though I use a lot of SW terms/lore but i’ll probably branch out as we go on throught he chapters. Takes place in coruscant and reader is 23! Maul ios around 30-31 haven’t fully decided yet. Uh hope everyone enjoys this!!

Summary; Getting an opportunity at a reputable company, you’re eager to show everyone what you’re made of. The only odd part is...no one knows who the owner is.

not my gif

Curses rolled off your tongue as the silence was disturbed by the raucous alarm emitting from your phone. Hurriedly you tried to silence it, avoiding waking up your partner that is sleeping next to you. The clock read 4:55 am and the sky was still pitch black. Yet the lights of Galactic City never died, it was hard to get rid of the illumination in your room. Even some curtains weren’t enough to block the livelihood, something you still have yet to get used to. Staring up at the ceiling, the dread of leaving the warmth that consumed you whole was winning the battle lulling you back to sleep. Another ear-piercing song flowed out of your phone causing you to jolt upright. Rubbing the back of your neck, a sigh escaped your lips before you tossed your legs over the side of the mattress. From the second alarm, your boyfriend grumbled before turning over, aggressively pulling the sheets over himself.

Today was the day of your brand new job. Anxiety nestled in your gut the more you thought about it so you tried not to. Two years ago you were leaving Naboo and your family after school. It was one of the hardest things that you had to do, and being an adult wasn’t easy or all that it was chalked up to be. Living on Coruscant was a totally new experience. Everyone dressed so differently-- obsessing over the latest fashions, erasing the idea of modesty as well. Luckily for you, that’s when you met Kenth Madon. Upon arriving, your ship was having difficulties, and you needed a mechanic. Out of all the shops around you, you chose his almost as if it were fate. Due to frequenting his shop, Kenth got the courage to ask to see you outside of the permanently grungy, gas smelling establishment. It wasn’t your first relationship, although it has been quite a while. It was nice to have someone give you the type of attention Kenth did.

Since he grew up on Coruscant, your boyfriend claimed to know what real fashion was. Hinting at the fact yours was a little outdated. So, he helped you restyle your wardrobe as you lacked any type of pizazz when it came to fitting in. At least according to him. During your outing, you still were drawn to rather lackluster choices of apparel, but at least it was slightly updated. Slipping on a white puff-sleeve shirt, you quickly tucked it into the black dress pants you were insistent on getting. The reality of putting on this outfit made your palms sweaty, your heart lurch up in your throat. with the realization of starting this new chapter in your life. Grabbing your white one-button jacket, you scanned your room one last time before placing a feathery kiss on Kenth’s stubbled cheek.

—————————

“Next stop: Galactic Square. Please, refrain from getting up early and blocking the exits. Thank you.” the feminine voice echoed throughout the subway train.

You rubbed your hands up and down your thighs, staring out of the viewport of the train. The job itself was competitive and the position wasn’t guaranteed. Nineteen other candidates were presenting their brand new prototypes for QuanCom, as well. The business that created the HoloNet, the Holocomms, comlinks, and much more. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This job could start you down a successful track, but you didn’t care. It was honestly only for the good-paying credits, since it was hard to find a job degree or not.

With a sudden stop shoving you against the seat, you quickly checked the time on your iPhone. 6:00 am. “Kriff!” you hissed to yourself. You were told work began at 8:00 am, so what in the hell were you going to do for an hour and a half? Being early helped ease your anxiety, though being this early only fueled it-- making it a lose-lose battle. Waiting for the other passengers to exit, you soon rose to your feet, swiftly leaping off the train. Examining the underground tunnels, your eyes shifted all over trying to locate the staircase leading upwards. It was crowded in the subway, yet it didn’t compare to the hustle and bustle that hurried by on the streets of Galactic City.

Humans, Rodians, Twi’leks, and species that you could swear you’ve never encountered before shouldered past you, as if you didn’t even exist. One long blink and an exasperated sigh later, you began to move your feet in the direction of QuanCom. The directions on your phone were confusing. The arrow rotating every once in a while was unable to read your location. Regardless, you continued hoping it was the correct way. The sudden smell of caf penetrated your nostrils, causing you to scrunch up your nose.

“If they sell caf, they probably have some deychin tea and maybe some food…” you trailed off hurriedly toward the small shop named “Caf Project ''.

Inside, it was cozy, brick-lined walls with a large sign hanging over the counter. Swallowing thickly, you stood back just far enough to show you were thinking of what you wanted, but really you were trying to stifle the anxiety welling back up as your mind kept going blank. A jingling sound interrupted your inner battles, and so did the voice of who was walking in.

“I don’t care. I told you to get this done yesterday. Not an hour before I arrived at the office. Is it really that hard to follow through? Do you not realize the utmost significance of this report? I swear I’m dealing with a bunch of imbeciles. Sith give me strength…'' Sucking in a breath, he glanced at you, brow raised. “Shut up for a second, Tannis.” He demanded before turning to you. “Are you in line?”

Your face went completely blank, just a second ago it sounded like he was about to murder whoever he was speaking to. But while speaking to you…his voice was smooth like silk, endearing actually. Swiftly shaking your head “no,” he stepped forward and flashed a warm grin at you, incisors slightly visible. Once again he continued yelling at someone, the barista not even batting an eye. His order was briskly made, though he didn’t even give any notion to what he had wanted. You couldn’t help but examine this stranger before you, attired in a charcoal grey suit that was paired with a very light grey dress shirt with two buttons undone. On his feet were freshly polished black Oxfords, his outfit so simple yet so suave. Once he handed the cashier some credits, you noticed a glimmer on his wrist, by the looks of it one kriffing expensive watch.

Adjusting the lanyard around your neck that holds your ID for QuanCom, the stranger with geometric tattoos all over his face turned to face you. You noticed a shiny stud piercing on the upper cartilage of his left ear. Maintaining some eye contact, you couldn’t help but feel a knot in your stomach. He was quite handsome, and his ivory horns…wow, you thought to yourself, cheeks running hot. “Get yourself together...you’re with someone,” You reminded yourself.

Lips parting, he studied you up and down.

“Good luck.” The words were quietly mumbled as he continued listening to what you assumed to be an employee, on the other line.

“Thank you,” you mouthed back, a sheepish smile tugging at your lips as you continue to fidget with the lanyard.

Maybe, he had heard of the big job offer at QuanCom? Advertisements were flaunted everywhere; it was hard to miss them. Shaking your head lightly, you step forward, showing that you’re ready to order.

“I’ll have a small deychin tea please and…uh- um..a croissant?” Everything on the menu food-wise wasn’t too appealing, but you needed something in your stomach to satisfy the beast. “Uh..how much, sir?” you inquired, pulling some credits from your spotless white jacket.

Shaking his head, the cashier's lips opened to a wide grin, “No need, miss, the man before you covered your order. You’re all set!”

There was that wave of nausea again. Why would he do that? Who even was he? Was it just his generosity for the day? Or did he think you couldn’t afford much based on your attire? Sighing, you frantically think about what you’ll be expecting for this job, continuing on your path toward the QuanCom headquarters. Getting closer to your destination, you glance over your phone, once more checking the time. 7:50 am. Finally, what felt like forever was finally here, and you were so eager to start on a positive foot.

Entering the monstrous building, people were hustling all around you-- confused, lost, and eager to get their days going, as well. You had to remind yourself that you were here as competition and not as a friend for anyone. Though right now, you could really use a friend and some directions as this place was large and filled to the brim. Inspecting the environment, you noticed a few flimsies posted. Maker’s sake, it made things easier by telling you where to go. Padding toward the nearest elevator, you crammed yourself in amongst the other bodies seemingly all going to the same exact floor. Not being able to help it, you held your breath midway until the doors opened on floor 18. Exiting, you followed the tall, skinny woman down the hall to meeting room 1804. To your amazement, it was already quite full, so you took a seat nearest to the door, pulling out some flimsy and a stylus so that you’re ready to jot down any information. The room was white-walled with very little decor besides a large glass table in the center. This is where the fun begins, the long drawn out rules and regulations.

“Alright! Now that we’ve gone over the workplace protocol and the prototype expectations, I will pair you up into four groups of five.” Her voice was raspy, though flat enough to make your eyelids heavy. Everyone around you was also struggling to fight the sleep that tried overpowering them. Names being called brought you back to attention every now and then, but you couldn’t stop thinking about him. “I’m sure Kenth sees more attractive women daily anyway…” you try to convince yourself.

“(Y/N), Fox, Steela, Hardcase, and…Finn. You five will make up group three.” The grouping continued slowly, but the names rang in your mind over and over. “Alright, now that groups are established, get to know one another and start some planning. Each member in your group has a very different degree path; this will help you all utilize one another's skills to create the best results for QuanCom. You have three weeks until you pitch your prototypes to Dooku, the COO.. Remember, 5 pm concludes your workday, so get to it.”

Sitting around your new coworkers, you fumbled around with your stylus, afraid to make the first move for introductions. It seems that you weren’t the only one being fidgety; the gentleman named Hardcase was bouncing his leg vigorously. If you were correct, he and Fox were clones. After the bill was granted clones rights and citizenship, they ended up all over the system. So many felt that cloning was unethical, especially for the fact they were treated similarly to droids. Though it was nice to see the two making something of themselves.

“Guess I’ll start! The name’s Hardcase. Yes I’m a clone, and--yes--I’m perfectly capable of thinking for myself. I’m great with my hands and can assemble anything together. For a short while, I was working as a mechanical engineer for the GAR.” The clone oozed with excitement and enthusiasm, which was quite entertaining. Clad in a pink-hued dress shirt and a blue suit, which matched his facial tattoos. On his feet were freshly polished loafers still tapping the ground.

“Well, I’m Fox. My skills are geared toward CAD and any type of 3D rendering. Once I devote myself to something, I see it through. You can trust me on this project; I assure you that,” he barely showed any type of emotions compared to his counterpart. His attire was dark-- suit, shoes, everything. It said a lot about him and which made you anxious.

“Well, I’m Steela! Researching is my speciality. Problem-solving is also a breeze. I’ll be able to find the answers in order to help us advance to a whole other level! I enjoy leading projects like this, since I know I can keep us on track one hundred percent!” The excitement radiating from her was encouraging. She seemed like a strong woman ready to lead this team to success. She wore brown high waisted dress pants with a matching blazer, and white blouse. On her feet were suede, caramel heel booties.

“I’ll go next…” the young Twi’lek’s voice was soft and elegant, soothing to everyone in the group. Just as she was about to speak the double-doors swung open.

“Asajj, we have a problem,” her voice hushed but full of urgency as she glanced around the room. “Tannis was fired. We need to fill her position. Now!”

“Gods, I knew this was going to happen. I told her she wasn’t ready for this position. Now he’s going to take it out on me,” Asajj let out a long sigh, arms folding across her body. The woman that just emerged looked similar to her, though her face was more relaxed.

“(Y/N), can you come over here for a second please?”

Everyone in the room glanced up at you before continuing their tasks.. Rising from your chair, you crossed the room sliding past everyone with ease. Asajj acted like she was presenting the finest delicacy in the galaxy; arms held out at you.

“I think she’ll do. A tad on the quiet side, but I’m sure Mr. Crimson can work with it,” Her response was more of a question, as both women had their eyes upon you.

“It’s not like we have much of a choice. You cannot run this and take on two secretary positions. You’re going to need the help,” The woman’s pale grey eyes burned into you.

“Fine. Take her to Mr. Crimson. You better hope he approves,” Asajj warned, giving you one last glance.

Quickly grabbing your belongings, the conversation you just had replays in your mind.

“Tannis,”

Why did that name sound so familiar? Who’s Mr. Crimson and why did you have to go see him. Your mind whirled around, anxiety eating away as you set foot in the elevator. It felt like a full rotation cycle before reaching floor twenty. Being led out you walked down a hallway that was decorated lavishly. The flooring was a beautiful dark marble. Each step you took echoed off the walls. Nearing the end of the hall, both of you walked through another set of tall glass double doors. Entering the spacious room, you can’t help but notice the viewport walls. Also catching your attention were two long black desks. They were set across from one another stacked with datapads and pieces of flimsy. Towards the middle was a closed black door that had a frosted glass panel. Without a doubt this room was breathtaking and even though it lacked decor compared to the hallway, the view of Galactic City made up for it. Light knuckles hit against the panel three times, waiting for a response.

“What is it now?” The aggressive tone was enough to send a chill down your spine.

Slowly opening the door to peek her head in. A few words were exchanged before she fully opened the door, motioning for you to follow right behind. Inside was a long glass desk, the legs were black; matching some of the furnishings or complimenting them. In front were two rounded leather chairs, the area rug underneath a bright white. Paintings and picture frames hung on the right side of the room, though you were too afraid to really gawk at them as a gruff voice began erupting again. There he sat, his black leather chair facing the viewports behind his desk seeming to be amidst another phone call. Something about his voice was all too familiar but the fear bubbling inside you made it difficult to pinpoint. Soon enough he swung his chair around slamming the phone down, right hand pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What was so important that you had to interrupt yet another phone call, Leys. If it’s not about numbers, you know, the job I pay you to do? Then leave. I’ll fire you too. I’ve had it with everyone’s complacent behavior. Any fool could be my financial officer, so if you as so step out of line again, you’re done,” The snarl erupting from this man was horrifying, bringing you back to the Caf shop.

It was him! The same eerie tone used then too, and yet he was able to turn it off so quickly when addressing you. Your hands began to clam up, eyes not even daring to meet his.

“Yes sir, I understand I’m very sorry. I just wanted to bring you Tannis’ replacement,” voice quivering, Leys bowed her head and hurriedly left Mr. Crimson’s office leaving you behind, alone and defenseless.

A satisfied chuckle was released from Mr. Crimson as he watched his employee scatter from his office. Brow raised in your direction, his stare intense, a sneer presenting itself. “Well. Take a seat.”

His hand motioned to the smaller round chairs, eyes never leaving you. Pushing his seat back just a smidge, a polished shoe crosses over his left thigh and his hands fold against his stomach. Releasing the breath you were holding in, you padded over to the seat in front of his desk sitting as straight as humanly possible.

“It seems I’m in need of another secretary. But it’s not an easy job-- I need someone reliable, someone organized, and to understand the urgency of when I say to do something, they do it,” Towards the end of the sentence, his voice dropped a little lower, eyes narrowing. “It is a permanent job that is until mistakes are made. Pays reasonably well especially for dealing with...someone like me. Seems Asajj and Leys picked you and they’re typically alright when it comes to the judgment of character.”

Something about the way he spoke to you made your heart skip a beat. Even the way he stared at you had your arms lined with goosebumps. Trying to compile a coherent sentence was no easy feat with his eyes burning into you.

“I-I, um..” fumbling over your words caused your cheeks to run hot. “Well...first off I wanted to thank you for this morning. You really didn’t have to pay for me...but I greatly appreciate it. As for my work, I am quite organized and pay attention to directions given, but I don’t exactly have the experience in being a secretary, which would probably be important…” trailing off, you broke eye contact with him to glance at a red light blinking on his phone.

He barely acknowledged your thanks, just giving a small nod. A deep hearty laugh left his lips, “Any fool could be a secretary, but you don’t seem like a fool. No, just the way you speak and hold yourself exudes intelligence. Normally a secretary is chosen from within the company, as an outsider could be one that would leak vital information about QuanCom to its competitors. Someone that has worked their way up the ranks, whom I could trust. However, due to obvious circumstances here we are. If you so choose to take this job you will have limited access to certain databases as I need you to earn that trust. Understood?” The sneer plastered itself once more upon his face, incisors visible this time.

“Yes sir, I understand. I’ll make sure I do this right Mr. Crimson!” a little bit of enthusiasm worked its way to you, eyes lighting up like Coruscant itself.

“Please, call me Maul.” he pleaded, followed by a half-smirk.

Rising to his feet, he outstretched a hand that you mirrored. His callused hand engulfing yours in a gentle embrace. Just this morning you were going in ready to compete against nineteen other candidates, and here you are sealing a deal with the CEO of QuanCom to be his second secretary. Breaking the handshake, he opens up his desk drawer pulling out a datapad, handing it to you.

“That will be yours. You’ll need it for all the paperwork and emails. You’re free to take it home, just don’t lose it. Asajj will send you some emails tonight that will need to be completed before you come in tomorrow morning at 6 sharp. Once you do that you’ll be set up in our system and able to begin your duties. You’re dismissed for the day, but you will be paid for a full day. Just a small token of gratitude.”

Taking the datapad in your hands, you gave a curt nod, ensuring you understood the importance that was just given to you. Getting yourself together along with your things, you exchanged a few words expressing how grateful you are for this new position. Heading toward the door, you outstretch a hand to grab the handle. Just as you’re about to open the black door, his voice cuts the silence.

“Oh, one last thing, don’t mention our little encounter this morning to anyone. Some may think... I’m beginning to play favorites.” his voice honeyed paired with a smirk and eyes ogling you, trying to take in one last visual before you leave.

---------

taglist: @maulfrk @honestlystop @pinkiemme @idiotonastar @nawpitynopenope @maulieber @rishi-moon

#maul x reader #darth maul x reader #Star Wars fanfic #star wars #Clone Wars #The Clone Wars #star wars clone wars #userlilylils #ceo!maul #maul

132 notes · View notes

scrambled-eggsed · 3 years

Text

A bunch of nonsense regarding Rusty Quill Gaming

Could possibly be shaped into an actual theory by people smarter than I am (by which I mean - please add to this! I'm tryna figure out the mystery, at least partially, and more opinions are always valued):

Gonna open with my main point and say that I think Persephone is really important to everything we don't know about the cult of Hades, and thus possibly the whole campaign. This is basically a few points about that idea.

[continuing below the cut because it gets a bit long]

We saw in the ancient Rome sidequest that the temple that was fitting for Hades was actually a temple for Persephone. Hades wasn't really popular, and we didn't see any evidence that confirms that he was being worshipped at all.

I think Alex may have hinted a bunch of times that the entity that gives Zolf his powers isn't just the concept of hope, and from a narrative perspective I think Persephone fits really well into this.

The party is currently trying to figure out a strange seed. And, y'know, Persephone was the Goddess of Spring, essentially, right? Plants, flowers, the sprouting of seeds? And if it had anything to do with the simulacrum, it would make sense that it would be metallic (I realise that this is a longshot but it just sort of makes sense, and possibly could make more sense when the party gets to Svalbard and gets more information about the seed).

Edit after 180: The Garden of Yerlik is described as “the garden where one can follow the path from life to death and back.” That sounds A LOT like Persephone.

A few pieces of info, or lack thereof, I don't know where to fit into all of this:

According to Azu's knowledge (I think Alex gave this info right after Barrett told LOLOMG about the cult of Hades), the cult of Hades were the main corrupters of Rome. However, as I said (and also assuming I remember correctly; again, feel free to comment, add or correct me), we didn't see any worshippers of Hades back then, right? (I would like to say that the whole thing with the evil Paladins [according to the wiki, it was the cult of Mars] who also freed the dragons was never really clear to me [why did they do it? also it went sort of wrong, right? like the dragons burned the commanding officer or smth] so if anyone actually understood that part, Please Help)

Wtf does Wellington's son got to do with all of this. This is unclear to me because A) I don't know how British aristocracy works, and I think that could have some relevant information and B) so far, Alex has named the Real Important npcs after real historical figures, with a few similarities between the character and the historical figure (for example - Oscar Wilde is a witty writer, Marie Curie and all the others from Prague are the equivalent to well-known scientists and academics, Guy Fawkes caused trouble with gunpowder (Guy Fawkes is really interesting bc she was also Byron's sister, which leads me to my next point -)) and that's why I think he's not just Wellington's son but is based on an actual historical figure - the question is who. All things considered, I suspect it could explain why it all started in London and seems to be based there.

We don't actually know what the cult of Hades' goal is. According to Barnes, the infected are just trying to infect as many people as possible and basically spread the infection and take over the world, but what would they even gain from that? I saw people saying this links to Mr. Ceiling but I really don't understand how that could be.

Tesla and the simulacrum. Just in general. We don't know how the simulacrum fell into Edison's hands (maybe It's the same thing that happened with the lightbulb in our world, but I highly doubt that, considering that Tesla was also responsible to the flooding of London (which is another thing I don't understand. Other London seems to have existed for a while - decades, at least - but as I understand, the general idea is that Tesla is still very much alive, and fled to America (or maybe is just on the run in general) with Eda Lovelace and another person I think?, so he's either an old man now, or not human, or I have misunderstood) and therefore was more important in that world than he is in ours. Unless there's Tesla lore I'm not aware of, in our world or the campaign's). Also, where does the simulacrum link up with the cult of Hades? Which leads me to my next point:

As I recall, the cult of Hades were the ones in charge of the factory in Damascus. Why? Was this another part of the taking-over-the-world plan? The simulacra were a replacement for the workers, which could mean that they were just looking to increase efficiency, but the riots in London have already started at that point, so they knew the world, and with it the economy, production and distribution, were gonna crash. Maybe they just wanted to replace the workers so they wouldn't be lacking the workforce when they got infected, but surely other robots could do that, and not specifically the most advanced and expensive ones out there.

Based on the whole idea of this post, every point concerning the cult of Hades also relates to - where does Persephone fit into all this? How did Hades replace Persephone? Where did Persephone "go"? Since the gods are real and pay some attention to the world, how does Persephone feel about all this? My guess (which is based on a hunch, which is based on pretty much nothing) is that Hades has taken over the role of "main god of the underworld" and everything done by the cult of Hades is supported by him, and Persephone Does Not Like This and is subtly helping those who try to reverse this, through Zolf and possibly other ways (I may have listened to Hadestown way too many times, but there is something to be said about Persephone basically making the world regrow and heal after every winter - and so perhaps also after a metaphorical winter, where it isn't necessarily winter but it's just a terrible situation that people somehow get through?)

EDIT: Cannot BELIEVE I didn't think about this earlier - did the Meritocracy attempt to erase Persephone? (Assuming she is actually relevant,) The only trace of her seems to be the Garden of Yerlik in the northern wastes, and Cel keeps saying that it's really weird how they were the only one who have already known there were people living there. Did the Meritocracy tell everyone that there's nothing in the northern wastes because they didn't want people to stumble upon the Bear Cities and see that garden? This also seems plausible because pretty much the only creatures who know exactly what happened in Ancient Rome are the Meritocrats, so they would be the only ones to know that Persephone was an important God back then. Also (and again, can't believe I didn't think about this earlier) this could tie in directly to why everyone thinks the cult of Hades were at fault for the fall of Rome - they were probably the ones to spin the story thay way. So basically, do the Meritocrats have any other motive that we don't know about? (Currently the last ep to come out was 180 so I might edit this again once the next one releases) Also I assume there’s some connection to the Cult of Mars but I can’t say exactly.

#rqg #rusty quill gaming #rqg zolf #lolomg #london and other london outstanding mercenary group #rqg meta #idk how to tag this

38 notes · View notes

aer-in-wanderland · 3 years

Photo

구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lost in Translation EP02

Back by, possibly not popular, but certainly very enthusiastic demand: my sister’s and my continued adventures in mistranslation and cultural subtext. You can find EP01 here. Buckle up and settle in for another monster post because, wow, a lot happened in this episode. Contains spoilers.

Prologue

We open with a sweeping view of Baekdudaegan as Yeon narrates about his past as the god who presided over it. For context, Baekdudaegan is the biggest and most famous mountain range in Korea, taking up an enormous swath of the Korean peninsula (to the extent that it’s often referred to as its ‘spine’ or ‘backbone’). So Yeon wasn’t lying when he said he was a ‘major’ mountain god. ;)

Yeon: You could say these were my Leeds Days. I was the master of Baekdudaegan, a mountain god who controlled the wind and rain,* and a gumiho who was, from the start, of a different caliber than the mongrel foxes you see in Hometown of Legends. ...Or, I was.”

[*Note: Can also be taken to mean ‘the natural elements’ in general.]

When Yeon refers to his ‘glory days,’ the term he uses is ‘Leeds Era’ (리즈시절). Originally a sporting term for the height of a footballer’s career, in Korean, the expression has come to be used to describe a person’s bygone glory days. The modern figure of speech (complete with English loan word) makes for a funny counterpoint to the Yeon we see on screen and recalls the mint-chocolate loving American TV show enthusiast we’ve known him as so far.

The other modern reference he makes is to Hometown of Legends (전설의 고향), which has been the title of numerous dramas and movies (1977-2018) centered around Korean myths and legends. This is basically the equivalent of an alien referencing the X-files. Overall, the narration serves to remind us just how modern our gumiho has become and clashes humorously with the visual onscreen.

Yeon’s above narration concludes with the first appearance of little Ah Eum, who immediately proceeds to pet the mighty master of Baekdudaegan as if he were her pet dog pfft (thus the ‘....or I was.’)

As an aside, tvN released some backstory information revealing that Ah Eum had gone to find Yeon in order to pray for rain. Which means she pet him in spite of that lol We also know from the past-life sequence in episode 10 that she had actually been warned never to venture anywhere near his mountain because a 1000 year old gumiho lived there. It’s almost as if her guardians don’t know her at all...

For anyone keeping track, Ah Eum uses banmal with Yeon from the very beginning. We find out why later. As a princess (even one who had been discarded), she’s used to outranking everyone around her and therefore speaking almost exclusively in banmal. To be fair, with her temperament, Yeon being a 1000+ year old mountain god probably just wasn’t enough to get him an automatic pass from her. Point for Ah Eum/Ji Ah character continuity.

Yeon: If I could rewrite* my past just once, I would return to this moment without hesitation. So that that child could never find me.

[*Note: Literally, ‘A/S my past,’ which I’m pretty sure has its roots in computer usage. So again, thoroughly modern vocabulary from the former master of Baekdudaegan.]

We transition from young to grown Ah Eum with a sweep of the Red Umbrella. According to tvN again, this umbrella was actually a gift from Ah Eum to Yeon, and it’s also the same umbrella Yeon still carries everywhere. It’s somewhat poetic, then, that it was this umbrella that lead Ji Ah to him. So, a meaningful item on multiple fronts.

Yeon: Some called it, ‘the scandal of the age that shook Baekdudaegan.’ To think, a mountain god who had given his heart to a human... Nowadays, it would have felt like a disciplinary hearing, but I didn’t care a whit. I liked her [presence] permeating my woods.

As you might have guessed, this love story ends in tragedy. Someone stole her life. Once she crossed the River of Three Crossings, I would never be able to see her again. I couldn’t hold on to her, but nor could I bear to let her go...so I resorted to abusing my power.

The BGM playing as Yeon narrates the ending of his tragic story is ‘The Parting at the River of Three Crossings,’ which I think of as the epic love theme of TotNT alongside ‘Sad Fate.’ Why do I keep mentioning the BGM? No reason, other than that it interests me. ;)

On a linguistic note, Yeon’s line, ‘Someone stole her life’ caught my attention from the first time I watched this due to his unusual usage of the word ‘life.’ Korean has multiple words for ‘life.’ The one that would typically be used in this context is ‘moksoom’ (목숨), which I think of as having the nuance of one’s life force. So to steal one’s ‘moksoom’ would mean to kill them. Instead, he uses ‘insaeng’ (인생), which is more like the life one leads. To steal someone’s ‘insaeng’ sounds more like a case of identity theft. As we find out later, that actually is what Imoogi did, and this hinted at that linguistically.

I’m not sure how well this translated, but the gesture of Yeon kneeling is both epic and heartbreaking. Kneeling is a very weighty gesture in Korea, so for Yeon to use his godly powers to freeze the very River to the Afterlife only to kneel and beg for one last moment with Ah Eum is just... It’s a momentous enough gesture for Taluipa, the ultimate stickler for rules, to make an exception and grant his request.

The fox bead: In Japanese lore, a fox’s bead is often akin to its life force, but that’s clearly not the case for Yeon. In Korean lore, fox beads are sometimes called ‘the treasure of a fox’s lips,’ since the bead is supposedly located within the fox’s mouth (and can thus be stolen/gifted with a kiss). Some tellings claim that someone who swallows a fox’s bead gains understanding of all things and phenomena in the universe, while others say they grant the bearer’s wishes.

Yeon continues his narration, describing how he’s encountered women with Ah Eum’s face over the centuries, but that none of them were her. For anyone interested, you can find my hot take on that here.

Okay, can we please have a spin-off of Yeon hunting down folklore monsters in Japanese-occupied Korea Gaksital (2012)-style?

Fun fact: Based on some of the still cuts they released, there was actually a deleted scene in which Yeon pulled the late-Joseon era Ah Eum look-alike aside, checked her for the fox bead, and then erased her memories. (And by ‘fun’ I mean, ‘why would you delete that??’)

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Iconic.

Fun fact: Lee Dong Wook picked this as the most memorable line of the drama due to it’s thematic echoing across multiple episodes.

On the topic of the tranquilizer, there was a deleted scene in episode 1 in which Ji Ah very openly 'borrowed’ it from Shin Joo’s vet clinic because she already suspected Yeon was a fox: fox fur, Fox Ridge... She was taking a pretty big gamble though since he’s not exactly your average fox.

It’s worth noting that Ji Ah doesn’t say she was ‘looking’ for Yeon (although she was, because she’s a go-get-‘em kind of girl); she says she was ‘waiting’ for him. I took this to mean she was waiting for him to return and make good on his threat to kill her (since, not only had she not forgotten, she’d been actively sticking her nose into anything remotely supernatural or unexplainable), at which point, presumably, she planned to turn the tables on him.

Episode 02 Title Card: I’ve Been Waiting for You

For anyone wondering how Ji Ah managed to get Yeon back up to his penthouse, apparently she told the security desk her boyfriend was drunk and boldly took him back up in the elevator (presumably with help) haha

Possibly coincidentally, Yeon’s first line to Ji Ah when he regains consciousness is the same as his first line to little Ah Eum: ‘Do you want to die?’ (minus the sageuk speak)

Ji Ah’s line, “I wouldn’t be sipping tea here if I was worried about that,” would more literally be: “If I valued my life, would I be sitting here drinking flower tea?”

Lol Ji Ah. “Want a cup?” is such a classy power play.

Sub: “After the stunt you pulled, you’re actually offering me tea?” Ha. Also, what Yeon literally says is: “You pulled that variety-esque stunt, and your next line is what? ‘A cup of tea’?” ‘Variety’ here is an English loan word meant in the sense of ‘variety shows’ (ex. Running Man or 1 Night 2 Days), though to my knowledge, no one has ever been tranquilized on one.

The following exchange was littered with enough small things I would have changed that I’ll just translate the whole thing here for reference:

Ji Ah: When a man and a woman have that level of physical contact, don’t they usually also drink tea or eat meals together, too? These days, the whole pure and noble act doesn’t go far.

Yeon: Whether it does or not, when you’re at a disadvantage, isn’t it considered common courtesy to come [to the table] having put aside either your pride or your self-esteem [i.e. at least one of the two]?

Ji Ah: Listen until the end before you determine who’s at a disadvantage.

Yeon: (Nodding) In exchange, if my thinking still doesn’t change, you’ll pay the price for having tested me.

Ji Ah: Price?

Yeon: Your sight (literally ‘eyes’). I’ll be taking your eyes that have seen what they shouldn’t have.

Ji Ah: Deal. (literally, ‘call’ as in poker)

Rang & Yoo Ri Crash a Funeral

In the off chance you were wondering why this is basically the only time we see Rang driving Yoo Ri and not the other way around, it’s because Yoo Ri is ‘in character’ as the daughter of a major conglomerate and wouldn’t be expected to drive herself if there was another person in the car. In Korea, there’s a whole code of etiquette around who sits where in the car.

Instead of ‘Lee Rang-nim’ the subs have Yoo Ri addressing Rang as ‘sir.’ That just strikes me as so distant and cold...

To my thinking, this scene was peak ‘Hoket-dan.’ It was nearly the same level of over-the-top campy as some of the old supervillains. If I’m being perfectly honest, I was worried at this point that Rang’s character would turn out to be equally 2D. Joke’s on me though, ‘cause this later became a hilarious character quirk when Sajang says to Rang, “It can’t be that you came to enjoy watching me die?” and Rang responds, “I love doing that! Look, I even brought popcorn. I even go about visiting funeral homes and stuff on purpose.” lol

Ji Ah’s Gamble

Okay, but Yeon actually took her up on tea haha I love it.

Subs: “So you’re a fox that’s pretending to be human.” The word they use here (and throughout the drama) is ‘doongap’ (둔갑), which is literally ‘to assume the form of.’ Unfortunately, there’s no verb in English that neatly conveys that, so this gets subbed a lot of ways. I’ve mostly been translating it as ‘transform,’ but that’s more properly ‘byeonshin’ (변신). Sometimes with translation, the best option still isn’t great.

It’s also worth noting that this is actually not what Yeon is doing here, since he sees those sorts of tricks as beneath him. Yeon is a cheon’ho; his human form is his own.

Sub: “What a lame reaction. A normal human being would scream...” More literally: “What kind of reaction is so lacking in sincerity? Generally, if [you’re] a human, I should at least get a scream...” Again, both ‘reaction’ and ‘scream’ are in English, and, somewhat humorously, Yeon uses the verb + juda (주다) form, implying he was hoping to elicit a scream with his reveal pfft

Sub: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere out in this world. I started directing a TV show about urban legends so I could catch you myself.” This is mostly fine, but what she says more literally is: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere in this world. In order to catch [one] myself, I buried my bones in a TV show about urban legends.” To ‘bury ones bones’ means ‘to devote oneself entirely to’ and implies more drive and dedication than in the sub. The subject is once again omitted, so she could mean Yeon, but I think she actually means ‘things like Yeon’ more generally.

Yeon’s line to Ji Ah when she asks him about their long ago encounter was subbed as: “I followed the smell of blood, and I ended up saving a little kid. But I can see that she’s very ungrateful.” I would translate this as:

Yeon: I smelled blood and followed it, and ended up saving some little girl (lit. young child), but now I see that that child is trying to repay a favor with enmity.

The expression Yeon uses here, to ‘repay a favor (eunhye) with enmity (wonsoo),’ is a common turn of phrase. It’s the Korean equivalent of ‘biting the hand that feeds you,’ or ‘repaying good with ill.’ Considering eunhye has actual consequences for Yeon, he doesn’t seem all that put out.

Lol Something about Lee Dong Wook’s delivery of Yeon’s line, “So you lost your parents...” reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’

Sub: “I’m not threatening you. I’m taking my chances.” This should be: “You’re mistaken. I’m not threatening; I’m gambling.” This turn of phrase is rather clever in Korean since ‘threat’ (협박) and ‘gamble’ (도박) are only one syllable off. In terms of the subs, while ‘gambling’ and ‘taking my chances’ are similar on the surface, they’re different enough in nuance that I would consider this a mistranslation. ‘Gambling’ implies an informed, calculated risk, whereas ‘taking my chances’ gives the impression of improvisation and leaving everything up to luck.

The Funeral Parlour

This scene is Rang in a nutshell. I actually don’t have much to comment on linguistically, but it was definitely an important scene for establishing Rang’s MO and motivations.

Shin Joo & Yeon

Yeon and Shin Joo meet up at the ice cream parlour to debrief on the situation with Ji Ah, and it’s cute how Shin Joo is more indignant over what went down than Yeon.

Subs: “It’s like we exist to repay people for their kindness.” This has been grossly paraphrased due to lack of cultural context. His line is literally:

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?”

This is another Korean folktale reference, this time to the story of The Grateful Magpies. I elaborated on it a bit here.

Yeon: “It’s old-fashioned but romantic. And it's also a fox’s dignity.” ‘Romantic’ here is the French loan word ‘romang’ (로망). In contrast to the English ‘romantic’ (which is also used), ‘romang’ is used to refer to ‘anything marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.’ ‘Dignity’ could also be translated as ‘grace of character.’ Yeon’s preoccupation with style/swagger/dignity is enough of a recurring theme (and occasional joke) that it features in his character profile.

For anyone keeping track, Shin Joo refers to Ah Eum as ‘Ah Eum agasshi.’ ‘Agasshi’ meaning ‘miss’ or ‘lady.’

Shin Joo’s line is subbed, “Does she bother you?” but it should be: ‘Does it bother you?’ where ‘it’ refers to the fact that Ji Ah so closely resembles Ah Eum.

Sub: “I’ve seen tons of people who looked like her for hundreds of years.” It’s actually not ‘tons of people,’ but ‘a couple’/‘several’ over the course of hundreds of years. Let’s be honest, people as pretty as Jo Bo Ah just aren’t born every day. ;)

Yeon’s line may be overly blunt, but it’s sweet that he calls Shin Joo, ‘Shin Joo-ya.’

Back over to Ji Ah. The way this scene suddenly switches from sentimental to horrifying is great. I also like that it’s unclear when she fell asleep. The boundary between reality and unreality is as blurred for the viewers as it is for Ji Ah, and it leaves us with a similar sense of disquiet.

In case it wasn’t already clear, it’s the tooth on this skull that leads Ji Ah to Eohwa Island. She sees a skull with an identical tooth in the news and goes to investigate.

Afterlife Immigration Office

LOL Hyeonuiong briefing the newly departed on death via powerpoint is hilarious. The powerpoint reads: ‘A Guide to Hell for the Dead, Presenter: Hyeonuiong.’ The red sigil on the right bears the characters ‘十王’ (the Ten Kings), so I guess this is an official, Afterlife-approved slideshow. heh

Side note: I’m impressed with the way this show seamlessly shifts between genres. We went from emotional to creepy to funny without it feeling forced or jarring (or at least, it didn’t to me).

The powerpoint (complete with webtoon) continues cheerily: “Hell! What is the Afterlife?” / “The 10 Types of Hell.” pfft Who made these slides? Whoever they are, point to them.

Subs: “You know King Hades, right?” WOW This is bordering on cultural whitewashing if you ask me. This should be King Yeomra (aka King Enma). He’s one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife, and quite arguably the most famous.

The sub here says Taluipa is Yeomra’s older sister, which is understandable since the antiquated word Hyeonuiong uses (누이), doesn’t specify older or younger. We find out in the final episode, though, that Taluipa is actually Yeomra’s younger sister. As far as I’m aware, this is not part of the original lore.

Lol Yeon being a drama king: “I’m going to take revenge! Thanks to her, my obligatory military service has already gone on for 600 years~!” (You’re not fooling anyone, sir)

“No way! A man’s hair is his life! My red-brown...” Fun fact: It was actually Lee Dong Wook’s idea to make Yeon’s hair red-brown, both as a nod to him being a fox, and to give him a more otherworldly look.

Why do the gods keep saying reincarnation is random when everyone we see reincarnated kept their face??

‘Oh my god” lol Watching kdrama characters react in English never gets old. Possibly because there’s something exaggerated or overdramatic in the conscious decision to use English instead of Korean.

A++ response from Yeon. I saw something going around to the effect of, ‘this show really just said love is love,’ and I love that. Point to the writer.

The BGM here is once again ‘Thread Rings.’ Given where it keeps being used, I’m fairly certain they’re somehow related to Ji Ah/Ah Eum... (So I guess there actually is a reason I’m paying attention to the BGM ;p). Lee Dong Wook just disclosed the behind the scenes scoop on the rings in his latest VLIVE.

This bulgasari is such a mild-mannered person. Like Shin Joo, he calls Ji Ah ‘PD-nim’ and speaks politely and deferentially.

Not for anything, but I really liked Jo Bo Ah’s delivery of Ji Ah’s line, ‘I saw a corpse.’ Her little mannerisms really sold Ji Ah to me as a person and not just a character.

Bulgasari: “That dream, can you sell it to me? I want to play the lottery.” In addition to the concept of symbolism in dreams, Koreans also have a common notion that dreams can be bought and sold. It’s funny, though, when you consider he’s probably just planning to eat the dream.

I love whenever Taluipa calls Yeon, ‘Yeon-ah.’ She’s normally so prickly that it’s notable when she's affectionate. Also, seeing as Yeon is older than 95% of our characters, there aren’t many who might address him like this with the affectionate diminutive.

Heh, Yeon refers to Ji Ah’s favor as a ‘civil complaint.’

When Yeon asks Ji Ah for her parent’s times and dates of birth, what he’s actually asking for is their ‘saju’ (literally, ‘four pillars’). You can find my explanation here.

The Snail Bride

Bok Hye Ja: “It’s the first time he’s brought someone (literally ‘a person’).” Normally this would mean, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a guest,’ but in this case, I’m fairly certain she means, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a human.’ ;)

“I won’t ask you to understand.” This was another exchange that made me love Ji Ah. I found her frank and sincere apology refreshing.

On a personal note, I loved watching Yeon recalibrate his estimation of Ji Ah in this scene. And it was also a scene in which viewers got to recalibrate their impressions of Yeon. Yeon is feigning indifference, but he makes a point of asking after Ji Ah’s feelings, which is not insignificant. It’s also in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen of Rang so far.

Oh my gosh, THAT PUFFBALL DOG (and it’s name is Bean-ie) XD

Minor detail, but where did Shin Joo get his necklace? Wait. OH MY GOD. Shin Joo is the Aquaman of TotNT. Yeon gets to be Batman and Superman rolled into one and Shin Joo’s power is that he ‘talks to fish animals.’ Dead.

Lol Ji Ah watching Yeon eat. I feel like this is a running joke. In the tales, gumiho notoriously eat people’s livers, so seeing him eat normal food must be a bit eye-opening.

The text description for Shin Don was left untranslated in the version we’re watching but it reads: In A History of Goryeo, there’s record of Shin Don, a monk from the time of King Gongmin’s reign (1351-1374 C.E.), having been an old fox.

Subs: “Is it true that the monk of Goryeo Dynasty was a fox?” Us: ‘Yes, the one monk in all of Goryeo and for all of Goryeo. Guess he’d have to have been a fox in that case.’ This should probably have been translated as: "So then, Shin Don...is it a fact that the Goryeo monk Shin Don was a fox?”

Ji Ah: “Oh my god.” heh

Do You Really Want to See It?

Wait, they walked all the way from Insadong to Digital Media City? Okay, this is one of the (few) pitfalls of being fairly familiar with Seoul. Sometimes it’s really obvious when two locations don’t connect and then it pulls me out of the drama. I think we’re supposed to believe that the Snail Bride is in the vicinity of Ji Ah’s broadcast station, seeing as her team are lunchtime regulars, but the the two neighborhoods are nowhere near each other.

Yeon’s line in the subs here is: “A. I’m a busy man. B. We may currently be living in the same world, but there is a big difference between where we come from.” Personally, I would have translated this as: “Firstly, I haven’t got that much free time. Secondly, we may be unavoidably living mingled together, but the world I belong to and the world you belong to are incontrovertibly different.”

Subs: “Those who got a peek at my world ended up going crazy or dying young.” More literally: “In the past, there have been those who got a glimpse of the world’s secrets. Well, most of them either went mad or had their lives cut short.”

Minor detail, but Ji Ah’s response subbed as: “I don’t care. I’ll stay out of your way. Just don’t disappear.” should more literally be: “Just don’t disappear from my sight (lit. ‘from before me’).”

The sub on Ji Ah’s line here reads: “She (Sae Rom) and I both had nightmares.” What she actually says is: “Me and my hubae also had nightmares,” meaning that she (Ji Ah) and Jae Hwan had nightmares in addition to Sae Rom. Which is why Yeon refers to them as ‘contagious’.

Okay, is it just me, or does LDW look exceptionally unreal in this scene?

Bulgasari

I’m not familiar with the actor who plays the bulgasari (pretty sure he’s a new face), but he did a great job making his movements uncanny here. The firey CG effects are fun too.

Heck yeah! Yeon sure knows how to make an entrance. Seeing as how he instructed Ji Ah on what to do, I’m pretty sure he was there the whole time......show-off.

Once again, I’m digging the fight scene underscored by ‘The Uninvited.’ I would happily watch an entire series that’s just Yeon and Ji Ah solving supernatural cases and hunting down baddies who disturb the peace.

The Smirk™ XD I’m 90% sure this was another LDW ad lib.

Lol Yeon. Subs: “Really? Then am I the jerk here?” More literally: “Really? Then I guess I’m the only bad guy, huh?”

On a linguistic note, the bulgasari speaks to Yeon in old-timey speech, once again playing up their mutual identity as creatures of lore.

It’s only at this point that, prompted by Ji Ah, Yeon finally reveals the bulgasari’s identity. This is accompanied by a brief chyron telling us that they appear when the world is in disorder, and Ji Ah supplies that they eat nightmares.

To elaborate a bit, bulgasari are one of the better known Korean creatures of lore. There are two different sets of hanja for them: (bulgasari 不可殺伊 ‘can-not-kill’) and (bulgasari 火可殺伊 ‘fire-can-kill’), which explains why, depending on the telling, they’re either un-killable or only die by fire. In traditional lore, feeding them metal makes them grow larger and stronger, which, while not the case in TotNT, is probably what inspired the coin-gobbling.

Subs: “Yes they are especially fond of broadcasting studios, which are packed with people. Eating metal reveals their true identities.” That subtitle went a bit sideways. It’s not that they like broadcast stations in particular, but crowded places like broadcast stations. So it should read: “They like places with lots of people, like the broadcast station, and if you feed them metal, they reveal their true colors.”

Okay, Yeon’s line that’s subtitled as, “The hostage will answer,” is more literally: “Hey, hostage. Try answering me.” It’s worth noting that, while he calls her ‘injil-bun’ (injil = hostage + bun = the polite word for a person), he’s still speaking to her in banmal, so he’s once again being cheeky.

It’s taking some license, but I would translate Yeon’s question to Ji Ah here as: “In this moment,* what exactly can you do other than rely on me to save you?” which is essentially what he means. [*Note: literally, ‘at this timing,’ and once again, ‘timing’ is in English.]

We get a series of short scenes lining up some of the side characters who will become our key players on the island: the fisherman find the severed head, Ji Ah grills Detective Baek about the case, and Rang approaches Pyung Hee with his usual devil’s bargain pitch. I didn’t really notice anything here that I think is important enough to the central plot or characters that it’s worth commenting on (especially given how massively long this post is already), so I’m just going to call it good and move right along. ;)

Pfft I definitely wasn’t expecting the bulgasari to be literally chilling in Yeon’s freezer (not that he had a choice). This is somewhat interesting given they’re typically thought to be weak to fire, not ice.

Subs: “I’ll die even if I tell you where he is.” More literally: “Whether I die in this way [by Yeon’s hand], or that [by Rang’s], it is all the same.”

Brother Complex

Sub: “Don’t even think of hurting her.” More literally: “Just try touching one hair on her head.”

Oh my gosh Rang’s face ㅠㅠ This was the first time I felt Kim Beom really got to display his acting chops in this role, and boy, was I glad to see it. This was also when I knew Rang was going to make me cry.

Yeon: “You’re acting like this because you lack affection.” The expression Yeon uses is ‘aejeong gyeolpip,’ which literally does mean ‘affection lack/want/absence,’ but I would have translated it as ‘affection-starved,’ since saying Rang ‘lacks affection’ could also be interpreted to mean Rang is incapable of expressing affection.

Yeon: “Why’s that?” Lol Lee Dong Wook. Also, this one line is cheekily in polite speech.

Subs: “Just because of a woman you gave up your position as a mountain spirit, left the mountain, and you even...” More literally: “Just because of one mere human woman you gave up your position as a mountain god, turned your back on the mountain, and..!!”

Yeon: “Yes, I know. I even abandoned you.” Rang-ah~ ㅠㅠ I recently received an ask as to whether or not I believed Yeon had truly abandoned Rang, which I answered here.

Oof, Yeon giving Rang advice as an older brother. In Korea, nagging is seen as a sign of affection. You may recall Ji Ah was very excited for her dad to nag her about her boyfriend in episode 12.

Sub: “You crazy fool.” Rang literally calls his brother a ‘michin nom,’ ‘michin’ meaning ‘crazy.’ ‘Nom’ is a pronoun that, depending on how it’s used, can mean anything from ‘guy,’ to ‘jerk,’ to ‘bastard.’

Sub: “I don’t need to know.” Actually: “There’s no need [for you to tell me].” The two are subtly different. Yeon’s saying he’ll find out on his own, not that he doesn’t want to know.

Fun fact: Kim Beom said in his script reading interview (before they started filming) that he was a bit worried about his onscreen dynamic with Lee Dong Wook because, while Rang has to hate Yeon, LDW is a hyung that KB likes so much in real life. What a cutie.

We cut briefly over to Ji Ah on the phone with Jae Hwan, asking him to look after Sae Rom while she chases down the skull lead.

As an aside here, Ji Ah calls Sae Rom, ‘Kim-jak’ (short for ‘jakga,’ meaning ‘writer’). In Korea, it’s common to refer to someone by their role or title. This might indicate distance, but Ji Ah’s shortening it makes the term familiar and speaks of their camaraderie. In the subtitles, this has become, ‘Ms. Kim,’ which is oddly distant given their frenemyship.

The Island

Is it just me, or does it feel like there should have been a scene here explaining how and why Yeon came to be on the boat? I’m assuming it got deleted due to time constraints, but I feel like it was needed.

Pfft The way Ji Ah pops up from behind Yeon, cutting comically into the dramatic shot of Lee Dong Wook’s windswept profile + BGM was great.

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Kimite patches are used to alleviate sea sickness, so this is further undermining the mood of a second ago haha

Yeon’s line is subbed: “I’d like to keep it to myself,” but this should more literally be: ‘Let’s each work individually/play it solo.’

Sub: “No, thank you.” What Yeon actually says: “Hard pass.” hahaha (Literally: ‘I’ll immediately/urgently decline,’ but tonally, ‘hard pass’ is closer).

The subs have Yeon’s line as: “You need to be careful what you pay attention to.” I would have translated this as: “If that’s the reason [you’ve come], go back. You mustn’t recklessly lend an ear [to such things].” His tone and phrasing are both surprisingly gentle.

Subs: “My guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious combination.” Well, my guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious sub haha I would have translated Yeon’s voiceover as:

Yeon: The same boat...the same island...a woman with the same face as that girl. My instincts speak to me relentlessly, telling me there’s something amiss about this combination.

Pfft The contrast between Ji Ah's dismount from the boat and Yeon’s.

Lol Yeon’s ‘excuse me’ was totally rude

For the record, from the moment Yeon sets foot on the island, he speaks to everyone in banmal. That’s bad form towards any stranger, but it’s especially rude considering their age. Sure, Yeon’s way older, but they don’t know that.

Ji Ah mouthing “What?” in English haha

Yeon clocking the effectively creepy villagers. Turns out the right BGM and camerawork can make anything creepy. Point to the director.

Settling in on the Island

Ji Ah’s line subbed as, “I thought you didn’t want to be involved,” should more properly be: “I thought you just said we should each play it solo?”

Yeon’s line is similarly mis-subbed as: “I changed my mind. Don’t let it bother you.” What he actually says is much ruder: “I’ll do what I want! Butt out.” Which explains Ji Ah’s affront heh

Lol Yeon walking right in front of the camera. Anyone who has ever had a pet recognized this moment.

I love how Yeon is being completely tactless and insensitive but then grudgingly course-corrects when Ji Ah glares daggers at him.

Fisherman (subs): “It gives me a bad feeling in my mouth.” Excuse me, what? haha The line is: “The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.”

Lol Ji Ah: “In the documentaries I watched, they say digging holes is your speciality” (complete with digging gesture).

Fun fact: Ji Ah blocking the way with her leg and Yeon burrowing under it was something Jo Bo Ah and Lee Dong Wook came up with themselves. Ji Ah’s line was scripted, but I’m nearly positive Yeon’s comeback of, “Burrowing is my speciality,” was an ad lib by Lee Dong Wook. Once again, casting Lee Dong Wook is the gift that keeps on giving.

WAIT. Subs: “You can’t go.” / “Borrowing is my specialty.” Hahaha What even? Cheon’ho Lee Yeon: professional mooch.

The way we then cut to Yeon ‘burrowing’ into a freezer of ice cream is just perfect. Point to the director.

Once again, Yeon is talking to all the village elders in banmal.

“You have a terrible service mentality.” pfft

OH. Ji Ah’s response to the misogynistic fisherman is just A++

Her line here is literally: “Oops, I’m afraid I’m overflowing with ‘jeong.’” ‘Jeong’ (情) can be a little hard to translate. It literally means ‘emotion’ or ‘affection,’ but the way it’s used linguistically can be a bit complex. The sub here was: “I’m afraid I was too generous,” which I actually think is pretty decent. The turn of phrase in Korean though, using the word ‘overflowing’ while over-pouring on the man, made her response doubly witty.

Hah. I love the way Yeon just raises his eyebrows when he comes out of the market and spots her.

Subs: “How dare a witch from outside come here and...” He actually calls her a ‘michin nyeon’ meaning ‘crazy bitch,’ so the line is: “Crazy bitch, where do you think this is that you dare...”

Ji Ah’s line that begins, “If you’re going to hit me...” is just SO great. We stan (1) queen.

Subs: “Nice. You’re tough.” This is a bit hard to translate. Yeon’s line is literally: “Oh~ What ggang is like this?” ‘Ggang’ can be translated as ‘guts,’ ‘tenacity,’ or ‘persistence.’ Naver dictionary describes it as: ‘a personal trait found in one who never gives in, when put in whatever difficulties,’ which is so spot on for Ji Ah. I might approximate this as: “Woah~ Just how gutsy are you?”

The way he's just like, ‘I approve. Here, have a shikhye~’ is mildly adorable. Did you buy that for her, Yeon, or were you planning on having two but decided she’d earned one? haha

Ji Ah’s response is equally great. The sub says: “That was nothing.” which isn’t a bad option for a subtitle, but what she literally says is ‘saesam-seureopge’ (새삼스럽게), where ‘saesam’ means ‘now? at this point? after all this time?’ So she’s basically saying, ‘You’re bothering with that observation, over that little stunt, after everything else you’ve seen me do?’ haha

“I plan to mooch off of you as much as possible.” Pfft I love how Yeon actually moves to stand behind her just to underscore the point. That’ll be Lee Dong Wook again.

Wow, these are some sketchy old people.

Subs: “People aren’t the only ones with eyes and mouths.” What he actually says is, “Are people the only ones with eyes and ears?”

The Forest Spirit

Wow, the lighting in this scene is just A++ Point to the lighting team (or is that just natural? It feels almost too pretty to have just been natural).

I was too distracted by Lee Dong Wook to notice the first time, but Ji Ah’s face when Yeon shushes her is great haha

On a linguistic note, this scene is one of the few in which Yeon code switches to archaic speech as he’s addressing the tree spirit. It’s the linguistic equivalent of him putting on his ‘mountain god’ hat. (He still speaks to Ji Ah normally, though).

We cut briefly to the mudang (shamaness), and I’m sorry, I know this is a traditional way of speaking, but it always makes me laugh because it’s so over-the-top.

The spirit addresses Ji Ah as ‘agasshi,’ which would be strange if she was actually a modern young girl, but makes sense for a spirit who’s at least 600. Overall, it helps to remind viewers of her supernatural-ness.

Yeon telling Ji Ah she did a good job is so cute. I feel like they’re rapidly becoming a quirky tag-team duo and I’m 100% here for it.

Mudang: “His body returned to shore before his head did! Your father!” This line was explained in the backstory collection.

Okay, the mudang needs to dial it back like 10 levels here.

Possibly just me, but Yeon swatting the air with his hand as he peers into the cave struck me as vaguely fox-like.

Minor detail again, but the chyron here is subbed as ‘Jangsansa Cave.’ It’s actually ‘Jangsan sagool,’ not ‘Jangsansa gool.’ ‘Sagool’ is written with the characters 蛇窟 meaning ‘snake hole.’

Lol Yeon freezing mid-motion when Ji Ah tells him to stay put. That is 110% Lee Dong Wook’s sense of humour. Praise the drama gods for Lee Dong Wook - this show wouldn’t have been half as fun without him.

Fun fact: This cave is actually intimately tied to Ah Eum’s past with Imoogi and the story of how she came to be his ‘bride’ (read: sacrifice). I translated the tvN description here. I actually think this was fairly important information, so it’s a shame it wasn’t covered in the drama.

Sleepover with a Gumiho

When Ji Ah asks Yeon why he’s insisting on staying at Pyung Hee’s, his response is subbed as: “I have my reasons.” This is more properly: “You don’t need to know.”

Sub: “We don’t eat that crap!” Yeon’s line doesn’t have a subject, but this should properly be: “I don’t eat that crap!” We know from Yeou Nui that some gumiho in this world actually do eat liver.

“Heard of the Chinese liver fluke?” Ha. Yeon literally says ‘kan distoma,’ i.e. ‘liver distomiasis’ or ‘liver fluke’. While there was a well-known outbreak in China, it isn’t inherently Chinese. There’s a Korean word for it too (간흡충), but once again, Yeon opts for the loan word, adding further humour to the gumiho disavowing liver consumption - for health reasons, no less pffft

The BGM playing as Yeon sees Ah Eum in Ji Ah is once again ‘Parting at the River of Three Crossings.’

Bok Hye Ja’s line to Shin Joo is subbed as: “He went to the island to find this reincarnated girl?” The word she uses is actually ‘gakshi,’ which is an antiquated word generally meaning ‘bride’ (as in ‘the Snail Bride’), but it can also just mean ‘young woman.’

For the record, the Snail Bride speaks to Shin Joo in banmal, who speaks to her in jondaetmal

Shin Joo: “Contrary to how he looks, he’s the devoted type, after all.” Et tu, Shin Joo?

Shin Joo’s line is subbed: “As if that’s a good thing,” but I would have translated it as: “Romantic, my foot!”

Sub: “At least once in our lives we come across that one person we want to give our lives to.” This should be: ‘risk our lives for.’

Sub: “I won’t ever devote myself to love. My goal will be to protect Mr. Lee.” Actually: “I won’t ever risk my life for love. I’m going to protect Lee Yeon-nim!”

“Well that can also be called love, can’t it?” Thank you for this, Show. I know some people think TotNT champions romantic love above all else, but I simply don’t agree.

When Yeon checks Ji Ah again for his fox bead, the BGM playing is once again ‘Thread Rings’

I love how they did the CG on whatever is happening with Yeon’s powers here. I would have loved to have gotten more of an explanation of the fox bead and its powers (and Yeon’s, for that matter), but alas.

I love that Yeon tucks Ji Ah in even after re-confirming (or so he thinks) that she isn’t Ah Eum. It was important to me that he came to like and appreciate her for herself before learning that she was, in fact, his lost love.

Morning on the Island

Ji Ah wakes to find Yeon gone, the blanket tucked around her, and her expression tells us she’s onto him: sure, Yeon can be a grump, but he’s also a complete softie. heh

Yeon is, once again, talking to the elders in banmal. Why do I keep mentioning it? Because no matter how many times I see it it’s still funny.

Okay, Lee Dong Wook has this way of pointing at things with his entire arm that I find ticklish. Yeon ends up coming across like a petulant child. On a cultural note, in Korea, pointing at people like this is considered impolite.

Yeon dangling the ginseng behind Ji Ah as extra incentive pfft Wild ginseng can be massively expensive in Korea (on the order of hundreds of dollars), so this is actually a very effective bribe.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that Yeon woke up before dawn, and, instead of going back to sleep, went into the mountains to hunt for wild ginseng, then set about using it to bribe the elders into answering Ji Ah’s questions for her. Entirely of his own accord. Like I said: softie.

Side note: Lee Dong Wook’s eyebrows are working overtime in this scene and I’m honestly a little jealous.

The newspaper Jae Hwan finds at the library is dated August 13, 1954, which Ji Ah immediately recognizes as having been just after the Korean War (if you’ll recall, this is when the forest spirit told them something ominous had come to the island).

This newspaper is actually really cool. You can see how, in the past, Korean newspapers used a lot of hanja in addition to the phonetic hangeul, similar to modern Japanese. The headline reads, “Headless Corpse, Discovered on Eohwa Island, Investigation Hits Dead End.” (頭 없는 屍身, 漁花島에서 發見, 捜査迷宮으로).

Okay, to be honest, this final scene - absent the extra context given in the next episode - made me question Ji Ah’s smarts again. I wondered why she was chasing down the clearly unstable guy just to question him, but it makes sense once you know she meant to warn him his life was in danger.

As usual, Yeon knows how to make an entrance. Cue ‘Gumiho’ theme.

Yeon stopping when Ji Ah tells him to never stops being satisfying.

The BGM playing as we cut over to Rang is ‘The House of Ghosts.’

Okay, those shots of Thirsty and Hungry were full-on horror movie and I actually kind of like it? I never watch horror as a genre, but for some reason, I found I missed this spooky element when it dropped out of the later episodes.

Oh, I like that Yeon went and made her a poultice. Very ex-mountain god of you, sir.

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” Iconic. And creepy. I love the attention to detail Jo Bo Ah displays in the difference between how she acts Ji Ah vs. Imoogi. Imoogi’s voice is higher pitched, and gives off more of a loose-cannon feel compared to Ji Ah, who speaks in a lower, more grounded tone.

Sub: “It’s me. The person you’ve been waiting for.” Imoogi literally says: “It’s me. That thing you’ve been waiting for.” This is obviously a big clue since normally one wouldn’t refer to oneself in such a way. It also reflects the fact that, unlike Terry-Imoogi, Jimoogi perceives no value in Ji Ah herself. (Yes, I call Ji Ah-Imoogi ‘Jimoogi,’ and sadly, no, I didn’t come up with it).

Yikes, Jimoogi tracing Yeon’s face was all menace and zero cute. Point to Jo Bo Ah.

Boy, this show really knows how to make an exit.

Blue Mooooooooon!! The guitar (bass?) riff is just so catchy.

And that concludes Episode 2. Thank you to everyone who commented on the first one. If not for your encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have continued. I also genuinely enjoy hearing from people, so send me your thoughts! This is a weird, unprecedented mashup of a live reaction post, behind the scenes info, and detailed language and culture notes, and I’m still learning how to balance the three. Your feedback is always welcome.

I’d also like to take a moment to credit my sister, who, in addition to weighing in on a lot of the translations, is also the chief researcher and fact checker for these. I, meanwhile, am in charge of bad jokes and snark. I mentioned before that these take longer than you might expect, but it’s really true. The time we spend watching the episode is actually the least of it, and as much as I enjoy them, they are a huge time suck.

So. This is what I’m going to do. If you’d like to see more of these, or if you enjoyed this, or if you’ve enjoyed any of the translations or commentary or whatnot I’ve been posting recently, please consider buying me a coffee. If you follow the link, you can buy me a $2 cup of virtual coffee. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to give it a try. It’ll help me to gauge how much interest there is, and, possibly more importantly, it will help me to justify all the time haha. If and when I’ve established there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with Episode 3. ;)

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lost in translation #구미호뎐 #kdrama #korean language #korean culture

45 notes · View notes

hypexion · 3 years

Text

The Timeless Children is the culmination of not just Series Twelve, but perhaps all of modern Doctor Who. Once again, the canon will be permanently altered, until a new showrunner comes along to change it. Nothing will be the same or different again!

Then again, what irks me about the Timeless Child stuff is that it distracts from the fact that The Timeless Children is a pretty poor conclusion to the whole Lone Cyberman arc that’s been going on. Ashad, who should probably be the main antagonist, gets killed halfway through to enable the Master to enact his lastest Master plan. The good news is that his plan is still Cyberman related, so all the Doctor’s terrible trauma still applies when he reveals his army of “Cybermasters“. But then the Doctor ends up in another inescapable situation, leading to the cop-out where Ko Sharmus shows up to die in the Doctor’s place. It’s a bit of a retread of The Doctor Falls, where the Doctor is in a position that is completely fatal, yet can’t actually die because she’s the main character. Everything just sort of falls apart right at the end, and it’s not very impressive.

Really, the only character who comes out ahead in this episode is the Master. Sure, he loses, but when he’s not being a giggling madman, Sacha Dhawan gives the character a very strong performance. Underneath the now-overplay “look how cRaZy the Master is“ stuff is something deeper and more interesting. His disappointment that the Death Particle doesn’t activate, his conversion with the Doctor when they arrive on Gallifrey, and “the rage and pain in [his] hearts“ all suggest that the truth of the Timeless Child is deeply upsetting to him. Beyond just “oh no I owe existing to the Doctor“, which was already true before all of this. It’s enough to wonder if the Master’s more manic side is a mask, some thing he plays up, just as the Doctor covers her own trauma with a facade of positivity. What ever the truth is, the Master has become a man tormented by what he’s learn, who has lashed out at anyone who might possibly be connected in an attempt to reassert control of his own existence.

Other characters are around, but don’t do that much. Ryan successfully throws a ball, and Graham says nice things about Yaz. Yaz then says that Graham is okay, which due to her upbringing is actually a very nice thing to say. Consider applying this metric to the already very nice things she says about the Doctor to discover a new ship. The future characters are also around, but one dies immediately, and Ko Sharmus basically absorbs all the personality allocated for side characters. Which is good for him, because it makes him a cool guy who justifies his screentime, but less so for the other characters.

So, the Timeless Child. The whole mystery thing that The Timeless Children is apparently built around. Once again, the Doctor is the most super-special person in the universe, due to the “Chibnall Masterplan“. It’s a big deal that completely overhauls the known lore, all to deal with a single scene in The Brain of Morbius. Is it really any different from all the other times the Doctor was the most important person in the universe? Only the Master actually seems to care, and while the Doctor might be a little discombobulated at first, she soon snaps back to reality.

Here’s the thing. The Timeless Child reveal is something that feels like it’s a big deal. A big secret about the Time Lord’s history is revealed, and the Doctor is right in the middle of it. Except, is she really? While the Doctor might be the Timeless Child, can it be said that the Timeless Child is the Doctor? All of the TC’s memories were erased to create the person who would become the Doctor. After that they had a childhood, an education, met the Master and had a family, before finally fleeing Gallifrey, maybe because of The Hybrid (who might be the Cyberium-Master actually?). There’s no continuity of identity - whoever the TC might have been, the Doctor is a separate person. This is even presented as a possibility by the episode - the Rth Doctor says that being the Timeless Child doesn’t matter, and Thirteen agrees. So far, this revelation does not matter in-universe.

And from a meta sense, is the Timeless Child anything more than a rehash of The Hybrid? Messing with the Doctor’s origins is a time-honoured tradition of Doctor Who. The name “Theta-Sigma“ was first used by a guy who popped out of a hole in The Armageddon Factor. The so-called “Cartmel Masterplan“, had the show not been cancelled before it could get going, would have coyly hinted that the Doctor was in fact connected to the origins of Gallifrey (and let us be honest: the execution would have actually been as subtle as brick to the face). Additionally, modern Doctor Who hasn’t shied away from presenting the Doctor in an almost divine manner. The Timeless Children sits upon the sins of Last of the Timelords, Voyage of the Damned, A Good Man Goes to War, The Day of the Doctor, and a myriad of other episodes, each portraying the Doctor as something more godlike than they ever should be. The Timeless Child isn’t new - in fact, it’s just directly stating what modern Doctor Who has been implying from the beginning: the Doctor is the most super-special-awesome person in the universe. Not that the Doctor cares.

And of course, nothing Chris Chibnall or anyone else writes can change the real-world fact that William Hartnel was the First Doctor. It’s also true that from an in-universe perspective, the Timeless Child is a Big Deal. But it’s a footnote compared to the hours and days worth of stories about the Doctor, the Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and ran away to see the universe. Until something actually happens because the Timeless Child is a thing, it’s essentially just another piece of throwaway trivia to bring when you feel like starting an argument, a bit like Looms. Things may seem different, but the true is that they’re the same as they’ve always been.

Also given that the Timeless Child stuff literally exists to explain a scene in The Brain of Morbius that already has better explanations, it’s clear that caring too much about continuity is a trap. Free yourself from “canon“ and “established lore” and embrace Doctor Who anarchy! It’s what the Doctor would want.

Ultimately, The Timeless Children fails to provide a statisfying conclusion to the Lone Cyberman arc or itself. It order to fit in the New Big Thing, plotlines are drop or folded into others, in a way that doesn’t quite work. And as for the big reveal? Like the rest of Series Twelve, no one takes the time to care. Except for the Master. Which, in the end, perhaps tells us how much we should care.

#doctor who #Thirteenth Doctor #the timeless children #doctor who rewatch

5 notes · View notes

chorusnihili · 3 years

Note

I'd love to hear more about the development of your Gaster! :D

BACKSTORY ASK MEME 1. How did you first come up with your muse’s backstory, if you did at all? Continued from here Also asked by @alagaster

So I left off with the question of just how Gaster's soul ended up in pieces.

I’m actually going to detour at the moment and say that it was around that point that I had decided to make the blog. I had a vague beginning and an ending, and usually that’s not enough for me to want to start, but I was excited, I had a lot of fun, so I went for it.

Honestly, one of the first things I need to have before I even think of making a blog is a good url. Urls are super important to me, and generally, whether or not I think of a good one is a key factor in whether or not I actually make the blog.

But in this case, I was too eager to start and I actually just threw together chorusnihil so I could get started on the pages. The thought process remained the same--the chorus is from Greek plays, the group of characters that narrate the actions occurring in the play. nihil is Latin for nothing--and I later changed it to nihili, which is Genitive, to roughly make the “chorus of nothing” or “nothing’s chorus,” a reference to the fact that the guy wiped himself out of history, and so there’s no protagonist to narrate. This was supposed to be a temporary URL, but I got attached to it, for reasons I’ll get to later.

(And really, isn’t a roleplay blog a modern chorus in it’s own way?)

Also there’s the phonetic pun-- CORE-us, anyone?

So I threw together a lot of the basic bios. Most of the stat pages are really bland, most of the guts of the story comes from the hidden details, most of which were added on later.

Something that came up around this point was Gaster’s relationship to Asgore. A lot of fanon pictures them as really close. A lot of fanon also portrays Gaster as Gaster as desperately wanting to retake the surface, which...as mentioned previously, my Gaster just, wasn’t into.

So it sort of put Gaster in between Asgore and Toriel--he wasn’t happy about the decision to go to war with humanity, but he wasn’t going to abandon everyone, even if he did become really reclusive.

I thought about the idea of the human souls, and I knew that Gaster would immediately hate the idea of working with them. And that was convenient, too, since it allowed me to further separate Gaster and Alphys’s work. At first, it was just a heavy disagreement. The idea that Gaster killed Asgore accidentally came a great deal later, but it honestly served to be a rather critical piece of the story.

The design of the DT Extractor and Sans and Papyrus were also very vague concepts at this point.

Revisiting the idea of his fall. We know from the canon dialogue that he fell into his own invention and that he was scatted across space and time.

The CORE is the common culprit and it was what I had chosen, too. But how? How could an energy source... do that?

So the idea occurred to me that maybe--maybe that was exactly as it was designed to do. After all, even in the real world, we have power plants that operate by ripping apart molecules. So... magic. Why not magic? A machine that derives power out of ripping apart magical energy.

And monsters are made out of magical energy.

Falling into that sounds like a very grisly fate, indeed.

The idea of how he got erased from reality isn’t one I really have solidified. G has a couple of theories, and I’m willing to roll with either of them, but, really? I’m not super interested in making a hard reason for it. Namely to adapt to other versions of fanon other muns might have.

Essentially, the theories say that the CORE destroying him released so much energy that it tore a hole in the Determination that pushes the timeline forward, thus allowing the Void to enter and merge with his soul.

From there, either,

A., his Determination very briefly was larger than that of the Timeline, and he himself invoked a Reset, but given that he was outside of the timeline at the moment, it was corrupted and only erased certain parts rather than fully resetting. I think that this was the original theory that I used in the original RP.

B., the Void acted as a corrective force trying to correct the hole in the timeline. In doing so, it erased Gaster from the reality, thus replacing the existing timeline with a new one in which certain things never happened.

C., something involving the power of Rewrite that Gaster has from the duality of Determination and Void.

D., something else entirely.

And so we had the scattered Unbound Gaster.

Which, funfact, the name Unbound Gaster for the form was supposed to be temporary, as well. It’s a reference to Unbound Hoopa for Pokemon. (Which is why Provoked Form Gaster isn’t called Unbound Form!)

Within the original RP that I developed most of this lore, Refused Gaster didn’t exist. In fact, that roleplay ended with Gaster’s permanent death--and being permanently forgotten to the world. A choice he intentionally made because the damage he did to the timeline by falling into the CORE was still present and only getting worse, and the only way to fix it was to allow his Soul to come together and pass on properly, thus allowing the damage to mend.

It was sad. I cried. I got emotional.

I got attached to a traumatic asshole character I literally had for four days.

Somewhere in here, I began to think about the origins of Gaster. Like, way way way in the past. Some people have Gaster being actively involved in the war, but it didn’t work for my portrayal, of having him be so afraid of humans and the surface. So for it to work out, I had him really young for the war, really young when everyone got driven underground.

I killed off his parents because ......

Frankly I didn’t want to design them :|

There’s a lot of varying opinions and interpretations about skeleton monsters, and it’s a section of the fandom I’ve decided to stray away from for now.

But I didn’t want the loss to be traumatic. Gaster’s been through a lot already, and I have personal vendettas against characters who solely consist of trauma after trauma.

So I decided to make the loss very distant--he’s aware he probably had parents, or maybe he came to be some other way--but he doesn’t remember them, there’s no tragic “my parents were killed in front of me,” it’s simply something he didn’t have, and something he never needed given the nature of monsters to be kind and caring.

...

But it felt like it was missing something.

So I started to toy around with this idea of a mentor, one who played the role of a father-figure, one who would plant the seeds to give Gaster the appreciation of science and knowledge. Someone who could take this lost and terrified boy and start to turn him into the intelligent and steady doctor we end up with.

Then came the problem of how he and this mentor would actually meet; Gaster’s scar proved to be a convenient excuse, plus it gave me a backstory for that, as well. A few humans attacked him and delivered the injury, and Gaster’s mentor found the wounded boy and took care of him.

The mentor is meant to be a vague entity, and you can view this in action in this memory. (Only partially because I didn’t want to name them.) Unfortunately, as per the nature of characters created post hoc, their fate was already sealed. I made the choice to cut their influence on Gaster’s life short.

(If they were around longer, who knows? Maybe they could have prevented some of the stupider things Gaster has done. Maybe they could have changed fate. But... as we’ll get to, everything happened exactly as it had to.)

Again, I made it a very distant loss. It’s a rather simple conclusion that not every monster would be happy vacating the surface--Gaster’s mentor had lived there their entire life. It was their home, they were not leaving, even upon threat of death. And so it was a bittersweet parting, but one with closure, and Gaster said his farewells and departed to the Underground.

Honestly, what I find really shocking about this character is just how intensely he wants to do good. I mean, I’m no stranger to good characters, but few of my characters push it as far as Gaster does, and how quickly that feeling came to me, considering he started in the original roleplay as a ruthless asshole bastard more than willing to fuck over and torture a bunch of children just for a chance at being whole again.

Most of Gaster’s early life in the Underground found in this post was written on the spot as I wrote that post, so it came really late.

I still find it hilarious that he used to work in therapy. You’re well aware you need therapy you fucking bastard. Quit denying it.

So, revisiting the idea of Gaster and Asgore. I do like the idea of them being close, and Gaster even calls Asgore his best friend. The declaration of war put a huge strain on the relationship.

I originally thought about the idea of him accidentally killing Asgore for shits n giggles. At my heart I am indeed an angst gremlin, so I was just thinking about what an alternate timeline where that happened might be like. After all, Gaster’s angry, Asgore’s full of guilt, with the way monster magic works, it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to think that it could happen.

But the more I thought about it, the more it fit eerily well. The guilt gave Gaster a reason to create Sans (and later Papyrus) as part of his belief in Karma (creating a life to replace the life he took) and to look into Alphys’s research into Determination enough to create the blueprints for the DT Extractor; both of these things were things that I couldn’t otherwise really fit into his storyline.

And finally...

His declining mental state and despair over the concept of the DT Extractor was what led to him being distracted enough to make such a critical mistake and fall into the CORE.

And given that the timeline changes when he falls, I realized that... I could have this happen, and the current timeline be unaffected.

Now, given that I said that I wanted to avoid more trauma in Gaster’s life, this decision might seem contradictory. But, it also served a very important point--Asgore returning to life, that mistake being fixed upon his fall gave Gaster something to hold onto. Something that made his fate not as awful as it otherwise would have been. A small piece of solace in hell.

Plus, Gaster’s guilt at the incident caused him to resign as Royal Scientist, further allowing him and Alphys to have their separate stories.

And pretty much everything snapped together at that point. Really, strangely well. I joked before on this blog if I’m really the one writing it.

If Gaster had not killed Asgore, he would have never created Sans and Papyrus, he would have never created the DT Extractor blueprints; if he did not create the blueprints, he would have never been distracted enough to fall into the CORE, if he never fell into the CORE, the blueprints would have never ended up with Alphys, she could have never created Flowey, and if Flowey was never created, he could have never used the souls to break the barrier and the True Pacifist ending would have never come to pass.

It all happened exactly as it had to.

It feels oddly poetic, given the way Undertale works.

In some ways, it’s cruel. Gaster regularly struggles with the idea that for his people to be happy, he had to literally be wiped out of existence. But in other ways, it’s a comfort--for at least he knows that his suffering wasn’t for nothing. That there was a purpose--that even if he had to be erased, he played a vital role in ensuring his people found victory.

Oh. One final note... In finalizing this story, you may notice that Gaster follows a classic pattern. We have a hero, who’s mostly good, but through his own flaws makes a tragic mistake and seals his own grim fate.

It’s called a tragedy and they’re common in Greek plays.

What was that about a chorus again?

I think that’s just about every important point I could cover. That being said, if you couldn’t tell, this is a very fascinating topic to me, so if you have any further questions or need any clarifications, feel free to send them in.

#let type = out of character #let type = answer

1 note · View note

theharellan · 4 years

Text

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: stolen from @dansiere tagging: @ghiassan, @deathsreflection, @altuspavus, @windrunnerrs (velanna), @hopewrought, @willbeshot, @seahaloed (iron bull), @asterfed (noctis), @ anyone who wants to steal it! also multis feel free to choose a different character

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated (i’m open to roleplaying with non-dragon age characters, and have AUs for other fandoms)

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. solas is both wildly popular and wildly hated. he’s been more consistently popular than the controversial women in the series, like sera or vivienne, who have only recently begun to get to the point where their tags are less vitriolic (although i’m sure it’s still out there), but there’s still a sizable hatedom that can’t have his name breathed in their vicinity w/o them talking abt how much they hate him. even if you’re currently cosplaying him!

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. again, you have ppl who are super into him and ppl who think he’s ugly. my personal opinion is that i think he’s weirdly pretty, and wish ppl would commit more to his unconventional features rather than try to chisel him into sb more traditionally attractive and that ppl who don’t find him attractive would maybe chill w/ calling him ugly. find him unattractive by all means, but lets embrace the fact that inquisition let their love interests have skin flaws etc and accept that some won’t be our cups of tea.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. its hard to deny at this point tbh.

Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK. frustrating as the hate in the tags he has enough fans that i couldnt say he’s underrated w/ a straight face.

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO. he’s the reason the game starts with a bang and not the inevitable dissolution of the conclave b/c the sides are disparate.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. regardless of solas’ relationship with the inquisitor, there are parallels and contrasts in their stories and he also is the reason they survive inquisition.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. fen’harel is well-known and revered, if feared, among the dalish, yet at the same time he’s not remembered for a lot besides locking the gods away-- and the context of that decision has also been lost. as solas he’s relatively unknown until inquisition and especially trespasser.

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. again, polarising!! he has loyal agents and people are willing to speak well of him despite everything, including his enemies sometimes (depending mostly on the inquisitor).

How strictly do you follow canon? — generally i try to have a canon basis for my interpretation, even if i interpret the text differently than the author.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — solas is an immortal who is simultaneously jaded and very much invested in the small moments of life. far from being weary of the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, it is systems and orders he is most tired of. he walks an interesting line that feels far less misanthropic than other immortal characters i’ve experienced, yet still he’s quite cynical. as a character who has fought against religious based tyranny before, but in a completely different era, he is in a unique position where what he sees around him is both horrifyingly familiar and yet completely new. it allows an exploration of the wrongs of thedas’ society from an outsider’s perspective. his motivations are complex and multifaceted, often condemnable and yet also understandable. his character arc in inquisition (if befriended, or regardless in the case of my solas) takes him from a dispassionate, disconnected antagonist to someone deeply invested in the people of thedas, deeply conflicted and actively hoping he will be proven wrong again. i think his story is a testament to human (or elven, or dwarven, or-) connection and how even when we resist we can’t resist creating bonds with the people in our lives. i personally see this bond going beyond the inquisitor hence why i play low-approval solas as conflicted as high-approval, if not when it comes to the inquisitor.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — solas is selfish and motivated solely by revenge, he’s clinging to a past that clearly no longer exists, if you ignore all the people from it who are still alive. he’s totally unaware of all his flaws and never owns up to any mistakes ever. no, i haven’t listened to a single word solas has said in my life why do you ask. he’s also critical of my faves which means he’s #cancelled, there is clearly no validity to what he’s saying. ksjdf no but in all seriousness i think a lot of reasons ppl don’t find solas interesting are just... weird readings of his character that sometimes have no basis in the text of inquisition, but also there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to not find him interesting. usually those ppl don’t like... talk abt how much they don’t find him interesting constantly tho. they just chill and aren’t invested in this particular villain. for one thing i think the game missed out on opportunities for exploring how someone who may not have even had a body at the beginning of his existence would feel about gender and sexuality, so making him presumably straight and cis was a boring choice. i also think that the dragon age games being very protagonist-centric hurts solas’ character, there’s no real reason why the inquisitor is the only one who can throw his plans into question but making the player the center of the universe means he’s not allowed to change due to the effects of other companions or NPCs. thank god this is rp and i do what i want.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — i have a history degree so when the inquisition companions were being teased, solas describing bias in primary sources from the memories he’s seen got me interested in him. but my first playthrough i didn’t actually take him with me all too often, i think my main party was dorian-blackwall-varric. i liked him, and i think he or dorian were my first friends in skyhold, but my initial interest was in other characters. between his dialogue that appealed to the historian in me tho and how his spirit opinions sort of turned everything i’d felt about spirits in the last two games on its head, i started vibing with him more the farther i went in. like merrill set me up for the “spirits are people” thing and solas hit it out of the park. then temple of mythal happened, and i did bring solas with me there. i found his dialogue fascinating and also suspicious, i’d just finished masked empire like the day before da:i came out so i definitely thought solas was an ancient elf in the same vein as felassan. it was after temple of mythal that i actually decided to make his blog, although like as one idk linchpin to cement my status as solas trash... i was hit BAD by the banter bug on my first playthrough, probably got like a dozen banters total. but then at some point late in the game i took solas to the forbidden oasis and he wouldn’t stop talking to people, and i really loved his banter with the rest of my party at the time.

What keeps your inspiration going? — replaying inquisition, new DA content when the bioware gods deign to grant us a lifeline, but the biggest thing is my rp partners. i wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the people i write with, new and old. my activity of late hasn’t been the best, work and the summer heat has really been sapping me of energy, and does even during years when we aren’t going through a pandemic. but it’s the thought of my rp partners and love of solas that keeps me coming back.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? i have my doubts sometimes, but i think i do ok.

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO / SORT OF? there is no headcanon too small for me.

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. but not lately * gestures to the low activity * i’ve been in this cycle where i get anxious abt late replies, so prioritise them, then burn myself out and can’t write the fics i want. i’ve had two i’ve been DYING to write tho i just... need to find the space in my brain to let myself.

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. i mean it depends on the day. if i work closing shifts at my store it gets very quiet and boring around 8:30 so i spent the next 90 minutes thinking about character stuff.

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO / SORT OF?

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO / SOMETIMES.

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO / SORTA.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — i’m going to say ‘no’ because like, i don’t ask for criticism. this is a hobby based on my interpretation of a character, if you think i write solas too soft then you’re welcome to think that, but i’m happy with the balance i’ve struck with his internal versus external behaviour and how he changes based upon who he’s speaking to. if you think i’m erasing straight people by making solas pan then ksjdfs. ok.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — yes!!! even if they retread ground already trodden, a) my interpretation may have adjusted since the last time i played or b) a reminder is nice. if it’s new stuff then it’s fun to think about.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — it’d depend on why they disagree. if they just disagree on a subjective opinion about what i took from a certain line, then they’re welcome to their opinion but i don’t necessarily care to hear it. if it is unintentionally hurtful then i would like to know. although rather than a comment i’d rather a non-anonymous message.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — same as the above.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — if they’re vocal about it i typically just unfollow / softblock if i was following in the first place. people can feel how they want about solas, but i’ve found over the years that if people really hate solas ooc it can often bleed into their ic interactions. it’s really weird seeing your character being brought up repeatedly in threads with others specifically to dunk on, for no reason other than i guess solas is living rent free in their heads, so at least we have that in common. but anyway unfollowing is just the best choice to avoid getting kinda pressed if i’m having a bad day.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — roleplay is the wild west of writing, so i think it’d depend on what the error was. coming at me like “you shouldn’t start a sentence with a preposition” would get a laugh, but i don’t edit my replies much if at all and mistakes will 100% happen. pointing out typos is chill so long as you do it politely.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — it depends! i’ve learned that being too easy going actually just means i’m subjecting myself to negative emotions to please people. so i’ve gotten less easy going as the years go by. how does one define “easy going” anyway? does asking that question mean i am objectively not easy going? the longer this thought goes on the more the answer seems to be “probably not,” but i like to think it could be a lot worse.

#( long post )#( ooc )#( about me )

11 notes · View notes

paradisecost · 4 years

Text

TIMELINE: ATTICUS

Are you ready for 1600 words of Atticus lore? Then BOY HOWDY do I have some good news for you. I ran out of steam by the time I hit the last few verses so they have way less detail, but whATEVER. I’ve also completely skimmed over so many details (like Atticus’ lingering issues with being cut off from his Indigenous heritage; his father’s disappearance; his relationships with various friends and lovers throughout his life; some of the shit he did and witnessed throughout his time with the gang and in order to escape them; etc) because otherwise the word count would be RIDICULOUS.

Note: There’s no set time period for this. A lot of Atticus’ mainverse is tagged as “v: age of sail” for the convenience of keeping most of my verses vaguely within the Black Sails timeline (1705-1720 usually) but realistically these are probably within the 1800s somewhere. The real question is: who gives a shit, it’s MY sandbox and history is what I say it is.

Under the cut for length. Warnings include talk of gangs, gang life, and so on.

Note: This is VERY much a work in progress and almost no detail has really been hammered out, especially regarding Atticus' time as an outlaw within the gang since I have a lot of research to do in that area (since I know more about modern gangs and cult dynamics than Ye Olde ones). Nonetheless, all of these verses are open for interaction/asks/etc - though verses marked as (intermission) or (segue) really exist more to bridge some verses together.

v: before it all (childhood) (0-13)

Atticus' early, pre-outlaw life, spanning from his birth to the age of about 12-13. He lives with his mother and sister in a small town in the middle of buckass nowhere; his father visits once a year or so up until Atticus is about 10, when he mysteriously stops coming. It isn't long after this that Atticus first becomes involved with the [redacted] gang, likely through befriending one of the younger members by accident. By the time he's about 12, he's built up a steadfast trust and codependence on the group - and his relationship with his mother has steeply declined, in part due to her reticence about his Native father and determination to erase any non-Whiteness from their children, and in part because of how vehemently she opposes his involvement with the gang.

v: drinking the water (gang member) (12-28)

Spans around eight years, from when Atticus is 12-13 to roughly 20-28. Atticus is ass-deep in the cult-like dynamic of the gang and has lost all contact with his mother, though he and his sister exchange letters here and there. He is extremely loyal to the group and considers them 'his people', is inherently distrustful of outsiders and has precisely no interest in living amongst them.

Grievances with the gang's behaviour towards both him and others start accumulating, however, when Atticus is about 18-20. They start off small, but as his sense of self develops and he starts to get more of a feel for who he is as a person, the problems start building up. This may be in part due to exposure to other dissenting members of the group who were swiftly either disposed of or, uh, re-educated; Atticus did not like seeing that shit At All despite his usual cognitive dissonance.

That isn't by any means the only factor; as he gets older, he's also granted significantly more freedom, which results in exposure to all kinds of people and places that he simply wasn't aware of as a kid. By the time he's about 25, he knows for sure that the life they're living now isn't one he wants to keep, but you don't simply leave a gang like that. It takes him a couple more years to a) figure out some kind of plan and b) gather the resources, courage, and knowledge he'll need to pull it off and live.

v: the aftermath (post gang) (28-30)

Somehow, Atticus finds his way out of cult-gang hell. There are no dramatics involved - he simply disappears during a hunt one day, to arouse the least suspicion. Unfortunately, he wasn't alone on the hunt- the gang's leader had sent someone along with him to keep an eye on him, as (unbeknownst to Atticus) his growing resentment and flightiness had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the group. It's likely that the person sent with him was someone Atticus liked a great deal, as the leader hoped that this would dissuade him from doing anything stupid to get away--

--but needless to say, they were later found dead in the woods, and Atticus was gone. He spent the next two years flitting around as much as possible, trying to get as far away as he could. The gang sent out hunts for him, of course- at first with the intention of simply talking to him and seeing if they could persuade him to come back. After Atticus started killing them off, they sent out searches for him with significantly less friendly intentions.

It's during this time that he takes on the name Atticus as his own. No forename/surname: just Atticus, or Mr. Atticus if folks are feeling polite. It's also during this time that he acquires Bad Jim, a black and white horse that accompanies him for the next several years, often as his sole companion. He buys Bad Jim (then unnamed) from a horse trader entirely legitimately, but pays an absurd amount for him because the trader--according to Atticus--had "clocked [him] as a wanted fella of some sort and wanted to capitalize on his desperation".

(The truth is a little different: the trader had, indeed, clocked him as a wanted man, but he raised the price of the horse to compensate himself for the risk of selling a horse to a possible felon).

It’s during this time that he meets The Captain--then called Amelia--for the first time; the two stay in contact for the remainer of Atticus’ life.

The gang stops actively searching for him about a year and a half in, though Atticus still doesn't let his guard down for a good couple of years afterwards. During this time, higher-ranking members of the gang begin to spread the story that Atticus is dead. In later years, this story will become that Atticus never existed - younger members who join later on have no idea who he is, as to their knowledge, no-one escapes the gang and lives.

v: solo outlaw (30-36)

No longer quite so intensely on the run from the gang, Atticus encounters a problem: he is definitely still wanted by various authorities for his involvement with them. Not only that, but he has no damn idea how to exist outside of them. He makes a few token attempts at honest work--tries taking odd jobs for people, herds cattle and has a brief stint as a stableboy--but in the end, he just can't take to it. Within a few months, he's more or less going off the rails: where before he'd at least tried to steer himself towards being what he thought of as a Good Man(TM), he repeatedly finds himself committing actions he would abhor from anyone else. He tries real hard to find some kind of moral balance between doing what he's good at and doing what he wants to be good at, but alas, the poor bastard's more or less on his own and having a shit time of it.

Other than that, no fucking idea about the details of this verse. He's an outlaw still - he's just on his own instead of with a gang, and more often than not, he takes on jobs from people who need someone killed or threatened.

It's during this time (when he’s about 32) that he meets the woman who eventually becomes Icarus' mother. There's no immediate spark, nothing like that; she neither trusts nor likes him at first. It's when he tells her--a half-Black, half-Indigenous woman--that his father was Indigenous that she first gives him the time of day, and it's long after that, when he talks about his feelings of inbetween-ness and his frustration at being cut off from half of his heritage that she starts to actually warm to him even platonically.

Icarus is born soon afterwards, but by then, Atticus and [I'll think of a name one day]'s relationship has already begun to... not deteriorate, exactly, but shift. They were never really in love to begin with so much as they were good friends who found a comfort in one another they couldn’t find elsewhere.

Anyway the point is, they separate when Icarus is still very small; Atticus is losing direction and feels as stuck as he did before, and his presence is causing more problems than it solves. He vows to stay in touch, though, and he does- and later in life, much of the money he makes from bounty-hunting goes back to his friend and their kid.

It's towards the end of this verse that Bad Jim is killed in combat, during a run-in with Atticus' old gang - specifically some newer, younger members of it that don't know him, but Atticus is able to recognise them. The horse falls atop Atticus as it dies and essentially crushes him to the ground- he's only saved from being completely crushed by the overturned wagon beside him that takes some of Bad Jim's weight. Despite still sustaining severe injuries from it, Bad Jim's death saves Atticus' life: he has no choice but to play dead until the shooting's over and the smoke clears. The gang members give him a cursory check to see if he's dead, but given that they have no idea who Atticus is, they have no reason to do anything but check and move on.

v: in recovery (intermission) (36-38)

It takes Atticus a long time to recover from the injuries sustained in the fight that took Bad Jim; he's essentially forced to find somewhere to lie low and recuperate, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers and mere acquaintances during it.

Towards the end of this time, he also acquires the dog that now accompanies him almost everywhere; an Anatolian Shepherd I still don’t have a name for.

v: bounty hunter (segue) (38-42)

TL;DR; Having recognised that he Fucking Hates being an outlaw but isn't much good at anything else, Atticus finds a compromise: he becomes a bounty hunter, straddling both sides of the law at once.

It's during this time that he he meets Isaiah, who helps him out of several rough patches.

v: bounty hunter (42+)

Just the previous verse but at the default ‘canon’ point in the timeline sdkfjnsdjfkn. All interactions take place in this verse by default, which is often also tagged as "v: age of sail (atticus)". Local cowboy is a sort of bounty hunter, blahblahblah.

#facts: atticus #verses: atticus

7 notes · View notes

animatedminds · 4 years

Text

What If: Every Character In Dragonball FighterZ Had a Dramatic Finish? (Pt. 4 - Final)

Well, here we are at the end. For the last four days, this blog has been going over each of the characters in Dragonball FighterZ - the tragic, bereft ones without Dramatic Finish - and imagining what moments from their history would work best in Arcsys’ glorious animation style.

So far we’ve gone through near the whole franchise, with only a few characters left - and there’s no time like the present to give those few remaining characters their chance.

As before, this isn’t so much a request for all these characters to legitimately get Dramatic Finishes - Arc System Works’ animation is too intricate and time consuming for that to be a reality - as much as speculation of what might have been. Though only a few of the characters in the roster can have a Dramatic Finish, most of them can definitely carry one in my opinion, and at the very least it makes a great excuse to go back and watch a few classic Dragonball clips. It’s worth noting again, as well, that on this list we’re looking for appearances in Dramatic moments: not necessarily wins. Across the list there have been quite a few characters whose best, most cinematic options have been losses of theirs. If you want the whole list, no lines, no waiting, no need to go back, check out the SoundCloud cast of the whole thing - or if you prefer to sit back and read here’s Part 1, Part 2 and - of course - Part 3. But let’s get on with it. Last time we finished off Dragonball Super (with one exception), and UI Goku himself hit the stores... that is, without the Dramatic Finish we were expecting (that went to Blue Goku). What’s left here are the extras: additional characters, interesting ideas that don’t fit anywhere else, that sort of thing. But first, one thing needs to be settled with the last remaining Super character...

That, right. Goku (Ultra Instict) himself!

As you might have figured from what I just said - and the previous entry - the Dramatic Finish that came with the latest DLC turned out not to be an Ultra Instinct Goku Finish with Kefla, but was actually given to Goku Blue instead. This not only knocked Goku Blue off the list (just as well since - as I went through last time - the option I thought of for Goku Blue and the option I thought of for Hit were one and the same) and, naturally means we had to put Ultra Instinct Goku on in his stead.

This is a little tricky, as some of Goku’s best moments in the Tournament of Power have already been snapped up by the game. The Surfing Kamehameha moment with Kefla is of course the stand out, but there’s also already a Goku vs Jiren Dramatic Finish (with Base Goku). They’ve repeated themselves before - giving a Vs Freeza Dramatic Finish to both Super Saiyan and Base Goku (and I’ve already suggested what is effectively a third, albeit starting with Blue Vegeta), but it still makes this an odd thing to approach.

As seems typical, I ended up with two big ideas. You guys might not like this ruling so much, since the first is an overall very solid moment, and the second - my main idea - is a little unorthodox, but bear with me.

For the first idea, a picture perfect Dramatic Finish, I’d go with the moment Jiren attacks the stands, along with Goku’s enraged payback.

For those who haven’t seen the arc, the Tournament of Power is odd among Dragonball major storylines in that there isn’t really a “bad guy.” Everyone is fighting on equal terms in a universal storyline, for fear of having their universe erased if they lose (stakes which - spoilers - turns out to be semi-fake, or at least more than they think). Everyone in the tournament, moral or amoral, is neutral to one another... but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their hang-ups.

Jiren - the final boss - is a being who suffered hardship in his youth because he felt he wasn’t strong enough, and so dedicated his life to obtaining more power. Goku - anime protagonist that he is - claims that his power comes from his friends and Jiren, who couldn’t care less about friendship, doesn’t exactly like that, especially when Goku starts winning. So he throws a fit and tries to blow up Goku’s friends to prove a point. Goes without saying that Goku didn’t exactly like that either. This moment is very self contained, cinematic and strong, with quickly established stakes and an epic conclusion, which makes it a perfect Dramatic Finish - in fact, it might not have been a bad place to end the original arc itself. You would pretty much have to do it on the Galactic Arena stage - which is a FighterZ original - as the lack of a Tournament of Power stage means there’s no other place for Goku and Jiren to have a battle of the scale we’d need while also letting his friends be there in the firing line. But, that being the case, you would simply have it start - as all Dramatic Finishes do - with Jiren getting knocked back, he rants about how friendship is easily erased and shoots a blast as the stands, Goku deflects it, and goes to town: a fight ensues a la the Super Broly Dramatic Finish, with a couple extra dramatic shots, and ending with an uppercut and massive Kamehameha that takes Jiren out. End with a shot of Goku standing over Jiren, but on a much less cheerful note than the Base Goku one.

All in all, it’s a pretty great idea. One only has to look at the clip to see that. So what’s my other option, which I would prefer? Well... we’ve seen so many good Dramatic Finishes in the game, I kind of think the Dramatic Openings could use a little love, don’t you? I’ve already suggested a few, but mostly as side ideas. However, this one could serve as the most epic opening in the game, if done well. The moment where Goku goes Ultra Instinct for the very first time:

youtube

Against Jiren again, of course.

The hypest moment of any transformation is always the moment the hero unlocks it. The point where they’re pushed to their limit and tap into that power they didn’t know they had. The God and Blue transformations were elaborate and offscreen, respectively, so this was really Super’s big transformation moment, and it was definitely hype.

Much earlier on, Goku tries to finish Jiren off with what he hopes is his ace in the hole - the Spirit Bomb. Jiren, having none of that, just flings it back... the resulting war ends with Goku losing: the blast slowly overtakes Goku before detonating in a truly spectacular way, and for a moment it looks like Goku is done.

That is, until he steps out of the transformation... changed.

It would definitely be the most elaborate Dramatic Opening - with the same amount of scene-work and modeling you would expect from a Dramatic Finish, but it would be worth it. The Dramatic scenes have in general become more and more spectacular over the years, but most of the Openings were early and so missed out on it. Still, the best thing about the Dramatic Openings is that they really get you energized for the fight to come - make you feel like it’s about to go down, and this scene would absolutely accomplish that. Not to mention, it would go perfectly alongside the Super Saiyan Goku and Super Saiyan 2 Gohan transformation openings as well.

But both options work pretty well, and either way it would be a great way to let the newest content in the franchise continue to shine. If Moro shows up later in this season, I’ll be surprised, but you can bet they’re will be some options off of that. But with Super now officially done, we move on to the truly extra candidates. Starting with...

Android #21

The villain of FighterZ’s story mode herself: a terrifying android who, thanks to a few infused traits from the Buu line, seeks to consume all life on Earth - while at odds with her own good side.

Since literally her only content ever is FighterZ’s story mode there’s not much to pull from, but luckily the choice for her is an absolute no-brainer. I’ve mentioned before that you could give her a decent Dramatic Finish with Android 16 - using any of his death scenes - but the best option is simply to take the end of the story mode, modify it and give it to us as a Finish of its own.

That’s right, we’re talking about the moment where Good #21 sacrifices herself to take Evil #21 out for good.

youtube

And, on the unique side, it would make this the only Dramatic Finish to trigger off of a mirror match - which is something rather impossible for anyone else.

You would need Goku on your team, of course - in a climax reminiscent of Kid Buu’s death, the moment involves Goku charging a Spirit Bomb while #21 holds her evil self off. Once the bomb is ready, Goku lets it fly - but Evil #21 is just powerful enough that she can resist the explosion. All seems lost, until the good half, knowing that she still holds the malice within that could lead to her becoming like her other self one day, tackles her evil embodiment - resulting in both being eradicated in a blazing explosion.

It’s a simple moment, sans all the dialogue, and the would be very simple to adapt to a Dramatic Finish: arguably, you would barely have to alter anything that isn’t already there (well, besides making the models fully animate in the “in between” moments, which would probably take some doing). Granted, one would have to have played the story mode to know what’s going on, but it’s not as if Dramatic Finishes aren’t fairly lore heavy in the first place.

And with her settled, we move on to the next questionably canon character without a Dramatic Finish, and one that was pretty hard to think of one for...

Goku (Dragon Ball GT)

... I don’t want to say “why couldn’t this have just been Kid Goku?” I really don’t.

However, for the purposes of this list, him being GT Goku makes it almost impossible to think of a Dramatic Finish. There’s the rumors Omega Shenron is going to be appearing later on in the season, but so far those are only that: rumors.

Otherwise, Goku doesn’t really get much in the way of awesome fighting moments against the rest of the game roster. He fights against Gohan (and adult Goten, which for obvious reasons isn’t happening) when the latter was under Baby’s control, but that doesn’t really have a conclusive end - let alone a dramatic one. He fights Vegeta in the same way, but Baby Vegeta is very much a different character from any other Vegeta we’ve got, far past the point of finagling, so the reference wouldn’t work.

Thus, I’ve mostly been going with “why not just pretend GT Goku is Kid Goku” for this list and any future Dramatic Finish. It came up in the Tien section, if and when Roshi appears it’s my suggestion for him as well, and it works far easier than trying to shoehorn a GT scene into the game.

With that in mind, I’ve already noted a great option in the first part of this: the end of Tien and Goku’s first fight, on the Tenkaichi Budokai stage. It’s epic, it’s a classic moment, and it’s lots of fun. Honestly, it’s GT Goku’s best option for a Finish.

But to give a new idea, I’d love for them to do something small but sweet for GT / Kid Goku. Something that would be both a cool call back, and a neat fighting game classic moment as well.

I’m talking about Goku and Krillin’s fistbump:

This still takes some finagling - that’s Kid Krillin you see above you, who is a lot smaller than his adult version (though not by much, you’d think). And there’s also a moment like this in Super between adult Krillin and and what would be in Base Goku in FighterZ terms, which would probably work even better (if anything, they could make this opening between Krillin and Base Goku and have GT Goku stand in during the flashback) -

youtube

- but if we’re talking about GT- sorry, “Kid Goku,” giving him this moment would work fairly well too. It’s another moment geared towards presenting a classic reference from the series’ oldest days, and gives us a sweet Dramatic Opening vs a tense and spectacular one.

It also doubles as a decent fighting game ref. Having characters who in lore are friends enter a fight with a simple fistbump or some other sign of respect is an enduring opening idea that’s most often seen in Street Fighter - which has often had Ryu and Ken begin fights this way.

This kind of small but sweet reference has somewhat gone out of style these days, along with a lot of the nuances you got with sprite-based fighters, but if it could be done more, I’d actually love to see it.

Here, for this case, you would simply have it happen on the Tenkaichi Budokai stage, and either have them walk onto the stage together and fistbump or - to save on animation costs - just begin with them doing it and jumping back to fight. For the full Base Goku version, doing that with a flashback of Kid Goku (a la GT Goku standing-in) doing the same, and then back to them as adults.

That and the Tien Finish are really the best GT Goku’s going to get unless something changes in the future, and both are pretty neat ideas, so that’s as far as we’re going to get with him.

And that’s the whole roster: with this list, now everyone has a Dramatic Finish. So I’ll end it instead with a truly extra suggestion: a Finish for a character who already has one, but which would be a very different kind of Finish that would still be pretty neat.

Kid Buu Destroys The World

I’ve already suggested something like this for Blue Vegeta’s Dramatic Finish - a finish in which the bad guy wins, and blows up the planet. It’s something that’s oddly cool to think about. Dragonball has many fantastic moments, including ones where the bad guys get ahead - King Piccolo blowing up Shenron, Nappa wiping out Goku’s friends, Cell crippling Vegeta and humiliating Trunks - but in the end, we mostly talk about the heroic ones.

So why not flip the script and just do one where everything goes to hell? Literally, for the evil people who happen to be on Earth.

Buu doing this is even more iconic than Freeza, imo, because while Freeza has been destroying planets for longer, it was always planets that weren’t our heroes’ own. He killed off Namek, but when he tried to come back to Earth and do it on the good guys’ home turf he got eviscerated - it wasn’t until a long time after that he was finally able to pull it off, and by then the heroes had a means of instantly undoing it. I still think Freeza vs Vegeta is a good choice for a potential Blue Vegeta Dramatic Finish, but if you’re approaching it from a “let’s make a Finish were it all goes horribly” standpoint, Buu is the standout moment.

youtube

For this, Kid Buu wins against Super Saiyan Vegeta or Goku. After the customary knockback, Buu grins, and laughs, and creates a planet destroying ball of energy. Goku and Vegeta run, but can’t get away - for bonus points, you could have Gohan, Goten + Trunks, and Piccolo on the ground, just out of saving range as the two are forced to instant transmission away. Cut to a shot of the planet as a whole, just before it all goes up.

Then, in the empty nothing of space, Buu reconstitutes, and flies off for more destruction. The end.

It’s a very different feel from the rest of the Dramatic Finishes, I think, which is why I felt it deserved to be on here even though Buu already has one. It’s just a fun, extra idea of the kinds of interesting things they might decide to do with Dramatic Finishes in the future.

And that’s everyone!

Hope you all enjoyed sitting through my nerdy listing habit. This was a lot of fun, going through all these Dragonball moments, remembering this and that and finding the most epic things each of our favorite characters have done. This isn’t even touching the iceberg for most of the cast, but if they do someday decide to give more of the rosters Dramatic Openings, none of these would at all be a bad place to start.

But if you think I’ve got the wrong idea, let me know. If there’s some moments you think would be better, give ‘em a try! Keep playing FighterZ if you have it, and simply stay Sparking if you don’t. The sky’s the limit for Dragonball, maybe even farther, and sometimes I think we haven’t seen anything yet!

8 notes · View notes

kloxbian · 4 years

Text

Watching the Shadows, Fraught with Desire

Sequel to Like a Devil in Disguise, which you can find here

Synopsis:

“Clarke?”

“Hello, mother,” she spat, watching her face fall even more. “Lovely to see you again.” The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable.

Abby was stunned. “Clarke, where have you been? They said you weren’t with the hundred.”

“Oh, did they? Did they tell you what the hundred said about me?”

“Is there something they should have said about you?”

Clarke almost laughed aloud. Oh, she was going to have fun with this.

Or where the Ark crashes and Clarke goes to greet them

WARNING: This has murder, psychopathic Clarke, Clarke being a bit tyrannical, and a sprinkle of dom/sub (Lexa's a fucking sub you CANNOT change my mind)

Notes: Okay, maybe I do have Secret and Fire to work on, but I wanted to do this. I love this universe and will be adding many more snippets to it. Feel free to send in requests if you have any.

Trig translations:

Otaim Ai Kripa - Always my demon

Houdfou - Greedy

But anyway! I really enjoyed writing this. Wanheda Clarke Griffin is the BEST and I can't stay away from this AU. I feel like even in the show Abby's always held on to her past memories of who Clarke was and still isn't fully accepting of who she's become, and, really, if you found out your daughter was a murderous spirit, you probably wouldn't take it too well.

Not that I'm defending her or anything. I hate Abby.

But I've just realized I haven't delved into Lexa's powers as Heda yet! Lexa is definitely going to be getting her own one of these sometime soon because Heda deserves some love too. Maybe do something about the lore of the different spirits, go more in-depth about Grounder religion and their deities.

On with the show!

It fell in a blaze of fire.

Clarke watched side by side with her fleim from the safety of TonDC. She’d seen it before, last time amid battle, but it was still an impressive sight. The falling stars that brought with them the greedy devils of the world. She watched Alpha Station barreling toward the ground, disappearing behind the trees. She could imagine the splash of water that would follow, sending waves three times as tall as she to the shore. Mecha station crashed down even closer, the base for what would become Arkadia.

She imagined what the other delinquents were seeing. They were probably watching with amazement, celebrating that they’d no longer be left without help. She doubted they cared about the adults on the ship, much less the council, but they’d care about the food it would provide, the safety from the elements.

The safety from her.

Clarke was well aware that they were terrified of her. They had good reason to be. And it wasn’t like she hated their terror. If they wanted to be scared of her, fine, let them be scared of her. She didn’t care.

Or perhaps she did care, just a bit. If only because she’d made an effort to keep them alive and safe. They repaid her with hatred. Hatred for murdering their comrades, all in the name of their safety.

Okay, so maybe the Wanheda in her had enjoyed slipping the knife into their throats. What of it?

She was interrupted from her thoughts by the sweet voice of her fleim. “Your people.”

“Sha.”

“What will you do about them?”

Clarke considered. She’d been thinking about it for days now, how she would approach the Skaikru. She’d severed all connections to them a long time ago, after they had scorned her for the spirit that lay smoldering inside her. “What do you think should be done with them?”

Lexa cocked her head. “Would they be useful to me?”

“They’d probably cause more trouble than their worth, but whatever is decided, I want to be the ambassador that delivers it.”

Lexa smirked. “You find pleasure in their fear.”

Okay, so she did. “They were the ones who sent us to die. I have many vendettas against them.”

“You may satisfy your monster, then,” Lexa said, leading them both back to her tent. “I’ll discuss with my generals. You may deliver the message tomorrow.”

Clarke felt Wanheda squirm with glee at the prospect. A wide grin stretched over her face. “I look forward to it.”

Clarke arrives at the boundary of Arkadia at dusk.

To her surprise, the people from Alpha station had already made it there, and part of a wall had already been set up. Granted, it had been a few days since they landed, but the efficiency was more than she’d expected. Though considering they’d shot any grounder they’d seen so far, that they’d rushed to mount the wall was no surprise. They expected hostility. It was probably the delinquents who convinced them.

She’d convinced Lexa to hold off on delivering the message for a few days despite her earlier excitement. What she wanted was a confrontation, and she wouldn’t get it without the right people there. Namely, Alpha Station.

According to the scouts, they’d gotten in contact with the delinquents from the dropship, but few had migrated back to Arkadia. The people like Bellamy and Octavia, Raven, Monty, Jasper, anyone who didn’t have people at Arkadia for them, stayed at the dropship. With their people. Their kru. Their devotion was well-placed, but logistically, it wasn’t a sound decision.

Not like she cared. Let them kill themselves. If it is their own stupidity, why should she feel anything about it?

Clarke reined in her horse, the same dark, two-headed mare she’d been gifted only a couple weeks ago. She ushered a scout from the trees, handing him the reins. “Keep her for me. I’ll retrieve her when I’ve finished.”

She ignored the quiet sha, Wanheda and began her walk to the gates.

Someone shouted, and before long (still twice the time it would take a ranger) all guns were trained on her. Somebody yelled ‘Grounder!’ and a gunshot rang through the air.

Clarke rolled her eyes, ignoring the sting in her bicep. Whoever the gunner was, they had terrible aim.

She strode up to the gates with a confidence that had them all hesitating to move. “My name is Clarke Griffin!” She shouted. “Open the gates!”

Mumbles pass through the crowd, talk of her outfit, her bleeding arm, talk of her. The gates opened and she stepped through, not paying any mind to the curious eyes that push in on all sides. She scanned the crowd, spotting someone pushing through. A couple guesses as to who that was.

“Clarke!” Her mother burst out of the masses, staring at her in disbelief. “Clarke, oh my god!”

She rushed to embrace her and Clarke stepped out of the way, holding back a sneer. Abby looked hurt. “Clarke?”

“Hello, mother,” she spat, watching her face fall even more. “Lovely to see you again.” The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable.

Abby was stunned. “Clarke, where have you been? They said you weren’t with the hundred.”

“Oh, did they? Did they tell you what the hundred said about me?” She was curious as to whether or not the hundred would reveal her secrets.

Abby looked torn. “Is there something they should have said about you?”

“Oh, probably. After all, I was the one who negotiated peace with the clans.” At Abby’s stunned look, she guesses that no, she hadn’t been told. “Not that they remember me for that. They can’t see past what I did to get them that peace.”

Abby stepped forward. “Clarke, listen to me, honey. I know you’ve had to do some bad things to stay alive. We all have. I forgive you. Whatever you’ve done, it can be forgiven. We can be a family again.”

Clarke let out a barking laugh. “Family? After you murdered my father and sent me to what could be my death? I doubt you even had to think about it before you made the decision. Tell me, Abby - do you really love me?”

Abby’s face only became more and more agonized. “Of course! I did it for our own good, Clarke. The good of everyone.”

“I’ll believe that,” Clarke hissed. “But that isn’t what I’m here for. I’m here to talk politics. Where’s the Chancellor?”

“I am, for now.” Abby tried to take Clarke’s hands but she was denied. “If this is about the hundred being cleared, it’s done. They have nothing to worry about. All criminal records have been erased.”

“Oh, no, this has nothing to do with the hundred. They don’t want anything to do with me.” She grinned as Abby’s face turned into confusion, mimicking the faces of the crowd around them. She gestured to her clothes, the blue sash that adorned her shoulder. “I’m here as an ambassador. For the Trikru.”

“The grounders? The people who’ve been attacking our scouts?” Abby shook her head. “You can’t be. They want us dead.”

Clarke shrugged. “You invaded their territory. You’ve scared off the game, killed their scouts, and why? Because some kids told you that they’re evil?” She laughed harshly. “You’re more naïve than I thought.”

Abby was about to retort before a man pushed past her, cocking his gun. “You’re one of them,” he growled. “They killed my brother when he went out those gates. We can’t trust you.”

Abby put a hand on his shoulder. “Morganson, be sensible-”

Bang!

Clarke sighed, feeling the blood seeping through her stomach. “Really? Again?” She muttered, listening to the astonished gasps of the people around her. She began to advance toward the shooter, watching as his eyes widened in fear, shooting again out of reflex. The bullet tore through her shoulder, but she barely felt it. She grabbed the gun, wrenching it upwards. “It’s rude to shoot people, don’t you know?”

She snatched his wrist, eyes glowing hellish blue. “I don’t appreciate getting shot!”

His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the ground.

She turned, watching the people scamper back. “Anyone else?” Her eyes still aflame, illuminating in the twilight, the crowd dispersed. She nodded approvingly. “Good.”

The expression on her mother’s face was one of absolute horror. She was the only person still within Clarke’s vicinity, but the look on her face was one of terror. She felt Wanheda tripping over herself in her excitement. Clarke waited a moment for Abby to speak, and when she didn’t, she frowned impatiently. “Willing to listen now?”

She can hear the Skaikru still watching, completely silent, hovering in the shadows as if it will protect them. Whispers of demon, devil flow through them, and Clarke can’t help but feel satisfied with herself. She’d wanted terror, and she had it. She had it all.

Abby backed away, looking around at her people desperately. “Kaplan? Muir?”

A man stepped out of the shadows, never taking his eyes off Clarke. “No. Not at all. I’m not going anywhere near her.”

Abby spun, desperately looking for help.

No one came.

Clarke signed in exasperation at the cowardice of these people. “Listen, all of you!” She shouted. “The commander is being generous. She’ll offer you a deal. You have a week to collect your people and head west, towards the land past the plains, or the commander will bring with her an army that will make the decision for you. And I don’t mean force you out. I mean she’ll storm this camp and slaughter anyone who resists. The choice is yours.”

Clarke ignored the frightened exclamations from behind her and strode out the gates, her lips twerking up into a smirk as the guards scrambled out of her way. Footsteps chased after her and she knew immediately who the only person to follow her was.

Abby seemed unshaken by her blatant disregard. “Clarke, please!” She cried. “I just want to understand! What’s going on? What’s happened to you? Where’s my baby girl?”

She froze. Pivoted on her heel and stared Abby down. Stalking closer, her mouth contorted into a snarl. “Your baby girl died a long time ago,” she growled. “You look at me and you see a child. A helpless child who you need to protect. Well, hear this, mother - I’m not your daughter. Not anymore.” She got right up in her face, forcing Abby to step back. Clarke’s eyes began to glow. “Ai laik Wanheda. I am the commander of death and you would do well to treat me as such. I don’t know what sort of pitiful love you feel for me, but I have none of it. You would do well to remember that.”

Abby was stunned into silence. Her whispers could barely be heard over the silence. “What turned you into this?”

Clarke snorted. “I’d tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me. It doesn’t matter, though. You saw how easily I killed Morganson. Make no mistake, if it came down to it, I’d kill you without a thought. Though perhaps with you, I’d get the pleasure of hearing your screams.”

She left Abby standing there and shouted for her horse. The young scout brought out her mare, head bowed, never looking Clarke in the face. She took the reins from the boy, giving him commands to retake his position and mounting her mare.

Before she left, she looked at her mother one last time. “Perhaps if you’d actually been a loving mother I would hesitate before I kill you.”

Clarke returns to TonDC after midnight.

There were no stablehands awake to help her, but a guard took the spot, someone always available to keep Wanheda satisfied. She returned to her tent, pleasantly surprised to find her fleim waiting for her.

Lexa greeted her with a smile. “I felt your return. How did it go?”

A grin worked its way onto her face. “Oh, it went wonderfully,” she said as she began to disrobe from all her heavy armor. “You should have seen their faces. Pure terror.”

“Otaim ai kripa,” Lexa muttered affectionately, stepping in front of Clarke to help her undo the many buckles of her jacket. “Is Wanheda satisfied?”

“Is she ever?”

“I suppose that’s why I call you ai kripa. You’re insatiable.”

Clarke’s eyes began to glow a dark blue. “Oh, I’m insatiable in more ways than that.”

Lexa tilted her head back, a pleased smile on her face. “I know.”

“Then why aren’t you fixing it?”

“Let’s get you out of your clothes first, houdfou,” Lexa said, her words faltering as Clarke pressed an open-mouthed kiss onto her throat, a hand coming around to squeeze the back of her neck. “Then-then we’ll see about mine.”

Clarke chuckled darkly against her skin. “I can undress later. I want you undressed now.”

She couldn’t see it, but she could imagine Lexa’s eyes darkening from green to a blood-red, fingertips sparking orange in her excitement. The hand on Lexa’s neck tightened while the other began to unweave the ties that kept her nightdress up.

Wanheda flooded her mind, ever-demanding, urging her to stake her claim, to show the world that the Heda was hers.

She bit down on Lexa’s throat, listening to her gasp.

Lexa was right: Wanheda was insatiable. And they both much preferred it that way.

#Sequel #Clexa #Clexa fanfic #Clexa deserved better #Clarke's still a psycho #Lexa still loves it #Abby HATES it though #Oh yeah Clarke kills a dude #devil's incarnate

8 notes · View notes