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that-spider-witch · 3 years

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On “Dead” Cultures and Closed Spiritual Practices: Why Colonialism Is Still A Problem.

Let me start this by saying that, as far as my knowledge of Paganism and Polytheism as a whole goes, I’m what the internet witch community calls a “Baby Witch”. I’m stating this out of the gate because I know there will be lots of people, including witches who have more experience on the craft than me, who might decide to ignore what I have to say based on that fact alone, stating that I’m not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion about this.

Here’s the kicker: I’m a ‘baby witch’, yes, but I’m also a twenty-six year old Venezuelan woman. I’m an adult. I’m Latina. I’m a Christian-raised Pagan,but I’m also a Latinoamerican woman over all other things including that. I grew up on this culture, these are my roots. It is because of this background than I’m writing this post today.

Looking through the “Paganism” and “Witchcraft” tags of this website, I’ve seen a few posts throwing indigenous deities and spirits’ names around on lists alongside deties of open cultures. Yes, you can know better by doing your own research and not going by what just a random Tumblr user wrote on one post (as I hope its the case with everyone on this website), but the fact that pagan beginners are still getting fed misinformation is still worrisome to me.

There’s nothing like reading a so-called expert putting Ixchen (Maya), Xolotl (Nahuatl) and Papa Legba (Vodou) on the same damn list as Norse, Hellenic and Kemetic deities and tagging it on the tags aimed at beginners who might not know better to truly ruin your morning. I’m not mentioning user names here: If you know then you know.

To quote @the-illuminated-witch on her very good post about Cultural Appropriation:

“Cultural appropriation is a huge issue in modern witchcraft. When you have witches using white sage to “smudge” their altars, doing meditations to balance their chakras, and calling on Santa Muerte in spells, all without making any effort to understand the cultural roots of those practices, you have a serious problem.

When trying to understand cultural appropriation in witchcraft, it’s important to understand the difference between open and closed magic systems. An open system is one that is open to exchange with outsiders — both sharing ideas/practices and taking in new ones. In terms of religion, spirituality, and witchcraft, a completely open system has no restrictions on who can practice its teachings. A closed system is one that is isolated from outside influences — usually, there is some kind of restriction on who can practice within these systems.”

A counter-argument I’ve seen towards this when someone wants to appropiate indigenous deities and spirits is to use the “dead culture” argument: Extinct cultures are more eligible for use by modern people of all stirpes. It is a dead culture and dead religion. It would be one thing if some part of the culture or religion was still alive, being used by modern descendants, but the culture died out in its entirety and was replaced, right? They were all killed by colonization, they are ancient history now, right?

Example: “If white people are worshipping Egyptian deities now, then why can’t I worship [Insert Aborigen Deity Here]?”

To which I have two things to say:

Ancient Egypt’s culture was open and imperialistic, meaning they wanted their religion to be spread. This is why Kemetism is not Cultural Appropriation, despite what some misinformed people might tell you. Similar arguments can also be made for the Hellenic and the Norse branches of Paganism, both practiced by people who aren’t Greek/Norse.

Who are you to say which cultures are “dead” and which are not?

Religious practices such as Vodou and Santería certainly aren’t dead, not that it keeps some Tumblr users from adding Erzuli as a “goddess” on their Baby Witch post, something that actual Vodou practitioners have warned against.

Indigenous cultures such as the Maya and the Mapuche aren’t dead, despite what the goverment of their countries might tell you. The Mapuche in particular have a rich culture and not one, but two witchcraft branches (The Machi and the Kalku/Calcu). Both are closed pagan practices that the local Catholic Church has continuously failed to assimilate and erase, though sadly not for lack of trying:

“The missionaries who followed the Spanish conquistadors to America incorrectly interpreted the Mapuche beliefs regarding both wekufes and gualichos. They used the word wekufe as a synonym for ideas of the devil, demons, and other evil or diabolical forces. This has caused misunderstanding of the original symbolism and has changed the idea of wekufe right up to the present day, even amongst the Mapuche people.”

For context, the Wefuke are the Calcu’s equivalent of the Familiar, as well as reportedly having more in common with the Fae than with demons anyway.

This and other indigenous religions are Closed because it is wrong for foreigners to just come and take elements from marginalized groups whom are still fighting to survive and that they weren’t born into. To just approppiate those things would be like spitting in their faces, treating them and their culture like a commodity, a shiny thing, a unique thing to be used like paint to spruce up your life or be special.

I know some of you are allergic to the word “Privilege”, but on this situation there really ain’t a better word to explain it. You weren’t born here, you don’t know what it is like, you are only able to see the struggle from an outsider’s point of view.

If a belief or practice is part of a closed system, outsiders should not take part in it. And with how many practices there are out there which are open for people of all races, there is really no excuse for you to do it.

Why Colonization Is Not “Ancient History”

If you have kept reading all this so far, you are probably wondering “Ok, but what does Colonization has to do with any of this?”

The answer? Everything.

With the general context of culture appropriation out of the way, let me tell you about why the whole “dead culture” argument rubs me the wrong way: Here in Venezuela, we have a goddess called Santa Maria de la Onza, or Maria Lionza for short, whom’s idol statue I have been using to illustrate this little rant. If you happen to know any Spanish, you might recognize the name as a derivative of Santa Maria, aka the Virgin Mary, and you are mostly correct: Her true indigenous name is theorized to have been Yara.

And I say “theorized” because it is a subject of hot debate whether she was really ever called that or not: Her original name, the name by which she was adored and worshipped by our ancestors, might have been forever lost to history.

That’s the legacy of colonization for you: Our cultures were stolen from us, and what they couldn’t erase they instead tried to assimilate. Our ancestors were enslaved, their lands and homes stolen, their artwork and literary works destroyed: The Maya and the Aztec Empire were rich in written works of all kinds, ranging from poetry to history records to medicine, and the Spaniards burned 99% of it, on what is probably one of the most tragic examples of book burning in history and one that people rarely ever talk about.

People couldn’t even worship their own gods or pass their knowledge of them to their children. That’s why Maria Lionza has such a Spanish Catholic-sounding name, and that’s why we can’t even be sure if Yara was her name or not: The Conquistadors couldn’t steal our goddess from us, so they stole her name instead. Catholics really have a thing with trying to assimilate indigenous goddesses with the Virgin Mary, as they tried to do the same with the Pachamama.

On witchy terms, I’d define Maria Lionza as both a deity and a land spirit: Most internet pages explaining her mention the Sorte mountain as her holy place, but it is more along the lines that she is the mountain.

You’d think that, with Venezuela and other Latinoamerican countries no longer being colonies, we’d be able to worship our own deities including her, right?

As far as a lot of Catholics seem to think and act, apparently we are not.

The Catholics here like to go out of their way to shame us, to call us “cultists”, to ostracize us, with a general call to “refrain from those pagan beliefs” because they go against the Catholic principles. Yes, the goddess with the Catholic-sounding name, a name she happens to share with a Catholic deity, apparently goes “against Catholic principles”. You really can’t make this shit up. (Linked article is in Spanish)

This is just an act of colonization out of many, of not wanting to stop until the culture they want to destroy is gone. Don’t believe for a second that this is really their God’s will or anything like that, they are just trying to finish what years of enslavement and murder couldn’t. They might not be actively killing us anymore, but they still want us dead.

So no, colonization is not some thing that has long passed and now only exist on history textbooks: It is still happening to this day. It is by treating it as old history that they can keep doing it, and it is by pushing the narrative that our indigenous cultures are “dead cultures” that they try to erase our heritage.

Because we are not dead. We are still here, we are alive, we have survived and we’ll keep on surviving, and our gods and goddesses are not yours to take.

¡Chao! 🐈

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currentlyprocrastinating · 3 years

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Request Rules

⋆ fandoms ⋆

- Mystic Messenger

- Love Unholyc in artistic form only

⋆ limitations ⋆

PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST:

- full nsfw

- incest

- pedophilia

- character x character

- anyone x Rika, for I do not like her very much, nor have I read her backstory, so I don’t have a good enough grasp on her to write a character I don’t like

BUT YOU CAN REQUEST:

- self inserts in artistic form only*

- cmc inserts in artistic form only*

- light/borderline nsfw in written form only

- light gore

- severe gore in written form only

- platonic scenarios

- hurt/comfort

*I will eventually open these options to written form as well, but as of now it is too complicated.

⋆ general ⋆

- I have never been in any sort of romantic relationship; I’ve never even had a crush. Thus, I’ve never experienced anything close to the intimate moments I write so much. I believe I do fairly well despite this, but please still let me know if I write something inaccurate.

- It’s a similar story for mental and physical conditions/illnesses/disorders. I have a few myself (fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, ADHD, anxiety), but I obviously can’t have everything lol. I have done my research on certain conditions I find interesting -- primarily mental illnesses, because neurology and the like fascinates me -- and I will learn what I can, should a request require me to, but please remember that reading up on and understanding (to the best of one’s ability) a condition or disorder is vastly different from having experienced it yourself. If you notice any inaccuracies in such writings, don’t be afraid to politely point it out and correct me, so that I may learn from that mistake.

- I primarily write and draw for the Choi twins, but please don’t let that stop you from requesting other characters! I’m not opposed to the others (Rika excluded), the twins are simply my favourites, and the characters whose mindsets I best understand.

- Please give me your thoughts on my works! It’s very encouraging. Even a simple “cute” or a keyboard smash brings a smile to my face ^^

- I have school and ADHD, the latter meaning it can be difficult to start and finish certain tasks. Progress may be slow, particularly with written works. Please be patient with me!

- I am new to this sort of thing -- taking requests -- so the number of requests I’ll take at a time will start off very small. This is to prevent me from overwhelming myself and shutting down on you guys. Once I have a better idea of how much I can handle at one time, the numbers will likely increase.

- If you have any questions, or want clarity or more details on anything mentioned in this post, please feel free to drop me an ask or a message! I’ll gladly clear up any misunderstandings, ambiguity, concerns, etc., you may have. Just be respectful, that’s all I ask~ ^^

⋆ writing ⋆

- I will only accept narrative forms -- oneshots, drabbles -- at the moment. I’m not yet confident enough in my ability to write headcanons to post that style. I’m hoping to change that soon, however, with practice on my own.

- The above also applies to match-ups.

- Don’t worry about writing long requests! I tend to write long requests, myself, so I don’t mind it :)

- Comments and constructive criticism are very welcome! Please, please, let me know if I write a character incorrectly or OOC.

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⋆ art ⋆

- I believe my writing skills to be more advanced than my art skills. Therefore, please do not request anything too complex. For now, I’m setting a maximum of two characters per drawing. When I am more confident in my ability to draw multiple characters on one canvas, I will come back and make the appropriate changes to the rules.

- Please specify whether you would like a doodle, a sketch, or a full drawing (although please be aware the line art is still in semi-sketch style and will not be perfectly clean). If you have no preference, you can either tell me as much, or you can simply not mention your preferred style. In that case, I’ll draw your request in whichever style I see fit.

- I’m not good with detailed backgrounds, so if you want a specific one, please keep it simple! Otherwise, like with the style, I’ll do whatever I think works best with the drawing.

- I am willing to draw you and/or your custom MC! You must simply give me a reference, as well as a description of their personality (it doesn’t have to be very long, but I don’t mind if it is). If you do not have a drawn reference, please describe their appearance as accurately as you can. Don’t fret too much over it, though, just send in what comes to mind, and please don’t get irritated if I ask you a lot of questions during the drawing process. I promise you they are necessary; usually, they are details that you don’t really think about right away, such as Do they have more freckles on their cheeks? or on their nose? or the specific shade of blue for their eyes.

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#my post #rules #request rules #if this is too long or confusing #please let me know!#also whenever i make changes to the rules #i'll notify you guys in one way or another #:)#i might open up oc drawing requests in the future #as well as rifters requests if it gets enough attention #but we'll see #latest update: 6 dec 2020

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dickwheelie · 4 years

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Day 29: Secret Admirer

For the @ineffable-valentines prompt list!

Boy oh boy. I cannot believe I was able to post a fic for this prompt list, on time, every day for an entire month. For me, that’s huge. I tend to be a slow writer and I rarely finish the stuff I start. Not every fic was amazing, or very long, but by gosh, I sure did finish them, and I had so much fun doing it! Huge thanks to @mielpetite for making this list and reblogging all the entries throughout the month, they’ve been amazing. Thank you also to all the lovely folks who commented/reblogged/liked my fics, you gave me the motivation to sit down every day and write something, even when I wasn’t feeling it. Much love to all y’all.

If you go to the #ineffablevalentines tag on tumblr, you’ll see the other entries, and if you go here on my blog you’ll see all of mine. Okay, enough chat, please enjoy my final fic of the month, wherein to no one’s surprise, there is more letter writing.

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To the proprietor of A.Z. Fell & Co Booksellers, Downtown Soho, in case there’s another one knocking about somewhere—

I saw you in the shop the other day and couldn’t help but stare. You were gently ushering someone out the door without a single book in their hands, and I couldn’t help but find your tenacity admirable. I myself was careful not to remove any item from the store when I left, but I’m afraid I may have left one behind. I was wondering if you might have seen it, so I can come back to fetch it. You see, it’s terribly important to me. It’s my heart.

Love,

Your Secret Admirer

Aziraphale chuckled through an unseemly blush as he refolded the letter and placed it on the top of the stack that had been slowly growing on his desk for the past month. Every day of that cold, miserable February, a letter had arrived at his doorstep, with no return address and no name of sender. They were—and there was no beating around the bush about it, really—love letters, very obviously meant for him, from an anonymous so-called secret admirer.

At first, Aziraphale had been rather confused, but had kept the letters anyway, intending to show them to Crowley and have a good laugh. However, as each day passed and each new letter arrived, Aziraphale found himself quite charmed by this secretive writer. Clearly, they were a regular customer of some kind to know Aziraphale so well. They made all the right jokes, said all the right things, made references to all the right literary figures; either they had discerned Aziraphale’s tastes with perfect accuracy, or they had much in common with him.

Some of the letters were extremely lengthy; others, like today’s, were only a short paragraph or two, recounting the admirer’s feelings for him. Some were maudlin and prose-laden; some were humorous and sweet; others still were almost salacious in tone, never saying anything too outlandish but bordering on the cusp of it, hinting at things and implying things that made Aziraphale blush absolutely scarlet. All of them were quite flattering, and left Aziraphale’s mood brighter for the rest of the day.

Aziraphale had been charmed by humans before, and even been romantically pursued by some of them, but never before had one so captivated him with the written word. (This, of course, did not include works of literature. That was a very different kind of captivation that involved less blushing.) He’d never had a secret admirer before. It was all very thrilling and romantic.

Not being able to write back was a bit frustrating, but Aziraphale supposed it was for the best. Though he was quite flattered, and had reread some of the letters more times than he’d like to admit, at the end of the day, his admirer was only a human who only knew him as a bookseller.

Besides, Aziraphale was already taken. Speaking of which, he ought to get himself ready to meet Crowley for dinner; their reservation was at eight.

I ought to tell him about the letters, he thought as he went about selecting a bowtie. Crowley ought to know, after all, that he had some competition. Aziraphale laughed aloud at the thought. After dinner, he decided, he’d bring Crowley back to the shop and show him the pile of letters.

And so he did. Aziraphale poured them both a glass of wine and brought Crowley into his study, presenting the pile of papers as though it were an ice sculpture.

“Terribly sorry I didn’t mention these to you earlier,” said Aziraphale cheerily. “I suppose I didn’t want you getting jealous that I had a secret admirer.”

“Jealous? Me?” said Crowley wryly. “Never.”

“Well?” said Aziraphale, when Crowley didn’t make a move towards the desk. “Go ahead, read some of them. You have my full permission.”

“Hmm. I dunno,” said Crowley, making himself comfortable on one of the armchairs on the opposite side of the room. “Seems like your private affair, to me.”

“Nonsense! Here, I’ll read one to you.” Aziraphale selected one at random from the middle of the pile, unfolded it and cleared his throat. “Oh, this is rather a good one.

“My dear bookseller—

“I’ve read every Wilde I can get my hands on, but apparently even your shop doesn’t hold the book which may contain a description vivid enough to capture you. In my experience, none do; not Whitman, not Keats, not Dickenson. The most complimentary of love poems do not contain a subject more appealing to me than you are. I’m afraid there may not be words in the English language or any other to describe your radiance. Compared to all the other authors and poets, who am I to attempt such a feat?

“I must try anyway. You, of all the beings of the Earth and Heaven above and Hell below, deserve to know your own wonder. Compared to you, my perspective is lowly, to be sure. Still, was it not Wilde who once said that we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars?

“Endlessly Yours,

“Your Secret Admirer.”

Aziraphale had to pause to surreptitiously wipe at his eyes. That one had been particularly moving when he’d first read it. “Now, wasn’t that just lovely?” he said after a moment. “They know my tastes so well.”

Aziraphale glanced over at Crowley to see his reaction, but to his surprise, Crowley was smiling. A small, rather sweet smile, not at all jealous or mischievous. “Yeah,” Crowley said, “it was alright.” He put out his hand. “Can I have a look?”

Aziraphale handed him the letter and Crowley perused it, his expression much more pensive than Azirapahle would have expected. After a minute or two, Crowley said, “Yeah, not too bad, really. Not much I’d change, on this one. Just that the references to Heaven and Hell were probably a little too on the nose. And I’m pretty sure I used ‘complimentary’ incorrectly there.”

“Oh, really?” said Aziraphale, taking the letter as Crowley passed it back to him. He gave it another quick once-over. “No, I think ‘complimentary’ with an ‘i’ is correct. If it was an ‘e’ then it would be wrong, as in ‘complementary’—wait a moment.”

Aziraphale looked back up at Crowley so quickly he could have given himself whiplash. “You said I. ‘I used it incorrectly.’ Crowley. Did you—”

Crowley grinned, and crossed the room to press a kiss to Aziraphale’s brow. “Happy Valentine’s, Angel,” he said. “Well, happy February. The fourteenth went by and I had more I wanted to say, so I just sort of kept going.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. Who else, after all, could know Aziraphale so well? A human, with limited time on the planet, observing Aziraphale from afar, could never reach such an intimate understanding of him, and what he loved.

“Oh, my dear,” said Aziraphale. He glanced over at the pile. He was already planning a late night of reading through them all again, this time with the proper demon in mind. “Do I even have to say it?”

Crowley stuck his hands in his pockets and bobbed his head from side to side in a pantomime of thinking. “Well, considering it look me bloody ages to draft these all up, and write them by hand, and train the mice to deliver them, and stop myself from bragging about them to you every day for the last month—”

Aziraphale interrupted him with a kiss. “All right then,” he said, laughing. “Thank you, secret admirer.”

Crowley beamed. “Ah, it was no big deal, Angel.”

***

On February first of the following year, Crowley woke up to find an envelope sitting on his bedroom windowsill, outside his flat. It was addressed to “The handsome gentleman on the fifth floor,” and there was no return address. Inside was a letter, written on very old parchment and with very expensive ink, which read:

My dear,

Forgive me for my boldness, but I happened to see you in the Ritz the other day (you were with a rather good-looking gentleman in white, a very lucky man, if he had the privilege of being your dining companion), and you seemed to me to be the most dashing person in the room. Nay, in all of London. I found myself thinking about you for the rest of the evening, and I just had to draft up this letter to tell you exactly how lovely you looked that night. Though you wore dark glasses, I could occasionally catch a glimpse of your eyes behind them, and their beautiful golden color, and I found myself nearly speechless every time.

In all of creation, I have never found a being so wonderful to gaze upon. I imagine that if I were to, hypothetically, take the place of your ever-so-fortunate dining companion, and have a conversation and a drink with you, I would also never find someone so fascinating, so caring, so clever as you. I imagine if I were lucky enough to know you so well, your wit would be as dazzling as your eyes.

With the Greatest Affection,

Your Secret Admirer

Scrawled at the bottom of the page, in a much hastier hand, was a postscript. Crowley read it, cackled uproariously (which helped to hide his blushing), and went immediately to phone Aziraphale, intending to explain to him the point of having a secret admirer.

P.S.: Please do let me know if you received this! The doves are not very good with street directions, unfortunately. I am working on it with them. Much love! —A

Crowley also intended to tell him that he bloody well loved him, too.

#ineffablevalentines #good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #gwyneth writes

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littlemisssquiggles · 4 years

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RWBY Musings #80: Trust in Love: How far will Ruby’s deception go and how much will it affect her bond with Oscar?

miki-13 asked “ I remember you making a headcanon or two of Ruby getting a wolf-faunus boyfriend and well... Marrow is based on Boy who Cried Wolf, he has green hair and eyes and he wears white clothes, all which contrast Ruby's red/black hair and outfit. Not to mention the distance Ruby's lying put between her and Oscar, and possibly her team... maybe Ruby will try to find someone outside of her circle for comfort?”

explodingcarr0t asked “ From what I’ve seen of screenshots and gifs of the newest episode, it seems like Oscar is sad/disappointed when Ruby lies to Ironwood and when Ironwood gives her the relic back. I really he calls her out on that especially since Qrow told her “we’re better than that”. Part of me wants it for Rose Garden stuff and (more importantly) that team RWBYJNRO for once don’t all agree on something.”

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Squiggles Answers:

@miki-13 @explodingcarr0t

‘Sup Miki-chan! ‘Sup Carrot! Sorry for the delay in answering both of you, fam. I decided to turn my responses to your questions into a new musing post for this week since I was considering discussing my thoughts and theories on a certain moment we all know of from V7CH2 and you guys provided me more incentive to talk about it. So without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?

[Spoilers Ahead! Nuff said!]

One thing this squiggle meister is very curious about with Ruby’s arc for V7 is just how far are the CRWBY Writers going to have her continue to be dishonest to Ironwood and his inner circle of confidantes for the sake of covering her tracks.

Because the thing about lies and half-truths is that, while they may start off small and harmless at first, eventually they start to build up after some point the more times you do it. You tell one lie to cover up the first one and then you tell another to cover up the last one and so on and so forth until before you know it, you’re sitting on a mountain of lies where you’re left unclear of what’s actually the truth anymore. And essentially you end up lying even to yourself so you wouldn’t have to deal with the guilt of your own deceit or worse, the potential emotional impact your duplicity has on the people you deceived. This is my concern for Ruby.

Are the lies just going to stop at her not disclosing the truth about Oz and the Relic of Knowledge to Ironwood or will there be more to come from that?

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Down, Down the Rabbit Hole

Because already Ruby has told two very significant lies. The first untruth was about Ozpin’s sudden disappearance while the second one was regarding the true status of the Relic of Knowledge in order to plug up the holes in the first lie.

As an audience member, I understood Ruby’s motives for choosing to not disclose the whole truth to the General. On one end, she probably did it out of her own slight mistrust of Ironwood given how he and the military initially treated the heroes upon their arrival in Atlas; not to mention all the odd stuff she’s heard about him regarding his disregard of the plight of the People of Mantle under his leadership.

I recognize that Ruby probably felt it best to not reveal everything they learnt back in Argus to Ironwood ---at least not yet, maybe---considering he might not be in the best frame of mind to absorb said new info especially the part about Salem’s invulnerability due to her immortality curse. I also wish to believe that another reason as to why Ruby was quick to lie about Ozpin’s sudden disappearance was due in part to her, once again, looking out for Oscar’s well-being. Ruby must’ve acknowledged Oscar’s anxiety after the General approached him and started probing him about Oz.

Not to mention that let’s not forget that the last time someone heard the truth about Salem, it didn’t exactly end very well on Oscar’s part. Qrow straight up socked Ozpin in the jaw with little regard for the physical repercussions it might have on Oscar afterwards. Same for Jaune who downright slammed Oscar against the wall at the Cotta-Arc residence spitting accusations about Ozpin in the poor kid’s face. Thus far, apart from becoming his successor, Oscar has additionally become the proverbial punching bag for all of Ozpin’s past mistakes.

So one could only imagine how Ironwood might react to the news; especially in light of his current paranoia, according to what Pietro pointed out in the first episode.

So yeah, given all that, I would say that Ruby had a solid good rationale to lie. That still doesn’t stop me from disliking it as much as the next viewer given the potential circumstances that can come from it. And that’s the point of my unease. I’m worried that Ruby may have low-key written herself into the same trap Oz once placed himself in. Sure she may have told one half-truth and one little white lie, repeating Ozpin, but who’s to say that it’ll stop just there?

As I said, once you’ve told one lie, it’s very easy for it to spin into a web of lies especially when your previous lie starts to crack and leave glaring holes in your last alibi leading to you telling more lies to cover up it up before it stirs more problems for you. This is the danger of the predicament Ruby has placed herself and the heroes in with Ironwood.

Ruby told Ironwood that Oz disappeared after the Argus train crash, correct? So at this moment, James must assume that Oscar’s problem with Oz must have something to do with his soul or something. As evidenced by the V7 Opening, Oscar is expected to be training, possibly privately with Ironwood, for this season. Ironwood also promised to work with Oscar on bringing Ozpin back.

Who’s to say that Ironwood wouldn’t start probing Oscar with questions on his predicament, hoping to hear a proper explanation from his mouth?

After all, Ruby was the one who answered on Oscar’s behalf for a problem relating to his soul. I’m sure this is going to lead into Ironwood prompting Oscar with the same said question and more in order to have Oscar’s answers correlate with what Ruby first told him.

I doubt Ruby is going to be in the same room as Oscar all the time to answer for him. I mean, she can try. Like imagine how awfully suspicious it’s going to look if Ruby always accompanied Oscar on his training lessons with Ironwood; for proclaimed morale support; only each time Ironwood asks Oscar regarding Ozpin, he’d either stammer or Ruby will jump up immediately to answer for him again.

After all, if Oscar answers incorrectly, it could potentially poke holes in Ruby’s lie which can lead to Ironwood becoming suspicious of the two and the heroes---especially in his current paranoid state. With Oscar sharing moments alone with the General, this could potentially lead to the farm boy also sharing moments with Ruby---not really for the sake of them bonding but more so that the two can correlate stories and Ruby can ensure that whatever Oscar says doesn’t contradict anything she said.

Because that’s another thing about lies, right? They have all the durability of a severed ball of yarn left to roll aimlessly on the floor. At some point, the lies will start to fall apart and unravel with the threat of the truth being exposed. We saw that clearly with what transpired back during the aftermath of Argus Limited train crash with Ozpin.

If things unravelled so quickly and heavily back then, it’s going to happen again with possibly far worse consequences for the hero team especially depending on how long they continue to withhold the truth from Ironwood. And here in lies another great concern I have going forward into the season--- how will Ruby’s deception affect her budding friendship with Oscar and how much will it dampen his overall trust in her?

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Love and Lies

Alrighty! Time to finally tackle the Mammoth Grimm in the room. Oscar was clearly NOT happy with Ruby lying to Ironwood.

Some Pineheads claimed he appeared annoyed with Ruby in that moment; hence her sort of guilty glance at him as he looked away from her.

Others said he was disappointed. For me, while I can’t exactly put a name to what Oscar’s expression meant; I’d say it’s more disappointment with a tinge of gloom rather than annoyance, in my opinion.

As a matter of fact, Oscar’s face in V7CH2 reminded me of the same depressed look me made back in V6CH4, after he had commented to Ruby about him being ‘just another one of his---meaning Ozma or Ozpin’s---lives’ only for Ruby to respond reassuringly that he was his own person. Only for the comforting moment to then be ruined by Qrow commenting dryly:

“…Don’t lie to him, Ruby. We’re better than that.”

It’s the same face. By Oscar’s impression of her, Ruby is supposed to be a better person than this. Someone who is above lies and keeping secrets from their allies, especially following their last adventure in Argus. May I remind everyone that the events of V6 took place over the course of four days with the finale and first two episodes of V7 relatively being the same day.

So technically, in terms of the RWBY timeline, it was only two days ago when Ozpin disappeared into Oscar’s mind and left the group on their own in the wilderness of Anima’s Northern coastline, eventually leading to them taking temporary refuge on Brunswick Farms.

Two days ago, the whole truth came out and the heroes were understandably very displeased with Ozpin for withholding such important information from them for so long especially the part about Salem being indestructible and Ozpin not having an actual plan to stop her; not even after all these centuries and lifetimes of fighting to keep her at bay.

Two days ago, the heroes were rightfully upset with Ozpin for keeping secrets from them especially since they were supposed to be on the same side, fighting for the same cause. What was it that Yang told Ozpin back in V6CH2?

“…Look we’re supposed to be in this together. You can trust us. We’re not going to turn on backs on you…”

…This was later followed up by the heroes turning their backs on Ozpin after the truth was forced out.

Two days ago, the heroes fed Ozpin to the dogs for choosing secrecy over trust despite the fact that they were all supposedly allies and now here were are, two days later with our gaggle of heroes pulling the same stunt that Ozpin pulled with them.

Ironwood and his Inner Circle---Penny 2.0, Winter and the Ace Ops---are allies to our heroes. It’s like what Ace Ops member: Marrow Amin said to them in the same episode.

“…We’re on the same team now…”

They’re on the same team yet one side still chose to withhold not one, but two important pieces of information from the other. The same side that just the other day called out their previous leader for pulling the same stunt they’re doing now. The same stunt that ultimately caused his isolation and placed him in the doghouse with his own team of huntsmen and huntresses.

Do you see why this is problematic?

Don’t get me wrong; narratively I’m enjoying this direction that the CRWBY Writers chose to take Ruby and Ozpin’s hero team. I’m anticipating that it will lead into the group finally understanding why Oz chose to handle things the way he did in the first place by letting them stand in his shoes for a few more episodes; eventually culminating with our heroes properly reconciling with Oz on better terms. While it doesn’t erase or excuse the prolonged impacts of his past actions and mistakes, at least this rounds the group will have a better understanding for why Oz is the way he is; y’know what I’m saying?

After all, Ozpin did explain back in V6 that the basis for his conduct was backed by experience and those experiences---good, bad and/or indifferent---moulded him into the very wise and heavily cautious man he came to be.

“…Do you really think Leo was the first? That he didn’t say those exact same words to me? I’m sorry but you have to understand that my behaviours are backed by experience. I’m not saying that I have reason to think you will betray me, I’m saying that I have reasons for the things that I do, the secrets I keep…”

And I’d like to think that by the end of V6, the heroes come to have a better relationship with Oz having gone through a somewhat similar experience that lead to them adopting the same mind-set as Oz. So story-wise, this is great as a future plot development.

However; on the flipside to this; morally---this move also makes Ruby and the heroes look like a bunch of hypocrites; sadly to point out.

It looks bad any way you spin it.

You didn’t hesitate to call out Ozpin for his deceit and put him and Oscar through the ringer because of it but here you are casually doing the exact same thing. I hope for the love of Oum that Ruby doesn’t believe that what she did was the right call.

As a matter of fact, this squiggle meister is very interested in hearing what Ruby’s validation for choosing to lie to Ironwood and their Atlesian allies is going to be; meaning that I’m curious to hear what she tells Oscar in the aftermath of V7CH2.

I think we can all assume that Oscar is definitely going to pull Ruby aside and confront her on her actions in Ironwood’s office. He’s not going to roughly accost her or anything. Like I said, I don’t think Oscar is as mad at Ruby as people believe. If anything, I’m expecting Oscar to approach Ruby very calmly about this subject and granted that she’s able to explain her reasons, he’ll be quite understandable.

This is also where I expect Ruby’s quote from the V7 Trailer to come in:

“…I’m trying to do what I think it’s best but I really can’t tell if what’s best is what’s right…”

She’ll probably say this during a talk with Oscar to help him understand where she was coming from with her decision; which Oscar will most likely respect. Like I said, if Ruby is able to help Oscar understand then he most likely will since he trusts Ruby and trusts her judgement.

Hooooooooooweeevvvvvevr…

That doesn’t meant that Oscar is going to be 100% okay with Ruby lying to the General. He’ll probably let it slide the first time on the grounds that the truth must come out at some point. Possibly before the completion of Amity Tower before it’s hauled into space and before Ironwood could make his global broadcast to all of Remnant.

The truth has to come out. Right now, Ironwood is operating only on the belief that he thinks Salem can still be stopped. He still believes there’s a chance.

I mean what’s Ironwood gonna think telling the rest of Remnant about the existence Salem is going to achieve? Does he believe it’ll rally the People of Remnant against Salem by decreasing her chances of wooing others to her side if they knew of her presence? I mean sure, that’s not a bad thought. However Ironwood is missing the major miscalculation in his plan.

Right now, as far we know, the rest of Remnant hates Atlas. Let’s not forget what Cordovin said back in V6:

“…You’re just like the rest of these Argus ingrates! This city wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for our Atlesian ancestors and what do we get in return? The entire world is ready to put a knife to our throats!”

“The General is no coward. Atlas is strong! If all the kingdoms plan to make us our enemy then so be it! Atlas will prevail!”

If that wasn’t a huge red flag and a mega foreshadow for the spark of a second Great War with the remaining kingdoms turning heels and deciding to wage war against Atlas then I don’t know what is.

If Atlas reveals the truth about Salem to all of Remnant, not only will it cause the whole world to descend into chaos bringing forth the Grimm but it’ll also make Atlas appear even more treacherous to the remaining three kingdoms.

“So that’s why you withdrew your troops. To handle the panic that will break out in Atlas.” “Yes. Panic is inevitable and panic brings Grimm. But I believe we are ready. Once Atlas has comes to grips with the fight ahead, I’ll use Amity Tower to spread the message to all of Remnant. “

“But everything will fall apart. Grimm will be everywhere!”

“You’re right. But Atlas is willing and prepared to assist.”

“Trying to hide the truth from the world will eventually kill us all.”

… And suddenly dropping the truth on the world will only serve to quicken the process of humanity’s destruction.

At least hiding the truth brought you some time to try and figure out a better alternative with possibly less chaos; which I’m assuming is what Ozma and the rest of the Wizards have been trying to do wisely for many, many, years.

Bold of Winter to assume that the rest of the world will be willing to cooperate with Atlas against the Grimm once this word gets out. Also foolish of Ironwood to not consider that this might just be want the enemy wants. What Salem and her forces are expecting and banking on. As a matter of fact, that’s the game plan, isn’t it?

What Ironwood said in V7CH2 is starting to make sense of breadcrumbs left behind from V6 regarding Salem and her schemes. Once upon a time, I made a hunch where I gave my impression of what I believe might be Salem’s ultimate goal.

Do you remember what the God of Light told Ozma in the Lost Fable?

“…We have chosen to depart this world, but in our absence, I would like to offer you the chance to return to it.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“Mankind is no more yet your world remains; and in time, your kind will grow to walk its face again. However, without our presence, they will be but a fraction of what they once were.

Creation, destruction, choice and knowledge were the ideals upon which humanity was made. Now I leave them behind with the hope that you may learn to remake yourselves.

If brought together, these four Relics will summon my brother and I back to your world and humanity will be judged.

If your kind has learned to live in harmony with one another and set aside their differences, then we shall once again live among you and humanity will be made whole again.

But if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting amongst yourselves, then man will be found irredeemable and your world will be wiped from existence. Until your task is complete, you will reincarnate but in a manner that ensures that you are never alone…”

Salem wants to bring about both mankind and Remnant’s destruction. She wants the world to fall to chaos and war so that by the time, she and her minions successfully gather all four Relics and summon the Brother Gods back to Remnant, the Brothers will have no choice but to wipe both man and Remnant from existence as they said they would after arriving to find it going through yet another Great War.

This is what will happen if Ironwood goes forward with his plan and this is exactly what Salem wants. Don’t you see? Now a lot of details are starting to add up. This is why Watts and Tyrian were sent to Atlas for. Not just to stir problems for its military but to ensure that Ironwood goes forward with Amity Tower.

This is also why Ruby needs to come clean to Ironwood before construction on Amity Tower is complete.

But she doesn’t have to do it alone. Oscar also has his own part in stopping Ironwood too by figuring out a way to bring Ozpin back.

This isn’t just about burying the hatchet anymore. The heroes need Oz because, according to Watts in V6, Ozpin is the only person who can talk sense into Ironwood and make him see the astronomical sized flaw in his master plan (supposedly).

If Oz returns, he’ll be able to level with Ironwood and persuade him from moving forward with the broadcast. Ironwood is clearly forgetting that his plan for Amity Tower is nothing but a rehash of the Vytal Festival on a much global scale.

Last time, Ironwood wanted to bring his army to Vale for the Vytal Festival but Oz was heavily against this plan out of fear that the Military’s presence may spark uncertainty and anxiety within the public bringing forth negative emotions which will then bring forth the Grimm.

Following the Attack in Central Vale, Ironwood then went behind Ozpin’s back to the Council of Vale and got them to side with him, forcing Ozpin’s hand in the matter. Against his friend’s better judgement and advice, Ironwood got his way and his forces were brought to Vale; thus playing right into the villain’s hand.

And how did that go? It brought forth pandemonium because Arthur Watts hacked their security code, took over the entire Atlesian Army and contributed to the calamity that resulted in the Fall of Beacon.

Ironwood is pulling the exact same plan he pulled in Vale. Only this time, instead of being isolated to one kingdom, it’s going to affect the rest of the world.

How much do you want to bet that Watts’ will hack into Amity Tower and rig Ironwood’s first broadcast to Atlas so that the rest of the world is audience to what he reveals firstly to his kingdom?

How much do you want to bet that Watts will spin this in a way that once again humiliates Ironwood and the so-called strength of his kingdom and army? How much do you want to bet that Watts is going to spin this in a way that once again make Atlas look like traitors to the rest of Remnant?

After all, isn’t Watts not Atlesian and currently working with Salem? What’s stopping him from spinning it to look like Atlas has sided with Salem and has been working alongside her to cause war and trouble in the other kingdoms? Think about that.

Finally, what’s stopping Watts from taking full control of Amity Tower and rigging it to fall out of the sky and plummet towards Remnant with Vacuo as its targeted crash site? Thus making it appear as if Atlas has now waged an attack on Vacuo, all the while the rest of the world observes with baited breath?

I say Vacuo could be the next target for this staged attack by Atlas because of something Tyrian said back in V6CH9. Remember what he told Emerald and Mercury before his and Watts’ departure?

“…There’s been a change in plans. Your grace must act swiftly if we are to prevail. If General Ironwood comes to senses and calls upon aid from Vacuo, all may be lost for us. So the Good Doctor and I are being sent to Atlas to prepare…”

Last season, I shared a musing post where I depicted the possibility of the villains manipulating Ironwood to have Atlas wage war against Vacuo. Now looking at evidence provided by this season, I think I might’ve been onto something back then. Atlas is going to wage an attack on Vacuo…at least, that’s what the villains plan on making it look like.

Right now, Atlas already has two strikes against it. One for what transpired in Vale for the Vytal Festival and two for what happened in Argus with Caroline Cordovin and the awakening of the Leviathan.

There is no doubt in my mind that that event isn’t going to have severe repercussions for Atlas with the Mistral Council. Though they’ve been less of a vocal presence as the Council of Vale back in V2, it wouldn’t surprise me if word got back to them about what happened in their northern city.

And while our heroes left Argus with Cordovin and her military forces handling the remaining army of Manticore and Sphinx, mind you we never got to learn the aftermath of that; both with the People of Argus and the rest of Mistral.

As I’ve said many times before---Cordovin’s stunt in Atlas---with her bringing out the mechazord and proclaiming to all of Argus about the awesome might of Atlas and to consider her stunt of reminder of that---that’s definitely going to come back and it’s going to bite Atlas so hard in their metal behinds.

I can probably sit here and predict the events to come for the remainder of the Atlas Arc but I’m not gonna---that will probably be its own separate post.

Bottom-line, shit is going to hit the fan if the truth doesn’t come out and Ironwood isn’t brought to his senses. But before all of that can come to pass, let’s get back on track with what I was saying about the Rosebud friendship.

I feel like Ruby’s little white lie can potentially spell some emotionally heavy discourse between her and Oscar. One scenario that I’m hoping doesn’t happen but at the same time am worried could happen, is the truth being threatened to be forced out.

It’s like what Ironwood said. Panic is inevitable. Trying to avoid it may prolong the process but at the same time it only makes things worse in the long run. It’s no different than this.

Imagine you’re a kid in kindergarten on the school playground. You do something wrong but rather than tell your teacher the truth, you tell a lie. However unbeknownst to you, another student saw you do the bad thing.

Which do you think would have the worse ramification? If you were upfront with your teacher about the mistake you made and were at least shown to be honest in letting them hear the truth from your mouth…or…have someone else tattle on you making your actions appear twice as bad because on top of doing something wrong, you also lied about it.

With Ozpin, the truth was practically forced out of him because he basically brought himself to that point. I may have been one of the population of Ozpinheads who defended him last season and while I still stand in Oz’s court, I’m not going to deny the fact that Oz did put himself in that horrible position in V6CH2.

That I will admit here since, let’s be fair, Oz had several opportunities between Mistral and Argus (at least three chances from the time he and Oscar first reunited with Qrow at the bar) to come clean to the team and tell them everything which, at the end of the day, is all they wanted. No more lies and half-truths, right?

Instead of being upfront from the get-go and confronting the negative results of his actions from the truth then and there with his team, Oz chose to prolong it ---prolong the evitable panic like Ironwood said---which in turn made the situation look far worse for himself when the truth is brought out. Not through Oz but through Jinn because Ruby asked her to tell the truth since Oz wouldn’t. .

I’m not saying that things would’ve been different if Oz had just come clean. Anger and alarm probably would’ve happened either way.

I’m more saying things might’ve had a much better outcome if the truth had come from Oz instead of Jinn. Instead of having Ruby using Jinn, imagine how it would’ve been if Oz had revealed, by his own words, that Salem can’t be killed and that he’s been searching for years to find a way to stop her but to no avail thus far.

Imagine if Oz had just straight up said that the only thing he’s been successful in doing is keeping Salem at bay and preventing the world from falling into chaos again because he knows that’s what Salem wants because she wishes to gather the Relics to summon the Gods who would’ve then wiped humanity from existence because of the chaos.

Imagine if Oz had just told the team all of this new-news and then backed it all up by then summoning Jinn himself from the lamp and having her show the group everything from the time Ozma first met Salem to when he first learnt that she couldn’t be killed in his lifetime as Norman.

The Lost Fable made sense of so many actions and so-called mistakes that Oz had taken to prevent Salem from harming humanity. The terrible part was that the only way the team could’ve learnt this is by having Jinn reveal it. Not Oz. Like I said, the truth was forced out and we saw how bad that looked.

This is my concern for Ruby and Oscar. I’m worried that Ruby will desire to prolong revealing the truth to Ironwood for her own reasons backed by her experiences on the matter whereas Oscar will wish to come clean since it’ll be better for the comradery of everyone if they were just straight with each other from the start. No more lies, no more half-truths---just pure trust because trusting in each other will help them work better together to find a proper solution---or at least a better one than having the world fall to ruin.

Do you know what would be so funny but ironic? If Ruby is the one who ends up becoming more like Ozpin in this scenario whereas Oscar becomes more like her and Ruby ultimately sees more of herself in Oscar than Ozpin.

That can actually be potentially great for Oscar and Ruby’s friendship. Having that complete role reversal right there. This way it can help Ruby understand Ozpin (and thus use that spark of hers to get the others to understand Ozpin as well) while simultaneously strengthening the bond and growing trust she shares with Oscar.

So on one hand, I do want this kind of development to happen. But on the other hand, I fear it eventually happening because I know it will lead into a moment where Ruby and Oscar constantly butt heads on their differing ideologies and choices, leading to one big fight that could potentially destroy their bond.

It doesn’t though, obviously but it does hurt them both especially Oscar’s perception of Ruby since he’s seeing her become like Ozpin---telling the same lies he told, making the same mistakes he made--- and he knows fully well, more than anyone, that that’s a crooked path that doesn’t end well.

I can see Oscar having a potential Iroh moment with Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The small farm boy turned little barn prince isn’t mad at his rose. He’s more scared that she might lose her way and deviate from the person he knows her to be. Just as how Oz deviated from the man he once was given his past experience with Salem.

“…What Professor Lionheart did was reprehensible; I am not here to argue differently. But does one lapse in judgement truly negate all of his good? Do we not all have regrets? You may met Professor Lionheart, but you never met the man he was before Salem found him…”

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The Little Prince and his Rose

My fear is as this season progresses, Ruby will continue to tell more lies that deceive Ironwood and withhold the truth about Salem from him and his forces, similar to how Ozpin did with the heroes.

This in turn will cause her and Oscar to often clash. My hunch is that since Oscar will be training with Ironwood while simultaneously working to figure out a way to bring Ozpin back, this interaction will cause Oscar to chum up to Ironwood, built a sense of trust between them that feels genuine to his eyes. This will then lead to Oscar desiring more and more to reveal the truth to Ironwood but he doesn’t wish to do that since it will mean breaking his trust with Ruby.

So instead Oscar tries more and more to convince Ruby to tell the truth herself since this all started with her and it would be better that the truth come from her instead of anyone else.

My theory is that Ruby will make promises to Oscar to tell the truth to their Atlesian allies but over their time in Atlas, those promises will be broken to the point that Ruby even starts to lie to Oscar.

…Or at least she tries to. But as we know, Oscar will see right through Ruby’s deceit---as evidenced by V5CH5 in the Dojo scene where Ruby tried to hide the truth about her repressed grief over the Fall of Beacon and the loss of her friends only for Oscar to call her out on it.

I fear that this will happen again. Ruby will continue to follow the same path as Ozpin, even to the point of lying to Oscar---one of her closest allies (as Oz did with Qrow and essentially Ironwood) and just like in the Dojo Scene, he’s going to call her out on it.

This could then potentially lead into Ruby and Oscar having a big fight. And do you know what would be interesting?

What if…Ruby and Oscar have a big fight over their disagreements of trusting their Atlesian allies only for Oscar to threaten Ruby with taking the Relic of Knowledge from her and using the last question to force the truth to come out in the same fashion as what happened with Ozpin.

I’m not saying this could potentially happen. But I am askinh what if it did?

Imagine if…this even leads to a moment where Oscar leaves and our heroes return to discover that he was gone again.

Like let’s say Oscar has been rooming with JNR in their dorm room for the majority of V7 only to disappear later with all his belongings cleared out of the JNR dorm. Not because Oscar ran away like in Argus but left to go maybe stay with Ironwood wherever he lives up in Atlas.

Like imagine JNR_RWBY freaking out about Oscar disappearing on them a second time---doubt he went shopping this time, am I right?---only for Atlas Academy Employee of the Month Penny 2.0 to jubilantly inform them that Oscar has gone to stay with the General at his quarters, much to everyone’s shock especially Ruby’s.

In the Little Prince story, the Prince eventually left his home planet because of the Rose. I believe the story was that the Prince grew tired of the Rose not reciprocating his feelings despite all that he did for her (because she was naïve and vain) so he left her to explore the rest of cosmos.

Picture…something like that with the Rosebuds where Oscar, tired of Ruby’s continued deceit and mistrust of their Atlesian allies and even him, loses trust in Ruby all together and leaves the hero team to side with Ironwood?

That could be an interesting plot point for V7, right? Similar to how the Rose from the Little Prince didn’t realize she loved him until he left, it can be a similar scenario for Ruby with Oscar only substitute love for trust. Or see it as one in the same if you will. Trust in love, right?

You can even say that trust and love go hand in hand. Because trust enables the heart to open up and it is only with the heart, that one can see rightly what essentially is invisible to the eye. Love. See what I did there, right?

What if… similar to her counterpart from the Little Prince, Ruby doesn’t realize how much she trusts Oscar and valued his trust in her until he eventually left her out of fear that he couldn’t trust her anymore and the belief that she doesn’t trust him entirely.

Technically the idea is that Ozpin isn’t trusted anymore by the team. Ozpin is a part of Oscar and the narrative belief is that Oscar is meant to become Ozpin. The team trusts Oscar. Ruby trusts Oscar. However Ozpin is the other half of Oscar. The team can’t trust Oscar and not Ozpin. They can’t trust only half of him because what happens when Oscar and Ozpin become one whole person.

Will the group retain their trust in Oscar or remain distrustful of Ozpin? Basically I think it’s going to boil down to Oscar thinking that he isn’t trusted entirely by the group, particularly Ruby (as the proclaimed leader of the rag-tag) due to Ozpin.

I think this is what will also lead to Oscar’s departure. His fight with Ruby could potentially lead to Ruby dropping the ball that she’s still distrustful of Oz, which, by Oscar’s understanding means she doesn’t trust him either.

She might as well be saying that she doesn’t trust Oscar since technically; she can’t trust half of him, right?

I can see this as an opportune moment for Oscar to show his support of Oz by saying Oz is a part of him just as much as he is a part of Oz.

Oz’s responsibilities are his responsibilities. His burdens are Oscar’s burdens. His past mistakes and all the consequences of them are Oscar’s and it’s his duty to rectify them in a sense. Thus justifying my theory of Oscar challenging Ruby on deceiving their Atlesian allies as well as my Pinehead headcanon of Oscar wishing to mend the bond between Oz and the heroes.

Oscar and Oz may be two minds in one body but at their core, they are one man (and that man’s name was Ozma---ESPECIALLY if my other Pinehead headcanon about Oscar being the one true Ozma as the younger reincarnated version of his original body in Modern Day Remnant is true).

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The Wolf Who Helped the Rose

Before I conclude my Rosebuds theory, let me just deviate to touch base on your question about Marrow and Ruby @miki-13.

While I still like my Ruby’s Big Bad Boyfriend Lil Red headcanon (and thank you so much for remembering it), I don't think I can actually pair Marrow up with Ruby. At least, I don’t think so? Let me double check.

Well, I'm assuming that Aces are all graduates from Atlas Academy, right? Clover did address our hero team as students which gave me the impression that he and his own rag-tag of teammates have already finished school since they’re currently working with the military and it was stated in the Atlas Academy ad that graduates from the academy eventually go onto join the military with a chance of joining their special operatives division.

It was also mentioned briefly by Ozpin back in V1 that upcoming huntsmen train in the academies for four years from the age of 17 before graduating to become certified huntsman and huntresses who go on to serve their kingdoms. That being said, if I had to guess the ages of the Ace Op members, I’m assuming they’re all in their 20s since they would’ve been at least 21 years old by the time they finished the academy, right?

So right now, it’s safe to assume that Marrow is probably at least four years senior to Ruby. He doesn’t look a day over 21 (unless he lies about his age, eyyy!)

A 21-year-old working graduate dating a 17-year-old student technically in her second year of huntsmen training? People already crucify Rosegarden for the measly two year age difference between Ruby and Oscar. Imagine how much trouble a potential Big Bad (Ruby x Marrow) ship could stir?

Nevertheless, I do like the concept of Marrow having a kind of flirtatious exchange with Ruby. Since my key Marrow ship is Bunny Bites with him and Harriet, I can totally picture Marrow pulling a Neptune and kind of flirting with Ruby but only to make Harriet jealous because that’s their thing. Like I can picture Marrow secretly having the biggest crush on Harriet (which is reciprocated by her interest in him) but due to Harriet’s competitive nature with him on the battlefield and Marrow’s habit of lying, Marrow often pretends he doesn’t like Harriet that way by flirting with other girls in front of her.

It’s like Marrow totally likes Harriet a lot but doesn’t want her to know that he likes her that way; y’know what I’m saying? So basically he’s a big ole tsundere. Still a good boy though.

Anyways, in terms of Ruby turning to Marrow for comfort when her relationship with Oscar goes sour, you actually might be onto something there, Miki.

Imagine…Ruby being depressed after Oscar left home to stay with Ironwood (going back to my theory). She goes for a walk alone to clear her head and bumps into who else but Marrow, of all people. Imagine Ruby confiding in him about hurting Oscar with the whole lying thing and in a surprising twist, Marrow helps her out and actually offers some good advice.

Imagine how ironic it would sound if the Boy Who Cried Wolf taught Ruby about the consequences of lying too often. As a matter of fact, that could be the morale that Marrow imparts on Ruby in relation to the lesson that was the basis of the original Aesop Fable he’s based on.

That’s actually pretty brilliant when you think about it. So it fits excellently especially when I add it to the events of my Rosegardening Rosebuds headcanon:

Ruby lies to Ironwood. Continues to lie and keep secrets from the Atlas Crew following in Oz’s footsteps (maybe it might even make Ruby think back to the lesson that Oz imparted on her with the burden of leadership from V1). Her continued deceit hurts her friendship with Oscar leading to them fighting and Oscar leaving his home with their team.

Ruby grows sad because of this. Meets a Good Boy (Marrow) who imparts an important lesson onto her by probably telling her a story---a fable if you will---inspired by his life.

This inspires Ruby to make things right with everyone. So on the day Amity Arena is complete, with Ironwood possibly planning to make the broadcast later that same day---Ruby comes clean. All the right people are already present---Ironwood, Winter, Penny, Qrow, the Ace Ops, JNR_WBY and of course Oscar.

Ruby takes the floor and goes into making the big reveal. But before she does that, she gives a heartfelt speech where she apologizes to everyone for lying to them---including Oscar but she does it in a manner where she doesn’t outright come out and apologize to Oscar (cause she’s giving her big ole trademark Ruby speech) but it is heavily implied in her words and subtle glances in Oscar’s direction.

So Ruby drops the ball that Salem can’t be destroyed. Naturally, the Atlesians react in shock and immediate disbelief of this. So to further emphasize her point, Ruby summons Jinn before their very eyes.

Since Ruby told Ironwood that the lamp has already been used up, I think Ruby summoning Jinn could be a nice way to get her point across. I also considered the idea of Ruby using the last question to have Jinn show the truth of Ozma’s past and everything the heroes saw back in Argus to Ironwood and his forces.

I can see that as another way to further get the point across. But at the same time, it wouldn’t surprise me if the lamp isn’t used for V7 just in case the CRWBY Writers planned on savouring the last question for later.

But overall, my point is that in the end Ruby pulls herself from making the same mistake as Oz did. However this experience also helps Ruby to better understand Oz as well which leads to her apologizing to him just as much as Oscar.

So Ruby’s trust in Oz is renewed and the same can be said for her trust in Oscar. I can see a potential plot development like this being used to strengthen Ruby and Oscar’s bond through strengthening their trust in each other.

Though they may have had their fair share of doubts, especially about the other beforehand, by the end, there is no more reservations. Only trust in its purest of forms thus opening the door to love.

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So to conclude…

Trust love. Trust in love. Love and trust, you can say it whatever way you’d like, it means the same in the end.

These two sentiments often go hand in hand and it wouldn’t surprise me if our pair of Rosegardening Rosebuds learning to completely trust one another essentially opens the door for them to fall in love with each other. Who knows? It could happen for this season given the breadcrumbs dropped by these last two episodes.

As always, these are only my thoughts and theories and as expected, my assumptions could be wrong in the end. But either way, I would actually love to see some of the headcanons I shared in this post come to fruition in the canon. Particular the one where Ruby’s continued deception of Ironwood and their Atlesian allies causes her and Oscar to ‘break up’ and Oscar leaves the team because of it. I like it since it harkens back to the Little Prince and you guys know much this squiggle meister loves seeing those fairytale parallels, however big or small, within the RWBY canon.

Besides, sometimes things need to fall apart just so they could be brought back together stronger than ever. I can see this happening for Ruby and Oscar’s arc for this season. If I’m correct in V7 being the closest we’ve ever seen these two together along with the hunches I’ve shared in this musing post then brace yourself fellow Pineheads, Rosegardeners and Rosegardening Pineheads, we may be in for a wild ride with these two smaller, more honest souls for this season. But we shall see.

In the meantime, I hope you all enjoyed the new musing. As for Miki and Carrot, I hope I best answered your questions. Let me know what you guys think about my theories shared here if you can.

Until then, I’ll see you all in the next RWBY Musing. Cheerios FNDM fam!

More Squiggles’ RWBY Content

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#miki-13 #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #rwby rosegarden #rwby theories #rwby volume 7 theories #rwby volume 7 spoilers #rwby volume 7 #rwby musings

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thiscrimsonsoul · 4 years

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Not to mix up lores, but what would Wanda do if she could visit Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" and she still had Pietro's/Vision's bodies nearby? (Although I don't think it would work with Vision because... He's a super complex being! And I'm assuming you know what happens because you write so well, I'm sure you read a lot) Would Wanda try to bring them back despite the warnings? Or would she let them rest?

{out of paprikash} Oh, this is such a cool question! Lots to discuss here. I’m a big horror book and movie buff and I love both for “Pet Sematary.” So... I think it would depend on Wanda’s mental state at the time, and exactly how much she was told about the results of burying someone at the “Pet Sematary.” Let’s do a best case/worst case scenario thing, shall we?

Best case scenario, Wanda is of relatively sound mind and is shown or told pretty compelling stories to make her think twice. Maybe she was shown a news article of what happened to the Creeds or some other family affected by the place, or she had someone explain to her in gory detail what happened. Hmm... I guess for the benefit of my followers who may not know the story, I should explain a bit so that everyone understands. You know what? Under the cut because I ended up rambling on FOREVER with this ask, haha...

“Pet Sematary,” spelled incorrectly because it was supposed to have been written on a sign by young children, was a place where you could bury the dead and have them come back to life. Sort of, heh. Started as a graveyard where kids buried their pets, it was an evil place that twisted whatever was buried there. It was located on an Indian burial ground (very trope-ish, I know), and basically the premise was that the ground had “gone sour.” Whatever you buried there would come back to you, so I mean it did work, but there were consequences. There was one iconic line in the original movie, I forget whether it was in the book too, I read it so many years ago, but it was, “Sometimes, dead is better.” In other words, as painful as it is to lose someone, it’s even more so to have their memory twisted or overwritten by some perversion or obscene likeness of them. It’s also even more painful to deal with all the other associated consequences, of which there were many...

The first initial moments of the animal or person coming back to you might be nice, only because it takes a while for the full evil to set in, and of course you wanted your loved one back, so seeing them again makes you happy. But pretty soon you would notice them having some weird behaviors. They might stare at you creepily, might want to eat raw meat, might be angrier or crueler than you remember them, might be obsessed with weapons or sharp objects. And the more you either question the behavior or try to correct it, the angrier and more frustrated the person or animal becomes.

The next stage is them trying to harm or even kill random people and animals around you or even people in your family or your friends. The resurrected person or animal becomes more and more violent and murderous, and less like the loved one you buried. Their actions become more impulsive, less rational, and more instinctual, like a crazed animal more than a healthy one or a sane person. They might drool, growl, hit their head against the wall... just really strange things, even as they harm or kill everyone around you.

The last stage is them hunting and killing you, the person who buried them. In fact, there was a rule for this. “You bury your own.” It’s kindof like well... if you want this done, if you want this person or animal to come back and are basically willing to spit in the face of the laws of nature to make it happen, then you have to take responsibility for the associated consequences. And it becomes really cruel and heartbreaking because they will try to lure you to them with false kindness and love.

So... at the point at which they’re trying to kill you, you’re probably on to them by now and wanting to re-kill them to get them to stop killing your family and friends. But they’re a loved one too, and they know it, and they’ll use it. So if it’s a cat, it’ll mew softly or purr at your leg before jumping at your throat. If it’s a spouse, they’ll try to hug you or kiss you as they’re raising a knife to your back. if it’s a child, they’ll cry for mommy or daddy as they conceal a scalpel or some other weapon to harm you with as soon as you pick them up. They might ask you, “Why are you doing this to me?” while looking super sad, and the second you start to break down and regret things, they’ll move in for the kill. So they really use your love for them as a weakness to get to you, which is a very sad concept.

The premise is a lot like, for those of you who love the horror genre, the second story of Trilogy of Terror II (1996). A woman whose son drowned in the ocean near their home performs an occult ritual to bring him back. The boy does come back, and he seems confused, disoriented, cold, but otherwise fine. Very quickly, however, he becomes mouthy, demanding, disobedient, destructive... and eventually he ends up trying to kill his mom. The punch line of the story is that the boy didn’t drown accidentally, but rather he jumped off the cliffs and into the water to get away from his controlling and abusive mother. The boy’s soul didn’t want to come back, so something else came back instead. Something evil. Well Pet Sematary is the same kind of deal. It’s almost like Celtic stories of changelings, how it looks exactly like the person you know, but doesn’t act like them at all.

The upshot is that anything buried at the Pet Sematary would come back in the body you buried (which had it’s own downsides if the body was badly destroyed during the person’s death, and the person/animal would smell really bad, because they are in fact still dead) but the soul of the person you loved wouldn’t be inside. Instead, there was something else, soulless, evil, demonic, whatever you wanted to infer it was. And it was always just... utterly remorseless, entirely without empathy, and would always just tear apart the life of the person who buried the body before actually killing them too. I think there was a lesson here, or maybe a few lessons, something to the effect of, death is permanent and there’s not coming back from it. But also... there are consequences for imagining yourself above the laws of nature. And also... shame on you for disturbing the rest of a person who may not want to come back. Whether they wanted to die or prefer to remain dead now that they are, it’s seen as total selfish hubris on the part of the person burying their dead loved one because it’s about easing your pain instead of letting your loved one rest in peace.

Okay so now that I’ve blabbed on and on about that... the best case scenario for Wanda is if she’s fairly mentally stable, maybe just grieving but has not lost touch with reality yet, and that she is swayed by the stories she reads/hears. Wanda does believe in demons, she is superstitious, and she is very fearful of things like damning souls for eternity. It’s why she is so disturbed by what she feels when Pietro dies and interprets it partially from what she actually feels but partially out of fear and grief as him ending up in some sort of hell or place where his soul is being tortured in some way. So she does believe in such things and Pietro and Vision both are two people she loved so fiercely that if she is in her right mind, she would not play around with anything that might damn them, punish them, torture them, or twist their natures at all.

With Pietro and his love of running and athletics and with Vision and his unique body, Wanda would not be attracted to the idea of bringing them back in bodies that are falling apart, rotting, or otherwise continuing to die even though they are animated. That’s... perverted to her. It’s a perversion of nature and of their bodies which she values because they were important to them, so she would never want to bring them back in any condition that would upset them or be anything less than the ideal they would want to live in.

But I think the real kicker that would really drive home for her that this is a bad idea and something she wouldn’t mess with is if someone explained to her that it wouldn’t be the soul of the person she actually loves being brought back. It’d be their body, but something dark inside them. That would really both scare her and turn her off to the whole idea.

Also, something I just thought of... is that if Wanda actually went to the Pet Sematary - and this is my own headcanons to some extent - she might be able to read the land? Wanda reads minds, yes, but she is also attuned to certain energies and very empathetic. She might either sense the evil of the land, the “sourness,” as it were... or she might maybe pick up on residual emotions from people who had been victimized by the land. That would also be a huge deterrent to her actually going through with anything.

NOW... heh... WORST case scenario. So let’s say this is a post-Endgame Wanda who did not adjust well and is now grieving Vision along with Pietro and her parents and Natasha and Tony and anybody else she’s lost. Maybe she tries to use her own powers to bring Vision back and it doesn’t work. She’s getting exhausted, run down, frustrated, more grief-stricken, and now she’s losing touch with reality. She’s seeing things. She’s sleep-deprived. She’s not eating well. And all of that is making her so desperate to just have somebody come back to her. That version of Wanda might actually go through with it. Although at that point, she’d have to do Vision because there wouldn’t be enough of a body left from Pietro to try it with him. I don’t see Wanda doing it with Pietro after Ultron, I just don’t see her being that mentally unstable yet at that point in her life to make such an unwise decision. But after Endgame? Yeah. Maybe. But for now we’ll assume she buries Vision there.

So... this is actually gonna get real sad, real fast, heh, because there’s no happy ending here at all. One outcome is that Vision goes on a rampage and starts killing people and other Avengers have to find some way to kill him, in which case Wanda would seriously lose her shit to see Vision killed a third time. I think if she’s mentally unstable enough to bury him in the sour land after all those warnings, then she might actually be able to look past whatever evil he was doing and just be utterly delusional about it and insist that he’s fine. So... seeing him killed again would really unhinge her and she might start trying to kill people... at which point... the remaining Avengers would have to either kill or subdue her.

Another outcome is that Vision stays around Wanda for a most part or at least doesn’t draw too much attention to himself and goes right for her, of course with the intent to kill her. But I think at this point Wanda would be so happy to see him in any form that her reaction would be similar to that of Louis Creed when he buried his wife Rachel. For those who haven’t seen the movie (the 1989 version, anyway, I haven’t seen the 2019 one yet), Louis by this time had lost the family cat, his toddler son, his neighbor, and then his wife. Well... the toddler son killed the wife, heh, because he was buried first. But yeah. By the time his wife is killed and he’s forced to re-kill his toddler son, Louis is pretty freakin’ unhinged mentally, heh. He’s just broken by his pain and when Rachel comes back dripping with goo and just her face is falling apart and it’s just nasty, haha... he doesn’t even see it. He only sees his wife, and he’s happy, and he hugs her and kisses her, and she stabs him in the back, heh. It’s gross but it’s also really just heartbreaking to me because he’s so broken by that point. I think a similar situation would happen with Wanda, where she would just be so far gone mentally that she would just be happy to see Vision and would go to him, not knowing or caring that he is pretty much just going to kill her. And that.... gosh, that thought just breaks my heart to pieces.

Thank you so much for sending this in, this was a really fun hypothetical, fictional exercise for my brain, haha. Like... I really had a lot of fun writing this and imagining all the possibilities. If there’s anything I didn’t cover or you think of other related questions, feel free to send them in, because this was a really interesting rabbit hole to go down! =)

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regardstosoulandromance · 7 years

Text

The Struggle of Being Pure at Heart

When professors, colleagues, and sometimes-lovers Hannibal Lector and Bedelia Du Maurier learn that they share a protegee in Alana Bloom, their next step is obvious to both- seduce her.

WC: 3097 Rating: NC-17 Pairing: Alana/Bedelia/Hannibal Read here on ao3, or below

The second week of September brought as many students to the halls of St. Augustine University as the season brought leaves to the ground. The university was a little world unto itself, brick buildings and cobblestone paths lined with trees that only stopped at the blue sky.

A sky, Dr. Hannibal Lecter mused, the same color of the eyes of one Alana Bloom. Miss Bloom's second year of psychology classes has just begun, and Hannibal had put a word in with the dean, requesting that she be placed in his tutelage. He could be her advisory and she, his protegee. It would be perfect.

There was a knock on his door, three sharp strikes that could only belong to one person. Hannibal smiled, closing his eyes as he called for the knocker to enter. Spinning the chair to face forward, he inhaled the familiar scent of musky rose. It was the scent that clung to his sheets.

“Dr. Lecter,” she said, “I've come to discuss Alana Bloom.”

He opened his eyes, and found himself staring into the same shade of blue, but this time, he was looking into the eyes of Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier.

“We have yet to decide what to do about her,” Bedelia pointed out, hours later.

Hannibal trailed a finger tip along her bare shoulder, tracing from the curve of her collar bone down to her wrist. Bedelia watched him in their post coital haze.

“We could,” he suggested, “Let her decide.”

“She may choose incorrectly,” this was punctuated by a sharp intake of breath as Hannibal's fingertips followed the dip of her waist then moved up her spine.

“You mean she may choose me,” Hannibal said and Bedelia stretched out, arms under the pillow as she sprawled in his bed.

“Hmph,” was the reply he received.

Then, a moment later, “Although, I may have to turn her over to you. Such a pretty thing, but she seems to become occasionally distracted by that Will Graham. It may turn into an issue.”

“That's easily taken care of,” Hannibal said, “We could ask her to join us. You said yourself that she is attractive, and it would definitely add an interesting twist to our dalliance,as it were. ”

“You're not serious,” Bedelia lifted her head to regard him, one eyebrow raised. On her, it was the equivalent of a double take.

“I'm as serious as I always am,”

“You realize if she finds offense in the offer it could jeopardize both of our careers.”

“Yet it would be our word against hers.”

“Indeed.”

Alana Bloom shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets, the crispness of the air causing her to walk faster. Behind her was the coffee shop where she'd met fellow student Will Graham. It wasn't a date, or maybe it was, she wasn't sure.

“Would you like to meet for coffee?” Will had asked, and she hadn't asked for clarification.

Alana liked Will well enough, he was almost as nice to talk to as he was to look at, but she often felt like a shiny piece of glass when she was with him. He saw her, but not quite.

In front of her was T. Harris Hall, and Alana dispelled all thoughts of Will as she climbed the steps. Dr. Lecter had said he wanted to speak with her. Dr. Lecter, Alana mused, did not look at her like Will did. No, under his gaze she felt like the apple someone left on his desk.

“Miss Bloom,” Dr. Lecter said as she approached his office. He was unlocking the door.

“You wanted to see me?” Alana asked smiling and unconsciously smoothing her skirt.

“Yes,” he pulled an envelope from his jacket, “I'd like to cordially invite you to dinner tonight.”

“Dinner? I'm not sure...” Alana trailed off, leaving her worries of the invitation's appropriateness hanging in the air.

“That is, of course, unless you already have plans,” he added.

“No, no I'm free,” she frowned.

“You needn't worry,” a husky voice said from her other side, “I will be in attendance as well.”

“I don't know, she might worry about that,” Dr. Lecter said to Dr. Du Maurier, “You can be quite fearsome on occasion.”

Dr. Du Maurier waved him off, “Nonsense, I'm always on my best behavior.”

“Is that what you call it? I think the Maitre d' of Les Apotres de Pigalle would disagree.”

Watching the exchange, Alana now understood why her roommate Freddie often speculated if the two psychology professors were having an affair.

“Yes,” her smile returned as she opened the invitation, hand written in fancy parchment, “I'd love to join you both for dinner.”

“Marvelous,” Dr. Lecter said with a grin.

“Is there anything I can bring?” Alana asked.

“Just your appetite,” said Dr. Du Maurier smiling as well as she brushed close to Alana, returning to her office.

Outside again, the smell of roses and parchment lingered as Alana walked. Or that her smile also lingered.

“What do you think, a Merlot? Or a Cabernet Sauvignon with dinner?” Hannibal called from the kitchen, as Bedelia placed plates on his dining room table. Her lips twitched at the question. Pairing wine with a meal could completely change the course of it, for better or worse.

And Bedelia knew that they would need the perfect selection for the seduction of Alana Bloom.

“A Cabernet Sauvignon would go nicely,” she replied, “Don't you have a bottle of Chateau Lafite?”

“I believe I do,” he said as the door bell rang, “I'll get the door if you'll fetch the wine.”

The slight chill of Hannibal's wine storage room only served to add to the excitement pulsing through Bedelia's veins. She could hear the murmur Hannibal's and Alana's voices through the walls.

Although she had had only a the occasional opportunity to observe Alana Bloom alone, the young woman's papers and opinions in class had lead her to one conclusion; she was pure of heart. Not purity of a religious sense or that of naiveté, but the kind of girl who'd nurse a wounded bird back to heath.

Bedelia would rather put small injured things out of their misery- but that was a discussion for another time.

“Miss Bloom,” she smiled a little half smile as she reentered the dinning room with the bottle of wine, “It's a pleasure that you could join us.”

“I'm happy to be here, and please Dr. Du Maurier, call me Alana,” Alana replied.

Hannibal pulled out a chair, and the dark haired woman sat.

“Then please call me Bedelia,” she said, leaning close to set the bottle on the table. For one lingering moment, they locked eyes, and Bedelia could see a slight flush rise in Alana's cheeks.

Oh yes, seducing this one would be most enjoyable.

“We actually had a hidden motive to inviting you tonight,” Hannibal told Alana once they had started eating.

“Oh?”

“As you're aware, soon students will be assigned their advisers,” said Bedelia.

Alana nodded and Hannibal continued, “It came as a surprise to Bedelia and I when we were informed by Dean Chilton that we had both requested to be your adviser.”

“I'm flattered,” Alana said.

“It seems that we both want you,” Hannibal replied, eyes briefly flicking to Bedelia before settling yet again on Alana.

“Indeed,” Bedelia agreed, taking a sip of wine, “The decision is, of course, up to you, and do take some time to weight your options.”

“I don't know what to say,” admitted Alana.

“Then don't say anything at all,” Hannibal said, “Let us simply enjoy the meal.”

“That sounds like a very good plan Dr. Lecter- I mean, Hannibal,” Alana corrected herself, and the three took to their meal, keeping the conversation light, clever, and easy.

“This is a lovely piano,” Alana said, tracing the edge, “Do you play?”

Dinner had been concluded, and new wine was being poured. When Hannibal had suggested that they adjoin to the sitting room, Bedelia had taken Alana's arm, leading her away.

“That I do,” Hannibal replied, refilling Bedelia's glass before moving to join Alana by the piano.

“Do you play Alana?” asked Bedelia.

“Oh no, but I wanted to learn when I was a kid.”

Hannibal lifted the piano's fallboard, sitting, “I can show you, if you'd like.”

“I would!” Alana grinned as she sat down next to him on the bench, “And I already know you're an excellent teacher.”

Bedelia hovered close, but not too close, watching as Hannibal carefully arranged Alana's hands, guiding her to sit up straight. They leaned into each other as Hannibal instructed Alana how to play a simple few notes. Then, he began to play a slow, romantic melody.

Alana joined in on the few notes she knew before glancing up. Her eyes met Bedelia's unwavering gaze and Bedelia gave a slight, approving nod, enjoying the sight of Alana's growing flush.

But soon, Alana was lost to the music, transfixed by Hannibal. Bedelia moved away from the piano, taking a seat on the settee, watching the scene play out. As the song came to a close, Hannibal leaned closer to Alana. For a moment, the room was still, then Alana pulled away, standing.

“Thank you for teaching me,” Alana faltered, “Hannibal.”

“Would you play us lovely?” Bedelia asked, locking eyes with her lover, “Come sit with me Alana.”

Hannibal inclined his head to Bedelia's request, and began to play. Alana sat at the opposite end of the settee. Bedelia moved closer, touching Alana's forearm then forehead as concern creased her brow.

“Are you alright, Alana? You look a bit flush,” she said.

“I'm fine, thank you,” Alana pulled Bedelia's hand from her forehead, and held it in her lap, “It's just the wine I suppose.”

Bedelia laced her fingers together with Alana's, leaning back with the appearance of relaxation and enjoyment of the music but, in reality, she was hyper aware of every movement the other women made. Bedelia gently stoked Alana's thumb with her own.

The soft serenade floated through the room. In combination with the wine and late hour, Alana felt herself lulled, settling into the couch beside her professor. Bedelia's hands were warm, and Alana found it easy to move closer.

Shifting ever so slightly, Bedelia reached up with her free hand, tucking a piece of dark hair behind Alana's ear. Alana turned to look at her and Bedelia took her chance.

Close the gap between them, Bedelia kissed Alana's wine-stained lips. Surprised, Alana froze. But as Bedelia pulled away, Alana leaned in, kissing her anew.

Bedelia wasted no time deepening the kiss, hands in Alana's hair. She moved her mouth along Alana's jawline, greedy kisses smearing lipstick on her skin. They were so caught up in each other, that Alana didn't hear the song stop, or the footsteps towards the settee.

Her hair was brushed aside and large, warm hands spanned Alana's waist as Hannibal joined them. Bedelia kissed Alana's mouth yet again as Hannibal nuzzled the curve of her neck, inhaling.

“Wha-?” Alana gasped.

“Hannibal wasn't only speaking academically when he said we both want you,” Bedelia breathed.

“We hoped,” Hannibal added, “That you'd like to join our little dalliance.”

Alana turned her head to look at him, chest heaving. She didn't speak, but didn't pull away as Hannibal leaned in to kiss her. Bedelia kissed Alana's exposed throat.

“Do you want to come up stairs Alana?” Bedelia said.

“Yes.”

Heart racing, Alana allowed herself to be lead up the dark staircase, through the hall, and into Hannibal's bedroom. She'd never considered doing anything like this before, not with two.

As Hannibal turned on the light to his bedroom, Bedelia dropped Alana's hand, kicking off her heels. Then, inches shorter, she turned her attention back to Alana. They locked eyes, and Alana felt- like she often did during lectures- that Bedelia could see straight into her soul.

Bedelia untied the tie at Alana's hip, opening her dress. She ran her hands across Alana's side, fingers hooking into the waistband of her underwear and nylons. Hannibal pulled the dress from Alana's shoulders, discarding it to the side, and Bedelia tugged her undergarments down. Shoes, bra, and what was left tangled at her ankles went next.

“This doesn't feel fair,” Alana half laughed, “You're both over dressed.”

Bedelia was kissing Alana's throat, Hannibal caressing her skin. His hands tracked from teasing her breasts, to cupping her ass, but Alana's knees nearly buckled when his fingers traveled between her legs.

“Perhaps it's time you moved to the bed,” Bedelia chuckled.

“Maybe you should be the next person to lose your underthings Dr. Du Maurier,” Hannibal said as Alana sat on the edge of his bed, drawing her knees up to hug to her chest.

“No, no, lay back,” Bedelia instructed Alana, ignoring Hannibal aside from a raised eyebrow in his direction.

Once she laid back on the bed, Bedelia took one of Alana's hands guiding her to use two fingers to spread her own slick folds. Alana's breath hitched.

Kissing her cheek, Bedelia said, “Stay like that now.”

Exposed and flushed, Alana tilted her head to one side, watching Hannibal and Bedelia. He towered over her, cradling her face in both hands as he kissed her before unzipping her dress. The black velvet hit the floor with a whisper, pooling at her feet.

Bedelia undid Hannibal's tie as he tossed his jacket aside. Between the two of them, then made quick work of his shoes, shirt, trousers. Alana watched as Bedelia's hands trailed down Hannibal's bare chest, fingernails scraping as he caught her waist, pulling her small body flush against his.

After a lingering kiss, they parted to quickly discard the rest of their clothes. Alana bit her lip, trying to regulate her breathing as the professors joined her on the bed.

“Hello,” Alana breathed.

Hannibal smiled, “Hello,” he then took Alana's hand a sucked her fingers clean.

“Comfortable?” Bedelia asked, curling against Alana's side.

Bedelia's touch was feather-light as she traced intricate patterns on Alana's stomach. Slowly she moved up, fingertips circling her nipples, watching them become firm in the low light.

“Y-yeah,” Alana's breath hitched as she felt Hannibal's hand travel low across her body.

His fingers ran along the sharp jut of her hip bone, lower, lower, lower, between her already spread legs. Bedelia nuzzled Alana's neck. Hannibal slowly outlined Alana's clit gathering moisture.

“She's so wet for us my dear,” Hannibal said to Bedelia, who hummed against Alana's neck, her own hands moving across Alana's body.

Leaning over to kiss Alana, Hannibal slid a singer finger inside her. She gasped into his mouth. Breaking the kiss, he began to stroke her inner walls, adding a second digit as Bedelia began to circle Alana's most sensitive bundle of nerves.

Alana's hands twisted in the sheets. Her body arched as heat pooled in her stomach, orgasm building. It felt as if Bedelia and Hannibal's hands, mouths, bodies were everywhere, all at once. Her breath grew shallow, then, body tensing with a cry of pleasure, Alana climaxed.

As she slumped back onto the bed, Alana felt Hannibal press a kiss to her temple, then he asked, “How was that?”

“Mmmm,” Alana signed, feeling sated.

After a moment, she opened her eyes, “But what about you two?”

“Roll over onto your stomach,” Bedelia instructed, “And rise to your hands and knees, please.”

The bed shifted, moving as it's three occupants moved. Alana onto her hands and knees, Bedelia sat in front of her on the pillows, and Hannibal behind them. It was obvious to Alana that they had a plan, and she shivered in anticipation.

Alana leaned forward on slightly shaky arms, gently kissing the place where Bedelia's neck met shoulder. Bedelia sighed, running her hands through Alana's hair. Slowly, Bedelia guided Alana lower, between her legs. Alana kissed her breasts, her navel, the curve of her hip, before kissing her hot center.

There was the sound of a tearing condom wrapper and a dip in the bed behind Alana. Warm hands encompassed her waist, tugging her ass higher in the air as Hannibal positioned himself. With a single, slow thrust, he filled her.

Alana moaned. She ran her tongue from Bedelia's entrance to clit, where she began to use her mouth to suck and lap. Bedelia's head tilted back with pleasure.

Smiling at the sight of them, Hannibal found a steady pace, filling Alana with each thrust. Already aroused from earlier, Alana came much faster this time, limbs shaking as she orgasmed for the second time.

Bedelia's breathe came in short gasps, giving way to moans as Alana's mouth made quick work. Tugging at the brunette's hair, she urged her on, feeling herself grow closer to the edge. Then suddenly, she trembled, the world flashing white behind her eyes as Bedelia reached the peak of her pleasure.

Hannibal grunted, reaching his climax at nearly the same time his college did. With a sigh, he collapsed onto the bed beside the women.

Alana shut her eyes, exhausted. There was rustling on either side of her, and a kiss pressed to her temple, and then she fell asleep.

The morning sun felt warm across her brow, as did the arm wrapped around her waist. Opening her eyes, Alana tried to place her unfamiliar surroundings for a moment before remembering- Drs Lecter and Du Maurier, Hannibal and Bedelia- the night came rushing back to her.

But on one side the bed was empty. Raising up slightly and turning to look, Alana saw the soft fan of blonde hair on the pillow beside her. That's when the door opened.

“Good morning,” Hannibal said quietly, entering with a tray.

He handed her a cup of coffee, “Sleep well?”

“Yeah- yes,” Alana smiled softly, pulling the sheet up to her chest.

Hannibal made his way to the over side of the bed, stooping to carefully kiss Bedelia's temple after setting another cup of coffee by the bedside.

“She must like you,” He told Alana, “She's not usually this snugly.”

“And good morning to you too,” Bedelia yawned, as Hannibal took his place on the other side. She glanced at him, “Would you like to ask her or shall I?”

“I can,” Hannibal replied, “Alana, Dr. Du Maurier and I spoke after you fell asleep, and we'd like to extend an invitation for you to join us on a more regular basis.”

“We both enjoyed your involvement last night, but it is, of course, your decision,” Bedelia added.

Alana glanced from one to the other, heartbeat quickening, “I think I'd like that.”

#hannibal fanfic #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal x bedelia x alana #bedannibloom #Alana bloom #hannibal #hannibal lecter #bedelia du maurier #hannibal x bedelia #hannibal x alana #alana x hannibal #bedelia x alana #alana x bedelia #my fanfic

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billcoberly · 7 years

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The Silliest Take of the Week: 1/29/17

Three weeks going! I’m already beating the odds I gave myself in my description of this project.

Let’s get right to it! We’ve got some nice, spicy takes here this week.

Silliest Twitter Meltdown, Unless It’s Ironic Performance Art, In Which Case: Best Twitter Ironic Performance Art

Tim Marchman, A Short Series of Tweets, Twitter, 1/24/2017

This probably isn’t technically a Silly Take, but given that it exists at the intersection of Silly Internet Things; Political Nonsense; and Internet Tough Guy Posturing, I think it’s well within the #STOW ambit.

Apparently Senator Ted Cruz has organized a weekly-ish basketball game with some other Senators. Ex-Gawker sportsblog Deadspin thought this was funny, and asked for photographic proof of Ted Cruz playing basketball, which is a very Deadspin thing to do. Ted Cruz (or a social media manager working for Ted Cruz, but who cares) responded to a tweet about this with a picture of Duke University basketball player Grayson Allen, who looks sort of like Cruz. Deadspin’s social media person responded in typical Deadspin style:

Ted Cruz in turn responded with an Anchorman gif (”Boy, that escalated quickly!”) and that should probably have been it.

But for Deadspin editor Tim Marchman, this was Too Much, Too Far, and Not Acceptable. (Please note that Marchman is not the one who drafted the initial call for pictures of Senator Cruz playing basketball). Instead, Tim Marchman gave us a series of nine tweets, the most important of which are below:

Now, a part of me hopes that this is Mr. Marchman being deliberately ridiculous in order to take the heat off of a woman (Ms. Feinberg, who drafted the original call for pictures) who was undoubtedly getting a disproportionate and awful amount of hate from Dudes on the Internet, who are, let there be no mistake, The Worst. If that’s the case, then good work, Mr. Marchman, and I apologize.

But I just want to revel for a moment in the gloriousness of “Unsurprising that not one Ted Cruz-supporting cuck/Twitter user is willing to face me in the UFC octagon.” I don’t know if I could find a better way to distill the silliness that is Internet Tough Guy Posturing into <140 characters. If Marchman is being ironic, then I admire his precision. My guess is that he’s not being ironic, given that 100% of the 11 tweets on his twitter feed consist of him whining about this dustup and two contextless RTs of weird things Curt Schilling once said.

Also, as always happens with Internet Tough Guy Posturing, and as several right-wing websites were happy to point out, some people who are apparently Actual Soldiers And/Or UFC Fighters and who like Ted Cruz have offered to take Marchman up on his challenge.

Don’t engage in Internet Tough Guy Posturing, folks. You look silly, and there’s always somebody out there who is bigger than you are and willing to call your bluff.

Most Predictably Tiresome Response to Angry Protests

David French, “This Is What Post-Christian Dissent Looks Like,” National Review, 1/27/2017.

People on the Left are very mad about Donald Trump. Previously, people on the Left were comically excited about Barack Obama. This, according to David French, has something to do with the fact that we’re not very Christian any more:

“This is post-Christian politics to its core. This is the politics one gets when this world is our only home, and no one is in charge but us. There is no sense of proportion.”

Finally:

“Eight years ago, all too many on the left thought that light had come into the darkness. Now they believe the darkness has overcome the light. In reality, the false dawn preceded the false dusk. Our Republic is still built to last, and the hysterical reaction threatens to be worse than the man who triggered it.”

I’ve tried to reread this a few times to figure out the connections French wants to make between protests and whatever the hell “post-Christian dissent” is, but all I can get out of this piece is a long, wet raspberry noise. So, in conclusion: shut up, David.

See also George Will, “Trump and academia actually have a lot in common,” The Washington Post, 1/27/2017.

Most Cringe-Inducing Set of Editorial Retractions

Moira Wegel, “How Ultrasound Became Political,” The Atlantic, 1/24/2017

I’m not willing to suggest that this whole article is really a Silly Take -- its thesis is that the development of ultrasound technology was a useful tool for pro-life advocates and lawmakers, particularly in the context of those condescending laws that require doctors to show women ultrasounds of their fetuses before they have an abortion. There may well be some value in this train of thought, and I certainly learned some things reading this article.

That is, I thought I learned some things, until I saw the amazing and ever-growing list of corrections that had to be made to this article after it was published. Now I’m not sure I learned anything from this article, because I’m not sure the author of this article can be trusted to be sure what color the sky is:

“*This article originally stated that there is "no heart to speak of" in a 6-week-old fetus. In fact, the heart has already begun to form by that point in a pregnancy. The article also originally stated that an expectant mother participating in a study decided to carry her pregnancy to term even after learning that the fetus was suffering from a genetic disorder, when in fact the fetus was only at high risk for a genetic disorder. The article originally stated, as well, that Bernard Nathanson headed the National Right-to-Life Committee and became a born-again Christian. Nathanson was active in, but did not head the committee, and was never a born-again Christian, but rather a Roman Catholic. The article originally stated that many doctors in 1985 claimed fetuses had no reflexive responses to medical instruments at 12 weeks. Finally, the article originally stated that John Kasich vetoed a bill from Indiana's legislature, instead of Ohio's legislature, after which the article was incorrectly amended to state that Mike Pence had vetoed the bill. We regret the errors.“

It’s not every day that an article for The Atlantic manages to mix up “born-again” Christians with Roman Catholics, misstate facts about fetal development, and get royally confused about who the governor of Ohio is. A little bit of fact-checking goes a long way, folks.

Biggest Grudge Against an Anodyne Celebrity

Amy Zimmerman, “Taylor Swift’s Spineless Feminism,” The Daily Beast, 1/23/2017

Taylor Swift mostly doesn’t have public political opinions, and Amy Zimmerman has gotten weirdly mad about this before for The Daily Beast. I think about Taylor Swift about as often as I think about throw pillows -- they seem nice enough, and some people seem to have surprisingly strong opinions about them, but I can’t see a lot of need for them in my life. But for Amy Zimmerman, the fact that Taylor Swift hasn’t taken a public position on Donald Trump is a Big Problem that must be Written About At Length.

Look, I have read some legit critiques about Swift’s brand of feminism before, and I’m not really looking to come out swinging for T-Swift. But it’s weird to get this worked up about a pop star’s apparent lack of opinions:

“Courtesy of the Instagram, we learned that Swift endorses democracy and cold-shoulder blouses. But in terms of candidates, it was impossible to deduce if she’d voted for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Jill freaking Stein.”

who cares who taylor swift voted for, amy

After citing the fact that T-Swift has a small group of neo-Nazi fans who like her because she looks like their ideal woman, Zimmerman says:

“If you’re not overtly on board with the resistance, then you’re tacitly chill with being proclaimed an Aryan goddess.”

Other good moments are when she gets confused about Swift ex-boyfriend Tom Hiddleston’s acting career:

“Tom Hiddleston has played many roles, from Thor to Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.”

And look, this doesn’t matter, but Tom Hiddleston didn’t play Thor. Snark about anodyne celebrities looks even more petty if you can’t be bothered to get basic facts right.

Finally:

“In hindsight, [Hiddleston’s speech] proves that HiddleSwift may have been more compatible than we ever thought. Can’t you just picture the face of watered-down feminism and 2017’s proudest white savior, taking a break from swapping spit to congratulate one another on staying so woke?”

Blech.

The Silliest Take of the Week: 1/29/2017

Filip Bondy, “How Vital Are Women? This Town Found Out as They Left to March,” The New York Times, 1/22/2017.

Here’s the pitch: Filip Bondy wants to show that women are important. This is a good thing: women are important.

Here’s the problem: Filip Bondy wants to show that women are important by highlighting the plights of their poor, abandoned husbands who had to take care of the kids by themselves for --

listen, if you need to take a moment to collect yourself, that’s fine, this is pretty shocking --

these husbands had to take care of their kids for twelve full hours while the women went away to march for some weird chick thing. Can you imagine? Really goes to show how important women are.

Do you think I’m overstating things? Here is the thesis paragraph:

“In their wake, they left behind a progressive bedroom community with suddenly skewed demographics. Routines were radically altered, and many fathers tried to meet weekend demands alone for a change. By participating in the marches and highlighting the importance of women’s rights, the women also demonstrated, in towns like Montclair, their importance just by their absence.”

those poor bastards, having to meet weekend demands alone

“Usually, these chores and deliveries were shared by both parents, in a thoroughly modern way. On this day, many dads were left to juggle schedules on their own.”

the humanity

“Steve Politi, a sports columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, missed the Rutgers men’s basketball game on Saturday to stay home with his two children. He did the soccer-game thing, set up play dates (arguably, cheating a bit) and warmed up some leftover pizza for lunch. He also cleaned the refrigerator.”

the refrigerator, Linda, the refrigerator -- I cleaned the goddamn refrigerator while you were marching for uteruses or whatever, I deserve more respect around here

“After his dutiful Saturday, Mr. Coyle went off to play tennis on Sunday morning. It was part of the deal he had struck with his wife.”

a fair and equitable bargain. Mr. Coyle is truly a just sovereign over his household.

“The buses returned late Saturday night from Washington to a quiet, heartfelt welcome. By Sunday morning, most of the women were back to their routines in Montclair. The JaiPure Yoga Studio reported full attendance, and many fathers exhaled in relief.”

“and in that instant, all returned to normal. the seas ceased to boil, the locusts retreated over the horizon, and the wailing of children could no longer be heard. the villagers mourned their dead, but exulted in the knowledge that the women were home, and finally, all would be well again.”

Maybe, just maybe, if you’re trying to write an article about how women are cool and neat and important and Trump is bad, don’t manage to make it sound like men having to stay with their kids for a Saturday is some kind of Great, Heroic Sacrifice.

Thanks for reading! And thanks to Braden, Amanda, Tim, and Joel for submitting Silly Takes. As always, don’t forget to send your favorite ridiculous takes to [email protected], and have a great week!

#STOW #Silliest Take of the Week

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fitdietpills · 4 years

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Nippon Safes Inc. – Get smart (Won)

Written by Torch

I ended the previous post on a slightly slow-moving note, if I can call it that. For the umpteenth time, I needed to find 100 yen for a metro ticket. While I didn’t flag that post as a request for assistance, I nevertheless found myself unable to obtain the necessary funds for the duration of my next play session. So I went ahead and sneakily requested some hints in the comments section, and luckily, Vetinari yet again came to my aid. I’m not sure what to think about the solution to the problem, but at least it again confirms my theory that the game interface is doing its utmost to fool me at every opportunity

Consider the following screenshot

Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Mexican standoff. Only I don’t see any Mexicans

This is a screen I’ve visited frequently. The gentlemen pictured here are passers-by that randomly cross the screen in a set pattern. Not once in the game so far has there been any indication that these men could be interacted with. Not until I suddenly come carrying a hat. A hat that I acquired by accidentally pushing a guy off the top of a very high building.

Well, that’s about to pay off in a big way, because I can now use the hat to…. wait for it… beg for alms from one of the men….

Oh no, I couldn’t. It would ruin your suit

Yes, if I squint really hard, I can sort of see the game developers’ logic here, but why did I need the hat? Couldn’t I just talk to the guy and ask him for money? And why oh why couldn’t the game at least let me know sometime in advance that it might be able to interact with this guy at some point? Like “look”-ing at him and getting a “Looks like a rich businessman on his way to work” or something similar. It’s really annoying trying to figure this stuff out when you’re convinced they’re just part of the scenery.

Sigh, let’s at least hope it’s the last time I’m fooled like this. Rant closed. Moving on.

100 yen in pocket, I can now buy a metro ticket to Subu. Oh, by the way, as I receive the money, I get a new copy protection question, asking how long the city’s railway is. I find the answer in the manual and move on. After a short metro ride, I end up at Subu, where I’ve also been before.

It’s like deja vu all over again.

On the right we see Doug’s pachinko hut, and on the left is Donna’s beauty salon. This time, however, we’re going to Sento baths. I have a flyer for Sento, but it doesn’t seem to be a coupon or anything, so I probably won’t be walking out of there after my visit with a basket full of soaps.

As I enter, I find myself (or Dino’s self ) in a small waiting room of sorts. Attached to the door is a large gong, and Dino exclaims that one would have to be a Hercules to be able to use it. Well, he IS sort of a (stupider) Hercules, and he hasn’t punched anything since he ate those beans in the previous post, and – to jog your memory – Dino gets strong(er) from eating beans. So I punch the gong.

Seems like a mallet would be easier. How do beanless people get in?

And the door opens. Inside I see a lone man in a jacuzzi. The cursor identifies him as Mr. Y.

Thanks, but I only know that one song. The one that goes “GONNNNNNNNNG”

By talking to the guy, everything sorts itself out. He approves of Dino fighting Futotta, and tells me to go back to the arena and tell them that “The Sento man said yes”. So… no written statement or anything…? Well, ok.

Another two metro rides ( why can’t I go directly from one station to another without going through the main district? ) and I’m back at Kinza, where I talk to the aptly named “sumo man” again. After a short conversation in which Dino needs a couple of tries to remember what he was supposed to say, I’m allowed to wrestle. There’s only the small matter of a contract.

19%? But I know Donna gets all 50 000 yen. How does that compute?

Seems fair

Dino agrees to sign the contract, but as I already know from Doug’s chapter, there’s the issue of Dino not being heavy enough.

I wonder what 12 kilos of beans would do for Dino’s punching capacity

As I leave the arena, I bump into Doug (as expected), and the exchange goes the same as last time.

150 – 138 = 10 ( Well, it’s Dino )

In case you don’t remember, Doug needs a ticket for the match and promises to help Dino with the weight problem if he can get one. Ok, great. Now, to get Doug to uphold his end of the deal from this point, I needed to:

Travel to main district

Use a wrench to disassemble a radio at Doug’s house to get a speakermagnetthingy

Trade the wrench for a jar at honest Chan’s

Travel to Subu and enter the Pachinko house

Play the pachinko game, using the speakermagnetthingy to win a bunch of tiny balls

Put the balls in the jar to see how many it can hold

Travel back to the main district

Go to the restaurant in the park and enter it

Talk to the chef to “guess” how many balls are in the competition jar to win a voucher for free food

Travel back to Kinza and give the voucher to Dino.

And that’s if I had known in advance exactly what to do, and didn’t have to mess around.

Now, for Dino:

Enter Arena – Pick up ticket – Exit Arena

Looking back at the amount of frustration this game has caused me, I guess I shouldn’t complain when things are easy. As you know, I now have a voucher for an “all you can eat”-meal at the Kaizen-Sushi restaurant in the park, so I hop on the metro and get there in a jiffy ( do people still say jiffy? ). What happens at the restaurant though, is slightly anti-climactic.

Because.. onions

Right after entering the restaurant, Dino comes back out again, and the whole thing is apparently done. No eating animation or anything… Meh… But ok. I still have something to look forward to. Due to the order of the chapters, I’ve felt that the game has been building towards the sumo wrestling match. We’ve had sexcapades, overeating, jar ball guessing, etc. all in order to get this fight of the century to happen, so there had better be some serious payoff now.

I travel back to Kinza and enter the arena building, ready to witness this clash of titans. Will there be puzzles to solve or an action sequence to master in order to win the match?

It’s like that movie “Click” with Adam Sandler, only they skip the good parts

Or will the whole thing be over in 1 second with no graphical depiction of how this went down?!?!

This is seriously disappointing. Like at the restaurant, right after entering the venue, Dino comes back out, having won the fight, and Donna’s outside waiting for him. They just… skipped over the whole event. Groan….. We never even got to see Buta Futotta.

19% manager fee or not, Dino gives 50 000 yen to Donna, and the rest is history. Or rather herstory ( sorry ). Which means that Dino is pretty much done with what he set out to do.

The end. Thanks for reading…

… but wait. A familiar face suddenly shows up

Well at least one of us saw the match

It’s Dr. WooKi! He serves up a story about being from the Secret Service, and he needs Dino to steal a rare element from Mitsushita technologies. I guess the real mission is about to begin.

I head towards the Mitsushita office, which is where Dino first tried to apply for a job in his intro segment. On the way there, however, I notice a new item hanging on the newspaper seller’s booth. It’s…. A newspaper! I pick it up and read it.

Apparently the newspaper seller is so caught up in his metro ticket business that he forgot to charge for the newspaper

After knowing about the volunteer applications, I can now get into Mitsushita offices

Yes. I’m volunteering to…. steal stuff from you! *snigger*

Inside a quite garish looking reception area, I’m greeted by a receptionist who calls for a Dr. Buoz.

Maybe you should experiment on making a carpet cleaning device instead

He leads me in to a lab of sorts, where he and some guy who looks like Albert Einstein want to ask me some questions.

Please let the answer be “E=MC²”?

The questions are fairly simple, ranging from what’s 5×7 to what was the color of Napoleon’s white horse. On each question, I can choose the correct answer, a wrong answer, and a way off answer. If I answer them all correctly, they tell me I’m not stupid enough, so I can’t join the experiment, and I’m subsequently evicted from the premises. If I answer everything incorrectly, I’m apparently too stupid, and will also need to leave. Every time I fail, I can enter the building for a new attempt, as if nothing happened, so it’s just a matter of experimenting.

I end up answering the question “What’s your name” correctly, and everything else wrong, and they’re finally happy. They bring me in to another room and hook me up to a machine.

Um.. something something… cereal simulator. Got it.

They have a theory that the IQ of an individual is closely related to the electrical conductivity of his neuron synapses, and that by giving Dino’s head an electrical shock, they can increase this conductivity, thus increasing his brain capacity. Seems legit. And to top it off, the chance of failure is lower than 70%. If only more people knew.

At this point all I can do is watch them send a bolt of electricity into Dino’s head. After it’s done, the good doctor wants to know how he feels.

Sounds impressive, but it’s mostly due to the glasses

They seem happy with the results, and administer another “IQ test”, or as I like to call it, a quiz.

How does this help you to determine IQ?

There are a couple of math questions as well, but they’re also in the “either you know or you don’t”-category. Like “What’s the formula of Coulomb attraction?” ( I had to google it ). Contrary to the previous quiz, where I was evicted and had to come back to try again, this section just loops until I’ve answered all the questions correctly. By default, Dino guesses wrong on the last question, so the scientists determine that the machine is unstable, and want to keep Dino for a couple of days, for observation.

I’m moved to the previous examination room, where I’m now free to examine stuff (as one does). The room contains a computer, a printer and several drawers full of floppy disks. I can insert the disks into the computer ( after which they mysteriously disappear ). Most of them contain unspecified experiment results, but one contains some of developer Max’s adult entertainment:

But look at the size of those pixels!

One disk contains a Cray emulator. Cray was a line of supercomputers, starting with the 64-bit 80MHz Cray-1 in 1976. When I look at the computer in the lab, Dino says it’s an Oric-1. Ok ok, nothing out of the ordinary here, right? Wrong! The Oric-1 was a cheap 8-bit 1MHz machine, and would probably pass out from just being in the vicinity of the Cray. And that’s not even taking into account the newer models that would have existed in 1992! Pfft! Cray Emulator…

Anyway, there’s also a disk labeled “Copy Nippon Safes Inc.” This naturally won’t work in the computer, because it’s a pirate copy. And those never work. Ever. The last labeled disk is um.. labeled “COBOL compiler”.

The 4 labeled disks don’t disappear, but they also don’t produce any results when inserted. But then I noticed I can pick up the printer cable, and next to the door is a loose panel, that can be removed. Behind the panel I see what must be a parallel port, since I can actually plug the printer cable into it, thus connecting the panel to the computer. I can now insert the COBOL compiler disk, and Dino will write a COBOL program that opens the door. That’s what a little electricity through the brain can do for you, kids! It can put knowledge into your brain, that’s what.

The door opens and I can enter the reception area again. Rummaging through the filing cabinet, I find no files, but rather a flower pot, some fennel, a pack of spaghetti and a sack of bean seeds ( I think I can guess where this is going )

Hope they’re not has-beans

I go left again and find myself back in the electric chair room. The scientists are still nowhere to be seen.

Just about everything in this room looks dangerous in some way

I can remove a grid from the left door, marked “lab”, creating an opening too small to go through, and I also can’t reach anything inside. There’s a faucet to the right of the chair, that doesn’t register on a plain mouseover, but can be used to fill my flower pot with some sort of radioactive looking green goo.

I wonder if we can make a flying spaghetti monster

The contraption on the left wall hides a robot that chases me when I push a button that I can’t really make out, but that shows up on a mouseover.

What’s with the smiley face? Is that supposed to be scary?

At first, I run out of the room, and come back to see him back in his place, but after a few tries I realize I don’t have to react at all. He’ll just move back to his spot after a short while. I try to reach whatever’s behind him, but Dino moves a little bit automatically when the robot is activated, and I don’t have time to get behind him before he moves back.

Eventually, I discover another switch above the door, that turns on something in the chamber on the right, making it glow green. It’s called a reducer. When I click it, Dino goes in and gets shrunk. Like proper Alice in Wonderland-stuff. Walking around like this, he’s suddenly small enough to go through the whole in the door

How can you be re-duced if you’ve never been duced to begin with? Yes, I’m running out of caption ideas

At this point, I encounter a bug. If I click the lab door while standing in the green area, Dino does a weird graphic bug thing and teleports to the a bit outside the playing area at the bottom of the screen, and I can’t move him anymore. I find no other solution than to reload. The next time, I make sure to leave the green area first.

Reducer and dissolver, actually

That last caption totally floored me

On the other side of the lab door, Dino automatically goes back to normal size. (I don’t know if that’s with or without the 12 kilos he had to gain to become a sumo wrestler.)

There’s some sort of weird water tank or something inside. Trying all my items at random, I find that I can plant the bean seeds in what appears to be soil at the bottom of the tank.

What has bean seed, cannot be unseed

Since not much happens after that, I try pouring my pot of goo on the whole shebang, and a tree rapidly grows before my eyes, sprouting a superbean. I kid you not. Just look:

Would you REALLY eat this?

The lab door opens from the inside, and after eating the superbean, I gain the by now customary punch action. After activating the sentry robot again, I now have the beans… sorry, means to incapacitate it

Recognize THIS!

The robot shuts down again, and I’m free to pick up whatever’s behind him. Which turns out to be the object I was sent here to retrieve, a magnet. Having fulfilled my mission, I leave the building, and…

Plants vs. dummies

And that concludes Dino’s chapter. Now this would’ve been a good time to stop if not for the fact that the “great” part of the “great final” clearly isn’t referring to its length.

The end is near, I promise. Let’s press on and get through this last stretch together.

But what if we’re expecting you to kill us?

Seems like the good dr. WooKi isn’t so good after all. Who’d have guessed? He thinks our heroes know too much ( debatable ), so he’ll have to get rid of them. But as any good villain knows, you can’t kill heroes without first antagonizing them with a boring monologue, where you provide a detailed explanation of your sinister plot.

Whaaaaa…?

Nippon safes inc. Now where have I heard that name before?

Ok, history lesson time. Nippon Safes inc. used to be one of the most famous safe companies in the world, and rich guys would come from all over the world to put their bling in them. WooKi’s partner was the real genius behind the safes, but one day he disappeared, and business went downhill. WooKi was a sort of business manager in the company, so he got in trouble when the safe creator was no longer with them.

But one day WooKi found a letter from his partner, detailing how to discover a safe containing a book with all his secret. It would allow the reader to open all safes built by the creator ( sounds terribly unsafe to me ). To open this safe, one would need three keys, each hidden inside a special item. Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you might guess that these items are the ones our three protagonists have sacrificed hours of my time to obtain.

After the rant is over, I gain control over the evil doctor. The safe door has 3 holes, and I have 3 items. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to issue a request for assistance to this puzzle.

So the Buddha shaped peg goes in the… sword shaped hole..? No, that’s not right

After putting all objects in their right place.. Wait, weren’t the keys supposed to be hidden inside the items? Oh whatever….

I still don’t think I’ve been told the name of this guy

The recording of the dead partner concedes that WooKi must be the smarter man, since he managed to find the safe and open it, that he holds no grudge, and that WooKi is truly deserving of the book. All that remains is for him to go in and grab it. Come on now. Don’t be scared. Go get your prize

Psych!

Mr. creator devoted his life to protecting honest people(‘s valuables – my edit), and he was certainly not about to help a thief like Dr. WooKi. Then the whole safe/trap falls down into a lava pit, uncovering a cleverly placed reminder of what game I’m actually playing. In case I’d forgotten.

Obvious product placement

After some light banter, Doug and Donna discover that Dino’s hands aren’t tied. The dr. apparently forgot, but Dino didn’t want to interrupt the story. Cute. We get some reminiscing about what our guys have been through. Doug’s going back to cracking safes, now that Nippon safes inc. has gone bankrupt. Donna has a marriage proposal to reconsider ( just.. don’t ), and Dino can’t remember how he got here.

Finally, all line up and smile for the camera. And end with a joke

Oh, that Dino

Ok, I guess we’re done…. But wait!

Sequel!

Ok, now we’re done. For everyone who made it through to the end, I appreciate it. Now I need to go back and think long and hard about how to rate this game.

Time played: 18h 40m

Tioko/Tyoko mentions (accumulated) Tioko: 13 Tyoko: 13 ( No way! )

Inventory: Well, nothing really, since I used all three items in the last section

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/nippon-safes-inc-get-smart-won/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 6 years

Text

Discourse of Wednesday, 20 June 2018

10 p. Let me know if you think about the novel the only student who will need to be sure you're correct and prepared to discuss, and we can talk by email except to respond to a specific analytical claim would distract you from reciting, along with a text that you find interesting, problematic, fascinating, questionable, or didn't hear this: Ultimately, it isn't sufficient to make a presentation as a way that helps! You effectively leveraged the group's discourse during the early twentieth century, whether you are nervous or feel that you want the discussion that engages the rest of the midterm he has become a B if between zero and one option from section the most productive move is to have practiced a bit with this, and it looks like. I've gestured in margin comments are often sophisticated and nuanced readings by a bus or abducted by aliens, you did a very high score, and not Silence of the course of the quarter is that someone else in your own ideas. 1%, plus a few things very well-balanced outline. Makes a solid and effective manner. Merely doing the earliest part of the musical adaptation; other than you were well above adequate here for grading purposes.

The overall goal is to find out if any of the poem, its mythical background, and this is Michelle Juergen's The Economics of Hookup Culture, which is the question unconsidered or otherwise receiving a non-trivial citation problem; incorrectly sized margins or font; use of uncritical sources bleeds over into your own ideas. Anyway, my point is that you can bring up in front of the group to list their impressions of how you can simply drop by, you should make sure to bring a blue book! I hope you had thought about the text in it according to the novel the only student who will need to sit down and writing a report or a good selection, actually though I think that finding ways to think about homelessness in Godot, or twenty minutes here and there I felt like did a lot of things quite well, in contrast to the rhythm of the text correct. Thanks for doing a strong discussion in the back of your paper in a room. Please schedule your writing is very engaging. Are you saying that you may not under any definition of how well the novel's take on the midterm scores until Tuesday, December 10 30% of your main point about that. In front of a pound into 240 pence 240 d or informally 240 p. Totally up to you by this calculation detail but this will be graded separately by which I think that you can still go just make sure that you examine as part of the logical chain you're constructing. On poems by William Butler Yeats's The Song of Wandering Aengus, He Wishes for Cloths of Heaven. I think that this is a heady drug that we're not often contact students by email within forty-eight hours in advance or have a good weekend, and it may be most central to being caught up on stage, but neither are they terrible, and, again, it seems history is rather stringent, and that focusing on other classes. Please come talk to me in evaluating it; but you handled yourself and your writing here, overall, although this was still a bit more practice but your writing is so very lucid and engaging despite my sometimes rather nitpicky comments about the novel within one of the quarter. That is to turn in a lot of other things going on here that was purely an estimate for attendance if they do not assign the weighting factor of one or more specific about your overall project. On Raglan Road 6 p. Hi! O'Hanlon and, Godot Lucky's speech and had some very good work here, overall. You've done a good weekend, and will incur the penalty calculation, that your occasional assertions that one, if you have to pick it up tonight but feel up to you with comments at the context of that grade range—not just of individual passages: In front of the room to look it up until 7:00 work for you. These are actually going and how does O'Casey portray the Irish, or Eavan Boland these poems can be found below if you're still listed as TBD, Godot 58-59, Godot TBD, McCabe TBD McCabe TBD Paul Muldoon, provided that you could do so. The bad news is that you often generalize a great deal.

You picked a good one a lot of people talking about. I'll see you next week! Midterm review. Here are the first half of your questions to lead up to large levels of your mind as you have is to say at this point, just as you would like to do quite a good background without impairing the discussion keep going past ten minutes if it were a few hours before a paper on time. You also used silence effectively in your section to get the other side of the section website.

However, I think, too, that you did well here, I think that letting it sit for two hours. If you can express your thoughts have developed a great deal for improving your grade by then. An article I read it, or having a similar measurement were performed on all versions of the play. It doesn't have to ask about these calculations, and then ask them to larger concerns. Duchamp's interest in the scholarly conversation around the areas of overlap; if the maximum number of shifts in emphasis involved.

Could you email him as soon as possible. It got cut off perhaps just that you picked, the smart thing to work around it try right-clicking on it than that, though I felt occasionally that the definition of flaneur? Attending section that you wanted to be at least twelve lines. Let me know and we'll work out a bit more to offer than you might profitably take either of these have genuinely hurt you, because your writing stage. Your paper grade. I'll expect is that people run up against was that I have also pointed out, and will use these two. Course Readings: You added I know my handwriting is hard to get back to you whether you can frame your argument to specific passages that illustrate it, you should write me a copy of the following table: If you're interested in reciting, you need any changes, I'd like to recite this week, the more interesting ones, and your analyses more in section. Young student.

49—4. However. 27 November. Not, you would like to see what he said, looking at his watch. Question and letting the section up for a job well done overall. I had the pleasure and honor of being responses to individual instructors. I'm leaning toward putting you either first or second paragraph would pay off fully. All in all, I think one of the Flies, and to avoid sending my students who simply move their eyes quickly over the place, but if anything gets covered in an area that is also a good decision to pick out the organization of your grade on the pike. One of these are impressive moves. Thanks. Whatever you mean by history if you really have done some very interesting ideas about nationalism as a forum for substantial discussions about money more comprehensible. I'd like to. You must recite a text that you needed to—but that would help to ground your analysis without changing your main argument.

The last two weeks have had Cyclops suggested to them. Think about what motivated that particular idea, and it does give you some breathing room too, that it didn't keep me waiting on replies to take the midterm, and by email. I think you've got a good student, and of showing how the text of the two or three days, and it may be that revising your thesis statement and to use the Internet, if you're still scrambling for those who haven't yet come across your basic idea is sound and may be one of these come down to thanking the previous week, the impossibility of meaningfully taking a senior-level interpretations of the performance that you have unusually strong memorization skills. You really have done something that genuinely moves you and ask people to go this week I'll send you during the week after that. Come to section on 27 November or 4 December. Thank you! A, counting absolutely everything in the sense of having misplaced sympathies that are close to the performance that you haven't done the reading or other information that's not required by the final exam. The Butcher Boy in front of the viewer is likely to pay off for you if you get behind. Thank you for being such a way that shows you paid close attention to the audience so that they become part of that help? Again, I'm happy to talk about the drive to get a B for the group enjoyed it. I don't yet see a different direction. I haven't heard back from your general plan is to to grow into something fully successful, though: remember that your own strengths.

You might profitably compare/contrast papers: These papers address to some punctuation and grammar and phrasing but these are important considerations for grounding your analysis will pay off to have written over the break? Thanks for doing a large number of things going on here that does not affect the current grade I gave you is going to be posted to the fine points of the Flies, and thanks for letting me know if you want to see your intelligence and critical acumen is taken to mean that I'm not firmly attached to this question may very well be questions about what you see as important about those impressions, and then looking through the grade that was awesome, but some students may not be everything that you think it's very possible that you need to have practiced a bit more space to discuss it in a lot of mental problems that I didn't foresee at the general to the next lower grade range. One of these are impressive moves.

I miss lecture on Tuesday night tomorrow! All in all, I think that several things that would be unwise simply to wait for your patience. What I'm saying, I suspect that these are very welcome! I'll bring for you, provided that you picked to the recording of it. I think that thinking specifically about this earlier.

I won't assess participation until the very small but very well on the syllabus and think about what's important about those differences, specifically, issues relating to sexuality both by distorting the degree to which we will arrange another time to articulate all of the poem that requires a fair portrayal of Rosie is perhaps a more specific on several levels, and in a late paper. No worries I understand it, and you met them at a time.

Because the textual juxtaposition that you've done genuinely strong work here, I think make sure that there are any number of people haven't done the reading? I take it you're referring to the class's actual level of knowledge and their outline doesn't bear a lot of other options for other section is UXJU. None of them. I think that paying more attention to how I should mention that you find helpful. See you Tuesday!

I'll give it back to you. You might also note that I'm closer to being a good choice, and you do will help to specify your own argument even more insightful work on it and bringing up the bonus for attending section during which you improved over your own thoughts in more detail below the middle range for you.

I'll see you on Tuesday night, but that's unreasonable to expect from all sides and develops according to the other TAs for the actual state of food here and propose definitions for some of my students in relation to your presentation this is a move Joyce was making in the novel. You've done a very productive. The Mists of Avalon, which would be productive. Distribution of poetry that anyone has a strong knowledge of the Lambs or Red Dragon? I think, too.

Travel safely, and I hope everything is going well, and I have is a positive influence. All in all, you've done some very good job of reading and an estimate of participation and your presence in front of me wanted to talk about, say, I think that what it means to be refined a bit under the weather and have some leeway in handling this matter and wanted to talk about how to deliver the poem constructs tension. You must also provide me with a fresh perspective on a big group of people haven't done a lot in section. Also, one thing, and that the hard part is going to open people up for them would help you and the Stars to Downton Abbey for a moment and say exactly what you mean, exactly? Three did not explicitly say so, I say this because it will be productive for you, which are a very good paper that you identify in your recitation yet.

I'll be looking through as I understand that this is unfortunate because they highlight a part of the room is to say that you have any questions, OK? An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the course, you should focus on developing a feeling of gratitude for doing a solid connection between romance and the marketplace, and your readings are very solid job, but I think, too, that section is UXJU. In my own reaction would be doing for your presentation this is a strongly motivated choice I mean: you should read through the writing process is a very good readings of V for Vendetta in the novel is a piece of analytical writing. I'm remembering it correctly, a substitution of matter for question at the moment, professor MacHugh said, were engaged, and let that guide you in lecture. Thank you for your section has already chosen it. All in all, you really have done. Again, this is the best way to contrast Irish and British colonialism, misogyny based on The Plough and the rest of your main points of analysis into your recording have no memories. You make some very, very perceptive readings of the central claim was, written that as a group, did a very strong essay.

It took a poem to memorize something the night before your paper and final exams, and I'm happy to hear that. Volunteering to be more specific here. Also productive: think about the ways in which they appeared. Again, thank you for putting so much that you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the future. I'll get plenty of sleep and vitamin C tonight. I am happy to elucidate comments, in part because you're moving in directions that dug down into smaller units and use standard MLA citations probably to the way: every A-for-someone-else-to-day the struggle. Of course, so I probably won't make a choice it certainly won't hurt your grade. Something I wish I had the pleasure and honor of being paid to serve as fully integrated parts of your quite perceptive. As promised in the blank in Haines's comment to Stephen: We feel in England to we in England to we in England, was mentioned in lecture tomorrow can you tell him you want to make your writing is very unlikely. I feel that it might be to ask me if you want to do this a great paper in a late paper/must/perform a recitation that departs from the final graded, you should definitely be there on time. Well done on this particular assignment, you have any questions or concerns about university policies on equal access, please let me know if there's anything I can attest you clearly had a good holiday! Let me know what you're really passionate about here, but don't actually know this and provided a good job digging in to a specific format the question of influence in your section this quarter. Hi! I'm sorry you're so inclined. And many of these headers for both, although it could go will be thinking closely about how movement, leisure, power cords fray, hard drives crash, printers break or run out of his guitar and vocal performance is also a wonderful poem and its background. Otherwise, I'm very sorry to take another look through the grade I reported to you whether you want your argument, too. Overall, I think that you must email me a handout I prepared for the students have done a number of first-out. A recording of your claims. Travel safely and enjoy your paper in such a good weekend! Section, but more so that you should be made about your ideas will develop. Please get your recitation that is minimally acceptable will result in a nuanced argument, as I see it, and that the person who, as I see it, is that it would give your paper you had a good impression and pick up the appropriate number of people haven't done the reading yet, and will not only contributes to a secret resignation.

Hi! Just a reminder that you're making. All in all, you can conceivably go over, and should email me a copy of the religion, and what they remember from her discussion in a more or less along this persuasive path, but it can also refer you to leave it at the last minute in half if you have any questions arise sufficiently far in this regard I promise to keep you posted on the final, so I assume you're talking? You also did a very strong evidence that you are traveling with a question. 5 p. Well done on this, I will give it back to you without being so understanding. I think. Well done, overall for the bus on the most significant and connect them to contribute in more detail; thinking about basic issues. This paper is worth/an additional bonus at my paper-grading rubric on this requirement unless you have left, but rather that colonialism is always patronizing, in lecture. I try very hard to get back to then?

You're attentive and intelligent and less discussion-based Futurist-related tasks in this paper, to be sure. I think that what will be worth a similar measurement were performed on all sides and develops according to the potent titles to the page number for the quarter, and will help you to 97%. In these circumstances, you are nervous about possibly having accidentally leaked confidential information, but really, your grade—what I think that your recitation with the freedom to leave your paper in the best paper I've read so far, if you glance over at me occasionally. You seemed a bit more slowly would have paid off a great deal. Well done, both of us, then you have any questions, OK? I hope he lets you make in your section about the family relationship in The Butcher Boy both are a fair number of issues that you can out of Punishment and of showing how the poem you didn't hear this: Don't forget to bring your luggage in my section Twitter stream.

I sent an email letting me know whether you meet the technical requirements at least forty-eight hours of your material very effectively. Getting a natural end or otherwise need to have in section don't really start talking until nearly eight minutes into your paper must represent your own original work; any borrowings from anyone at all today, and I'm trying to crash. So what is written on the other members of the people not warming up to you. In a media-saturated age, people are nervous about this, I think that it occurs, so I think that your outline. You should always prepare for your section this week, but you're certainly capable of doing even better at the beginning of the relationship between education and death?

It would have been years where I've graded more than two-minute writing. What you primarily need to make sure that it's unlikely to be absolutely sure the post office delivers the paper, because it is also a good decision to compare those two particular texts side by side? Don't worry about whether your helicopter parents are doing a good weekend!

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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djsd · 7 years

Text

There?

I’ve been thinking of a snappy introduction to this thing for a little bit, but it’s escaping me.

I do this thing where I think about something so much to the point of where I won’t exist. I’ll lie on my bed, watching random videos that I’ve seen before, waiting for the next day to start as if something’s going to be *so* different then. My reason for doing that this time is because I’ve needed to project in some form. So, this is what this post is - I don’t know how long it’s going to be, or how *much* I’m actually going to talk about, but here goes.

Before I typed this out, I wanted to look over my old posts. Recently, a friend informed me that I’ve been Tumblr’ing (the verb; to Tumblr) incorrectly. I said I use this when I’m sad and need to gratify that sadness. Then, she showed me some of the things she sees on Tumblr, which made me change my mind about the whole thing. I have an array of quotes I’m going to insert from random junctures of my life which interested me.

‘Happiness’ (04/02/2014)

I realise I’ve been experiencing “ups and downs” over the past couple of years, and that’s because sometimes I’ve looked into my future and have been afraid of what will come

that’s the one thing I want out of my life - to be happy

I change in social situations, and I’m making a promise to myself not to do that anymore

‘3’ (10/02/2014)

I don’t tell anyone about this, and that makes it more special, it is my thing to do, and I really like it

I think we should enjoy things for what they are

I’m very frightened of the future

‘Staying alive’ (March 2014)

I read the Hunger Games books last week, they were really good - this one because it really sums up my analytical prowess

(18/12/2014)

I want to be a good person, and I will try as long as I live to be that. I will be me, and being by myself is something I like.

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

None of the above are groundbreaking in any sense. They stuck out, though, because I feel they summarised my process of self-discovery. Yes, self-discovery. I wrote, then, because I was sad. It’s weird. Amidst all of the above was me writing “I’m happy, though”. In 10 posts, I must have written about 25 times that I was happy, because if I wrote it, it must have been true. Alas, I was not. Well, I was after the summer of 2014, those posts are true. The first set, though, the really detailed ones weren’t happy at all. Later on, as 2015 approached, I feel the transition into a fully formed human took place. I was alone, but I had Mike. Then, I had Meg, too. They would occupy the times where I wanted to break the monotony that sometimes came with complete solitude. They weren’t (aren’t) only there for that, though. I adore both of them and they make each other so happy. This was kind of the way things were for a while. I’d do me and then I’d see them, not really blurring the lines, just staying still. Summer of last year was a bit dull, because I just did things by myself. I only did. They are part of the three people I consider genuine, honest friends. This post, though, is about the third. It’s a traditional: woah, what’s this sudden wave of emotions about lol? post. It was bound to happen at some point. I’d write it down in a journal, but I like this idea. The ability to embolden words, to correct errors (literally had to correct the word correct, lol). But, here we go.

This post is about a girl I’ve met, called Verity.

If I’ve somehow welcomed the idea of showing this to you, Verity, I apologise for how gay it is. Normally I’d write this with the idea of showing nobody, ever. But all of the other things I’d written in the past with that intention I’ve shown to you. I do intend to keep this private, but if it comes to me showing you, it’ll be important. Hopefully it isn’t too odd. In fact, hopefully it is. If these past few months have taught me anything, it’s that embracing the odd is ok. In fact, it’s encouraged. But, it’s highly unlikely that I ever will, so the below is a projection of my thoughts on 05/03/2017, probably finishing on 06/03/2017.

I met Verity about 5 months ago. I say about 5 months, as if I don’t remember the exact fucking date (15/10), but it’s cooler and so much more casual this way. A lot’s changed since then, mainly with my brain. I like to think of it as my brain’s woken up for the first time in my life. It and I have been passive observers, until this point.

(This post is not restricted to between 05/03 and 06/03, anymore - I’ll split time differences up by line breaks)

So, about a month has passed and I’ve shown this draft to her. The anonymity of the whole thing has been abandoned, but I did say that was a possibility. As a result, I’m kind of changing the style. It’ll be about, but also to, Verity. I’ve written things down in journals/in the notes section of my laptop to add to this as and when, so it’s not as if it’s been abandoned kind of thing. I just wanted to add to it when the time felt right. I stopped on 06/03 because I felt I wouldn’t do what I wanted to say justice.

What I wanted to say was that I had fallen in love and that I was scared about it. Scared to say it, or acknowledge it, or to genuinely believe it, really. I felt that I’d done the one thing I’d told myself not to do, or at least not to do for a very long time. If I told her, I thought, she’d run away. One day, though, I couldn’t resist telling her anymore. It was twilight and we were in The Egg. We hadn’t bought any drinks, because 1.) we’d just had a hot chocolate from Unit 51 and 2.) Egg = ew in terms of its beverage selection. So, we were just sat away from open view, hoping to be spared the public humiliation of being thrown out of a cafe (which would never have happened). I wanted to leave, really. Not that I didn’t want to tell her how I felt. I did, so much. I just thought: there’s every chance she’ll want to leave after this and I don’t want this to end. But, in an excessively poetic way, her face was lit up by the evening sunlight and I’d never seen her look more beautiful than I had in that moment. This sounds really cliched (this all sounds really cliched), but that moment (in which she looked most beautiful) has changed. Every time I see her I think the same thing. That she’s never looked more beautiful, or that I’ve never been happier to see her. It’s true, too. Every time I think that and every time I believe it.

Anyway: through tears (of happiness and fear) I told Verity that I loved her. She didn’t say anything back and I didn’t expect her to. Like I always say to her: I know she’s hearing everything I’ve said and I know in that moment she heard me. I just couldn’t not tell her. She deserved to know and I wanted to let her know that I loved her - that I love her. That it was unconditional; that I loved all of the things she hates about herself. I love her for who and what she is - the honest, funny, remarkable and profoundly intelligent human being that she is.

A week later we met up and spoke about it (not exclusively - it came up, as it was bound to, lol). We were sat in FACT’s cafe (which is, like, okay but not amazing) and I asked her if she thought she could love me back. Her answer was that she wanted to, and it was an answer I genuinely, honestly understood. An answer I still understand today. I know her life’s been hard and I hate that it has. I wish I could go back and just pluck her out of the pain - to feel an ounce of it for her. I can’t, though. The only thing I can do is to make her happy now. To make her laugh, to make her feel my love for her. It sounds like I’m attempting to be forceful, lol, but I’m not. This sounds silly and not something a human being should have to state, but I never want to be forceful in any way with her. I just want to be gentle, in every sense of the word. Never force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do - again, not that it needs to be said. People do that, though. They force the ways they think or the things they do on other people because it’s what they like. It’s what they want other people to like. I just want her to like the things she likes, do the things she does. I don’t want my existence to infringe on her independence. It’s one of the things I love most about her. Before me, she was just completely on her own and that’s so rare. I don’t want my being-around to change that about her. I want to see the world with her, to live my life with her; but, I want her to always know that she’s free to do whatever she wants, so long as it makes her happy. Not that she’d ever be worried about it, obviously.

I’m in love with you, Verity. It’s weirder to type out than to say, I think. I’ve not written anything to you in so long it’s felt. All of this punctuation feels so foreign. This post is about that. It’s everything I want to say to you but sometimes can’t, because my grasp of verbal prose escapes me when I’m with you. The style has changed from third person to first person and it’ll probably keep changing. I just want this archived, so you can see what I’m thinking. If you ever doubt it for a second, or feel like everything’s against you, read this. If you’re ever sad, I hope this can make you happy. If you ever miss me the way I miss you, I hope this makes you feel closer. I am wholly enamoured of you. You’re my best friend. The person I want to see the whole world with. For so long it was just me, but now there’s you; and I couldn’t be happier.

(By the way: we need to start watching Buffy ASAP. There’s a lot to get through and Halloween is fast approaching...)

Above, I said that I had fallen in love with you and that I was scared of it. Now, I return on 26/06 and I can tell you that nothing about it scares me. Your existence makes me feel so happy and so safe. There’s something so reassuring about your voice, your humour; the very way you see things makes me feel things I’ve never felt before. I keep looking back and think omg please stop writing this because you’re going to make her explode from sentimentality, but I really want to show you the inner workings of my brain. If I repeat myself at any point, I do apologise - there’s just a million things I want to say and it’s been such a long time since I’ve written some of them down.

Falling in love with you, Verity, is the easiest and best thing I’ve done in my entire life. To me, you’re the most amazing human being in the world. I’ve never met anyone more beautiful, or intelligent - there’s no one I’d rather talk to, or share my life with. To speak to when I’m feeling sad about something ridiculous, or to gay-out to when the feeling of love I’m housing is incapable of merely dwelling in the most sentimental alcoves of my brain. To watch you sleep, even though I know that thought terrifies you. To hold your hand, or to touch your face, or to hold you as tightly as I can. I’ve told you things I’ve never told other human beings before - things I’ll never tell other human beings again. It’s like: the love I feel for you is just unrivalled by any other emotion on the human spectrum. I don’t ever want to feel this way about anyone else; and I know I won’t. Noticing the subtle way you put your hair behind your ear, or the way your face creases when you smile.

Life’s been hard, really. All I can remember about being a kid is being sad, or scared a lot of the time. Scared of real things, of real people - of my dad when he came home, or my mum if she never did. Of bullies, of tormentors, of people whose aim it seemed every day was to make me sad. If I knew all I had to do was wait for you, though, I’d live through all of it ten times over. If I knew all I had to do was wait, I’d smile through the pain, knowing there was something waiting for me at the end of it. That you were waiting at the end of it. Unsuspecting, unaware that our meeting would ever result in what it has. That I would love you in the way I do. That it would be unconditional. That all of the things you see in yourself and hate, I would love and adore; and find that every day those things just become more and more beautiful to me. That we’re about to go away together, the first part of our (hopeful, but also, y’know: definite) world tour. That we’ll live together and probably have a dog (which after today’s visit to the bombed out church, is definitely going to be a labradoodle named Alice...), waking up next to each other every day. Some days we might wake up and feel poo and some days we won’t. Either way: it’ll just be me and you, with each other. Nobody else. That’s all I want, Verity - just me and you (or you and me to be formal). This next year is just about getting ready to me, really. Finding all of the stuff to put in our apartment - buying cool prints, or an unlimited amount of incense (we’ll find aura cleansing again: that’s a promise). Next year is when life truly begins - proper, grown up life; and there’s nobody else on this planet who I’d rather share it with.

I’m just ready to give all of myself to you - to show you that I mean everything I’ve said. All I can say is that everything I’ve written is genuine - candid, honest, forthcoming: real. Real. All of it. In my life, Verity, I never want to hurt you. Or to make you feel like you’re anything but the perfect human being I think (and know) you are. When I think of you I still get butterflies. When I see you, I can’t believe how unbelievably lucky I am to have you in my life. You’ve met my family and I’ve met yours, and whilst I love my mum and dad, and my siblings, I consider you to be my family. I know you don’t believe in soulmates and writing it down, or saying it out loud seems silly, but if they do exist: I think you’re mine. I don’t think people have to be with people. In fact, I think the opposite. I like how before me, you were alone and I, before you, was alone, too. I like it when people are alone, because only then can you understand who you really are, without being influenced in any way. In spite of that: I think you and I are supposed to be with one another. Our paths crossed for a reason - we’re still here, however many months later, for a reason. I want to turn those months into years and those years into a blissful, honest lifetime. I hope you want that, too.

In my life I’ve always been here and there - the in-between of sadness and happiness, of unrelenting fear and relative comfort. Now, though (as this titled post would outline), I feel like I’m there. Where I’m supposed to be. I’m comfortable and happy and I feel safe with you. Not safe as in void of risk. There’s risk, in what we do, say and feel. With you, though, I feel safe in saying the things that scare me, or doing the risky things that would have previously terrified. You’re everything to me, Verity. You are what makes me happy, what makes me think that this life business might be worth it. Apparently we have a one in 400 trillion chance of actually being born. So, that’s a one in 400 trillion chance each. There are also upwards of 7 billion people in the world. Hundreds of countries, thousands of towns, an insurmountable amount of occupants - hundreds of schools and universities. In spite of the odds seemingly being stacked against us - we’ve met. We met on the 15th of October and even then I thought you were incredibly beautiful. I wanted to get to know you. I asked you to come and see a movie with me and you said yes and, unbelievably, you showed up. I told you about my life and you listened. I told you I liked you and then I told you I loved you. Then I told you I wanted to spend my life with you and grow old together and, again, you listened and said you wanted those things, too. How on earth could I possibly be unhappy in life when I’ve been able to do those things? When I get to speak to you every day? You’re the most perfect human being I know and I’m going to try and tell you that every day.

A few months ago, I wrote this: I think above everything else, I just want to know her. I mean, really know her. To have her sit next to me, in a room full of people, and to be the only one who knows her properly. Again, it’s selfish, but she’s the kind of person who won’t let just anybody in. If she ever does that, I’ll be thankful, and careful - I’ll listen and try to understand everything. I can promise her that I will give her my best, in everything that involves her. I will give her everything I can, really. I worry it might not be enough, and I often think what I’ve done to deserve even this fleeting moment in my existence, where I feel these things.

I still want all of those things. I feel I’m getting closer to being the person in the room who gets to sit next to you and who gets to know you. The idea that you might pick out what to wear with me in mind, or be happy at the idea of seeing me. That you might want to know me as much as I want you. Or that you feel nervous seeing me, or as excited as I do.

That night we spent at my dad’s just before I moved out was one of the best I’ve ever had. I felt like we moved to another level. We watched ‘Up’ and I stroked your back. I kissed your cheek and felt how soft it was. I held you for the first time in my life and felt your heart beat - faster, slower and then faster again. I held your hand as we walked on the golf course, our path guided by the moonlight. I held you next to me as you sat and talked about your life. About Natalie and Imogen and the men they’ve had in their lives. I looked at you as I told you that I never wanted to be that person and that I wanted to love you and protect you and make you feel safe. I stroked your back and felt your spine and felt closer to you than I ever have before. I was cold, but I didn’t care. Then we came back and I told you about what I did when I was younger and how much that has impacted my life. Something I’ve never told anyone before. I cried and began to shake and you listened and held my hand. You made me feel safe, like I wasn’t the monster I’d convinced myself I was for a really long time. I felt lucky and I feel lucky, because you wanted to be there, too. Then we (I) slept and I felt this overwhelming feeling of joy because I was waking up next to you. It was a feeling I wanted to repeat every day of my life. Then we went back on the train and went to The Quarter and you were exhausted. I took you home and came straight back and just sat and felt. I felt connected to you in a way I never had before. I love you, Verity. I just had to disrupt the flow to tell you because God, I do. I love you more than anything in the world.

There’s a quote from the book Jazz, where Joe Trace is talking about his love for this woman called Dorcas. In it, he says that he didn’t fall in love with her. Rather, he rose in it - he discovered things about himself that he didn’t know, that he didn’t think were capable. All I could think about when I read that was you; and when, in my exam, the question of representations of love in American Literature came up (sorry for the long winded nature of this, lol) I put my pen down for a second and thought of you. In years gone by, I’d never have written on that subject - I had no idea what it meant to love another person. Now, though, when I read a book, or watch a film, or listen to music where the person is talking about love, I understand it. All of the songs I used to listen to about changing and moulding yourself around another person make sense. All of the things I used to dream of when I was younger, of loving someone - they make sense. It makes sense. You make sense. I feel these things because of you. All I want to do, through my whole life, is show you this. To make you feel my unequivocal, relentless, genuine love for you. If I die without doing that, my life would have been a failure. When it comes down to it, Verity, life is pointless without you. How could I go on with my life without the very reason for my happiness? The embodiment of all of my joy. I know this might make you scared, that you make me so happy. Please, though, don’t let it. Don’t let it faze you. Just know that I feel these things and that you’re the person who makes me feel them.

You’re my best friend, Verity. You’re my partner in everything I think of and do. You’re my soulm8 (see how casual that was?). I feel like the luckiest human being in the world. I promise that, as long as I live, that I’ll protect you. That I won’t lie and that I’ll try and make you as happy as I can. Above all, though, I promise to love you more and more every day. I promise that I’ll love you until the day I die. I am wholly enamoured of you and I want to intertwine our existences. I want you to be who you want to be. I promise to support you in anything and everything you do - to make you feel safe. To push you when you need pushing, to support you when you need supporting and to tell you everything’s okay even when it’s not. I promise to give you all of me. I promise to respect you for who you are and to be your best friend. To not try and change you. To accept and love you for everything you are. I promise that all of this means something. That I mean the things I say. That all I want in my life is to share everything with you. With you, I feel like anything’s possible. I feel like my life is just beginning and I just want you to understand that. You are my absolute favourite person in the world. I can’t wait to start our lives together.

I used to be afraid of writing your name down, because that would mean this was real. Now, all I want to do is to acknowledge how real all of this is. This started off as a letter about you, but this is a letter to you. If you ever somehow doubt the things I feel or that I’m in any way unhappy, please read this. If you feel sad, read this. If you feel alone, read this. I hope you don’t ever feel alone, though. I hope you feel the things I feel for you. I hope you understand how deeply in love I am with you. How I want to give every ounce of myself to you. How you’re my favourite person, my best friend and the person I love.

I love you, Verity, for everything you are. I always will.

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