#just stuck into there like it was the excalibur of construction | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zeravmeta · 4 years

Text

fuck it. soma cruz fgo servant profile bc i make my own content

Servant: / Servant Class: Soma Cruz / Alter Ego

Origin: / Region: Castlevania Series / Japan, 2035

Alignment: Lawful Neutral(?) “Yeah, not sure how I classify as Lawful given my past life, but whatever.”

Aliases: The Dark Lord, Dracula, Soma Cruz

Parameters: STR (B) / END (A+) / AGL (B+) / MP (EX) / LUK (A) / NP (???)

Class Skills: Authority of Beasts (Fake), Core of Chaos (A), One Who Severs Fate (A)

Character Info: “In order for God to be perfectly Good, there must always exist an embodiment of Chaos, a Dark Lord to emerge from the evil of humanity’s hearts.”

For one thousand years, the Belmont bloodline had opposed the terrible night that Count Dracula would bring with his powers. After generations of suffering, the Belmont’s latest mantle bearer, Julius Belmont, along with their generational allies, the Belnades clan and a nameless soldier, had managed to permanently defeat Dracula with the help of the Hakuba Clan’s shrine magics. Severing his connection to his power and sealing Castlevania, the embodiment of his power, within a solar eclipse, Dracula had finally faced his demise in 1999, prophesied by Nostradamus one millennium ago. Thus, the strongest Dark Lord had fallen, his throne empty and awaiting a new master.

In 2035, Soma Cruz had visited the Hakuba Shrine to meet with his childhood friend Mina, unaware of the birthright he would claim.

Skills:

Chaos Ring A: An extremely powerful construct that channels the very essence of Chaos. It can only be found by the one who can traverse and control the Chaos Realm, the Dark Lords personal right. Wearing it grants the unlimited magical power of the Chaos Realm, but actual output depends on the user. If the Demon King’s Ring is the symbol of Dracula and his reign, then the Chaos Ring could be considered the symbol of Soma and his new beginning.

Thematic narratives aside, it’s a very convenient tool for Soma.

“It’s weird, but it feels like…it was made for me. Almost like a welcome gift.”

[5->3 Turns] [Charge NP (20%->30%), Increase NP Gain (10%->25%) (3 Turns), Gain a Delayed buff 1 turn after skill use (Unremovable): [Charge NP (20->30%)]

Armament Master D: Soma is extremely proficient at using any and all forms of weaponry. Due to Dracula’s vast reach, Soma has a vast number of different modern and mythical weapons and gear at his disposal, notable weapons including Excalibur (sealed in the stone), Hrunting, Caladbolg, Mjolnir, and even a Positron Rifle, to name a few. However, one weapon unique to Soma is the Claimh Solais, an Irish sword of light mentioned in many legends and defining the archetype of “Sword of Light.” It provides a great boost to parameters and is surprisingly light weight despite its size. Another unique weapon he wields is the Valmanway, the “Blessed Wind” that is always ‘cutting’ even when still.

(The rank is D because despite his proficiency, Soma has never had any formal training.)

“I mean, it’s just a sword, right? How complex is it? You can just swing it and things die. Though…considering I have ol’ Drac’s memories…sorta, maybe I’m just remembering it?”

[8->6 Turns] [Increase Atk (10%->20%) (3 Turns), Gain Critical Stars (5->15), Increase Critical Star Absorption (3000%) (3 Turns), Increase Critical Damage (10%->20%) (3 Turns), Apply Special Attack against Sky, Star and Beast attribute enemies (20%->40%) (3 Turns)]

Power of Dominance (EX): Soma’s inheritance from Dracula, or more fittingly, the Chaos Entity opposite to God. The Power of Dominance is a unique ability that grants a complete mastery over the abilities of any and all souls Soma can acquire from the enemies he defeats. All the monsters that Dracula unleashed in his crusade against humanity are the countless souls under his domain, even that of Death itself, and their powers rightly belong to him.

Soma can differentiate between the types of Soul Arts he uses, and this reflects accordingly in his Noble Phantasm.

“I never wanted this power, but I guess I’m stuck with it. I’ll always carry the target on my back, but at least I can look awesome as hell while doing it, I suppose.”

[5->3 Turns] [Decrease Enemy Charge by 1 (20%->50%), Select own NP Command Card’s type between Quick, Arts or Buster for 3 Turns. Effect of NP changes depending on which Command Card Type is selected. This skill is immune to debuff effects (such as Skill Seal)]

Noble Phantasm:

Advent of Sorrow – He Who Severed His Fate Against Chaos and God / Anti-Divine, Anti-Self / Rank (???)

A manifestation of Soma’s power truly made his own, separate from the title of Dark Lord and Dracula. Having defeated the Chaos Entity, he managed to sever its connection to his soul, and be saved from his Fate. Even so, he carries the Power of Dominance with him always, and the countless souls and followers of Chaos always wait and offer themselves unto Soma to lead and command them. In his own imperfect way, neither holy nor demonic.

After all, he’s only human.

(Note: If used by the true Count Dracula, this would be considered an Anti-Humanity NP)

[Type: Buster] – [Deals massive damage to a single enemy (1200%->2400%), Chance to Decrease Charge by 1 (80%->100%). Overcharge: Increases own Buster Card Effectiveness (20%) (1 Turn) and NP Damage (1 Turn) (20%) (Activates First)]

[Type: Arts] – [Deals heavy damage to all enemies (400%->800%), Chance to decrease Atk (15%->25%) and Critical Chance (20%->30%). Overcharge: Inflict Curse (5 Turns).]

[Type: Quick] – [Apply Debuff Immune (1 Time), and Restore HP each turn for self (3 Turns) (1000->1500), and Increase NP Gauge each turn for self (3 Turns) (5%). Overcharge: Apply Def Up for all allies (3 Turns) (25%->50%).]

Bond Lines:

Bond 1: “Heh, thanks for having me! I’m still not too sure about how all this stuff works here, but if you need a monster taken down, I’m your guy.”

Bond 2: “So the rest of those dudes call you ‘Master’? Kind of awkward, but I guess they’re magical familiars at the end of the day. What? So am I? Sorry but, vampiric powers aside, I’m just a normal guy. I was even in University before I got dragged here. I’ll just call you [name] for now.”

Bond 3: “Do you like curry? Arikado said I shouldn’t be using these monster souls for dumb stuff, but they don’t mind. They always talk to me and really want to help me out wherever I am. Except Death, that guy sucks. He’s always breaking into my home and trying to convince me to become the next Dark Lord and to ‘accept my throne’ and stuff.”

Bond 4: “…It scares me, sometimes. Knowing not only what I am, but what I’m very capable of.”

Bond 5: “Y’know…you could always come back with me to my world, if you want to escape. I’ll take you to meet Mina, and Hammer and Yoko and Julius and Arikado and…Hm. Sorry. I know you can’t abandon this world, it’s where you grew up. There’s…a lot of people here who love you. You should always remember that and hold it close. It saved my life when I thought I couldn’t go on, and I know it will also save yours.”

Voice Lines:

(1): “I’m glad this place is a lot simpler than the castle. That place had so many hidden rooms and puzzles that I felt like I was going insane…No, as a matter of fact, DON’T tell me about all the secret workshops here.”

(2): “Hm? What’s up? I’m just relaxing here. Sorry if I’m taking up space. It’s nice to just take a moment.”

(3): “No, no, don’t worry. Even if I could, I’m not the type of guy to just go around stealing souls. I only do that to monsters, and even then, they become complacent once they return to me. I could show you some of the fun ones, like the Skeleton Gardener, if you’d like.”

Likes: “What I like? Curry! Oh, and Mina. She’s been with me for my whole life. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Dislikes: “This is gonna sound cliché, but garlic. It just tastes bad.”

Event: “Whoa, a party! Let’s go, I’m super bored cooped up in here.”

About The Holy Grail: “Wish granting? No thanks, I’ve read a ton of comics and things always go wrong. What? Of course, it’s a valuable source!”

Summon Quote: “Yo! My name is Soma Cruz. I’m just a regular high school student. Um…Where am I, exactly?”

Happy Birthday: “Happy Birthday, [name]! I’m so gonna throw you the coolest party ever! I’ll even invite Mina…If, uh, if that’s cool with you?”

(King Hassan): “D-Death!? Why are you…Oh. Uh, sorry about that. You reminded me of...someone. I’m sure you’re a cool guy underneath all that armor.”

(Vlad/Vlad III (EXTRA)): “Huh. So, in this world, the legend of Dracula is just that? A legend? Well, that’s a huge relief. I’m not exactly the kingly type.”

(Gilgamesh/Gilgamesh (Caster)): “Hey [name], could you give me a hand? This gold idiot keeps saying I stole his weapons, but they’re mine! …Hey! Stay back with those portal things! Someone, help!!!”

(Scathach): “Jeez, I bet Arikado will get along with that slave driver. Seriously, Arikado’s method of teaching me my powers amounted to locking me in a room with monsters and a pocketknife. Huh? She’s stomping over here!? [name], help me!”

(Marie Antionette): “I don’t know why, but…Looking at you makes me sad. I’m sorry.”

(Sessyoin Kiara): “Master, this lady is coming onto me WAY too hard. She keeps telling me to ‘embrace what I am’ and junk. I already get enough of that crap from cultists back home.”

(Sakata Kintoki/Astolfo/Romulus/Romulus-Quirinus/Ashwatthama): “Hey, you’re a pretty cool dude, huh? Finally, someone with some style!”

(Amakusa Shirou): “Ugh, you remind me of Fortner. And stop using rosaries around me, I’m not Satan, you jerk!”

(Mephistopheles): “Please, leave me alone. I’m not evil, nor will I ever be the Dark Lord. Just because I have those powers doesn’t mean I’m defined by them. Also, the alarm clock you gave me exploded, so I don’t think you’re all that trustworthy anyways.”

(Beni Enma): “Aww, you’re so cute...Wait, from the Underworld? A yokai? Guess you’re one of mine, then. If you want, I can loan you some Skeleton Waiters for your chain.”

(Any Avenger-Class Servant): “Hey, you guys are kinda like me! Everyone says you’re evil, but you’re actually really nice!”

(Arcueid Brunestud): “Master, that girl is shooting me some pretty weird looks....Huh? Reincarnating vampire? Oh, I guess I’d look pretty weird in that case. That’s not her fault, though. Maybe I’ll go say hi.”

QQABB Deck:

Buster Card: 2 Hit / -Soma raises Excalibur (still in the stone) and smashes it into the enemy-

Quick Card: 5 Hit / -Soma holds Valmanway in front of him, turns around, and multiple slashes envelop the enemy-

Art Card: 3 Hit / -Soma does two horizontal strikes, then a third overhead strike with Claimh Solais-

Extra Card: 6 Hit / -Soma punches twice, does a spin-attack with Claimh Solais, then jumps back and fires his Positron Rifle-

Level Up: “Whew…I feel so powerful.”

Ascension 1: “Whoo! Good job, [name].”

Ascension 2: “This…This is just like then…[name], maybe don’t do this anymore.”

Ascension 3: “Please…stop. I don’t know if I can pull myself back this time…”

Ascension 4: “I see. Well…as long as you’re by my side, I’ll never succumb. So please…don’t die.”

Battle Start ½: “Just how many monsters out there!? In any case, let’s do this thing!” / “I’ll carry the mantle and defeat this terrible night!”

Skill ½: “Bullet, set…Enchanted, set…Guardian, set…” / “How about some of this!”

Attack Selection ½/3: “Hmm.” / “Seriously!?” / “Nice.”

Attack ½/3: “Hraagh!” / “Take this!” / “You’re going down!”

Extra Attack: “Let’s see you handle THIS!”

Noble Phantasm Selection ½: “Are…Are you sure?” / “I’ll trust you on this.”

Noble Phantasm: “I will never be the Dark Lord…You, God, and The World will just have to deal with it!”

Noble Phantasm Damage: “I won’t…Submit...!”

Regular Damage: “Gah!”

Defeated ½: “Mina….” / “Julius…our promise…”

Battle Finish ½: “That was a close one…” / “Anyone need some healing? I have some spare spoiled milk…Oh wait, none of you have a Ghoul soul, huh?”

#fgo #fgo fanservant #soma cruz #castlevania #read this and catch my disease #fucking LOVE this funky little pimp coat lad #'but zerav this is way too op'- shut up i deserve this my cock is huge and yours can be to if you let go of such foolish notions and go ham

24 notes · View notes

ohmightydevviepuu · 4 years

Text

hello love (a silent kiss from a wish) / CS January Joy

part one of two for the @csjanuaryjoy AO3

When Elsa admitted that she had no control over the ice swirling around and seeping into Emma’s bloodstream, Emma knew fear unlike any she’d experienced yet.

She just--she wanted to believe that everything was going to be okay. And that they would all live, happily ever after.

thanks to @thisonesatellite, @profdanglaisstuff and @optomisticgirl for encouragement and love.

special birthday shoutout to @distant-rose <3 <3 <3

(i would like to note that @optomisticgirl’s epic “Days of Future’s Past” inspired part of this story) (you should read it)

@shireness-says @shardminds @mariakov81 @stahlop @kmomof4 @carpedzem @jonirobinson64 @spartanguard (for science)

part two will post on 24 january!

the time-slip is a classic and i would be remiss if i did not point other other gems (that i am aware of) in this fandom: a seed of hope by @unfolded73 in time by @justanotherwannabeclassic i jumped across from you (oh what a thing to do) by @bemusedbicycle

this story was inspired by an old sailor moon fic called quirks by vievre (on FF dot net)

one.

Emma Swan was freezing.

She had never, in her entire life, known it was possible to be this cold. She thought she’d understood cold--had endured cold, had survived cold, living on the streets in Minnesota in the winter, camping out in the backseat of her unheated Beetle in Boston, shivering in a jail cell in Phoenix.

She’d been wrong.

“If I could just--lay down for a minute,” she panted, letting Elsa help her to the ground.

“Emma,” Elsa said. “Emma--talk to me. Tell me more.”

Emma wasn’t sure if she was going to survive this. She heard her father’s voice on the other side of the ice wall and knew that he would be disappointed in her. She tried to imagine him saying something supportive and ridiculous and cheerful and exhorting her to have hope, but she--she couldn’t. Hope had vanished at least 20 degrees ago.

Emma was too damn cold for hope.

“Parents don’t always help,” Elsa murmured, but Emma was having difficulty following the conversation from one end to the other. She could hear the static squelching on the walkie from the other side of the ice wall and knew that David Nolan was doing everything in his power to get her out of here. And Hook--

“That has to be very lonely,” Emma said, but the movement of her lips did little to help her stay warm.

Emma wasn’t going to think about Hook, about how she’d refused to let him break down her walls--metaphorically speaking--and how she was now trapped behind a literal wall, made of ice, and wasn’t that one hell of a metaphor?

But she knew that he was probably trying just as hard to break that one down, too. She tried to imagine the pair of them, the prince and the pirate, just to make herself laugh, to move her muscles, but it was cold--too cold for anything to be funny.

“Were you born with magic, or cursed?”

She’d seen some weird shit in her life, and even weirder shit in the year and change she’d lived in Storybrooke. She’d eaten chimera and killed a dragon and led a mutiny of Lost Boys. She’d seen a flying monkey in New York City. But when Elsa admitted that she had no control over the ice swirling around and seeping into Emma’s bloodstream, Emma knew fear unlike any she’d experienced yet.

Fear of loss--because, for the first time in her life, she had something to lose.

Her parents, her family. Henry. Hook.

“I’m very sorry I trapped us here,” Elsa said. “I didn’t mean it.”

Emma knew that, she did--she just wished that she knew everything was going to turn out all right.

That they were all going to live, happily ever after.

She was barely conscious and did not see the glow of the wishing star in the ice underneath her.

two.

He came awake all at once.

Two hundred years shipboard made a man a very light sleeper, and in the years since, Killian Jones had been content to be awakened most mornings by the movements of his still-drowsing wife. She would breathe against his skin, tickling him. He would feel her lips against his back in light butterfly kisses along his spine or her fingers as she traced the designs inked into his arm. He would feel the gentle pressure of her body as she pulled herself closer to him, and hear her whisper: “For heat.” And then he would nod, allowing her the simple fiction and enjoying the way she fit perfectly against him as he watched the sun rise through the filmy curtains of their east-facing bedroom.

He was unaccustomed to the sight that greeted him on this morning, however. He was cold and stiff--”Getting old, babe,” she would say, giggling--and when he opened his eyes the first thing he saw was a portable heating device on the floor of the Charmings’ old loft.

The loft that no one in their family had occupied for years.

It came to him in phases: the awkwardness of sitting on the floor; the pain in his shoulder and neck; his arm, oddly positioned behind him and over his shoulder. He tried to move, but couldn’t. Something-- someone --was holding his arm in place.

Instinctively, Killian twisted--he needed to check, he needed--

When he tried to pull his hand from her grasp, she turned, though she didn’t wake. Emma Swan was curled up on the old too-small couch in the old too-small family loft, his old greatcoat pulled up to her chin and his hand wrapped tightly in hers.

He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Neither was she.

three.

Killian examined himself in the mirror.

He was wearing one of his linen blouses and a pair of leather trousers, his waistcoat discarded on the wash basin. The boots lined up next to the couch had pointed toes instead of rounded and buckles instead of zippers. Though he always protested to his wife that he still ‘retained his youthful glow’, the reflection that greeted him was younger, and harder, and Killian suddenly missed the laugh lines and crow’s feet he had begun to accumulate.

With a sigh, Killian pulled his shirt up by the hem, already suspecting what he was going to see. His skin was largely unblemished, except for his tattoos; the scar he carried from Excalibur was missing. He had not yet been wounded. Killed.

He had not yet asked--begged, pleaded--she had not yet--

Killian closed his eyes and for an instant, he could feel his wife’s fingers tracing the pale silver line in the dark, the way she did on the nights where it still, sometimes, all felt like too much, when one or both of them was restless, when the only thing that kept the darkness at bay was the light they created together. He exhaled, scrubbing his hand down his face.

The sliding door separating the washroom from the living area still stuck--of course it did, he reminded himself, no one had ever bothered to fix it--but he maneuvered it gently, hoping not to wake anyone, least of all the baby. The cot was in its old spot by the alcove and if he had to postulate, his brother-in-law was--at most--three or four weeks old and still well into his screaming phase.

Killian would bet gold doubloons on unloaded dice that there was sleeping Arendellian royalty in the bed at the top of the ladder.

Which meant that the Emma Swan curled up on the couch, under his coat, was not his wife.

He examined her, taking in the gold of her hair in the early morning sunlight, and saw that the strands of silver that had begun to twine around the gold were missing. She appeared to be relaxed--he doubted anyone else would notice--but his Emma slept with complete abandon, and Killian could see that even in repose, in her family’s loft, this Emma was on her guard.

He wanted to touch her. His fingers practically itched. He wanted to smooth away the worry line on her forehead, to run his palm across her cheek, to wind his fingers into her hair. But this Emma still had walls that were miles high, and would not welcome his touch or his breaching of her carefully-constructed boundaries, no matter that he had, once upon a time, literally attempted to tear down a wall between them. He had bruised his shoulders, had blunted his hook on the solid ice and been rewarded with the feeling of the weight of her in his arms for the first time.

And when he’d carried her back to the loft, wrapped in his coat, she’d pulled his hand into both of hers and didn’t let go, clasping and unclasping their fingers, tracing the metal of his rings. He remembered it, they way her hand had felt, small and cold; the way her eyes had softened when she wouldn’t let him leave.

That was last night, unless he missed his guess, and just as he had the realization, she opened her eyes.

Emma startled very slightly--another thing that his Emma had not done in years--and relaxed infinitesimally as she saw him. “Hook,” she said, and smiled. Her eyes were sleepy but crinkled at the corners as she met his gaze; she laughed at him every time, but Killian always swore that the morning sun made them glitter a particularly vibrant shade of green.

And that’s when his breath caught, in that moment, when all he saw was the woman he had married. His True Love. (“Capital ‘T’, capital ‘L’,” she always said, as if he could possibly forget.)

“Good morning, Swan,” he said, kneeling to put their eyes at a level. He tried, and failed, to hold back, restricting himself to brushing a lock of hair out of her face. “Have you warmed up at all?”

four.

The shower at Granny’s was worse than he remembered.

Killian wasn’t sure if it was the pressure of the water, or the fact that he missed Emma’s open shampoo bottles and the scent of her around him while he bathed. Maybe it was that the shower in their home was big enough for both of them, a circumstance they frequently took advantage of. Killian reached for his old black dressing gown that was still brand new in this time, and had not been appropriated by his wife. He stepped out of the bathroom, thumbing the scar on his abdomen that wasn’t there, and took in the room: the corners of the sheet tucked in with military precision, the hand-drawn map of Storybrooke tacked to the wall, his books stacked precisely on the wooden desk in the corner.

It was clean. None of the photographs Snow had started gifting them, which multiplied on what felt like a weekly basis, cluttering every surface. None of the detritus his Emma left in her wake wherever she went. When he’d walked through the door and didn’t immediately trip over Emma’s boots, which she would leave wherever she happened to take them off, it felt wrong.

She’d sent him “home”, and that felt wrong, too, but Killian knew there would be no changing her mind and no reason for her to think any other way. Especially not when she’d allowed his touch and then immediately pulled back into herself. Emma had merely thanked him for spending the night, shooing him out the door, and he had gone.

“I’ve slept in far worse places for less worthy reasons, love,” he’d said, conscious of Snow--of Mary Margaret--and David trying not to watch them from their alcove. They were destined to be forever watched, always interrupted, and they’d long ago given up changing the locks. “Far be it for me to deny a beautiful woman such a simple request.”

He’d been there for her, and she’d allowed it, and he had never forgotten how that felt.

But now, in the Spartan room he’d once maintained as his own, there was much else to consider. This wasn’t time travel, nor was it another reality--two things he, unfortunately, had practical experience with. He had not gone through a portal, or been transported by other magical means. It did not match Emma’s and Regina’s descriptions of waking up in the Wish world, or being sent through the looking-glass.

To his best approximation, he had merely woken up in the body of his younger self, on a day that he had already lived.

That left him with two questions: why?

And--perhaps more importantly--where was the Killian Jones that had been meant to live this day?

five.

The bed was warm, and it was that as much as anything that alerted his senses and pulled him fully and completely awake. The bed was warm, and strange, and there was filtered sunlight coming in through flimsy window coverings. He was wearing neither hook nor brace--nor shirt--and he wasn’t alone.

Hook lay sprawled on his stomach, and there was on his back the weight of another person, their arm draped across his neck and a cheek against his shoulder. He tried to remember the last time he had woken up with someone in his bed in the daylight, and when he lost count of the years, he rolled over onto his back.

Emma Swan followed his movement, mumbling to herself as she re-settled her head on his chest, and Hook froze.

Bad joke, that, he thought to himself, when he had just last evening been surrounded by literal miles of ice--when Swan had nearly frozen to death in a spell gone awry.

She was anything but cold at the moment, her breath tickling his skin. Her hair was tied up at the top of her head in some kind of knot, and he had a delicious view of the skin at the back of her neck and the silver chain she wore. They were tangled together in a web of soft sheets and he could feel, from where she pressed against him, that she wore little or nothing beneath her sleeping shirt.

He didn’t belong here.

Though he had often fantasized about what he and Emma Swan could do, should they ever find themselves in bed together, her present reaction to this manner of company would likely end poorly. Emma Swan had carefully constructed boundaries, and this was a violation of all of them.

He didn’t belong here, and Hook knew this couldn’t be a dream. It was too real; he could feel the weight of her against him, and the softness of the mattress under him, and the warmth of the sunlight against his skin. There had been no portal that he was aware of, no other means of magical transport. He did not know what else it could be, other than a curse, and though he would happily kiss her--

Hook exhaled a laugh through his nostrils.

His previous attempts at curse-breaking had not been successful. He would rather enjoy this feeling for a few minutes longer than endure another knee in the groin for his efforts.

But.

He had thought of her, every day of the year that they had been apart, and dreamed of her every night, and this was--

He remembered carrying Emma back into her parents’ loft last night, under the worried and watchful eyes of her family, and of Elsa. He had been easily persuaded to stay, just by the look in her eyes that told him she needed him. Hook knew she couldn’t verbalize it, not yet, but she needed him, and he could be there for her.

And now, Hook found himself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar place, with a very familiar yet unfamiliar woman pulling him closer with every breath she took.

Her hand moved, and he saw it: the slender silver band around the fourth finger of her right hand as she absent-mindedly traced the tattoo along his collarbone. Hook watched her, mesmerized by her obvious familiarity with the intricate design, the way the light reflected on the ring, and he noticed something else.

He wore one, too.

six.

Killian stood in his rented room, letting the weight of his greatcoat settle on his shoulders, and realized there was another question he needed to account for.

What now?

Zelena was clearly not an option in this time. Regina was still avoiding as much of the Charming clan as she could as often as she could rationalize it. The crocodile was, for obvious reasons, out of the question. Mary Margaret and David would undoubtedly panic, and then work to convince him that his discarded solutions were viable possibilities, and all of these years later he still stayed away from the convent and its inhabitants whenever possible.

They had forgiven him, but he still had not. Killian felt a pang as he thought of all of the ways he could attempt to change what was about to happen, and the chain of events that would follow. Few knew better than Killian Jones the cost of meddling with the past, however. And there was too much that would be put at risk if he even tried.

But--in the meantime--what if he just enjoyed this quiet moment, and spent a day with Emma Swan? He was turning the key in the lock and on his way down to the diner before he even completed the thought.

“Good morning, Captain.” Granny Lucas greeted him with an appreciative grin, and Killian could not help but smile back as he ordered his coffee.

“Coffee?” Granny’s eyebrows quirked upward. “Finally starting to rub off on you, are we?”

“You know that you can...rub…wherever you wish, Mrs. Lucas,” he said, waggling his eyebrows in the way that she liked.

She flicked her towel at him. “You watch yourself, boy,” she said, the way that she always did, before turning to pour out a cup of coffee. “How do you take it?” she said.

“Ah,” he said, caught off-guard. Emma drank coffee, Emma and Dave, who made a pot every day at the station, and he had first gotten into the habit of bringing her a morning fix in the weeks after she had restored his heart to his body. “Black,” he said.

Before that, he had drunk tea.

He checked his phone for the time while he waited for Granny to hand the cup over, and looked up to see her watching him. “Sheriff won’t be here for a few minutes yet,” she said.

“Aye,” he agreed.

“You doing okay with that thing?” she asked, gesturing at the device.

Killian ran his finger over the keypad, hovering over the ‘Emma’ button. He shrugged. “Needs must, and all of that,” he said. “Have a hot chocolate ready?”

Granny smiled. “Sure,” she agreed, watching him take a sip. “You know I’m rooting for you two.”

Killian nearly spat out his coffee before turning to face her, one eyebrow raised.

The bell over the door rang and Granny gave him a wink. He put his mug down. “Faint heart never won fair lady,” she said, handing him a cup of cocoa doused in whipped cream.

He turned back toward the door. When Emma spotted him, their eyes met for a moment before she relaxed into a small smile and gave him a little wave, pointing to a booth. Their booth. The one where they ate breakfast every weekend, had family dinner at least once per week, afternoon coffee breaks after quickies in the restroom and the time he had persuaded Ruby and Dorothy to close early, commandeering the old jukebox and dancing with her in the middle of the diner.

Killian waited for her to sit before handing her the mug, careful not to spill, and mindful of the way her hands immediately encircled it and how she touched her pulse points against the heat of the beverage for warmth. “Still cold, love?” he said, wishing he could pull her hands into his, rub his own thumb across her wrist, trace the five-petaled flower tattoo with his finger.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. She gave him another small smile and a shrug. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Only mostly dead, then?” Killian smiled at her, affecting a calm he knew his other self had not felt.

Emma paused mid-sip and looked out the window. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess I should be glad you didn’t go through my clothes, looking for loose change.”

Killian chuckled. He understood that reference--

--and he shouldn’t.

Emma noticed. Of course she noticed. Half a dozen emotions flashed across her face before she settled on the easiest one, and Killian would swear she was wishing for another dagger to hold against his neck--bad joke, that--as she asked: “Who the fuck are you?”

seven.

It was a wedding band.

It was a wedding band .

He--

She--??

Hook sat up, dislodging both the dozing woman and the sheets. She muttered a curse under her breath and grumbled as she rolled over to the other side of the mattress, and he saw the ornament on the chain he had just been admiring, and he swore.

Colorfully, describing anatomically impossible acts in several languages and ending with an emphatic “bloody hell .”

She--Emma Swan--his wife --sat up immediately, her expression brimming with concern. “Killian?” She held her hand out, her right hand, putting her palm against his chest and spreading her fingers. She inhaled and exhaled, deeply, and “breathe, Killian,” she whispered. “It’s okay.” He felt himself falling into her rhythm, the metal cool against his skin, his eyes drawn to the ring between her breasts against the thin fabric of her sleeping shirt. They looked--she looked--different. Rounder?

Hook averted his eyes, embarrassed. She looked down at herself, her hand brushing her abdomen, and back up, guiding her face with his palm until he was looking at her again.

He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself leaning into the pressure of her hand against his cheek.

Shaking his head, Hook found he wasn’t quite capable of speech.

His eyes closed. “Killian,” she said, her voice gentle. “Killian, look at me. Did you dream about Excalibur?”

He shook his head again, still uncomprehending. “I don’t--Swan--I’m not--”

“Come back to me, Killian,” she said, and it was a command. “Here and now, babe, look at me.” Her hand was back on his chest, her breathing rhythmic and soothing. “Tell me something you know is true.”

He looked at her. Finally, he said, “I think we’re going to have a bit of a problem there, love,” and laughed.

The sound was more than somewhat unhinged, and Emma’s hand fell away. “Okay,” she said. Her expression had changed into something he was more intimately familiar with: suspicion. “Tell me the last thing you remember, then.”

Hook caught her hand in his, finding himself suddenly unwilling to let her pull away. She surprised him by immediately lacing their fingers together. “It’s okay,” she said. “You can tell me.”

“The ice wall,” he said. “Last night, you were trapped in a wall of ice and you nearly froze to death. We took you home, to your family’s loft, with a woman called Elsa. I didn’t want you to be alone, so I stayed. When I woke up--” he shook his head “--I was here.”

Emma’s mouth was open. For a minute, she said absolutely nothing, until the confusion on her face cleared. “Oh,” she said. “ Oh, oh, shit--”

She took a few deep breaths of her own, closing her eyes before she looked at him again. “Hook?”

He nodded, and her fingers tightened around his.

“Our second date,” she said, and smiled.

Hook laughed; this time, there was a trace of humor in the sound.

“Aye,” he said, rubbing his finger against the silver ring she wore. “I don’t suppose you ever found the champagne?”

eight.

Hook bathed--showered--letting the hot water steam up around him as he chased his own thoughts in circles. The shower smelled like her.

It was distracting.

Though it was far less distracting than the ring he couldn’t bring himself to take off.

“Swan, we should talk,” he’d said, and Emma laughed.

“I find,” she said with a smirk, “that when my husband says that to me, I’m rarely in for a pleasant conversation.”

He glared at her. “Poor form, Swan,” he said. “Using a man’s words against him.”

She’d called him ‘Hook’ as if there was a distinction. Perhaps there was; perhaps that’s what happened when a man woke up years into his own future. That’s what she’d said: “Oh, shit,” in her typical state of eloquence. “That was real--you really--” She’d laughed until she was nearly in tears, until he’d needed to steady her with his arm and she’d smiled at him, as though she expected nothing else. “You’re in our house,” she’d said finally. “In the future.”

Perhaps, in that instance, he was no longer the same man he once was. Hook wanted to know, and yet he didn’t. He rubbed the ring again--”It’s real,” she’d said, “I promise”--and thought maybe that was all he needed to know. That, and the way she’d smiled, as though it was nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’ll make breakfast. We’ll talk after,” she’d said, his wife said, and smiled a smile that lit up the entire room. “You can use the shower. Pretty sure you’ll find everything you need.”

But he didn’t belong here.

Hook kept repeating that to himself, like a touchstone, but everywhere he turned, he was contradicted. There was his soap in the shower next to the open, flowery-scented bottles that were Emma’s. A razor on the wash basin, a straight-edge with a shaving brush, stood solitary amidst the cosmetics. Everything he needed, indeed. The soap was the same kind he’d gotten into the habit of using since the curse, from the washroom at the inn, with its clean scent of citrus and hint of spice.

It mingled well with the open bottles that smelled like Emma.

He wrapped himself in a towel, a luxurious sheet of soft fabric that covered him past his knees, and dragged his thumb against a six-inch scar bisecting his abdomen. The closet held boots and jackets and waistcoats; his brace and hook were on the table next to the bed. On the shelf was the chest he had carried with him on the Jolly Roger across the centuries.

And Emma Swan wore his brother’s ring on a chain around her neck.

There were pictures dotted on every surface, small miniatures depicting him or Swan or Henry or some combination of all three. Pictures of himself and Charming, of Snow White and Emma, of the four of them together, of the wedding-- his wedding. To Emma Swan.

Hook had never given much thought to the future. He had lived the majority of his unnaturally long life with only one goal and a single-minded focus on its achievement.

He had never seen a sunset so perfect.

Hook dressed himself, buckling his brace and selecting a blue shirt and a black waistcoat and, after a moment of hesitation, a jacket. Clothing was armor. It was the facade he chose to show to the world. He had never been less certain of what a day might bring in his entire life and he did not intend to face it in nothing more than the low-slung trousers of soft fabric in which he had awoken.

And a gentleman would never parade himself about in a state of undress.

“Hey, sailor!” Emma’s voice easily carried up to where he stood. In their bedroom. “Breakfast is ready!”

nine.

She was angry.

That was an emotion with which Killian was intimately familiar. Hers, and his--because the Darkness had left its mark upon each of them. Killian’s already-short fuse was, occasionally, shorter than it ever had been. Emma sometimes retreated behind walls that were taller than ever. They fought it as they had everything else--together--and kept the same rules, always: always talk to each other. If that didn’t work, then talk to someone else.

And when all else failed, there was Archie, who called it “post-traumatic stress disorder”.

“Fucking post-traumatic savior disorder, more like,” Emma always said, her body brimming with frustration. But her hand didn’t shake anymore and that was, itself, a victory.

Somehow, they got through it. Together.

But all of that was to come much later.

For now, Emma Swan was angry, and she repeated her question.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Killian watched her, calculating the best way to answer her question. Honestly, for a start.

“My name is Killian Jones,” he said, and her eyes narrowed, assessing him, until she nodded.

“Killian Jones who suddenly learned what Netflix is?” she asked.

It was her favorite movie. He could practically recite it as well as she could at this point.

“Killian Jones who has had more opportunity to familiarize himself with Netflix, yes.” He smirked. “And all of the pleasures of ‘Netflix and chill’.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

“I’m not the Killian Jones with whom you are currently acquainted,” he admitted.

Emma’s hand went to her forehead. “What the actual fuck?”

He wanted to reach for her hand. He wanted to, but he didn’t. “I can’t properly say, but I woke up this morning in our--in your family’s loft. That is not where I went to sleep last night. I fell asleep in my own bed, in my own home.” With his wife, whom he missed more and more. It wasn’t--

She didn’t--

It wasn’t Emma , he realized. She was exactly as he remembered, and he loved her now just as he had done then It was the way his fingers itched, and his sudden understanding of why.

“Holy shit,” Emma muttered. “You’re--”

“From the future,” he finished. “Aye.” He rubbed his finger against his ring--the wrong ring--to stop himself reaching for her hand.

“When?” Emma said.

“I really shouldn’t say,” Killian hedged. “Several years from now.”

“You’re still in Storybrooke? You--you stayed, in Storybrooke?”

It was the Darkness again, or rather the magic that had come with it. Though he had no aptitude and even less interest, he retained just enough of it that he could feel her, his Emma, because of the bonds they shared. Like a warm sunlight against his skin, nothing more, but he had gotten so used to it that he felt chilly in the shade. The feeling was enhanced by physical contact.

Only this body had not yet been subject to the Darkness.

And this Emma did not--yet--love him. Not the way she would; not the way she did .

“Aye,” he said, looking directly at her. “I’m still in Storybrooke. My entire life is here.”

His Emma loved to touch; she needed it almost as much as he did. Their fingers intertwined, her body flush against him as they walked, her hand splayed against his chest as they lay on the couch or in their bed, against his heart. As though she needed to remind herself--to remind both of them--that it was still there, and still beating.

Her eyes widened for an instant before she looked away. She seemed suddenly uncomfortable.

He cleared his throat. “Listen to me, love,” Killian said. “You and I, we’ve done this part before. Just answer me: Am I telling you a lie? Because I’d rather not have to do the whole bit with the flying monkey and the brig to prove to you I am who I say I am.”

“David doesn’t have bologna,” Emma said, and Killian could hear acceptance in her words, perhaps with a hint of a smile.

“A fact for which I remain eternally grateful,” Killian said.

She smirked.

He smiled.

“So,” she said. “If you’re here, then my Hook--” She blushed and cleared her throat and started again. “The Hook from this time is--where? There? Where you came from?”

He shrugged. It was the most likely explanation.

“And you’re not, like, I don’t know,” Emma said, “worried? Upset?”

He shrugged again. “Why should I be?”

“And that’s it?” She was incredulous. “You’re just going to, what, stay here?”

“I could give you a ‘hope’ speech, if you want. I’ve got a fair few memorized by now.” He laughed. “Let’s just say, darling, that you and I always get back to each other in the end.”

In New York, in Camelot, in the Underworld, in Neverland.

Always.

That’s what it meant to be True Love--capital ‘T’, capital ‘L’--to not give up, to never stop looking. To always make the choice, and choose each other.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Killian said. “He is yours. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

She bit her lip and looked out the window. “I believe you,” she whispered.

#csjanuaryjoy #csjj #january joy 2020 #cs fic #cs january joy

92 notes · View notes

anjels001 · 3 years

Text

The Queen of Knights - Guinevere SI

[A/N:I am not English writer, I user Grammarly so if you see any errors let me know!!😉🤭 ]

[A/N: I accept constructive criticism so I ask you to comment if you liked it or not, because your comments help me to improve my writing even more.]

-----------

Waking up in a different body, in a world totally different from yours that was in the past is not fun at all. Especially if it is expected to fulfill certain expectations .... Well, I was never able to do what is expected. This is the story of how a girl won the love of her people, won a witch and saved her enchanted prince.

-----------------------------(*^▽^*)-------------------

Metal-to-metal beats were heard around him. left, defend, and counter-attack. The intense smell of iron hung in the air. Dodge, defend, kick, and strike. The cries and moans of the fallen, both allies and enemies, afflicted my soul. Defense, dodge left, redirect the blade and attack the opening. The sacred blade weighed in my hand recognizing that it was not its handler, the handle was wider, its blade was longer and wider, something like that would only be an issue for me, but.... she agreed with the job next to me. Dodge, defend, defend, deflect, and counter-attack. I was not surprised when I discovered that the enchanted swords had a small degree of sapience. Dodge, Strike. It was to be expected that of a weapon created by Faes. "Arthuuuuu!"

My internal monologue is interrupted abruptly, when I raise my sword, I defend myself from the attack launched by a red and silver missile.

Applaud.

The strength of the blow that would have brought me to my knees now was just a small cut, I thank you internally for Merlin's lessons and Lancelot's training, but still for myself if it weren't for my stubbornness and my constant requests for his teachings they have no strength to protect my beloved.

"Modred" I answer inside the helmet, my voice comes out hoarse and in the same deep tone, of my beloved, thanks to the illusion of sound. "Recognize father, recognize me as your son, recognize me as your heir!" Screams the boy.

This is magic for you. Its swings were wild and powerful, its attacks were intense, never leaving an opening. I was on the defensive, a little more and would be discovered, that's what happens if everything I did, all the sacrifice would be in vain. No, I can't let that happen, the Battle of Camlann was inevitable, no matter what one tries, the only way my beloved survived was if someone took his place, it doesn't matter my apologies, right there in I knew this result. That's why as your queen, I took your place. With tears, I looked into the maddened eyes of the child who was yet another victim of the witch's plans, of the boy that my heart considered as a son. The boy who wanted nothing more than the love of his parents. With a hardened heart, I make my decision. Moving my sword aside, breaking the facade I took on, I leave a small opening on my right side. A suicidal move to use during a battle, any experienced warrior instinctively would take advantage of that opening. It Mordred perfectly met those requirements. Splash His sword went through my chest, completely ignoring the armor I wore. His body freezes in shock, leaving him vulnerable and giving the opening he needed. Excalibur shone slightly giving me the strength I needed to carry out the intended action. Splash. The sword of the distant future pierced his heart, the strength of this movement breaks the helmet of the knight of the tuition, leaving his face to be seen. A face that was so similar to my beloved's, but also so different.

His blond hair was disheveled, his emerald green eyes stared at mine through my lunch, with a spark of desperation and delight. I pull into my arms without hesitation. His weight, as well as that of his armor plus the armor he wore, ends up putting us on our knees. The spell that covered me dissipates, the armor that used to fit my body perfectly was now loose and wide. A surprised sigh came from his lips. Leaning his helmet on his shoulder, pulling his head to lean against mine, his body curves a little. "Forgive me". I sob "Forgive me, my little dragon". "w-why?" he asks me in a whisper. "Because your father loved you so much, as I loved you, but we couldn't let Morgana take over the kingdom, she would destroy everything, so we couldn't take it over". I murmur regretfully in his ear. "Lo-ve?" As if it were my own flesh, but I couldn't let Arthur fight you, it would destroy you" Me, ignoring the blood that drips from my lips "Forgive me... Mordred" His arms tighten around me as a last effort. "I ... lost ... you ... mom". he said on his last breath. His body softens like a puppet whose strings have been cut to the side. My eyes briefly look at the carnage around me. The floor was painted red with spilled blood, my eyes moved searching among the bodies of the knights, those who swore to serve and follow my beloved. "My king!" the familiar voice screams. I hear the sound of hurried steps, coming to my left, fear, and a battle of relief so that moving the helmet in that direction I see familiar armor.

At that moment the adrenaline that kept me upright decreases, my body leans precariously, but before I fall on my face I am caught by two familiar arms, which support me easily. "Who are you?" asks Sir Bedivere with a touch of coldness in his voice when he perceives the smaller figure in his arms who wore his king's armor. His hands move quickly to the helmet, removing it quickly, to reveal the fake one. "My Lady ?!" he exclaims surprised, horrified, and shocked by the figure he holds in his arms. His face was smeared with dirt and sweat by many men, his beautiful blue eyes were swollen and reddened by the tears he shed, his red hair was stuck in a messy bun, his little lips were quickly blue and his skin was extremely skin. "The others?" I ask in a whisper to Airgetlám's Shining knight, completely ignoring the loss of sensation in my legs. They were more important. "H-hurt but safe my lady". said the stunned knight. "I'm happy," I say, relieved. "Where's the king?" He asks. "In Camelot". I answer "This whole time was you, you took your place from the king". says the same instantly realize what I did. I smile at him, not being surprised by the discovery. " Why?". he asks in a saddened tone. "He would not return." I reply, moving my trembling hand to my neck, holding the pendant on my necklace, it was a small topaz stone in the shape of a tear. "Sir Bedivere, I ask you to return your sword." "No, my lady, I refuse to leave your side, hold on a little longer, my prana can help you and reload the sheath .." "GUINEVERE!" cries the desperate voice of my beloved.

'No' I think desperate 'he should be Camelot'! The familiar face of my beloved appears in my field of vision, his beautiful features were distorted in horror and despair. "Art ... I thought I left you ... in Camelot". I say, feeling the cold rise in my arms. "But I am here" I reply sobbing hugging "I am here ... when you should have stayed there as it was due". "I was never one to follow what was expected," I say. His voice was getting muffled, so he could no longer hear him. "I know". he said, "is one of the things I loved you the most, wait a minute my love, Merlin will be here soon". "Remember ..." he said ignoring the last sentence, "remember ... what I said to you in the Jardins ..... on our first date?" * snorts * "How could you not .... it was apart from that I knew how intelligent and charming you were, how you had a beautiful voice". "Sing ... sing for me ... Please". I ask with difficulty, it was increasingly difficult to maintain awareness. It took a moment before I heard it again. "Hey, Jude ..." Sings with a choked voice "Don't make it bad ..." Tears were streaming down his face... "Take a sad song ..." Raised one of my hands ... "and make it better ...." Give a tender kiss, before caressing her with your cheek ... "Remember to let her .." A few drops of water splash on my face ... "into your heart ...." His voice was distant. My vision died out, his beautiful face was the last thing I saw. Soon the darkness surrounds me. Then the light. Thousands of information and knowledge are recorded in my mind. Some that I already knew, others that were lost, and others that I haven't even heard of. My eyes open, for the first time since I was reborn I found myself again in the modern era. It is and I see that I was in a Warehouse, in front of my master. Sigh. There, lying on the floor, was a red-haired boy that I knew a long time ago, his eyes were wide and shocked by my sudden appearance. Hello shirou ... My lips part and I ask the infamous question of the suicidal nob. "I ask, You my master ? " "Eh?" problematic.

#fate/stay night #SI Guinevere #Fem power #It's all Zelretch's fault

3 notes · View notes

elgaberino-mcoc · 4 years

Photo

KITTY PRYDE the SHADOWCAT

The idea: a playable Marvel Contest of Champions character in the Mutant class based on any iteration of Kitty Pryde’s long and storied history in comic books. This blog entry is intended to explore whether Kitty Pryde is a strong candidate for Marvel Contest of Champions.

Why Summoners Care

She has a rich history with many team-ups (read: synergies, and not just mutants). Even though she is a classic character, her exploits are fresh, current, recent, and always relevant to big plot lines.

By most measures, she is a bigger deal than many Mutant-classed and mutant-related who are all already in MCOC, including Bishop, Cable, Domino, Havok, Mister Sinister, Omega Red, Warlock, and Sunspot.

In January 2020, Frontline: MCOC’s editor Dan was interviewed by the MCOC Content Creator Program’s Kabam Thel. (These interviews always ask the content creator what one champ they would add to the game.) Dan chose Kitty Pryde. Elaborating on Twitter in September 2020, Dan said that “For me, Kitty is on that Jean Grey/Emma Frost/Storm tier of Top X-Ladies of all-time.” He noted that “If we're going by comics, Kitty is 2x Jubilee on appearances, and just had a lot more impact in her stories. She's also the best character Chris Claremont ever created, and is the character he writes the best. So in a way, she is the definitive X-Man from the guy that made the X-Men the X-Men.”

Kitty Pryde and Summoners

She’s a widely requested champ. On the MCOC Wishlist Poll on Ranker, Kitty has been in the top 10 since 2019. She is one of only 4-5 characters to have ever been the #1 ranked champ on the poll. She is also among only a handful, as of December 2020, to have received more than 1,000 Summoner upvotes. At end of year 2020 she has 1,125 upvotes and sits comfortably at #6 most-wanted champ behind Beta Ray Bill and ahead of Morbius and Kraven.

Kitty is also content creator StarfighterMCOC's #1 most-wanted champ, and Frontline: MCOC’s #1 most-wanted champ (see above), and she lands in Katy Candy's top five most wanted.

Raw Potential for Synergies

Besides her romance with Colossus, her membership on the X-Men and Excalibur (including her affiliation with the Soul Sword), and leading the new House of X “Marauders” and “Hellfire Trading Company,” as the Red Queen, Kitty is one of the mutants who has many connections outside of mutant-oriented stories. Kitty joined and even briefly led the Guardians of the Galaxy and has shared some adventures with Spider-Man. She was also trained to be a ninja under Ogun, who figures prominently in Wolverine’s adventures connected to Japan, and who currently possesses Shogun.

The following are Other MCOC Gabe’s synergy ideas, originally listed on Kitty’s item description on the MCOC Wishlist Poll.

“X-Women” with (any four of) Phoenix, Storm, Boom-Boom, Jubilee, Psylocke, and Rogue; “Guardiennes” with (any four of) Gamora, Phyla-Vell, Mantis, Moondragon, Nebula, and Angela; “Soul Sword” with Magik, Magik II, Margali, and Colossus (Future); “Possessed” with Dracula and Ogun or "Star Lords" with Star Lord or “Romance” with any and all versions of Colossus.

She’s in Other Games

Mobile

Some mobile games in which Kitty Pryde has already appeared include Marvel Future Fight, Marvel Puzzle Quest, and on cards in Marvel War of Heroes and X-Men: Battle of the Atom.

Update December 3, 2020: she has also been teased for Marvel Strike Force.

General Character Pool

Unlike most mutants, Kitty has appeared Some Marvel games that feature the entire pool of Marvel characters have featured a playable Kitty Pryde include Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, Marvel: Avengers Alliance, and Marvel Heroes.

X-Men Video Games

Kitty has appeared as a playable character in X-Men II: the Fall of the Mutants (1990) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) (pictured above with Lockheed).

She reportedly had a role in X-Men: The Official Game (2006), which was designed to reflect Ellen Page’s portrayal in the FOX motion picture of the same name. She is also reportedly mentioned in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.

She’s in the Battlerealm

Wolverine mentioned her by name in the February 2019 event quest dialogue.

“I told Kat not to try it,” says Wolverine, “But she insisted nothing was wrong. Hell of a time gettin’ her outta that wall.”

Write-Ups by Summoners

Original Description Migrated from the MCOC Wishlist Poll, which preexisted this blog

“She walks through ...her opponents? She can reach right past Armor Up and your Force Field. Paired with any Soulsword synergy champ, her special 2 can power lock and her special 3 does more damage per stacked buff. Add her little buddy Lockheed and you've got some fire-breathing attacks.”

Further thoughts by Other MCOC Gabe

Plausibly she should have phasing, telepathic resistance, and capabilities that can distrupt Tech champs, possibly EMP, Accuracy Reduction, and Shock.

Kitty also has the ability to disrupt any technology through which she phases, short circuiting or de-powering it. This concept forms the basis for a Theory Thursday entry suggesting that champs of all classes that employ technology could have a #circuitry hashtag that would allow Kitty to affect them.

Editor’s note. This entry remains under construction, as I have yet to do a full review of community archives searching for Summoner work-ups.

NEWS

December 3, 2020 ► Today the Marvel Strike Force Twitter account teased Kitty Pryde and Lockheed for their game. With her addition to MSF, Kitty Pryde is now in all the major Marvel mobile games except MCOC.

Septemper 25, 2020 ► Kitty has fallen to #4 most wanted champ.

September 14, 2020 ► According to the MCOC Wishlist Poll, Kitty Pryde is the #1 most-wanted champ among the MCOC Summoner community.

August 28, 2020 ► No dice. With the reveal of the September champs (Apocalypse and Professor X) it appears the pirate theme was not a reference to Kitty Pryde’s imminently joining any rosters.

August 26, 2020 ► In-game messages reveal that the September event quest, which some have theorized will bring the arrival of Kitty Pryde, will have a pirates theme and will be associated with Krakoa and House of X. Krakoa is the island on which Mutants congregate to live and coexist peacefully. Kitty famously failed to enter Krakoa, due to some interaction of her powers with the gateway that sorts out non-mutants. She instead became the leader of the new Marauders, ...dressed as a pirate captain.

July 1, 2020 ► (a) An in-app cutscene at the end of the monthly Event Quest features heavy House of X (“HOX”) flavor. Kitty features prominently in the HOX plot lines. (b) The “Champions of the Contest” roadmap Champion Tease suggests a coming other-half to a duo to which Magneto belongs. Many theorize this will be Professor X. In recent House of X story lines, Magneto has teamed with Professor X in leading a new Mutant civilization.

So could Kitty be the Mutant who can pose a threat to both of them? Most think a more likely fit would be Apocalypse. But Kitty does lead the pirate “Marauders” and “Hellfire Trading Company” as the captain Red Queen. The Hellfire Club has been a threat to Professor X and Magneto before. Could Kabam consider her a threat by extension?

February 6, 2019 ► In in-app Event Quest dialogue, a “Kat” is mentioned in passing during a conversation about things happening to mutants in the Battlerealm. The character gets stuck in a wall, which would seem to refer to Kitty Pryde’s phasing ability.

8 notes · View notes

oddnub-eye · 4 years

Text

Our Own: Chapter 4

Chapter 4 is Here

The Monkey King rolled his shoulders and reached behind his ear. He pulled out a small black and gold object that quickly grew into a full length staff.

“Ah let's see what we’ve got here,” Monkey giggled, “Morgan, obviously, Artemis, s’up bitch, some chick in yellow, greetings, and Arthur. Why am I here Morgan?”

“Arthur is possessed by Charming, and we need an escape window.” Morgan said curtly.

Monkey’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and his lips curled into a snarl. Monkey slowly began walking towards Arthur, saying, “Sorry buddy, I know you’re a good guy but…”

Monkey didn’t finish his sentence, lashing out with his staff, Arthur bringing up his sword to block. Monkey didn’t hesitate, instantly whipping his weapon around to attempt to strike Arthur’s legs, but the attempt was blocked. Arthur whipped his blade upward, knocking Monkey’s staff backwards, swinging down at Monkey.

Monkey slid under the blade, elbowing Arthur in the stomach. Arthur flinched but brought up his knee, slamming into Monkey’s chin. Monkey rolled backwards, grabbing out several tufts of his fur. Monkey threw them behind him, before bringing up his staff to block a swing from Excalibur.

The fur connected to the ground and exploded into clones of Monkey, all bearing smirks. Arthur snarled, sliding backwards and taking a defensive stance. Monkey launched forward, his clones following him. Arthur leapt sideways, slicing through two clones in one stroke.

As the battle raged in behind them, Morgan sprinted forward, helping Artemis to her feet.

“Where’s Rena?” The witch asked, hurrying the goddess and Belle out of the room.

“Outside.” Artemis answered, pulling the lever to drop the drawbridge.

“Hey, uh, will Sun or whatever his name was be okay?” Belle asked, pausing slightly.

“He will be.” Morgan said confidently, bolting across the drawbridge, “And he normally doesn’t respond to anything that isn’t Monkey.”

Belle followed the witch across the drawbridge, murmuring, “Weird.”

Rena was standing on the other side of the moat and she asked, “What’s going on?”

“Arthur’s possessed and we need to leave now!” Artemis ordered, leaving no room for questions.

Rena raised an eyebrow, but she followed the rest of the group. Morgan snapped her fingers, a summoning circle appearing in front of her, from which a minivan sprung from. Morgan quickly climbed into the driver's seat.

“You own a minivan?” Belle asked as she climbed into the back.

“I like the space.”

Once everyone climbed in, Morgan slammed the gas, barreling down the road. They drove in silence for a bit.

“Where are we going?” Rena asked, “I mean, we aren’t driving aimlessly right?”

“Nearby city, I know someone who can help.”

Belle nodded before leaning back into her seat.

“Hi.”

Belle jumped in her seat, turning to see Monkey in the seat next to her.

“AH! What are you doing here? I thought you were-”

“Fighting Arthur?” Monkey interrupted, “Charming teleported him out of there once he realized y’all escaped.”

“That bastard’s gonna pay.” Morgan spat, her hands tightening around the wheel and grinding her teeth

“And he will,” Artemis said, “But right now, we have to protect Little Red.”

“Her name’s Rena.” Belle said.

“We need to keep Little Red safe,” Artemis reaffirmed, “So I hope your contact isn’t just a hook-up, Morgan.”

“He isn’t.”

They drove in silence, the only sound being the tires on the road. Monkey leaned backwards, toying with his circlet. Eventually, the group pulled into a city, a sign reading “Chicago”.

“Can we get some deep dish?” Monkey asked, seeing the sign.

“I thought you didn’t like cooked food?” Belle asked, remembering reading Journey to the West.

“That was before I discovered Chicago.” Monkey said, although the tone of his voice was flinty, and Belle took the hint.

Morgan found a parking garage and parked the van, hurrying them out of the van. The group climbed out, Monkey summoning a cloud that he promptly sat on.

“I’ll search the streets, y’all go where you need to.” Monkey started to float off, but then he smiled, “Hey, Rena, was it? You wanna see what flying’s like?”

Rena’s eyes lit up and she nodded. Wukong smirked and expanded the cloud, and Rena climbed on.

“I’ll go in the opposite direction.” Artemis said, before jogging out.

“Guess you’ll be stuck with me a little while longer,” Belle quipped to Morgan as they made their way out of the parking garage.

“Not for long,” Morgan laughed as they walked down the maze-like streets of Chicago. Despite the confusing nature of the city streets, Morgan made her way through the streets with the confidence of someone who’d done this quite a few times.

Eventually, Morgan stopped and said, “We’re here.”

Belle looked up, seeing a blazing neon sign reading “Valhollar.”

“Well,” Belle rolled her shoulders, making sure her tonfa where ready, “I guess we better head in.”

Constructive Criticism is always welcome and I hope Y’all have a great day! Feedback is encouraged!

#Our Own #sun wukong #Belle Friolic #Rena Geong #Morgan Le Fae #Artemis #Arthur Pendragon #mythology #fairy tales #Original Story #writing

2 notes · View notes

journodale · 4 years

Text

Why I’m mad about the Rise of Skywalker

My first reaction to The Rise of Skywalker – once I got past the litany of eyerolls and “oh, come on!” reactions while I was watching it – was just how mad I was about it. It’s not a deep-abiding rage, mind you, and much of my anger is a form of disappointment, but some of it is just about how petty and spiteful aspects of the film seemed to be in response to things that happened in The Last Jedi. (Spoilers, and occasional salty language, about herein).

My biggest and first complaint is that JJ Abrams and his co-writer, Chris Terrio, turned Rey into Ken the Jedi Prince. Ken. The. Fucking. Jedi. Prince. For those of you who are unaware, these stemmed from a series of largely shite (but occasionally charmingly shite) young adult novels in the early 1990s, as the franchise was experiencing its first major revival with the publication of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy. Several of those books revolved around the discovery of a Jedi “prince” named Ken, who started to follow Luke Skywalker around until he discovered that he was indeed Palpatine’s grandson (the books had a whole story arc about his father, Palpatine’s son, being a three-eyed mutant), though these storylines and characters conveniently disappeared from the old expanded universe and were never spoken of again. Around the same time, Dark Horse Comics also published Dark Empire, many of the plot points therein were also lifted liberally by Abrams and Terrio – specifically that Palpatine has resurrected himself by use of clone bodies and mysterious dark side powers – the film simply called the planet Exogol rather than Byss, but the broad strokes are the same, including that Palpatine was eventually trying to move his essence into a new body (in this case it was Leia’s unborn third child rather than Rey). These comics touched off a whole litany of spin-offs wherein the nature of the Force and the conflict between the Jedi and Sith descended to increasingly cartoonish depths, and yet here they are, reviving themselves, because of the need to give Rey a bloodline.

In an interview with Terrio in The Hollywood Reporter, Terrio stated that they chose to make Rey a Palpatine because it was the “worst news she could receive,” and then handwaved a bunch of bullshit about “dark side royalty” and how she was choosing her own family over her ancestry. The problem is that this makes no sense, either from a story perspective, or from the broader continuity of the Star Wars universe. Terrio insisted that the original films established that the Force ran along family lines because of Luke Skywalker’s line to Leia in Return of the Jedi about how the Force was strong in their family – discounting that this was Luke’s awkwardly trying to tell a woman who made out with him six months before that she was actually his long-lost twin sister, or the fact that the whole existence of the Jedi Order and their prohibitions against marriage and children precluded there being Force-wielding dynasties out there. Rian Johnson in Last Jedi to make the significant revelation that Rey was the children of junk traders and nobodies was not only “democratizing” the Force – that one didn’t need famous parents to feel the Force – but also to being a hero. Terrio insisted that they weren’t slighting Johnson – and that could be the case. They instead were taking the laziest course to telling the story of the film.

Absolutely nothing in the story demanded that Rey be of Palpatine’s bloodline – if they insisted on bringing back Palpatine (another lazy choice, but more on that later), he could simply have demanded that Kylo Ren find her because she was simply a powerful Force user, whom the Force seemed to manifest in her as a response to the rising darkness (which would seem to have been the whole promise of The Force Awakens’ title). They wouldn’t have needed to invent a son for Palpatine (and then handwave away the fact that he apparently didn’t have Force powers despite their insistence on strong Force lineages, or if he did, how he managed to avoid being groomed as his father’s new apprentice and heir, and how he wasn’t the subject of a war of succession to the throne upon Palpatine’s death), and they would have maintained the notion that the Force belongs to everyone – not the Jedi, not the Sith, and certainly not to famous bloodlines (as Johnson made explicitly clear in Last Jedi). But no – giving Rey a bloodline was about fan service, and the constant need by certain fans that she be related to somebody important (never mind that all of the theories they put forward would not have worked out in terms of ages and timelines).

Another example of Abrams and Terrio totally not thumbing their noses at Johnson was the complete abandonment of the core theme of Last Jedi – that it’s people and relationships that matter, not things. What Abrams and Terrio replaced it with was about turning objects into fetish items – lightsabers in particular. The fact that they insisted on Rey having rebuilt Anakin/Luke’s lightsaber – recreating it exactly rather than turning it into something new – or having Rey build her own lightsaber before the film opened, coupled with the fact that they also introduced Leia’s lightsaber to imbue it with special meaning, as though it was the fact that it was these two lightsabers in particular that imbued Rey with particular symbolic meaning for the final fight was a complete abrogation of Johnson’s message. Lightsabers are not Excalibur – they are not magic swords bestowed upon Jedi by women in lakes. That said, Abrams is pathologically incapable of writing screenplays that don’t have MacGuffins (though the Sith Wayfinders were themselves also MacGuffins, and the dagger another one – even though its appearance and history made absolutely no sense), so this is more of his particularly lazy writing. As an aside, the whole Wayfinder MacGuffin is itself partially lifted from the Jedi Prince series, where the Imperial warlords were looking for the Glove of Darth Vader and found it in pieces of the second Death Star…on a water planet. I’m not even kidding.

The redemption of Kylo Ren didn’t make any sense. Terrio tried to handwave some Joseph Campbell bullshit about how great myths required atonement with the father figure and the great sin of patricide, but Ren’s actual rejection of the dark side was completely nonsensical – particularly because of how they used the device of Leia going into some kind of meditative state that eventually led to her death, as though it was her mystical intervention and self-sacrifice that somehow drove it out of him, as though the dark side was some kind of demonic possession. It also didn’t make sense how Rey decided to heal Ren immediately after she struck him with a lethal blow with her lightsaber – which they played as an act of mercy – and it was Terrio’s contention that it was what allowed Ren to let the light in and see his father again (which was a memory and not a ghost, because how else were they going to get Harrison Ford wedged into the film for fan service). There’s no logic to any of that. Both Force Awakens and Revenge of the Sith showed that going to the dark side was a choice – Ren chose to kill his father because he thought that was what would allow him to bury his past. After a career of mass murder and raping the minds of his interrogation victims, he’s going to suddenly turn it all back because he got stuck by a lightsaber and healed? Really? I’m not buying it. (Incidentally, the fact that Ren’s body dissolved in the end also makes no sense either – Kenobi, Yoda, and Skywalker’s corporeal dissolution had to do with the powers that Qui-Gon Jinn learned to unlock to maintain his presence in the Force after death, which he later showed Yoda how to do in The Clone Wars series and in Revenge of the Sith. I can see Luke having taught Leia the powers, but Ben/Kylo Ren before his training had been completed? I have a hard time with that).

Yet another of Abrams and Terrio’s lazy choices was the need to bring in a Big Bad™ in the form of Palpatine rather than engaging with another of the significant aspects of the Last Jedi’s themes, which was about the banality of evil. The whole point of the casino sequence that fanboys like to deride is that it showed Finn the evil of indifference of those who profit from war, while the underlying theme of the rise of the First Order in the films had to do with people being nostalgic for fascism – sure, a lot of people got trampled underfoot but at least the trains ran on time and we were “safe” with stormtroopers on every corner. It made the film as relevant to the 2010s as George Lucas did with commenting about Nixon and Vietnam in the original trilogy, or his construction of a trilogy of films about political violence and the rise of authoritarian populism with the prequels. Killing Palpatine does nothing about these bigger, underlying societal problems that the Resistance has to confront. Remember in Last Jedi where Poe talks about being the spark that will light the flame that will burn the First Order to the ground? Well, that’s all evaporated with the revelation that hey, it was Palpatine pulling the strings all along. Nothing to confront here, people, let’s just kill the Big Bad™ and go home. Again, it’s cheap, it’s lazy, and it’s fan service.

I have a big problem with the way Abrams and Terrio treated the Finn/Poe relationship, which all of the actors were pushing for. Abrams, in several interviews, dismissed this as the fact that they have a bond that’s “stronger” because they’ve been through the fire together, or some bullshit like that, then assured fans that they would get their LGBT representation because it’s important to show queer fans that they too belong in the Star Wars universe. That “representation” – the fact that a tertiary character from Last Jedi shares a same-sex kiss with another woman (whom the materials accompanying the film identify as her wife) – is brief, in the background, and was easily sliced out of the film for foreign distribution. And yet, Abrams expects plaudits for his “representation,” while also trying to reinforce Finn and Poe’s hetero credentials with the ambiguity of what Finn planned to declare to Rey as they were sinking in the quicksand, and with Poe’s awkward flirting with Zorii Bliss (and we did learn in the subsequent materials that the pair’s previous “emotionally complicated” relationship was when they were teenagers). Abrams later said that a kiss between Finn and Poe would be “heavy handed” – erm, you know, like the fact that he had Rey kiss Ren, the man who chased her, tortured her, tried to rape her mind, killed her friends, and was a mass-murderer. Yeah, he’s a dark, broody soul who just needs the love of a good woman to complete his redemption story (and I’m sure that the Internet is replete with all kinds of fanfic about how her magic vagina cures Ren’s manpain). That’s totally not heavy-handed, heteronormative fan-service in the slightest. There was actual ground that could be made where Finn and Poe were gay male leads in one of the biggest blockbuster franchises on the planet – something that has never been done before. It would have been ground breaking, keeping entirely with the story that had been established, and would have actually been worthy of applause.

The diminution of Rose Tico’s role is also bullshit, and Terrio’s assurances that they filmed more good stuff with her that just wound up on the cutting room floor also doesn’t pass the smell test. Terrio asserted that it was great how she rose from being a lowly mechanic to being one of Leia’s right-hand advisors – which conveniently had very little screen time. There was an opportunity to have her included with the group aboard the Millennium Falcon on its spy mission right at the very beginning of the film, rather than the insertion of the puppet creature Klaud, so as to show that Rose was an integral part of “Leia’s best agents” entrusted with getting the valuable intelligence from their spy in the First Order, but no, that would be a little too obvious. What is left is essential proof that they have caved to the loud and obnoxious fanboys who objected to her presence in “their” films.

There’s a lot of other nitpicking I could do – whether it’s Abram’s inability to grasp how hyperspace works, the fact that the celebration scenes at the end don’t make any sense with the exception of going down the fan service checklist, or the fact that the closing scene contained so much cheese that I’m surprised the Supply Management marketing boards didn’t file a trade complaint and impose 300 percent tariffs on it. The pace of the film was so frenetic that any scene that could have been poignant or moving was lost in the bang-bang-bang editing. Overall, however, I’m just incredibly disappointed in the lazy writing and fan service that pretends it’s being clever.

This was not the film we deserved. This was a film that rewarded the legions of fanboys who complained that films with strong female characters who don’t wind up in bed with a man at the end were a “feminist agenda;” that films that didn’t pander to the very straight white male entitlement to a particular fandom were the works of “social justice warriors” that hate their own fans; that films that don’t recreate the wonder they felt when they were twelve years old – which is an impossibility – are somehow raping their childhoods. The CBC’s Eli Glasner called it “cinematic comfort food,” but it’s more insidious than that – it’s a repudiation of attempts to grow the franchise beyond just a nostalgia cult, as it increasingly morphs itself into (and by cult, there is now a legion of online “truthers” who trade conspiracy theories about how the films have been hijacked by executives with agendas). And because it will rake in billions of dollars, it will assure the people with the purse strings that this is what the market needs more of. My hope for the franchise is moving toward vehicles like The Mandalorian, and the other forthcoming live-action series on Disney+, because the lessons for blockbusters are apparently to be hollow facsimiles of what came before.

#Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker

2 notes · View notes

hitchell-mope · 5 years

Text

Dark curse season five episode titles

The mistress of all evil. Mal’s back. And she is pisses off. She wants Uma’s soul. So now Hadie’s faced with a decision. Save his brothers wife. Or join his sister in her rampage. He joins Mal. In flashbacks Mal comes to teens with the knowledge hades is her father

The benevolent dark one. Ben makes a name for himself in Auradon by manipulating people left right and centre with promises of rejoining Auradon to Massachusetts when he has absolutely no intention of anything remotely close to that. He just wants to make people feel how he felt. In la bete a freshly dark oned Ben makes a name for himself by using his new magic to help instead of hurt

The once and future queen. Guinevere (Saoirse Roman) is back and she needs the saviours help. She wants to go back to Camelot and rule like she believes she was meant to. Merlin (Asa Butterfield) is having absolutely none of it saying she has no right to the throne. In flashbacks Camelot is overturned when it’s revealed that the lowly servant Merlin pulled Excalibur from the stone. Much to the annoyance of Guinevere and her husband Arthur (Tom Holland). It’s the Pendragon’s start of darkness

How will you find your way. Dark bal chad dizzy trough the forest. They say for fun. But Dizzy’s terrified. And rightly so. Now they have the Vorpal sword. In flashbacks dizzy misses her mother under the curse

The voodoo princess. Ben’s plan is revealed. He wants to reverse time so he never becomes the dark one in the first place. And to do that he needs Celia on his side. In flashbacks Celia seaeches for her sister

Skeleton leaves. Peter Pan (Jacob Tremblay) is back. And he wants to fight Harry. In flashbacks Peter’s first encounter with James Hook (Robert Carlyle) is shown

Magic carpet ride. In flashbacks the courtship of jaylos is shown. In Auradon preparations are underway for the jaynelos wedding

Old, alone, done for. Jane might have created time travel. And Harry gets flung into the future where he’s fully mortal elderly abandoned and dying as the only inhabitant of Auradon (hence the title). Back in the present bal has heard of the new spell. And want it for themselves

Rumplestiltskin. 900 years before Facillier became the dark one he came across Rumplestiltskin (Michelle Gomez) who offered him a deal. His children would achieve greatness. If and only if he took her place as the dark one. In Auradon Celia and Uma search out the shade of their father for help against bal

The other side. Now that they’ve found Facillier the sea witch and voodoo princess set about constructing an army against bal. Hadie has a screaming match at hadeficent. Maleficent wins and tells him that the past can only change so much. Bal manage to get the spell working but jaylos are pulled through the time fissure. And land right when Facillier attacked Doug back in season one

The many faces of the dark ones. Dagger hot potato. Jaylos keep time travelling and accidentally preventing Ben from killing Facillier. This sets off many alternate timelines with many alternate dark ones. At one point even Hades acquires it’s powers. At the end of the episode the scales disappear from Ben and climb up Doug’s neck. With jaylos still stuck in the past

Change the fates design. Devie is pissed. Not only is the saviour now the dark one and Mal no longer the mistress of all evil but Uma’s vanished along with Harry and the twins. And nobody knows where they’ve gone

One kiss. Evie tried to free Doug from the dark one dagger. But the kiss doesn’t work. Facillier says it’s because he enchanted it long ago so only the traditional method will free the current dark one. Death. In other news bal is on the run from the angry mob of hurt kingdom denizens they terrorised while evil. They’re rescued by the twins. Who deliver them to Huma

Root of all evi. Hades focused

#disney descendants #dark curse

7 notes · View notes

dailydiscardedkarna · 5 years

Photo

Day ? - Kalter judging you

After procrastinating for how long, I’ve finally written headcanon for Discarded Karna. I even wrote AU Fate/Zero. If anyone is interested, I updated everything in AO3. Here’s the title; Ongoing Dream (I put the link in the source or my page)

.True Name: Karna(?)

.Class: Rider

.Parameter

Strength: B

Agility: A

Luck: D A

Endurance: B

Mana: B

.Class Skills

Riding: A

Magic Resistance: C

Divinity: A

Clairvoyance: B-

.Personal Skills

Discernment of the Poor: A

Mana Burst (Flames): A

Uncrowned Martial Arts

.Noble Phantasm

O' Sun, Become Armor「Kavancha & Kundala」A

Still not sure whether to include it or not.

O' Naga, Unveil Thy Rage 「Ashwasena」- A

[One of Phantasmal Species, Naga. Its True Name is Ashwasena, the mighty son of the King of Naga Takshaka. During Kurukshetra War, Ashwasena was disguising himself as Karna's arrow and had almost killed Arjuna had it not been for Krishna who saved him by pressing his feet on the chariot and sank it into the earth, hence the arrow missing its aim. Disheartened, Ashwasena returned to Karna and asked him to fire him towards Arjuna once again, making a promise that he would not miss next time. However, Karna refused as it was against his principles as a warrior (as well as his promise to Kunti) to shoot the same arrow twice. Hence, Ashwasena tried to kill Arjuna on his own but failed miserably.

Why he became part of Karna's Noble Phantasm, Karna himself doesn't know. Ashwasena simply stated that he will take his revenge on Arjuna no matter what. After all, it was Arjuna who incinerated his hometown and killed his mother in cold blood. It is not definite whether Arjuna would be summoned in the same Holy Grail War as Karna, nevertheless, this time as Servant, Karna happily accepted Ashwasena as his ally.

Ashwasena, while his true form is Naga, can shapeshift into anything, be it human or animals. In fact, he actually couldn't materialize without permission (he actually could, but for the sake of his safety, he asked permission) nor transform into his original majestic form as Naga without Karna revealing his True Name, therefore, Ashwasena would maintain his appearance as small animals such as cat (due to Master's preference) to reduce energy consumption. Even without revealing his true form, his bites are still deadly and poisonous. He can possess any weapon as well, making those weapon he inhibited becomes even stronger and got poison attribute.]

O' Sun, Become Chariot [Sapthaswa Ratha] - A+(+)

[Karna's fatherーSurya, the Sun God, offered Karna the mastery over light itself in the form of Sapthaswa Rathaーthe Chariot of the Sun God, with its 7 Divine Horsesーbut Karna refused to utilize it in his lifetime. Now summoned as a Servant of Rider class, Karna is willing to utilize it just like how he accepted Ashwasena.

As Karna prays 'O Father, lend me your strength', the Sun Chariot appears from the sky, controlled by reigns on the driver's stand. It is drawn by 7 Divine Horses and they can be considered as tough as Servants themselves. Just like Karna's armorーKavacha & Kundala, both Chariot and the Divine Horses can be considered as the radiance of the Sun itself, which means the Chariot is extremely durable and with the presence of the Divine Horses, it boasts extraordinary power and the Chariot can go at ridiculous speed that no Servants could catch up.

Unfortunately, this Noble Phantasm is harsh in mana consumption therefore Karna rarely uses it and prefer to move from places to places by himself. To minimize the amount of mana consumption, he would materialize small part of the Noble Phantasm such as using the rays of the Sun from part of the Chariot as piercing weapons to decimate and incinerate anyone in his path, or to reduce it even further, he could take small part of the Chariot and customized it as a sword. He would prefer not to summon the whole set of Saphastwa Ratha, however, it seems like the 7 Divine Horses can materialize on their own without the Chariot itself. Moreover, unlike Ashwasena who needs Karna's permission to materialize, they can materialize without Karna's permissionーout of their persistence and affection of wanting to directly protect Karna as the substitute of Kavancha & Kundala.

...whoever dares to attack Karna and his Master, they shall be meet with the Sun itself*.

*in this case, it would be like Ozymandias battle animation in FGO. Beam attack everywhere.]

O' Dhanush, Lead Me to Vijaya 「Vijaya Dhanush」- EX

[Vijaya Dhanus is a Divine Construct in form of bow. This bow is said to give sure victory to the possessor, hence, called Bow of Promised Victory. While this bow is Karna's main qualification as Archer, it is possible for him to possess it in Rider Class as well.

It is no exaggeration to say this bow represents Karna's greatest glory as Hero. Despite being repeatedly rejected, subjected to ridicule for being the son of a poor family, and particularly for his low birthーevery disgrace Karna has experiencedーeverything is dispelled in the day where he finally used Vijaya Bow and show his true worth in Kurukshetra War. The moment he utilized Vijaya Bow, he utterly annihilated the Pandavas Army, implementing fear to Pandavas soldiers and bringing hope to the Victory for Kauravas. His true capabilities that everyone refused to see, they are forced to ingest the reality in the most devastating way.

This bow is said to give sure victory to the possessor, hence, called Bow of Promised Victory. Yet, wielding Vijaya Bow still leads to Karna's death in Kurukshetra War. Was it just a false statement? No. it is indeed the bow that leads its user to Victory. For Karna, prestige and glory are his Victoryーand his death was in fact, the peak moment of his Victory. In Karna's last battle, he undisputedly overwhelmed Arjuna, that was, until Karna's multiple curses were activated at the same time which result the wheel of Karna's chariot stuck in a rut. In that moment, Karna knew his death is coming soon, sensing Arjuna pointing his arrow to his back, yet, there was another realization that struck to his mind. It was this. This coming moment, he would attain Victory he was promised to. Soon enough, Arjuna's bow, with smiling Karna still fixing his chariot, shut down the Sun.

In that moment, there is no doubt his death is bestowed with 'Victory'. He was killed in unfair means, in other words, had Arjuna let him resume in proper battle as warriorーhad Karna came back wielding Vijaya Bow in his handsーthe course of the war would definitely turn out differently. It is indeed, the Bow of Promised Victory. Even when the result is death, he still attained Victory as his honor is protectedーnot bringing shame to his best friend who acknowledged his true worth, Duryodhana, and those who gave him life and raised him.

Now that he is summoned as Servant, his definition of 'Victory' is slightly changed. He is still holding his pride as warrior and Heroic Spirit, but the fact that he serves the Master who summoned him is what is really important. His Master 'Victory' is his Victory, therefore, he shall put his utmost effort to protect and granted their wish.

As Noble Phantasm, Vijaya Dhanus is a powerful continuously active-type Noble Phantasm that display its terrifying abilities that continue to function without any need to call out its name called. Every time an arrow is aimed, the energy of the arrow is automatically amplified by the bow's sacred mantra, which means every time an arrow is released, its shot is as destructive as cannon fire. It is simply impossible to repel it with normal means. Though it also means each shot consume an extraordinary amount of Magical Energy.

Moreover, what makes this Divine Bow even more terrifying is the fact that Karna is its user. With his immense physical strength and terrific archery skills, the destructive power of released arrow becomes catastrophic, and its speed and precision are of that of a homing missile. Simply put, the 'Promised Victory' also implies where Karna is virtually invincible as long as he held Vijaya in his hands because he brings calamity and gives no chance for the enemies to do anything, as if the living being in the Earth is left with no choice but to simply run away to nowhere from the meteor shower.

While in term of its usage is already tremendously destructive, Vijaya Dhanus shows similar attribute as ExcaliburーThe Sword of Promised Victoryーof Arthuria's. As that which can be called the physical actualization of their ideals and the symbol of their heroism, it is their greatest and most powerful Noble Phantasm. Furthermore, it also shows its true worth even further when faced greater evil. Similar to Excalibur ProtoーThe Sword of Promised Victoryーthe original purpose of Vijaya Dhanus was to defeat greater evil that threatens the World.

...if Arthur and Karna were to be summoned in the same Holy Grail War, as the Wielder of Promised Victory,

"I wonder, who will emerge Victorious?"]

.Extra Info

Karna, as Rider, is ridiculously even stronger than his Lancer form as he has access to his strongest Noble Phantasm, Vijaya Dhanush. Though either way he is OP in any Class......

I did my best to 'how to design Karna without making him too OP' and it's so freaking hard because?? There are just so many possibilities?? And Karna is already naturally OP af?? orz

And so, I removed all his Noble Phantasm in his Lancer Class; Vasavi Shakti, Brahmastra, Brahmastra Kundala, and Kavacha & Kundala. I actually want to keep Kavacha & Kundala but I decided to remove it because it is simply a foul means to have Karna having his armor and bow at the same time. He would truly be invincible!! This is why Indra, Arjuna's father, took Karna's armor, then Krishna persuaded Arjuna to kill Karna while he is weaponless. The Sun boy is really that broken!! How awesome!!

*uhum* so, yeah, I came up with new Noble Phantasm after roaming around Karna's legend. 3 Noble Phantasm; Ashwasena, Sapthaswa Ratha, and Vijaya Dhanush.

Both Sapthaswa Ratha and Vijaya Dhanush's consume an extraordinary amount of Magical Energy so Karna rarely use them. Especially Vijaya Dhanush. Unlike Arjuna's bow that needs to reveal its True Name 'Agni Gandiva' to make it homing missile or Vasavi Shakti in sealed form, Vijaya Dhanush doesn't need Karna to reveal its True Name to activate it. The moment Karna wield it it's already activated nuclear ready to launch. I mean, in the legend itself, its shot power is enough to move the fucking world o(-(

Sapthaswa Ratha is similar too..... it could be used as piercing nuclear weapons o(-( the visual would be like how Ozymandias' battle animation in fgo. Beam everywhere.

In my headcanon, Karna would be fighting with a sword that he customized from part of Sapthaswa Ratha. This way, it would do less wreckage instead of decimate the surrounding. Karna, being master of all weapons, his swordsmanship is top class too, easily keeping up with Saber Class opponents. So I guess he is both Saber and Archer in Rider Class......lol.

As for Ashwasena, the details of this NP would be explained in Fate/Zero AU *slapped*

#karna #fate apocrypha #Fate Grand Order #fate zero #kalter

44 notes · View notes

betsynagler · 6 years

Text

Tired of Being Treated Differently

In 1996, my best friend from high school invited me to go on a two-week cross-country trip with her and three of her friends — which turned out to be four for the first six days, when one of them decided to bring an extra person, until we dropped him off in California. I’d never driven across the country, and was excited to give it a try, so I said yes. It was an incredibly fun and also eye-opening experience, not only because it was my first visit to sites like the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and the Corn Palace, but because four of the people in the van — and once we dropped off our California-bound late-addition, everyone except for me — were people of color. How did this matter? Well, for starters, when we’d land in places like a fishing town on the Oregon Coast, and everyone would stare. As a fairly generic-looking white woman of 27, I was used to passing without a second glance in most of the places I’d been to that point (basically the States, Europe and Canada), certainly anywhere I’d been in the U.S. It very quickly became obvious to me that this wasn’t the case if you were were Black or Asian American, like the friends I was traveling with. Turned out there were parts of the country — and a lot more parts than I’d suspected — where you were going to get noticed, and not in a friendly way. But there was also stuff I learned on that trip that wasn’t as obvious. Like what it meant when we went out to lunch in a nice restaurant in Santa Fe and got terrible service. My impulse was to just chalk that up to the fact that we were all in our 20s and didn’t look like we had money — particularly after spending more than a week’s worth of nights either camping, sleeping on friends’ floors, or in Motel 6s (the night we splurged on the $40/night Excalibur in Vegas, it felt like we were staying at the Plaza). Because that was what I’d dealt with before. My friends, however, felt pretty strongly that the way we were being ignored and slighted had something to do with race, because they’d dealt with that before. And so, while it’s not like this had never occurred to me until then, that trip helped drive home in a tangible way that 1) my experience of going through the world was not the same as everyone else’s, and 2) that that body of experience, that history that each of us had, was going to lead us to view the same situations very differently.

These concepts weren’t hard for me to get, not just because I had friends of color, but because of what I’d been experiencing in my own life and career, starting with graduate school. Since moving to New York to become a filmmaker six years earlier, I’d often had this feeling that I was being treated differently, but in ways so hard to prove, even to myself, that I'd mostly just accepted it was all in my head. When guys I’d shot films for as a first year at NYU, who’d been really happy with my work, instead chose the same other guy to shoot for them in second year, I chalked it up to my not being “technical enough,” or not having the confident decisiveness to take charge of the set the way the DP was supposed to — until I realized that no women were shooting films for men at all, unless they were their girlfriends. When I arrived on professional sets, it started sinking in more and more that men really were always telling me to smile, or offering to “help” me with my job when their jobs were unrelated to mine and I hadn’t asked for their help, or treating me as an object of flirtation, even if they were my superiors. I eventually learned to handle all of that by being more tolerant, competent, and professional than they were, but what I had the hardest time with was what I cared about the most: sending out scripts, or soliciting constructive feedback from peers in writing workshops, and receiving constant rejection or rude/patronizing remarks. Okay sure, cruelty is considered par for the course in a business where success is so elusive and so coveted that people are just expected to accept all kinds of abuse — verbal, sexual, physical — in order to get somewhere. But that only makes it more infuriating when there are additional comments or obstacles that other people don’t seem to be dealing with. Like when I wrote a film about a friendship between two teenaged girls, and one of the men in my writing group couldn’t understand the point of the script unless they had a lesbian relationship. Or when I submitted a script to a production company and the coverage I received said that the reader had no interest in the story, which featured two female main characters and one love interest who was a man of color, until the second love interest, a white guy, showed up. Yeah, that's when things got good, he said. I was starting to see that I was stuck in a system where the white male arbiters of good and bad had all the power not just to decide whether my work was one or the other, but to define what the terms “good” and “bad” even meant. So it was easy for them to claim — and fully believe — that the failure of women to scale their ranks wasn’t due to our gender, it was due to their inability to master “the craft.” All they had to say was, “I couldn't get into the story,” or, “I didn't care about the characters,” and those were considered legitimate critiques based on merit, when of course there was way, way, way…basically everything more to it than that.

This is what makes unequal treatment such a hard thing to pinpoint: it has everything to do with who’s distinguishing and quantifying “good” and “bad” in an entrenched system. So it's only when you look at the big picture over time, quantified in data, and see the work of women and people of color highly underrepresented in nearly every area of the arts — music, painting, sculpture, literature, theater, cinema, etc — that you can see discrimination is happening because the system itself is fucked.

What I was going through wasn’t the same as what my friends from that trip were going through, not at all. Each of us is a different person. But we all knew that we were being treated differently, based on countless experiences we’d had that added up. And we knew, because we’d experienced that too, that the kind of discrimination we were dealing with was so insidious and damaging precisely because people who hadn’t faced it were going to scoff and chalk it up to something entirely innocuous, and say it didn’t even exist.

I was reminded of all this last weekend, when I watched the women’s final of the 2018 U.S. Open. I don’t think most people would say that Serena Williams behaved perfectly when she argued with umpire Carlos Ramos and then later broke her racket when she threw it down in anger. But the question is not whether she did something wrong, it’s whether she was treated differently. Of course you can say that Ramos was just following the rules, that she shouldn’t be getting special treatment because she’s the great Serena Williams, and that plenty of men have been penalized like she was — with articles like this jumping on opportunities to bring all of that up and say “What about…?” But if you dig a little deeper, you find way more examples of white men behaving worse in less important matches, even toward that same umpire, and not having him penalize them so severely as to ruin a tournament final for everyone involved. In other words, yes, there are rules, but if they aren’t applied in the same way across the board, we are back at “He said, she said,” and it's always the “He said” that comes first. Always.

The Whatabouters always say, “Why does everything have to be about race/sex?” Well, yeah, it’d be great not to have to talk about discrimination, but you can’t when it won’t leave you alone – even when you’re arguably the best athlete in the world. If you’re a woman and/or a person of color, your experience has told you that it nearly always is about that. It just is. Then the Whatabouters say, “Then you’re asking for special treatment when you break the rules.” Well, that’s because the rules, by which I mean all of the laws of this country dating back to the Constitution, were, from the very beginning, designed to treat women and people of color differently – creating a world in which the norm is special treatment for white men. Again, it just is.

And how often have our laws and rules that were not designed to be unfair been applied evenly and fairly? Let’s face it, the U.S. Open’s got nothing on the American justice system. Why do we refuse to recognize that when fallible people who do “bad” have to be punished, and when other fallible humans are doing the judging about how “bad” they are, there's going to be all sorts of bias and unequal treatment? If the recent news isn’t convincing to you, we’ve now got data to prove that Black people are much more likely to be on the receiving end of police violence; have been far more likely to receive the death penalty in capital cases; that crack users in the 80s, who were more often Black, received far stiffer sentences than white users of powdered cocaine; that Black people were far more likely be searched and arrested for possession of marijuana than white people (two of the reasons, in case you were wondering, why so many more people of color have been incarcerated en mass during the War on Drugs); and that Black schoolchildren are likely to be more severely punished, suspended, or even have the cops called on them than white children for the same transgressive behavior.

And systems by which people are considered “good,” like at their jobs, and promoted? Again, completely dependent on the fallible judgments of those in power, so that only in the aggregate can we see how Black employees receive extra scrutiny from their bosses, Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to be promoted to management positions, women are punished and considered “bad” at their jobs for traits that are considered “good” in men, like ambition, speaking up, or doing too well in school; and how, of course, women of color are the least likely to be supported or promoted for equally good work.

I know what the Whatabouters are saying now: “Yes, people in the past were wrong, but now, moving forward, we’re the ones trying to treat everyone the same.” Um, really? We’re supposed to believe that? We’ve had this whole lifetime of experience that tells us otherwise, and you’re dismissing that, again? You’re claiming that, at long last, in this tennis match, or court of law, or screenwriting competition, or job review, or state senate, when it comes down to questions of “rules” and “fairness” and “objectivity,” we should continue to just trust the white guys? Yeah, right.

If you’ve been wondering why so many women and people of color are running for office this election season, well, here you go: we’re just sick of being treated differently. For a long time, we’ve trusted the white guys who say they’re going to fix things and finally respect our rights the same way they respect their own. Now we’re finally deciding that the only way things are going to change is for us to get in there and make the rules, and apply them ourselves.

Can you blame us?

8 notes · View notes

snarktheater · 6 years

Text

Ready Player One — Level Two (Chapters 26-27)

“I figured it out later that night, a few hours after Shoto left my stronghold.”

See, when I said that Wade making a mistake in the search for the Jade Key didn’t prove the book understands character flaw, I didn’t think the book would literally have Wade go back to having a random, convenient epiphany for the next step in the Easter Egg hunt. This book is the gift that keeps on giving, in that I rarely have to go very far to elaborate on my arguments: usually, all I need to do is turn the page.

The epiphany, by the way, happened because Wade was randomly folding the wrapper the Jade Key came in, and suddenly remember there’s a scene with a unicorn origami in Blade Runner.

The moment I said the word “unicorn” aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand.

…Okay, sure. That’s nice, I guess.

From this, Wade decides that the “test” mentioned on the Jade Key must be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. The book also exposits to us what that is, and what Blade Runner is. And while the book does mention the movie’s based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, I’m not getting the impression that Wade has read it. I mean, it doesn’t even mention at any point (in this chapter or anywhere in the book) the phrase “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Anyway. There’s a convenient re-creation of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner as part of the OASIS standard planet-building kit, meaning that building (and the Voight-Kampff test located in it) can be found on any number of planet. Do I really still need to call attention to the fact that the planet-building tool apparently contains hundreds of other assets similarly taken from existing properties, or have I made my point clear enough about the death of originality in this book yet?

So, Wade goes to the closest planet that features one such replica, Axrenox. It doesn’t matter what that planet is. Actually, not much of anything matters. I mean, the book spends a whole paragraph telling us about how Wade hopes nobody will steal his ship while it’s parked on Axrenox, but—spoiler alert—nobody will. I’m calling attention to it because it’s the second time Wade has expressed worry that someone would steal his transportation method, and the second time nothing comes of it. At some point you have to ask if someone’s not projecting a little too much. And I don’t mean the fictional character here.

Speaking of things that don’t matter: writing a good action scene as Wade goes through the replicants that guard the place. Because, yes, the planet-building kit includes guards in the building too.

The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer.

Shitty writing aside, I want to point out that the book really shows how much it understands Blade Runner’s theme and central message by…treating the replicants as disposable mooks in a John Woo movie. Like, sure, they’re constructs in a video game, but still. Good job.

Speaking of not understanding the point, remember how the clue was like “take the test”? Yeah, if you know what the Voight-Kampff test is, you might have gotten a little enthusiastic there, since that test is meant to ascertain the ability to empathize with others. Which would be hilarious to see Wade Watts take. Sadly, no, the test only acts as a gateway to a 3D recreation of a video game that Wade has already mastered.

I honestly feel like it’d be insulting to you if I were to recap what happens next in detail. It’s a game. Halliday dropped a hint at it in his will video, which is mentioned to justify Wade being a master at the game. There’s another case of the book using romaji to transcribe the title of the game in Japanese, even though, again, that name is just English words written with Japanese characters and phonotactics. There’s still no tension; I mean, we literally go from Wade explaining the rules of the simulation and how he can’t leave to…

I managed to clear all eight levels of the game in just under three hours.

Oh, sure, after that he tells us how he got close to dying at one point. Like…thanks for telling me I should have been worried in the time you skipped.

At the end of the trial, he gets to choose a giant robot from fiction from a list (some of which already crossed out due to being picked by the Sixers).

I stopped cold when I saw Leopardon, the giant transforming robot used by Supaidaman, the incarnation of Spider-Man who appeared on Japanese TV in the late 1970s. I’d discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn’t care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless.

Okay, so, I just rambled about the romaji, so I won’t do it again here, though you should know it still annoys me. But I will say I’m pleasantly surprised that Wade actually made a decision derived from passion for something. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen.

Anyway. Wade gets a toy replica of the Leopardon, and with that, he’s now cleared the Second Gate, and receives a hint to the Crystal Key’s location, in the form of a logo of a star inside a circle. This sounds like a pretty generic symbol, but Wade recognizes it. Probably because, if you look it up, it is actually distinct enough:

It just so happens the book describes it really poorly:

Then a symbol slowly appeared in the center of the screen: a glowing red circle with a five-pointed star inside it. The points of the star extended just beyond the outer edge of the circle.

The book skips over Wade leaving the Tyrell building, by the way. I guess the guards only prevent you from entering? I don’t know, because the book won’t tell me. Once he’s back on his ship…wait, I’ve gotta point this out:

And thanks be to Crom, the Vonnegut was still parked right where I’d left it, its cloaking device still engaged.

I already mentioned the ship would not in fact get stolen, but…“thanks be to Crom”? This isn’t even something he’s done until now. It’s just a random reference out of the blue.

Back to the plot. The red star and the image I just showed you are from a music album, 2112 by the band Rush. I don’t know anything about them, but the album is apparently about…

a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.

So…like this book’s world, then?

Wade somehow knows exactly which lyrics on the album are relevant to finding the Crystal Key: a passage about the “Priests of the Temple of Syrinx”, because there’s a planet Syrinx somewhere in the OASIS with a temple in it. And by “a temple” I mean 1024 copies of the city described in the album’s supplemental material. Because copy-paste is an excellent substitute for good ideas. You know, between this, the planet with hundreds of copies of Halliday’s hometown, the planet with hundreds of copies of that text adventure game, and oh, the fact that the game’s planet-building tool contains hundreds of licensed assets. I mean, you can make the technology to run a lifelike VR simulation, but procedural generation and original art assets are both out of reach?

No, I will never stop being angry about this. It’s lazy writing and lazy in-universe, and it heavily undermines the idea that the OASIS somehow dominated the market. I mean, think about it: right now, the videogame market’s latest trend is Battle Royale games. The first game that managed to put the genre where it is is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but because it lacked any original assets—and was frankly shoddily made because it was rushed into early release in order to be the first out—it was easily outdone by Fortnite, a game with a more competent team and actually creative people working on it, specifically because the concept alone isn’t going to make a game win on the market (and it also makes for very weak ground to sue people for copyright infringement once they beat you, Bluehole).

A concept can be replicated—don’t ever believe the myth of the indispensable lone genius, i.e. Halliday in this case, there’s always someone else, or a group of people, who can replicate your idea and probably improve on it while they’re at it. So I cannot for even a minute believe that there isn’t someone who couldn’t make the OASIS, except, you know, better. Hell, that’s what IOI should do, instead of investing loads of money into a contest to take over the OASIS with a very low chance of success.

Ahem. I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I? Well, that’s okay, because the actual action is as stilted as usual. Wade lands on the planet, and I guess IOI didn’t attempt to leave people to guard it or anything so he’s all alone. He finds the temple mentioned in the song, and figures he has to make an offering at the altar. Luckily, he instantly knows what other lyrics of the album are relevant, and they lead him to a secret cave behind a waterfall. If you think I’m rushing through the scene…barely. It takes him a paragraph to search the cave, for instance. The book’s as uninterested in this as I am. Which…you know, it shouldn’t be.

What does he find in the secret room in the secret cave, you ask? An electric guitar. It’s another reference to the album, but also, it’s stuck in a stone.

I grinned at the absurd Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times, so it seemed obvious what I should do next.

Yes, really. Apparently Arthurian legends are no longer widely known and the only reference Wade has is a specific movie adaptation of the mythos. Because that makes sense.

So Wade gets the special guitar, and it turns out he knows how to play it (in the OASIS, that is), and he’s randomly inspired to play the song 2112, even though there isn’t really anything prompting him to do. But it’s lucky, because it makes another clue show up:

The first was ringed in red metal The second, in green stone The third is clearest crystal and cannot be unlocked alone

Had the Sixers played the song and discovered this message? I seriously doubted it. They would have pulled the guitar from the stone and immediately returned it to the temple.

Yeah, so, because Wade played the guitar for no clear reason, Wade now has an advantage over the Sixers. Thanks, author puppetmaster! It’s not like giving characters a clear motivation to do what they do is difficult or useful to reinforce the book’s verisimilitude!

I mean, for real. Would it really be so hard to say Wade just…felt like playing the special guitar before he offered it at the altar in the table? It’s really not that hard.

Also, what the fuck is up with that hint? No, really. Now Halliday wants to encourage cooperation in his contest? Don’t you think it’s a little too late? Also, why do that at the last stage? Does that mean multiple people will get the egg at the same time…by design? That’s not gonna backfire at all.

Anyway, Wade returns the guitar to the temple, and when he puts it on the altar, it turns into the Crystal Key as planned.

my score on the Scoreboard increased by 25,000 points. When added to the 200,000 I’d received for clearing the Second Gate, that brought my total score up to 353,000 points, one thousand points more than Sorrento. I was back in first place.

As a hint for the location of the Third Gate, Wade only gets a stylized A. It’s actually the symbol of Halliday’s avatar Anorak—and of his castle. Because of course he has a castle in the OASIS.

the castle was impregnable and always had been. No avatar but Anorak himself had ever been able to pass through its entrance. But now I knew there must be a way to enter Castle Anorak. Because the Third Gate was hidden somewhere inside.

You know, Halliday making his own impregnable location inside of his own game explains a lot about why the OASIS is so permissive towards griefers. It was made by one.

Speaking of griefers, now that someone else has found the Crystal Key, guess who made an impenetrable dome around Castle Anorak? Yep, it’s the Sixers! And yes, there’s an artefact that lets you create a literally impenetrable barrier around a location in the OASIS. Again, who designs this?

The news of this soon reaches the gunter and clans, who all converge on the planet Chthonia, even though, you know, they don’t have the Crystal Key yet. But in spite of being in a really bad spot, Wade decides not to give up this time. I mean, it’s not like the Sixers having the exact same advantage (exclusive access to the Third Gate) didn’t make him fantasize about committing suicide three chapters ago or anything. That’s character consistency right there.

Yes, I’m still bitter that the book went there.

I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.

Well considering how the rest of the book has gone, I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat here.

So Wade emails Artemis, Aech and Shoto the location of the Second Gate and the Crystal Key, and prepares to put the rest of his plan in motion, while the book attempts to end “Level Two” on a cliffhanger.

Once I was sure all three of them had received my message, I initiated the next phase of my plan. This was the part that terrified me, because I knew there was a good chance it was going to end up getting me killed. But at this point, I no longer cared. I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.

I did say “attempts to”. I mean, this is the first time Wade actually has a plan, and the “reach it or die trying” has sort of been his MO so far. But hey. Nice attempt.

#ready player one #ernest cline #book reviews #ya books #young adult #books #young adult books #ya #reviews #book #book review #review #st: ready player one

10 notes · View notes

nerdolopedia-blog · 6 years

Text

The Importance of Histories in Fantasy Worlds

On some occasions I stumble into a fandom, get a glimpse, and walk out. This is either because I don’t find it as interesting or the fan base is incredibly intense. This is how I felt with The Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth. I have seen all the movies (and at the time of writing not the extended editions) and read the Hobbit when I was younger. As I venture deeper into the world of fantasy writing, I have realized that I know very little about some of the roots of our modern day fantasy culture. So I started reading Lord of the Rings. At the time of writing I am nearly done with Fellowship of the Ring.

I now find myself way too deep to get out. It’s gotten to the point that I started looking up YouTube videos about the lore of Tolkien’s universe. I am even now motivated to get through the three volumes of Lord of the Rings simply so I can get to The Silmarillion. Why? Because I am obsessed with how deep the lore is in his universe. Not just that, but the amount of history the world seems to bleed. It made me realize something really important about worlds, one that I had only touched on because of player questions. Why do certain “man”-made things exist the way they do?

I have though hard on the ecologies of my world and work very hard at answering why certain natural things exist the way they do, because history has less impact on them. I only has impact in events that change habitats, and those are much quicker to answer. However for man-made structures this can become much more of a rabbit hole because there is so much history behind even a single ruin.

History Creates Meaning

I’m going to keep coming back to ancient ruins because it’s something that I love to work with. They are ancient places often shrouded in mystery with unknown creatures inhabiting them. They are places of danger and adventure. However slapping a ruin down in a location because you want to have that adventure is just lazy, and honestly will come off quite flat.

Adding history to the ruins will help you in constructing something far more meaningful and mysterious. I’m going to take the ruins of Osgiliath from The Lord of the Rings as my example. From various sources I uncovered that there is a history to the place, one that is actually really interesting and explains a lot about the motivations of individuals. It used to be a grand place that more or less had a large string of tragedies befall it until it withered, died, and then ruined. Why were the people of Gondor trying to fight for it? Because it had meaning to them. That meaning had a long history of those people.

If you have a place that is considered sacred, or a lost temple to some god, or even a lost mine, consider the history behind the place. This lets you build specific features into these locations. Perhaps the grove is sacred because during a long ago war, an Ent sacrificed itself to seal away an ancient evil and now a great tree rests where it fell, and that felling the great tree would unleash the evil. For a lost temple, why is it lost? Was there a massive rockslide that isolated it from the world or some event that cause the monks to seal themselves away? For a mine when was it lost? This would tell the style and age of garments. Did the mine collapse? Maybe the awakening of some ancient being caused the entrance to collapse sealing the workers inside. There is so much more I can expand on this but the more history you have to the place the more you can flush it out and make it seem real.

Past Conflicts Create Current Grudges

We all know that Dwarves hate Elves and Elves hate Dwarves, but why? As much as I would like to blame kale, it most definitely is not the reason. This is one of those common tropes we pull from Tolkien’s world without much thought as to why. If you dig into it Tolkien actually has an explanation. There is real history in their grudges, a series of events that lead to mutual distrust. Sticking in grudges for the sake of having grudges gives no depth and no emotion to those grudges and makes them out to feel empty and the character just like a jerk.

These past conflicts can be simple misunderstandings or breakdown of communications. By having it be a simple solution it is entirely possible to include this in your games to allow two groups to make amends or at least start down the road toward it. The past conflict could be central to your plot. Something like a disagreement over possession of a dangerous artifact that happened behind closed doors could lead to conflict, with the true reason being hidden from public view.

An Aside on Racism

In my example I use different races of people in these grudges. This will come off as racism and is a heated debate within the RPG community. Some insist on using it because its part of the history while others want to do away with it all together. I am using this example largely because it is the most well known grudges between two large groups of people to help me illustrate a point. I do not want to tackle the problems with racism in games in this article and I don’t believe I am qualified to be able to do the topic justice.

Characters Create History, and Vice Versa

Just like histories help flush out places, so do they create places for people. Too often when writing histories have I had to include a notable person(s). Often I will leave the name blank as I am working on the history as a whole, but they are key to that history. Who Gandalf the Grey and the Balrogs are gives great meaning to their motivations. A civil war cannot be fought because an adventure calls for it. It has to have people who are upset with what one faction is doing. The people have no reason to revolt if the King isn’t cruel or unwanted by the people. No one goes around thinking “You know, maybe we should have a revolution”.

Why don’t they think that? Because there is history leading up to strife. While people cause events to happen, those events affect other individuals. This is a never ending cycle of cause and effect that we call history. In reality if you look at our actual history, this is what happens ALL THE TIME. You want to get better at writing histories in your fantasy world, pick up a history book or go watch stuff on YouTube. Those can be more entertaining and consumable.

Now this isn’t the end of it. We also get the cases where historical events create a character down the timeline. A country that is punished for war crimes has someone just zealous enough who is suffering from the punishment that they rise up to create even MORE conflict. Sound familiar? If not that’s fine. This is basically what happened with Germany and the rise of Hitler.

Artifacts of the Past

This is the topic of history I feel I see the most of when it comes to RPGs. The idea is that the magic items and artifacts you find in game have a history to them. Heck Tolkien’s work does exactly that with several of the magic swords that they find. Glamdring, the sword that Gandalf carries, belonged to an ancient elven King. The goblins are even terrified of it. Why? Because that sword has a past, clearly the sword was used in some way against the goblins that THOUSANDS of years after its creation that they recognize it and fear it. When writing your histories think of significant objects that were used in the execution of events. Just look at Christianity. How many artifacts have come just out of the story of Jesus? The nails that stuck him to the cross, the crown of thorns, the spearhead that pierced his heart. Heck the Holy Grail is a prime example of this. History makes these artifacts a symbol of past events and potential shapers of the future. What about the story of Excalibur? I think I could go on for pages of actual historical artifacts but I hope you get my point.

This gets even more interesting when you start to introduce sentient magic items. When an item knows its own past and can inform the wielder of this past, this can create for some amazing story hooks for finding a magical sword buried in a ruin. This doesn’t mean that you need to create a history for every magic item. After all I don’t need a complete history of how a normal potion of healing is located at a shop. Or maybe it can, if you have the setting for it.

Technology Shapes History

In our world we are making constant advancements in technology. It is impossible to say that the advent of new technology would not shape its history. Since I have not delved that deep into the Tolkien universe I can’t say that I know of any examples directly from his world. However I will bring up a different universe that does: Avatar the Last Airbender. In it, there is a clear delineation of power (in the grand scheme of things) between the Fire nation and the other nations. While this does change over the course of the show, the history of the world showed that their advancements in technology (even if powered by relatively primitive means) gave them a leg up in conquering the world.

Now for some real world examples! One of the earliest examples (that I can recall) is the advent of the Chariot in its uses for war. It was a game changer because you could have two people riding for the price of one horse, a driver, and a bowman. If having to charge a bowman on foot wasn’t terrifying enough, now add the fact that they are in a large wooden cart being pulled by a horse AND they are shooting at you. Unless you have a chariot of your own there isn’t much hope of you catching them without dying. And thus the early arms race began! However that isn’t much the point. What this causes is a complete change in the way we fight wars, or get around for that matter. Chariots were created around a 1000 years before they became tools of war.

For something less war oriented let's look at one of my favorite: the printing press. This revolutionized our ability to spread information more reliably. Before the printing press we had to duplicate text BY HAND. For anyone who has written for long periods of time you know how painful this can actually be. I’m not sure I can actually quantify in words just how impactful the printing press is to society and yet it is a real question that we need to ask ourselves when creating our fantasy histories.

The Natural World Shapes History

For those who have even the slightest knowledge of history have probably heard the story of Pompeii, a roman city that was buried beneath the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D. While I am no historian, it is difficult to say that to a society that was so closely religious that the loss of Pompeii had no significance to the people of Rome. It could have been that the fall of Pompeii only solidified religious beliefs that the gods were willing to dole out punishment.

Since we exist in the natural world it is impossible to deny that it impacts our history. What foods are available, what natural disasters occur, what terrain is there that protects us (or lacks protection) from invaders? How many different flood stories come up in the various myths and legends? The ancient civilization of Egypt was centralized on the Nile river and much of their ways of life and belief systems stemmed from the river. Going back to Tolkien the ruins of Osgiliath were located on a river, that river plays into its history and defense.

Conclusion

History is a complex and mysterious topic that we struggle with in our real world. The benefit of writing a fantasy world is that you can fill in all the details even if you don’t bring them to light for your readers as these histories will impact portions of your world. Creating histories for existing elements of your world may help you determine the impact it has on other elements of your world as well. It brings a level of depth and immersion for the more curious players and readers in your world.

#History #fantasy #ruins #technology #characters #Lord of the Rings #Osgiliath #grudges #conflict #natural world

1 note · View note

tessatechaitea · 7 years

Text

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #19

Hal Jordan and His Army of Penises #19.

Oh yeah! Right there! Time dilations subsiding!

I'm so angry about the direction our country is headed right now that I'm sort of willing to die in a nuclear holocaust just so my last words can be, "I told you, you fucking garbage morons!" Obviously Soranik can tell the race of an alien by touching its genitalia. She determines Rip Hunter is human and that he likes smooth jazz. I'm assuming that's the only kind of music that comes out of Yellow Light Construct Headphones. Hal Jordan screams, "Human?!" My guess is Rip is uncircumcised so Hal didn't recognize the massive sea cucumber between his legs. "Where is the little mushroom cap?!" he pondered. Actually, Hal's main concern is that Rip stole the Green Lantern ring from another human. Hal is stupid. We've had decades of comic books detailing just how stupid Hal is. People like to say he's brash or stubborn or pigheaded but he's really just stupid. Do you want some evidence? Everybody now knows Rip Hunter came out of a temporal anomaly (the rings said so!) so there's really no reason to think this human stole this Green Lantern ring from another human. He could be a future Green Lantern, you fucking asshat. I was calling Hal Jordan a fucking asshat but if you thought I was calling you one, just hang on. I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later. Everybody cares about something that I don't give a shit about and sooner or later, I'm going to tear into your favorite thing. Hal fails to "rip" the ring off Rip Hunter's finger so John steps in and says, "Let me do it, Hal! As you know, the Green Lantern Corps is a despotic, fascist, authoritarian organization which means I have the ability to remove the ring from any fucking piece of shit lantern I deem a fuck up and a waste." He then says the override code and steals Rip Hunter's ring. Fuck the Green Lanterns. Although I bet even these cumsharters have health care coverage through their organization.

"Oh shit! So that's what temporal anomaly means!"

Rip Hunter's message from the future is that time has been corrupted and 2047 isn't the way 2047 is supposed to be. But there's still a chance to fix it here in 2017! How many fangenders reading this comic book have just scooted out to the edge of their seat and possibly stuck a hand down the front of their pants at this revelation? If you did, get the fuck off my blog! I am tired — oh so very fucking tired — you know, exhausted — with people traveling through time to fix time. Just knock it off! If the 2047 Rip visited is different than the 2047 than Rip expected then Rip needs to realize he's just in one of the infinite numbers of timelines. You don't go back in time to fix the timeline you're not happy with. You sidestep into a different timeline! One where everything is how you expected it to be! Being that there are infinite numbers of timelines, you're always going to have the timeline that needs fixing. Because it exists right next door the timeline you're happy with. It also exists two timelines down from the timeline where women are allowed to walk around topless. When Rip discovers that it's 2017, he points out that there's still time to fix the future. A few panels later, after only discovering the year, he declares they have one day to save all space and time. Or maybe just the Green Lantern Corps. It's really a toss-up as to which it is since superheroes basically only deal with two kinds of problems in the modern age: save the entire everything or save themselves. Meanwhile, Space Ape and Gorin-sunn aren't as dead as I expected them to be. They have been thoroughly trounced by Prism Beasts and now must suck the dick of some guy with an evil beard and an alternate timeline Nightwing costume. He says he's from the future and that he's going to mend it all. So I guess he's a good guy like Rip just trying to save time! His name is Sarko because Venditti was having a bad day in the imagination booth when he came up with it. Sarko gives Space Ape and Gorin-sunn a future lesson. Apparently the Yellow Lanterns will eventually lay down their rings to pick up Green Lantern rings. That makes sense because who wants police who utilize fear to do their jobs? But apparently Sarko doesn't like that the Sinestro Corps have become antiquated symbols of disgrace and failure. So he's kind of like a guy who sews a Confederate Flag into his jean jacket. He's proud of a heritage he really needs to think twice about. So Sarko has come from a future that he thinks needs changing and Rip has come from an apparently different future that he thinks needs changing. I mean, I suppose this comic book wants the reader to believe that Sarko has already won and the future has been rewritten simply because Sarko came back in time but since Rip came back in time to fix it, why wasn't the future fixed already? Oh, because time travel stories almost always suck logical dick. And don't you dare start explaining it to me in the boring, normal way you're supposed to understand it! I know how writers use time travel and the way they think it works! I don't need your fucking Actually Nerd interpretations to set me straight. I'm reporting the way things should be but they never are because writers write the way readers expect! Or something. Just...just...get off my blog!

Sure, that's how time works. But that's just the way time works! Whatever you do now will be the cause of whatever happens in the future. And guess what? You can't change it! You never did anything except react to Rip Hunter coming back from the future. You never had a different present! So the future is and always has been the aftereffects of whatever you choose to do now thanks to Rip coming back from the future and telling you that you need to change the future. Which can't really be changed since it's just a present that hasn't happened yet.

Look, Kyle brings up the perfect movie to understand time travel. In Terminator, there are no time paradoxes. There are no alternate timelines. There are no futures that can be changed by going into the past. What happens in the future happens exactly because the robots sent a robot into the past and the humans sent a human back to stop it. Without out that happening, no John Conner. But it happened in order to kill John Conner. That's not a paradox. That's a perfectly knit time quilt. Everything always happens the way they happen. One timeline perfectly in sync. So knock it off with all these people from terrible futures coming to the past to fix things and then having the things fixed. It's fucking stupid bullshit. Although! These stories have their own internal logic as well. It's just that they matter a whole lot less than you would think. And when you realize how they work, you realize it's all wasted effort. If Rip Hunter traveled to the past from a 2047 that sucked, he didn't wind up in the 2017 of that particular 2047. His arrival caused a split timeline which changes everything and veers off on its own direction. Which means the 2047 that he came back in time to save still exists and still sucks and will never be saved. But at least they don't have to worry about that asshole Rip Hunter anymore! So see? If time travel works this way, why bother going back in time at all? I suppose to save yourself, if you're not a Time Master who just gallivants all over time creating offshoot timelines like so many bastard children. I mean, sure! If I were in a sucky 2017 (which I totally am), I would absolutely go back in time and arrive in a totally new timeline that will change simply because I'm now a part of it. Although I might have to kill my other self if I want to seamlessly fit in. I suppose that would depend on how far back I went. Suddenly trying to be a twelve year old me probably wouldn't fool many people at this point. The time travel nonsense was over pages ago so I'll stop ranting about it. Eventually, the Prism Beasts descend on Mogo. Hal says to John, "You're a grower, John, but I'm a show-er!" Then he flies off into the sky with his army of penises in an attempt to destroy the Prism Beasts. But as was shown earlier, they're immune to Spectrum Light. So they're like about 95% of everything else in the universe? Immune to the greatest weapon in the universe? And of course the other 5% that is susceptible to Green Lantern light usually get lucky and the rings lose all their charge during the battle. Unsurprisingly to everyone (and especially to Carol Ferris), Hal's penis army fails at its intended job. The Ranking! No change. I'm not sure why I continue to read comic books when a majority of them use common comic book plots that I despise. It's like writers think it's okay to just shorthand every script. "Readers like familiarity! Also it's easy to write a story they've read five hundred times already!" So here we go again. Somebody from the future wants to change the past and somebody else from the future drops by to tell the people of the present, "Hey! There's this future that currently sucks and there's this guy who's the reason for it. You should probably stop him." Then everybody in the present goes, "Okay! Sounds legit!"

#Hal Jordan #Green Lantern Corps #Robert Venditti #V. Ken Marion #Dexter Vines #Dinei Ribeiro

1 note · View note

someplace-that-is-else · 7 years

Text

Warren Ellis’s Excalibur: Joys (and Curses) of Side Characters

I really used to love comic books.

I was a big X-Men collector back in the late ‘90s. The very-detailed costumes on the superheroes. The multiple part crossovers. And usually, writers had nice long runs on the books. And I followed the writers, not so much the artists. Okay, Ken Lashley…but…lol.

One of the runs that has always stuck with me was the British writer Warren Ellis’s run on Excalibur.

In hindsight, I could honestly admit that Excalibur never got a fair shake with fans, including myself. Most fans only saw the book as a place for third-tier superheroes. Yes, a lot of x-fans loved Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers Phoenix…but they were so separated from where they started from that no one took them seriously. That is…until Warren Ellis brought a sharp, dark direction to the series with the first arc of his run, titled the Soulsword Trilogy. Not only did it focus on Shadowcat, the girl next door of the X-men family, but it used an old plot thread to reestablish the books’ connection to the main x-books of that time.

It was just a roller coaster from there. An awesome one at that. What stood out for me was an interview that he gave during that time where he talked about the characters and how he chose to approach the characters. He wanted them to be the European X-men. Not weak, secondary characters, but equal to the X-men proper. And a team was only as strong as each member. Ellis throughout his run took each character and developed them. So strong was his development that when the book reached issue 100…there was no doubt that this was a powerful team due to all the character/plot development that he had established from his first issue (issue 83) to that point. Third-tier no more, they took on a London Hellfire Club as a team with no weak links.

That got me thinking about side characters. My Darkenverse had a lot amount of them. The more books that I wrote, the more I had.

But was that a good thing?

JOYS OF A SIDE CHARACTER

A character is only as good as the supporting characters around them.

Sometimes a side character could be used to bring your character into focus. The arc for my character Aidan in Darkchilde has to do with him dealing with his witch heritage. The side character Bethanny was a foil for that, a woman who continued to challenge Aidan throughout the novel. There were times when she was wrong of course. But there were times when Aidan saw that she was indeed right, and he had to deal with his past…and his mother.

A side character could also be a catalyst for action to occur if your novel should…shall we say stall? Ebony in Darkened Soul started my main character Daniel exploring the world of the Nosferatu by her very appearance. Since his lover/creator Jared disliked being around the Nosferatu world…INSTANT CONFLICT!!! Bonus…it propelled the plot (why was Daniel hidden from his kind?) toward its reveal.

But of course, a side character should not be only one dimensional. And sometimes they are not. Jonathan Araby was a Nosferatu who has some answers to Daniel’s questions in Darkened Soul. His scenes are few and far in-between. However, his way with words and his general vibe revealed a hidden depth that the book only lightly rubbed up against. Best of all, when readers of Darkened Soul have talked to me, they mention Jonathan specifically. They felt it.

But of course, side characters also could be a problem…

CURSE OF A SIDE CHARACTER…

It happened across all forms of media…whether it was a book, a tv show, a movie, etc.

You know it.

There was the main character. And also there was the side character usually, a sidekick. And eventually, the sidekick started to get a bit of their own story. Then…the sidekick became more important than the main character.

My Darkenverse was no different. Darkchilde was a prime example. While the main characters were Ebony and Aidan, the main one was Ebony. In the process of writing Darkchilde, it felt like more and more of the major information was occurring in Aidan’s sections of the novel. Meanwhile, Ebony only appeared to be dealing with who to pick: Nicholas, the vicious rogue Nosferatu or Victor, the deadly and passionate Latino Nosferatu. The main theme of Darkchilde was identity. In Ebony’s case it was the question of when one was the person who held the people around them together…what happened when they were no longer needed.

Or what happened when there was a side character that was introduced as a way of revealing part of the plot and said character took off? Again, Darkchilde was a prime example of this in form of Antonio. There was no one like him in my Darkenverse before, a Nosferatu in transition from human looking to the Nosferatu a person would see in that old silent movie or even Blade 2 who was in the thrusts of insanity. He had been a beautiful way to reveal the main plot of the novel aka why Ebony and Aidan were being attacked.

Then he appeared again. Unexpectedly.

I knew he would be at the masquerade party in the middle of the novel. So imagine my surprise (and Ebony’s) when he appeared in her suite at the hotel in a scene right out of Hellraiser. A dish of madness and horror. Clearly, there was interest on my part as a writer. Then when he met up with another of my side characters Epiphany, it was love (?) at first bite. They winded up having a little side plot in Darkchilde.

So what did one do when your side characters appear to take over?

COMPROMISING WITH SIDE CHARACTERS

By the time Warren Ellis finished his run on Excalibur, there was no one really who had not had any development except for (debatedly) Nightcrawler’s girlfriend Daytripper. All of the characters could stand on their own with their own story. The characters could also come together and form a powerful force, no one interchangeable. Watching a master work, constructing such a series from the ground up and seeing fresh and inventive ideas was such an inspiration to me growing up. I never forgot it. In fact, usually when I moved, Warren Ellis’s run was a run that I usually moved with.

So…I had to do the same. As the writer, I had to be able to use the knowledge of my side characters to know what was best for my books.

In the rewrite process for Darkchilde, Ebony’s past came more to the forefront. I had given hints in the first draft. In Darkened Soul, I had made a hint about a college experience with Ebony. In Darkchilde, I dove into it even more, fleshing it out through flashbacks. And those flashbacks were so developed that it revealed more her character. As I went back to writing the novel in normal time, Ebony felt more centered and less overshadowed by Aidan. I had found the way to strengthen her character.

That was the way to my side characters…compromise.

Jonathan Araby had depth. The exploration of that depth turned into Darkened Soul: Jonathan’s Tale. Epiphany showed an interest in Antonio and no time to explore because it took away from the main story? That was something I would be exploring in a forthcoming novella. Antonio kept randomly popping up, revealing hints about himself itching to be exploring? As I mentioned in my blog A Tale of Three ( http://someplace-that-is-else.tumblr.com/post/155053536518/a-tale-of-three-writing-update-12-27-16 ), I was working on a new Darkenverse short story collection. A lot of Antonio’s history would be explained in that.

So not only was I dealing with my characters one by one, I was getting new books out of it as well.

#winning

As for a team, I admitted there was one thing that I liked very much. The moment when Ebony and Aidan found met in the Bond Club, a Goth techno club that recurred in my novels. The fact that Ebony and Nicholas had been in one section of the novel while Aidan had been with Epiphany and icy Bethanny, and now they met? And from there, it was off to a dangerous night at a masquerade.

Superteam unite!!!

#warrenellis #excalibur tumblr #sidecharacters #sidepieces #writing #tales #joy #curse #marvelcomics #comics #comicbooks #darkenedsoul #darkchilde #epiphany #ebony #aidan #antonio #nosferatu #masquerade #superteam #hellraiser #compromise #xmen

#warrenellis #excalibur #tumblr #side character #sidepieces #writing #joy #curse #marvelcomics #comics #darkenedsoul #hellraiser #compromises #xmen #nosferatu #epiphany #ebony #aidan #antonio

2 notes · View notes