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paragonrobits · 6 months

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anyways I happened upon some thoughts on the in-universe thinking behind the song Marceline ascribes to Marshall Lee in Bad Little Boy

the biggest and most significant thing there is that Marshall explicitly has feelings for Fionna and manipulates her with those same feelings that she has for him; this raises a lot of questions if you assume that this relates to Marceline's own thoughts on Finn.

In Go With Me, she's pretty adamant that she doesn't feel that way about him. Now, of course, that episode was the Finnceline episode for a long time even with that detail because of how much it emphasized how well they mesh together, how akin they are and how much fun they have together. It's also notable in that Marceline at that point denying any feelings doesn't preclude her developing stronger romantic feelings later in life, but I don't think that's the most important possible takeaway.

Instead, consider a more significant bit; Marshall Lee's characterization is something Marceline specifically wrote, for a character she likely believes (for good reason) to be based on her. And most importantly, Marceline has a really low opinion of herself. She thinks of herself as a monster, she drives people away on purpose so she doesn't feel the pain of losing them in other ways, she deliberately acts off putting and scary because she believes she's just as much a monster as her father and everyone will leave her one way or the other.

It's not unlikely that the song she gives Marshall is probably based on her own romantic feelings in the past, exaggerating her own feelings about herself as a bad person, or a manipulator; I suggest that Marshall's entire characterization is Marceline criticizing herself, exaggerating what she thinks she's doing; manipulating the feelings of others for her own amusement or because she thinks its funny.

Now, we know she's not actually like that, and this is just her being needlessly self critical (while also trying to engage with her father substitute and bond with him somehow), but it is pretty significant how she characterizes Marshall as much more callous and even cruel; Marceline even at her most apparently antagonistic was nothing like that.

As an example, consider Go With Me again; when Finn dons the lute suit to try to get her to go with the movies before, Marceline's comment of 'uh oh' and attempts to dissuade him suggests she's at least considered the idea of him having SOME feelings for her and to head them off, and she's surprisingly gentle as possible with him once her attempts to just gross him out or scare him away have no effect on him. Even if she was planning on heading this off, she's remarkably awkward and cautious about it.

The biggest surprise is that we know what Marshall Lee is ACTUALLY like; rather than being a manipulative jerk who toys with his friends feelings even if he DOES have romantic feelings in them as well, he's not that different from her, albeit even more laid back (possibly because he doesn't have a thousand years of trauma persuading him he's a monster too, though in this case he may simply not recall it); given his attitude with Fionna, its not implausible that they DID have a romance at some point before it cooled down (which is, again, something that could well have happened if Finn was older during the on-screen seasons) and they're definitely close enough that he's implicitly crashing at her place with no suggestion that she'd find him walking around in just a towel there surprising.

So again this suggests to me that Marceline's depiction of Marshall says more about her own deep self criticism while playing it off as part of Ice King's fanfiction, airing it out in a deniable way (which is a very Marceline thing to do); from her own views as a cruel manipulator toying with the feelings of her heroic friend, to a bad break up with candy royalty that's complicated at BEST, to that heroic friend being internally tormented by those feelings, it all says a lot about what Marceline THINKS herself as a bad person even against a significant amount of evidence otherwise.

#adventure time #marceline #bad little boy #analysis #marshall lee #queued #i will concede there is some shipping bias here but #anyone who knows me in the AT fandom probably would expect that

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cookinguptales · 8 months

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Hello, i hope you are having nice day/night! I have a question, i have tarot card as well but I can’t read them well or make connections, how can i do that better ? I hope it is not a silly question. I just want to know how to get better at reading cards <3

Oh wow, y'all are fast. lmao

I guess it depends on what your goals are. For me, I'm coming at this from an academic/historical POV so I spent a while learning about the history of the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot, some of the occult ideas being referenced by the cards, etc. (I also learned about other major tarot decks, but I don't usually use that while doing readings.)

You really do not have to do that, though. If you just want to know about the generally accepted meanings for tarot cards, there are tons of books and web sites that will help you learn. It's good to keep in mind that cards don't generally have just one meaning. Sometimes their meanings are complex, and sometimes different people ascribe different meanings to the same card.

One other thing here is that, while the same card can have many meanings, often the creator of the deck has a specific meaning in mind, when it comes to modern decks. Many modern decks come with a small booklet that explains the choices they made. You don't have to use this book, but knowing what the creator intended can help you know what each card is supposed to mean when there are a lot of options to choose from.

So... once you know what each card means (or at least what your options are) then you do actual spreads. Again, there's no one right way to do this. There are a lot of very common spreads, like a Celtic Cross or a Horseshoe, but this doesn't need to be complicated. You can do simple three-card readings like I do, or you can even do a reading with just one card. I think the secret here is just to have what you want out of this spread in mind before you start. If you're doing a three-card spread, does each station (place where the card is put) mean something? Is it a past, present, future situation? A problem, cause, solution situation? Or do you just want to bring the cards you draw into a cohesive whole?

When I do readings on tumblr, I usually just do a basic three-card draw to make things simpler. Then... well, again, this can be done however you want to do it. For me personally, I think about the three cards and how they could be assembled, then I almost kind of write a story about those three (or more) elements coming together. I guess you could say I kind of write tarot fanfiction for each person I give a reading to, lmao. In other words, if all three of these sets of themes/events are to be fit together, how would I fit them together if I were writing a story, if that makes sense...?

I think about human nature, or at least my understanding of it, then I try to think about a reading that makes sense. Sometimes I think about the literal meaning. Sometimes I think about the historical allusions. Sometimes I think about vibes. It's not an exact science or anything. I just kinda write down whatever makes sense to me.

We have fun here. :')

But again, it doesn't have to be like that! You can go as literal or as metaphorical as you want, as simple or as complicated. And... honestly, a not inconsequential amount of this is just vibes. How do you feel looking at these cards? Does this feel positive or negative? Going with your gut never hurts in a situation with no wrong answers.

As far as psychic readings... Well, I'm not psychic, though I have done ethnographic research with people who... I guess I'd say at least genuinely believe they are. I can't say that I have strong feelings either way on whether they're right. (That wasn't really my concern lmao.) So I guess I'd say... if you want to try and exercise your ESP, really lean into those gut feelings. Know the basic meanings of the cards and then listen to your own intuition. What do you think this card is trying to tell you? How does that interact with the other cards on the table? Is this a message from something larger than you, or you assembling your own subconscious psychic intuition into something consciously comprehensible? Are the cards guiding you, or is your power guiding the cards? Things to consider, I suppose.

Altogether, though, I would just say that tarot is a living tradition, and there are no hard and fast rules. Buy the decks you like, use them how you like. The "meanings" of these cards change drastically depending on the historical period, where you are, and who's interpreting them, and your ideas do not matter less than anyone else's. Some people don't even bother learning the "right" meanings! They just go off vibes.

Honestly, I'd say to just start researching commonly accepted meanings of cards, read the booklet that came with your deck, and start doing it. Do all kinds of things. You'll eventually find the method that feels right for you.

#tarot #replies #just my two cents anyway

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artbyblastweave · 3 years

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BLASTWEAVE what does steven universe have in common with watchmen?

Both Steven Universe and Watchmen are groundbreaking entries in their respective genres that demonstrate a deep understanding of the appeal of the genre they’re working in, and engage with their ideas on a previously unheard-of level for the medium. That breaks ground and clears the way for what other works in the genre can get away with.

Steven Universe showed that, well, first of all that you can make a cartoon that’s fundamentally ideologically queer beyond a few side characters, but also that you can have an emotionally intelligent and mature children's cartoon where the character nuance and depth and development are all taken very seriously. Watchmen showed that you could write serious and interesting narratives about superheroes if you were willing to roll with the crazy. (Neither of them was the first to do the things I’m ascribing to them, but I do think that they’re what made it stick for their respective fields.)

In doing so, though, both works create/created a catch 22 for all future works in their genre. Part of what made both of them so good is that they were willing to critically unpack and air out the ugly implications of their format that usually get chalked up to suspension of disbelief, and now that that’s out in the open it becomes very difficult not to think about how any other given work is or isn’t addressing those issues- even if they aren’t equipped to address those issues in the scope of the story they’re trying to tell. Watchmen asked questions about who sanctions superheroes, what qualifies you to do that work, where the line is between heroism and fascism or if there even is one, whether the agency to act means you have a right or a duty to act, whether anyone who seriously bought into the superhero thing could possibly be doing it for good reasons, and, if they somehow were, how long you can care with the intensity necessary to be an effective hero without suffering burnout (not long.) I literally can’t think of a single superhero thing worth reading that isn’t in some way in conversation with Watchmen - you now kind of have to answer those questions, explicitly or implicitly, even if your books thesis is “Alan Moore sucks eggs and being a superhero is very sustainable and fantastic.” If you just leave the question of whether your superheroes are justified completely unaddressed, there’s an uncomfortable discordance there, because we’ve seen the extreme end of that sliding scale in the form of the Comedian and if the narrative doesn’t engage with what makes the protagonist not Edward Blake, it can feel worrisome. If they try and then botch it it can feel alarming.

Steven Universe has a similar thing going on, at least for me. It’s the only unironic, non-parodic children’s series that’s really, seriously unpacked how fucked up and traumatic it would be to grow up as the archetypical All-loving Spirited Saturday Morning Cartoon Protagonist, how warped and dysfunctional a household that enabled that lifestyle could be at its worst, and what the future looks like when your whole childhood was centered on a now-ended conflict. ( a lot of cartoons flirt with that last one but don’t commit.) I’ve seen jokes and intended-as-cracky fan theories about this for years, surrounding lots of other cartoons (Ben 10, Pokemon, Powerpuff Girls) but almost never with the assumption that the creators are on the same page as them. I’ve seen stories that are post-modern reimaginings using the same general archetypes or whatever (Venture Brothers) but that’s not this! SU told an entertaining story earnestly, and then engaged with the emotional fallout of the story it told, with an unheard-of breadth and depth. A whole season of unpacking! No other show has ever been allowed to sink that much effort into closure. That’s usually what Fanfic is for.

I think it’s great, and that shows like Infinity Train and The Owl House are able to go as hard as they do largely because of Steven Universe’s precedent- but no matter how good a cartoon is, I can’t watch them without having this voice in the back of my head going “Oh, these children are going to grow up to be broken wrecks, bar an extensive and harsh healing process that kinda hurts to watch, huh.”

The issue is that not every cartoon can be Steven Universe, where the project was to thoughtfully and sensitively unpack this stuff. It’s a fair bet that we’ll probably never see a show with that exact project again (not least because of the loss of novelty value.) You’ve got your own stories you wanna tell that’ll run their own course, mostly aimed at children, there objectively isn’t narrative or financial room for most stories to unpack these assumptions if that wasn’t the goal going in. For example, Gravity Falls had pretty tight storytelling and a narrative that absolutely had room for a post-script "where-do-we-go-from-here” plot- it sped-run the “oh no, childhood’s ending” thing- and it’s pretty telling that the aftermath, healing process, interpersonal relationships and so forth are one of the things that that fandom heavily fixates on. The narrative had such a clean ending that it made people go looking for the mess. That’s not bad! It’s how most storytelling works! But now I look at any cartoon with kid heroes that’s meant to be taken even marginally seriously and go, Oh. Win the battle, lose the war. Then I feel sad. The contrast, of course, is that most superhero works actually can be, and in fact benefit from trying to be like Watchmen, because all the questions Watchmen raises about the ethics of power are also just.... like.... the most interesting storytelling hooks if you want to write a cape thing with real themes. They’re the kind of stories we’d have gotten years prior naturally if not for the CCA boondoggle. Admittedly it kinda creates a different problem where most “good” cape media is inescapably self-referential and draws on picking apart the conventions of a 60-70-year old canon that hasn’t been in wide circulation in years. But! I also think there’s a stronger obligation there to keep superhero fans in check- if your superhero thing isn’t making the reader question the ethics of violence and individual heroism in the face of systemic injustice, you wind up with people who unironically think Frank Castle is a role model to be emulated. We all know that guy. Children’s media doesn’t really produce that guy the same way, although it can draw them in from other corners. Superhero media often needs to be self-critical in a way children’s cartoons don’t always have to be.

#steven universe #gravity falls #watchmen #infinity train #the owl house #also I want to give a shoutout to animorphs for #similarly #engaging in how fucked up it would be to be a power ranger without being too on-the-nose about it #meta #thoughts #worm #parahumans #because lets face it #you know what's on the back of my mind when I'm thinking of works that think about Implications tm #wildbow

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theclockworkmonk · 3 years

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Out of the Mouths of Babes — Chapter 4

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Chapter 1 on Tumblr

Chapter 2 on Tumblr

Chapter 3 on Tumblr

Written for Hinny Ficfest 2021

Prompt: “Uncle Ron said something about Harry knocking Ginny up, but I don’t know what he means,” Teddy said.

*******

Ginny had disappeared, dragged through the kitchen door, before Harry could come up with an excuse to keep her by his side. He sighed and took a long gulp from his glass of firewhiskey, welcoming the burning sensation down his throat. Whatever his family was so wound up about, Harry knew he wasn't in danger here, so he hoped the drink would dull his overactive auror instincts so he could enjoy the evening.

"So...how's the shop?" asked Harry, choosing to focus on George, "any accidental new body parts I can't see?"

"Harry, I'll have you know that we ascribe to only the highest of safety standards at Weasley Wizard Wheezes," said George with his nose in the air, "We strictly adhere to a dual-fault system to make sure a trained wizard is on-site to intervene in case of emergency."

"By that he means that he doesn't try any weird shit on himself without me there to rush him to St. Mungo's," said Ron with his mouth full, wincing as his mother smacked him in the back of the head with a wooden spoon for his language.

Harry's eyes narrowed at his best friend. "So you two are already partners now? Really wasting no time on bailing on me, aren't you?"

"Don't be a prat!" grumbled Ron. "No, like I said, it was just a thought that I had. You know, the kind of thought you would hope you could share with your best mate without him jumping down your throat?"

"Well I think it's a marvelous idea," Mrs. Weasley announced loudly from her place at the stove."

George's eyebrows shot up. "Who are you and what have you done with my mother? You're glad that another one of your sons is considering wasting his life at this silly business, instead of a respectable job at the Ministry?"

"Well, if said Ministry job involves chasing after Death Eaters every day," huffed Mrs. Weasley, "Then I suppose my nerves will take any alternative."

She sent a stern look towards Harry and pointed a threatening spoon at him, making him jump back. "You could do well to learn from Ron in that regard, Harry."

Ron was grinning ear to ear, bouncing in his seat from being the favorite child of the moment.

"There's nothing wrong with Ron doing the responsible thing." she lowered her voice to a grumble so Harry barely heard, "at least someone is."

Harry surveyed the tense atmosphere in the room again.

"Okay, what's got everyone in such a mood?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

"No one's in a mood!" said Mrs. Weasley quickly.

"Harry," Mr. Weasley spoke up for the first time, and his voice too was less assuring than Harry usually found it. "I'm having trouble with a fascinating new muggle device I've discovered, would you mind giving me a hand out in the shed?"

"Oh. Sure," said Harry easily. Mr. Weasley got up from the table and led Harry outside. They entered the man's infamous tool shed, and Harry noticed new mechanical and electronic devices in various states of disassembly. Mr. Weasley gestured to his work table, where a VCR sat.

"I've heard that muggles use this to see recorded images, like a pensieve, but I've put in those black blocks, and nothing happens."

"Oh, well," said Harry, trying not to laugh, "You need to attach it to a television. It can't just work on its—"

He was interrupted by the door opening again, and Harry was surprised to see Mrs. Weasley entering the shed which he always knew her to avoid, wanting nothing to do with her husband's "nonsense" tinkering.

"Molly, what are you doing here?" Mr. Weasley asked crossly, "We agreed we wouldn't. The boys—"

"I told them I was getting apples from the orchard," his wife said dismissively. She crossed the shed and looked beseechingly at a very surprised Harry.

"Harry, dear, you know how we think of you as a part of this family. We've been wanting to say….we hope that you don't think that has changed because of you and Ginny's relationship. We know young men have trepidation about 'the girlfriend's parents,' but you're not just our daughter's boyfriend to us, you're one of our own."

Harry was as touched as he was confused. "Th-Thank you, Mrs. Weasley," he said softly. "I can't tell you how much that means to me."

"And one reason we had no objection to you and Ginny dating," Mr. Weasley continued, "is that we trust you to always do right by Ginny. To always do what's best for her."

Harry looked back and forth between them, their expressions pointed and expecting.

"Well — ehem — I'll remember that. I promise to never do anything to hurt her." He meant it.

There was another moment of silence before Mrs. Weasley spoke up again.

"Sooooo…." she prompted. "We just want you to be aware that….should you decide to propose…you wouldn't have to worry—"

"What!?" Harry's heart leapt into his throat and he knew his face had turned scarlet. "Oh, no no," he said, putting his hands up. "I'm glad to have your blessing, but we're not ready to think about that yet."

Harry rubbed his neck nervously. It was only a half-lie. In truth, Harry was ready to think about that. He thought about proposing to Ginny damn near every day, in fact. But he was fairly certain that Ginny was still years away from being ready. She was fiercely proud of her independence and she was still dealing with the papers referring to her as "Harry Potter's girlfriend" before "star Harpies Chaser," even without marriage.

Mr. Weasley sighed in what seemed like disappointment and Mrs. Weasley's mouth thinned and her expression turned sour.

"Well...the roast should be done, we should all head back inside."

The Weasleys led the way out of the shed and Harry cautiously followed them. When they arrived back in the kitchen, Harry saw Bill shoot his father a stern, questioning look, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Weasley shake his head grimly, and Bill and Charlie gave Harry a glare that would make Mad-Eye Moody quake in his boots.

Harry froze and all the breath left his body. It suddenly all made sense. He was the thing that the Weasleys were so on edge about. Ginny's parents inquiring about him marrying her.

They had somehow found out that he and Ginny were living together.

Harry suddenly felt like a sheep in a cage with several wolves.

"Hey mum," said Charlie, "while you were outside, Aunt Muriel floo-called and said that the gnomes are in her attic again. Apparently she's upset at the way dad tried to take care of it last time."

"Is she sure it's actually the gnomes, or is it the doxies nesting in her hair?" Mr. Weasley grumbled as his wife shooed him into their sitting room and through their fireplace. Harry's heart was thudding in his chest as the few Weasleys he could count on to not murder him due to this secret getting out abandoned him with the curse breaker, dragon tamer, master prankster, and Ministry power-broker.

Several murderous eyes turned towards Harry.

"Look...er…" Harry stammered. "I really thought that, after everything, we had all moved past the whole 'overprotective big brothers' routine."

"Yeah, we thought we had too," said Charlie darkly, "but mum and dad's diplomatic approach clearly didn't work, so the gloves are off. I guess we never figured that the savior of the bloody wizarding world would do this to our sister."

George snorted, still finding this whole thing quite amusing. "Sorry, do this to her? Harry's the real victim here. Ginny's a nightmare already, can you imagine what living with her will be like now?"

"What the hell are you lot talking about?" Ron cut in, looking around the room in confusion.

"I think your brothers have become aware of me and Ginny's...status change," said Harry.

"Oh, that is just so typical!" huffed Hermione, crossing her arms and adopting her lecturing pose. "Ginny is perfectly capable of handling her own life and she doesn't need a bunch of chest-beating men to defend an outdated notion of her 'honour!' I still can't believe how sexist magical society can be sometimes."

"Yes, Hermione, our world is sexist, whether we like it or not" said Bill, not backing down. "You can pontificate all you want about how it's not right, or a double standard, but once the public finds out about this — and sooner or later, they will," he shot another glare at Harry, as if he wrote to the papers about it himself, "then it will change how people see her. And since she's a Quidditch star, the way people see her matters."

"Yup, can see the headlines now," George sighed dramatically, "the ambitious social climber Ginevra Weasley, raised in a pauper's home, so she used her feminine wiles to land herself this sweet gig."

"Look, ultimately, it's none of our business — no, I'm serious!" Ron finished in response to his brothers' looks of betrayal. "Look, Bill, Charlie, you two were only around when Ginny was a little girl. You didn't go to school with her. You never saw first-hand what happens when you try to meddle in her life to defend her virtue, trust me." He shivered a bit, as he remembered the traumatic memory.

"I don't even understand why we have to meddle," said Percy, "I just don't understand your logic, Harry. There's no question you would be willing to throw yourself into mortal danger all over again to protect Ginny. What you're hesitating to do is comparatively easy."

"His reasons don't matter, he should have thought of that earlier," said Charlie, pointing a threatening finger at Harry. "I don't care if this makes me a hypocrite, but you're going to do the right thing and—"

Ginny suddenly burst into the room, causing every word to fall silent. Harry knew that Ginny always hated it when people were obviously talking about her, but as he started towards her, he was surprised when he saw that her eyes were watery with tears. Ignoring all of the eyes on her, she ran straight towards Hermione, throwing her arms around her friend.

"Erm, is something wrong?" asked Hermione. She threw a questioning look to Fleur as she followed Ginny into the kitchen, but the young mother looked just as confused as anyone as she took Victoire back from Bill.

Instead of answering Hermione's question, Ginny withdrew from the hug and smacked Ron upside the head.

"Ah! What the shit!" Ron cried, rubbing the back of his head.

"Ronald, language!" scolded Mrs. Weasley, re-entering the kitchen along with her husband, making the room quite crowded.

"That's your main concern?" asked Ron, "Not the unwarranted physical assault?"

"It's not unwarranted, it's for being a stupid, forgetful git!" barked Ginny

She walked up to Harry and took his glass of firewhiskey, still mostly intact.

"I need this more than you," she informed him, and began to raise the glass to her lips.

"GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY!"

Mrs. Weasley's ear-piercing shriek caused everyone in the room to wince, and Ginny momentarily jumped behind Harry for protection. "Merlin's balls, WHAT!?"

"Molly…" Mr. Weasley cautioned.

"DO NOT 'MOLLY' ME, ARTHUR!" his wife shouted back. She had a crazed look in her eye and she was pulling at her hair. She rounded on Harry and Ginny.

"We have tried to be respectful, but you two are clearly not ready for this kind of responsibility! I am so disappointed in you both for not taking this more seriously! You haven't even given a thought to how this will affect your careers!"

"Our careers?" asked Harry, confused. "How would that possibly—"

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. He had gotten it completely wrong about what the Weasleys were talking about. The talk about responsibility, their careers, affects to Ginny's public image.

Somehow, the family had gotten word about the "honour" bestowed upon Harry by the Wizengamot, and all the implications that had for his and Ginny's future together. He supposed it wasn't too surprising that Arthur or Percy had heard about it through their Ministry connections.

He looked sideways at Ginny, and from one look he knew that she had come to the same realization. Both their faces split into wide grins as relief flooded through them that all of this drama was over something so silly. Apparently, the family somehow had the absurd idea that Harry would keep the title and actually take the status, power, and responsibilities being offered to him.

Harry and Ginny cracked up into delirious laughter, leaning on each other for support, which did nothing to help the livid look on Mrs. Weasley's face.

"Oh Merlin's beard, is that what has you all concerned? Don't worry about that," laughed Harry, waving one hand dismissively and wrapping the other around Ginny's shoulder.

"I mean, come on, we're obviously not keeping it!"

There was a moment of silence, then the entire kitchen exploded.

#hp fanfic #hp fanfiction #hinny #romione #hinny ficfest #hinny fanfic #hinny fanfiction #ao3 link #harry potter #hp #harry x ginny #ron x hermione #ginny weasley #weasley family #farce #comedy #ron weasley #hermione granger

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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Nie Mingjue and Wen Ning as conscious fierce corpse buddies

ao3 link

By everyone’s agreement (except his own), Wen Ning was the sect leader.

Of course, practically speaking, Nie Mingjue actually ran everything; he was the one with the experience in it, after all, and he claimed he was no good at teaching, which was the other thing they generally did.

This was, of course, a blatant lie – the few times he did agree to take on some classes, they were by far the most popular – but Wen Ning had yet to figure out how to get Nie Mingjue to do anything he didn’t want to do, and anyway he really was very good at all the work that went into being sect leader, so it all worked out quite well for everybody in the end.

How they ended up with a sect in the first place, Wen Ning will never know.

The school had been Song Lan’s idea, though; that much was certain. Or, well, Wen Ning supposed it was actually Xiao Xingchen’s idea to start with, or possibly both of them, but Song Lan had been the one to make it an operational proposal and anyway Xiao Xingcheng had been a scattered soul at the time so Wen Ning felt pretty comfortable ascribing the idea to Song Lan.

Xiao Xingchen’s back now.

So was Xue Yang, but that was unfortunately unavoidable – their souls had become so intertwined by the time they’d both died that there was really no bringing one back without the other, much to Song Lan’s annoyance. Out of lack of better options, Xue Yang was currently being kept very firmly under control, even lock and key if it seemed appropriate - he didn’t object as long as it was Xiao Xingchen applying the locks - and they hadn’t entirely decided if he was going to need to be executed for the good of society at some point.

Still, at least for the time being, he was being useful. No one could say that Xue Yang wasn’t a genius when it came to inventing new things, even if he wasn’t as good as Wei Wuxian, and their school was as much about research as it was teaching.

After all, demonic cultivation was pretty new. There was a lot out there to discover.

A lot out there to teach.

It wasn’t like not having anyone around to teach them stopped there from being demonic cultivators in the first decade or so after Wei Wuxian’s death, especially given how easily it could be picked up. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t very good at it, and there were pitfalls for any cultivation path, much less such a dangerous one, reviled by the whole world.

Song Lan, who’d picked up the basics during the time that he’d been controlled by Xue Yang, had argued that it was cruel to allow people to pick it up out of desperation and to charge ahead with no guidance – that without a firm hand to show them the way, most people would end up getting corrupted, or just mess something up and end up in a qi deviation.

(Nie Mingjue was understandably a bit sensitive about those, so that was the argument that had worked on him. Wen Ning, for his part, was a little bit bitter about everyone, and hadn’t much cared what happened ot them, but on the other hand what else did he have to do?)

So they’d started the school.

Only about a quarter of their disciples so far were there willingly – most of the others were dropped off by Jiang Cheng, who had some trouble dropping his habits of finding them wherever they were, and everyone agreed that their school was a better place for them than his dungeons – but the number was steadily growing as their reputation got out there.

Their reputation as teachers, that is. Everyone knew about the other thing.

The whole…fierce corpses thing.

Hard to avoid everyone knowing, what with Wen Ning, the Ghost General, being the sect leader.

Obviously in a perfect universe, Wei Wuxian would be the one in charge – of the school, of the sect they formed to support the school, of the whole demonic cultivation path that he invented – but he was busy in Gusu doing…something.

Mostly his husband.

At least he came by to visit on a regular basis?

Though actually now that Wen Ning thought about it, he didn’t actually like the times when Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang would get drunk together and came up with new ideas – it’d been Nie Mingjue who’d figured out how to restore a sense of taste to a fierce corpse, though he refused to divulge where he got the idea or how he’d come up with it but no one really cared to pry too much because it worked – because the ideas were invariably fascinating, innovative, and uniformly awful.

Also, Wei Wuxian visiting usually meant that Wen Ning needed to sit with Lan Wangji all night to make sure he didn’t accidentally liberate any of their staff, usually in the guise of keeping him company, and he knew the man didn’t like him. He always had a look of a man sucking a lemon whenever he visited.

…maybe that was just the name of their sect that he object to.

In their defense, neither Wen Ning, Nie Mingjue, nor Song Lan were especially creative people, Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang hadn’t yet been revived, little A-Qing hadn’t yet been reincarnated nor revived her memories – they’d just picked the most straightforward name they could think of.

And, well, they were all gui. What was wrong with calling it the Gui Sect?

Sometimes Wen Ning thought that Lan Wangji was unnecessarily judgy.

“What are you brooding about?” a voice interrupted his thoughts, and Wen Ning looked up with a smile.

“Sect business,” he lied, and Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes at him, clearly not believing him for a moment.

“What about sect business? The trade disputes?”

Wen Ning frowned. “We have trade disputes?!” He hadn’t even heard about – oh, no, Nie Mingjue was laughing. “We don’t have trade disputes.”

“We’re supported by all four of the Great Sects, between Wei Wuxian at Gusu, Jin Ling at Lanling, Jiang Cheng – as a favor to the former two – in Yunmeng, and last but not least my brother. Who’s going to start a trade dispute with us?”

That was comforting. Sort of comforting?

“Are we bullying people with our resources?” he asked, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.

“Of course we are,” Nie Mingjue said, sounding satisfied. Ugh, sect leaders. Somehow – with some admittedly fairly major variations in style – they were all the same, always looking for an advantage for their sects.

Wait, he’s a sect leader now. Does that mean he’s like that?

No, he’s a terrible sect leader, which means he’s exempt. A bit like Nie Huaisang had been all those years, as the Head-shaker…on second thought, that was part of a giant plot that had in fact ended with the Nie sect ascendant above all the others – the Jin sect in tatters, the Jiang sect isolated as always, the Lan sect putting all their attention on having to corral Wei Wuxian – so maybe it wasn’t the best comparison.

Ugh. Why is this Wen Ning’s life?

“Stop thinking about running away to be a rogue cultivator again, it’s much too late for that,” Nie Mingjue advised him, not unkindly. Wen Ning hadn’t even said anything. “Besides, you like teaching juniors. Even delinquent juniors.”

“They’re mostly not delinquents anymore,” Wen Ning objected. It was really amazing how being forced to attend a class taught by Xue Yang was enough to drive most young people far away from the mere idea of being a delinquent again lest they risk turning into him – and to help identify the remaining ones that needed to be kept under very close supervision. “Speaking of teaching, when are you taking another class? Your training sessions with Baxia don’t count.”

“From the number of people watching, they should.”

“It still doesn’t count,” Wen Ning said firmly, even if it really probably should – watching Nie Mingjue, a fierce corpse, working seamlessly with a spiritual weapon specifically designed to eradicate fierce corpses was truly a fascinating sight.

Of course, most people were more fascinated by the fact that Nie Mingjue usually did his training shirtless – including Wei Wuxian, irritatingly enough, though interestingly Lan Wangji, who was usually the first one at the vinegar jar, didn’t seem to object – but nothing much could be done about that.

(Fierce corpses did not need to worry about the heat, or sweat, or any of the usual motivations for going shirtless, but Nie Mingjue claimed it was a psychological need based on years of habit-building. For anyone else, Wen Ning would think that they were vain and secretly enjoying the attention, but with Nie Mingjue…it probably really was just habit.)

“Fine,” Nie Mingjue said. “Give me one of the basic seminars; I’ll do that. Not one of the musical ones.”

Wen Ning had learned by now that there was no point in smothering smiles – after all, he was a sect leader, and no one had the right to criticize or yell at him for smiling too much or for taking too much attention to himself.

Take that, Wen Chao.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten that you’re nearly tone-deaf.”

“At least one of you hasn’t.”

“Xiao Xingchen means well,” Wen Ning said, even though honestly by this point it was pretty clear he was just forcing Nie Mingjue to try out new and increasingly exotic instruments for his own (and everyone else’s) amusement. “It’s a little funny.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes again, looking long-suffering, but he had a pretty good sense of humor about these things.

Also, if he was ever actually upset about something, Nie Huaisang would have fixed it.

No one would have enjoyed Nie Huaisang fixing things, but he would still have fixed it. He always fixed things that affected his brother.

(Example number one: Jin Guangyao, his eventual demise, and everything that happened after that.)

“I actually came here to give you news,” Nie Mingjue said. “Would you like to hear it?”

Wen Ning had politely requested – a little desperately �� that Nie Mingjue check first. The other man had a way of just saying things without any consideration for the anxiety of the person he was talking to, with things like “we’ve misplaced a student” or “don’t worry it wasn’t a student we actually liked” or “Xue Yang is on the loose and he’s summoned something again” or, one memorable instance, “Baxia decided to summon a dozen of her close friends and family and they may or may not be attacking the staff rooms, but honestly she’s having so much fun that I don’t really feel like stopping her, thought you should know.”

Wen Ning took a deep breath that he didn’t need, firmed up his emotional resiliency, braced himself, and said, “Yes.”

“A-Qing thinks she found your sister’s reincarnation,” Nie Mingjue said, and the air shot out of Wen Ning’s lungs as if he’d been punched. “You know that she’s been sensitive to these things ever since her rebirth, we did some investigating, and we’re pretty sure. How would you like us to handle it?”

Wen Ning scrubbed his face. “I – have no idea. I thought her spirit was still haunting the place where her ashes were?”

“Just one of her souls, and the new body is one short. They’ll have to be reunited eventually or else she’ll suffer the physical effects of missing a soul, but there’s a way to do it that maximizes the chances of her recovering her memory from her previous life and a way to do it to minimize it.”

Wen Ning put his head down on his desk. “I…I don’t know. Our life was pretty awful, so maybe she’d be better off not remembering? But I also want my jiejie back…I hate decisions. Why did I become a sect leader again?”

“We told you that you didn’t have a choice and you lacked the spine to resist.”

“…thanks.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Sometimes I really do wonder what you did in a previous life to deserve this one.”

Ouch. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Nie Mingjue said. “Come out and spar with me, it’ll help you think it over.”

“I don’t have time to think about anything else while we spar, though…?”

“Exactly.”

“…do I get a choice about this?”

“No. Get a move on.”

Wen Ning let himself be dragged over to the training fields. “You do remember I’m sect leader, right?”

“So is my brother,” Nie Mingjue pointed out and – fair.

“Your brother is one of the most terrifying people in the cultivation world.”

“And he still lets me boss him around. What’s your point?”

…fair.

“No point,” Wen Ning said, and waved to some of their more promising students, who immediately perked up at the thought of getting to watch them spar. “No point at all.”

In the end, he thought, his life hadn’t turned out that badly after all.

#mdzs #wen ning #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #Anonymous

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ask-artsy-oncie · 3 years

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what kind of pokemon do you think the ducktale crew would have if they were trainers?

I'm only doing main partner pokemon bc I don't think I can flesh out teams for everyone

Scrooge - okay so this one was actually really difficult. I really see him as specializing in steel-types, because aside from his immense wealth, a major defining trait for Scrooge is how he's self-made (through his adventuring) and, less notably, his distaste for magic. I think all of this has a lot of cohesion with the steel type, but finding the right pokemon was a challenge. I was hoping for something from Galar, but nothing really jumped out to me as vibing particularly well with him, so I think the best fit I could find would be Aegislash, which is, at least, also from a European region, and fits well with his adventurer motif. If anyone has any better ideas feel free to send them in, though, cos I'm still not entirely sure.

Donald - Specializes in water-types. It would be entirely fitting of Donald's luck for him to get stuck with a magikarp. But with hard work and dedication (and a decent amount of rage) he ends up raising it into a Gyarados. He would also have the mega-stone for it.

Della - Specializes in flying-types. It was so fucking tempting to give her a celesteela, but not only would that be kind of mean, but I also want to refrain from using any ultra beasts. That being said, I think that Skarmory might be a good fit, because it still does retain the same flying/steel mix, and I do think that Scrooge has rubbed off on Della, significantly (for better or for worse). Plus I think it fits her motif very well (planes, metal flying machines, while Donald sails boats, watercraft that catch the air in their sails, and goes well with a water/flying type). I was also really tempted to give her a rayquaza, but I also wanted to refrain from using any legendaries. Mayhaps she went to space chasing a rayquaza, tho?

Huey - eclectic in his type choices, he likes to have an extremely varied team. Obviously this makes it harder to narrow down his partner pokemon, but I feel like it suits him. I also feel like Girafarig suits him - I think he initially relates to it as he ascribes his own rage to a persona he feels is an antithetical "side" to his "normal" personality that he needs to supress, yet ultimately, he learns that the Duke is simply an aspect of himself and a part to his whole, just like how Girafarig is not comprised of two separate pokemon, but is instead just a single creature.

Dewey - Electric-types for suuuure. It just fits his high-energy personality so well, and I think it also has synergy with his desire to be a media star, since iirc most reporters, interviewers, and camera-people in the games carry electric-types. I think Jolteon would work well with him, since as much as he would hate to admit it, he does tend to gravitate towards the basic and popular, which the eeveelutions definitely are. And though pikachu would have been the obvious choice in that case, I think Jolteon fits his aesthetic, best.

Louie - ooookay I am going to cheat on this one a little because I do have two pokemon in mind for Louie. Firstly, I think he favors both normal- and dark-types, though he isn't too hard-pressed about types. His main partner pokemon would be either a Meowth or an Alolan Meowth, though either way he never intends to evolve it. Cats. Money. Louie. It works. I am very adamant about Louie having some kind of Meowth as a partner. I also believe he would have an Absol. Absol just seems like such a good pokemon for anxious people to have, since it can easily sense and warn about disasters. I think Louie would value that, a lot.

Webby - with Webby's high value and priority on friendship, I think the fairy type would be a very good fit for her (especially since she is a part of Team Magic) though, I also think she would at least try to keep a varied team. Her partner would be Mimikyu - because oh my god look at this little guy, it needs a friend so bad!! Webby will be its friend!! And she'll give it all the love and attention it needs. Of course, it knows Return.

Lena - Ghosts, Dark, Psychics, Faeries, anything that exudes a magic and mystical energy to match her own. Lena would definitely be one of those "psychic" trainers who absolutely has powers of her own, but still takes the time to raise pokemon. Her partner would be a Gardevoir - a pokemon very in-tune with emotions that compliments Lena in her struggle to control her emotions and magic. It would also be a shiny Gardevoir and Lena would also have its mega-stone, because then they would share the blue-black-and-white palette. And when they're both powered-up, Lena loses the black in her palette while Mega-Gardevoir gains it.

Violet - Violet also has an affinity for the more "magical" types her sister and friend are. I think that, due to her interest in witchcraft and metaphysics as a field of study, I'm a bit torn between Gothitelle and Hatterene. She probably would have both, I'm just torn on who her partner would be. On one hand, I could lean harder into the metaphysics aspect, since that's what one of her fathers studies/teaches, and go with Gothitelle, but Hatterene also gives her more synergy with Lena because their partner pokemon would be the exact same type combination. I'm not sure.

BOYD - A Ditto!! Not just for their implied connection to science and the steel-type, but because BOYD (in-universe) was also designed to replicate (and ultimately be) a real person.

Hahahaaaa that took a lot of thinking! Thank you for the challenge!! I do have more ideas but I think I'm going to stop there before it gets too long. Also sorry if you meant "ducktales crew" literally. I don't know those people well enough to assign them pokemon, lol.

#Ducktales #DT17 #Pokemon #Also - Ty's partner is Joltik he specializes in bug-types #Kit's partner is Tropius and he specializes in flying-types #GLOMGOLD'S PARTNER IS SHARPEDO OBVIOUSLY!!!

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tartrazeen · 3 years

Text

Random HankCon Reverse AU Post

I wrote this on Discord some months back, and very luckily somebody fantastic helped me out by finding it! <3 <3 <3 The context was around the HK series already being a canonical type of android in the game: it's a housekeeper model, like the HK-400 Connor hunts down in his first investigation with Hank. So from that, everyone was discussing a reverse AU where Hank was an HK housekeeper, Connor was an overworked older brother taking care of his younger brother, and one of them was proposing that Connor just rent an HK to help around the house and take the load off. And from that, I came up with this roughly described - but still fun and angsty - concept. Picture reading it as I wrote it: mid-conversation, and butting in to slap this idea onto everyone. :D

Omg - Hank helping out enough in just a few ways by making lunch or something, or dinner for the next night, and Connor actually having time to go to sleep and spend time with both of them. Or Hank activating a Cranky Child Up Past His Bedtime protocol and making Connor go to bed, because the poor guy doesn't have an off-switch when every single case just needs a 'few more minutes' for him to crack it.

Connor having such a rough week that his little brother saves up cash from - pfft, I dunno, what's stupidly diabetically sweet enough for this - recycling beer bottles from around the neighbourhood, purely to rent Hank for Connor's sake AND THEN IT BECOMES LIKE SOME KINDA WEIRD-ASS DATE THAT NEITHER OF THEM SEEM TOO INTERESTED IN ENDING But then - then - they get into a bit of a routine like that. Connor's happy enough to rent Hank when his little brother needs him, but now it's grown into a... "Okay, fine, if I need him too, then that just helps both of us. That's okay." ... And then one day, his little brother's staying at a friend's house or something, and Connor's - just... bored? Lonely? Tired? He's not sure. But he flicks over to a website, sees Hank is available, and decides to rent Hank really just for himself. And it's the first time that's ever happened without a kid in the house or without Connor himself being too exhausted to function, so it officially becomes a weird-ass date of them hanging around. Maybe going outside to get air. Whatever happens. Now here's where I can draw upon some more IRL bullshit: water heater rentals. These things last ten years, you pay $40 a month to rent them, but at the end of the tenth year, you'd still have to pay to buy it out. And that - despite everything you pay - could still cost like $6,000. Even if you bought the thing outright, it would've cost $5,000.

I say that because I imagine Connor getting to the point where he's thinking... he might buy Hank. Whenever rental products go up for sale, there's usually a steep discount, so he thinks it won't cost too much. No one else rents Hank as much as he does anyway, and he's not sure how much he's spent, but surely that would knock the price down. He's still very much trying to think of this as a practical transaction to manage the purchase of a machine, after all. Except Connor is the one asking to buy Hank. The company isn't offering. So the sticker shock at the price is - just... unbelievable. To the point that Connor very much regrets even opening his mouth. And the nanny company says it's that or they throw Hank out, because - just the IRL - they can't be seen selling Hank cheaper or giving him away when they're done with him, or they'd never make any money. "People would just wait until he's thrown out and go dumpster diving." So now we have a ticking clock and Connor has a bill to pay. We could do two things from here: 1) Connor gets the money (spoiler). It isn't easy. He's already doing all the overtime he's allowed because he's volunteered for it - he can't afford to let something like sleep get in the way of catching a murderer - so he's making the most that he can. He doesn't have any vacation or sick days to cash in because he's used them all whenever he's burnt out; that's probably why he looked into getting Hank in the first place. And it's not like he has time to get a second job or anything. It's his little brother that asks, "Do we really need a car?"

So they both start selling everything. They don't really need a crappy couch. This table's been wobbly since day one. A garage full of crap that is coated in dust and grime is just enough to get them over the edge of it. And it's a weird feeling, bringing a nanny-bot back to an almost empty house. Connor might comment on how there'd be a lot less to clean, which is bullshit, but the best he can in defence of it all. So Hank takes it for what it is, slowly appreciating exactly what this meant for all of three of them. It's an empty house that's quickly become a full home. 2) Connor doesn't get the money (yesssssssssssss) Because there's just no way to pay that. It's ridiculous - even if he could afford it, he should still be arresting these people, because this is an obvious robbery. He can't make that last leap to admit this is more than a machine to help around the house, and the company - just... "Okay. You have three days to change your mind if you're interested." His little brother tries to get him to. He asks if Connor can just sell the car. Not only is that a bad idea, because how else is Connor going to get to work, but who's going to pay that much for it anyway? It's not worth it, Hank is a walking piece of plastic programmed to be friendly, and if they need a nanny-bot so bad, they can buy a new one for a third of what the rental company is charging. On the second-last day, his little brother tries the ol' "Rent Hank for Connor's sake" trick. It's a last-ditch effort to get Connor to admit that they would all feel awful losing Hank, machine or not. He's real enough to them, right? Wrong. Plastic. Money. Facts. Connor's more pissed that his little brother wasted more cash that could've gone towards paying a price they would never be able to afford anyway, and walks off to let his little brother hang out with the android for a last night. He doesn't want to draw this out for himself, and Hank had better be gone by the time Connor comes home.

Connor doesn't do much. He mostly just walks around for hours. And for way too long - eventually, he's at a park, and there's Hank emerging from the snow (oh yeah, it's snowing) to gently wait there in silence. That goes on for long enough for Connor to accept that he's going to miss Hank. It's a short conversation, and Hank's used the Cranky Kid protocol for Connor to know to start heading back, but that's all Connor says: "We'll miss you, I guess. Thanks." Hank is gone by the time Connor wakes up. The house is quiet, his little brother has his breakfast, and Connor has his lunch made. And that is what really gets to him. Hank - over and above his programming - once again took care of Connor, too. Those walls that were already dropping finally drop the rest of the way, and knowing perfectly well that he's too late, he calls the rental company up to ask if there's a payment plan or some extension or anything he can do to keep Hank. There is! Fortunately! And if Connor would like to arrange that for any of these other rental androids, the company can certainly help. What about Hank? Well, this is a business. They had a deadline and costs around that deadline, so they couldn't keep waiting around forever in the hopes that some family changed their mind about buying a standard android. It's unfortunate, but yes, Hank was appropriately disposed of. Would Connor like to buy another android that looks like Hank instead? Connor hangs up before they can give him the full sales pitch. His little brother notices. His work notices. Everyone notices that Connor's different lately. He's reached an almost terrifying level of laser focus on his work. He has all the time he wants to catch all the bad guys he feels like, and he does because who's going to stop him, really? And it goes like that while his little brother keeps asking for Connor to rent a different android, or to just buy one that's like Hank. On and on and on and on and on and on and on until Connor finally just loses it, dumps his phone on the ground, tells his brother to do whatever the hell he wants so long as he shuts up, and storms back out. He's out there for hours in the cold, half to spite Hank's memory - that he's become painfully reliant on for reasons he ascribes to guilt - and half because he knows it's not only guilt he's feeling. Everything tingles. His fingers, his nose, his ears, and he's at least considering going home to his car so he can warm up without having to do a walk-of-shame back inside. He's saving that for when his brother's asleep. This is roughly a minute before he notices Hank walking out in the snow. Not Hank. Not exactly. It's another android that looks like Hank, and that jolt in Connor's chest twists into a searing ache again. He's changed his mind and he's out here entirely for spite now, because his little brother must've called his bluff and rented another nanny and sent him to drag Connor home.

He's committed to that until Hank mentions the number of times Connor's tried to fight him on going to bed, and the grand total of zero times that Hank's lost this fight. Hank's very good at this. He's had to deal with a lot of rough families and teenagers. Hank remembers that because each family has a profile saved based on every visit: preferences, schedules, the kids' needs, memories... They've always been backed up. It's a business, after all. It takes Connor a few minutes to get it. He's still trying to decide if this android is real or not, let alone... his Hank. And Hank is perfectly willing to keep coming back to convince him. And he will, every time, for as long as Connor keeps a copy of his memories. ... But it is going to be after Connor is in bed. Connor's never been happier to get dragged away, kicking at this 1.98m cuddle-bear the whole time.

#dbh #detroit become human #hankcon #hannor #hank x connor #reverse au #angst #fluff #rough draft #ripped straight from discord #my stuff #good job tartra

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ryqoshay · 3 years

Text

Happy Life: Fallen Angel vs. Little Demon

Primary Pairing: YohaRiko Words: ~3.4k Rating: G AU: Angelic? Time Frame: Between Riko’s 2nd and 3rd year and Yohane’s 1st and 2nd year of high school Story Arc: Stand Alone

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Author’s Note: Inspired by a somewhat recent SIFAS Daily Theater translation. I will link to said translation in the follow up post.

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A knock sounded at the door.

Riko quickly shoved the doujin she had been reading under her pillow. “Yes?” She responded, grabbing some sheet music from nearby on her bed.

“Riko, dear.” Mrs. Sakurauchi said, as she opened the door. “Your friend, Yohane-chan, was it?”

“Yoshiko-chan?”

“I believe she left this.”

Riko recognized the device in her mother’s hand as Yoshiko’s phone and sighed. “Yes, that’s hers.”

“I tried calling her mother already, but it seems she was called in to work and is unable to get ahold of her daughter to tell her.”

“I see…”

“So, I was hoping you could bring it to her?”

“Me?”

“I’m not sure how else to get it to her, or even tell her that it’s here.”

Riko sighed. Perhaps some of the fallen angel’s luck rubbed off on her. It was probably bound to happen at some point or another, what with the two of them spending more time together as of late.

“Alright.” Riko agreed, sliding off her bed.

As she made her way down the stairs to the front entryway, Riko considered the events leading up to her needing to deliver the forgotten item. Yesterday, she had noticed Yoshiko a bit out of sorts, even for the purported fallen angel. In an effort to cheer up her friend, Riko had offered to have her come over to visit Prelude. Thankfully, the tactic had worked well. Yoshiko had perked up immediately and had been quite enthusiastic in her time with the young dog.

The three went for a walk before returning to Riko’s home for a warm meal prepared by her mother. From there, the two girls watched a movie together, while Prelude spent the entire show curled up in Yoshiko’s lap.

At some point, Riko had noticed the time and wondered aloud if Yoshiko would be able to make the last bus back to Numazu. Yoshiko was confused by the question and had to check the schedule. Riko had wondered if the younger girl had bothered to check the schedule earlier. To Yoshiko’s dismay, she had already missed her bus. Thus, Riko had ended up offering to let her stay for the night and pulled out the guest futon.

After another movie, the two turned in for the night. Riko had noted, with a bit of jealousy, that Prelude chose to sleep on Yoshiko’s futon instead of Riko’s bed or her own dog bed. In the morning they went for another walk and enjoyed a quick breakfast before Yoshiko headed back home. Unfortunately, without her phone, it would seem.

At least it was early enough in the day that Riko wouldn’t have the same problem returning home as Yoshiko did yesterday, she thought as she took a seat in the bus.

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“Ah, Riko-chan.” A voice called from behind her.

Riko startled and spun. “Oh, uhm… M-Mrs. Tsushima.” She said upon recognizing the blue-haired woman. “I thought… My mother said you were at work?”

Yoshiko’s mother paused for a moment. “Oh dear, I believe there must have been a miscommunication. I said I was on my way home from work. It was just a minor emergency that I was able to address quickly before returning.”

“Oh, well… I came to bring Yoshiko-chan’s phone.”

“Yes, I figured as such. That was very kind of you. My daughter should be grateful to have such good friends. Elsewise she would have had to retrieve her lost belongings on her own.”

“She’s helped me in many ways as well.” Riko said, remembering the events leading to her getting past her fear of dogs.

Mrs. Tsushima smiled. “Well as thanks for today, why don’t I make something for lunch, if you don’t mind eating a little early, or later, if you intend to stay for a little while.”

“I can stay for a little while.” Riko said. “I don’t have any other plans until later this afternoon.”

Mrs. Tsushima nodded and let them into the complex. Inside, they took the elevator up several floors and walked down the hall to the Tsushima apartment.

“My daughter is likes to stream when she is home on the weekend.” Mrs. Tsushima explained as they removed their shoes in the entry. “So she’s probably in her room.”

“Thank you.” Riko nodded and headed toward her friend’s room. Streaming? She thought to herself. Perhaps she shouldn’t stay until lunch. She was about to interrupt Yoshiko’s session and wanted to keep the interference to a minimum if possible.

Upon arriving, she knocked on the door. No response. She knocked again.

“Yeah, Mama, c’mon in.” a voice called from within.

“Uhm, actually, it’s…” Riko started as she opened the door.

“Wha?!” Yoshiko startled from her seat at her desk. “Riri?!” She dropped the controller she had been holding. In her attempts to catch it, she fumbled, causing it ricochet off the edge of the desk and hit her in the face as she leaned forward. “Kyaa!” She cried, recoiling in such a way that her chair spun, and she slid off onto the floor. “Ughn….” She groaned.

“Yoshiko-chan!” Riko rushed forward and knelt beside the younger girl. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m…” Yoshiko pushed herself up enough to see her screen and sighed. “I lost…”

“Lost?”

“My match.” Yoshiko accepted Riko’s hand and pulled herself up to her feet.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Yoshiko shook her head before smiling strangely. “Though perhaps as punishment, Yohane should have Riri play a match.”

“Eh? Me?”

“Kidding.” Yoshiko chuckled. “Unless…”

As Yoshiko straightened her skirt and halo, Riko turned to the screen. Sure enough, the words “You Lose” were displayed in English overlaying a camera slowly orbiting what Riko assumed to be the two competitors in the match. The one on the ground was surely Yoshiko’s character and the one posing was whoever had won.

There was also a flood of text scrolling up the side of the screen.

“Eh?” Riko blinked as she recognized her name among the scrolling text. Or rather, Yoshiko’s nickname for her, accompanied by a myriad of emojis and other icons she didn’t readily recognize.

“Hey!” Yoshiko suddenly said, leaning forward toward the camera. “What have I told you all about Riri? Only Yohane is allowed to use that name bestowed upon one of her favored little demons.”

For some reason, Riko wasn’t surprised when the text sped up and the frequency of her nickname being typed increased.

Yoshiko growled something Riko didn’t understand but retrieved her controller and took her seat again. “Sorry, Riri, the horde sometimes doesn’t listen to their mistress when they get too excited.”

“And they’re excited… to see me?”

“Of course!” Yoshiko grinned. “Who wouldn’t be excited to see someone as wonderful as Riri?”

Riko felt heat rise in her cheeks. “A-and they know about me and that… nickname?”

“Well yeah, Yohane takes great pleasure in telling her little demons about those she favors most, such that some may ascribe to ascend to such greatness as well someday.”

Riko couldn’t help wondering what sort of details about her friends Yoshiko might share with her followers. Hopefully nothing too private. Still, despite the embarrassment, she couldn’t deny that it did make her feel good that Yoshiko held her in such high regard.

“A-anyway, you forgot this at my place this morning, Yoshiko-chan.” Riko held out the phone.

“Wahhh!? I didn’t even realize!” Yoshiko grabbed the device. “Thank you, Riri! Thank you!” She paused for a moment, apparently realizing she had once again dropped her persona. She cleared her throat. “And as a token of gratitude, Yohane shall rescind the punishment.”

“I thought you were just kidding about that.”

“Well… the horde seemed to think it was a good idea.” Yoshiko admitted, jutting a chin toward the screen. “But Yohane doesn’t want to force one of her favored little demons to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

“I never said I didn’t want to.” Riko pointed out. “I was just a little surprised by the offer. And, I’ve never played a game like that before, so I’m not sure how good I would be.”

“It’s not a matter of how good you are.” Yoshiko said, pulling open a drawer from her desk where she retrieved a second controller. “It’s about having fun.” She handed the device to Riko.

“Oh, uhm… alright.” Riko accepted the controller.

“Go ahead and grab that chair.” Yoshiko motioned in the general direction. “I’ll get things set up for a local game.”

Riko nodded, slid the chair next to the other girl and sat down.

“Alright, quick rundown of the controls.” Yoshiko indicated each button, named it function and added a small tutorial about combo moves.

Riko swallowed down her nervousness, telling herself it was little different than being on stage in front of an audience. Except the audience was watching through a camera. So maybe it was more like a PV? Except it was live. So… somewhere in between?

“Yohane shall go easy on Riri for the first couple matches.” Yoshiko said as she selected a character, an angelic girl with one black and one white wing. “Oh, the next guy over is a good beginner character.” Yoshiko pointed toward Riko’s selection.

“Alright.” Riko made her choice of a muscular man with classic anime-esque spiked hair and a very strange sword.

“Ku ku ku.” Yohane chortled. “Fallen Angel Yohane verses Little Demon Riri! Heaven or Hell! Dual 1!” She intoned, mimicking the game’s announcer surprisingly well. “Let’s Rock!”

Riko fumbled through her first combo and was disappointed when Yohane blocked the first blow and followed up with a counter. Yoshiko giggled and tripped Riko before backing off.

“This is Riri’s first match, so of course Yohane is going easy.” Yoshiko said. “I thought I already made that clear.”

Riko assumed she was responding to something she saw in the endlessly scrolling chat but wondered how the other girl was able to read it while concentrating on the game.

Riko made another attempt to attack and got a little excited when the first two hits managed to connect. But, no surprise, Yoshiko turned things around quickly and delivered a devastating combo that wiped out more than half of Riko’s health bar. Riko grunted and attacked again, only to be countered yet again.

“Slash!” the game and Yoshiko said in unison.

“But…” Riko started to protest.

“Yohane said she would go easy.” Yoshiko explained as though reading Riko’s mind. “But she didn’t say she would just let Riri win. And besides, that was just Round 1. Oh, here we go…”

Round 2 proceeded in a similar manner to Round 1 and it wasn’t long until the overall match was won by Yoshiko.

“So, do you wanna keep using that guy or try someone else?” Yoshko inquired as the character selection screen came back up. “Oh, you can also choose alternate costumes by using different buttons.”

“I see.” Riko took note. “I think I will use him a little while longer, until I learn more.”

“Alright.” Yoshiko nodded. “Well, I’m going to change things up and use her.” She moved her selection box to a short girl wielding a ship’s anchor as big as her. “She’s one of the hoard’s favorites.”

The second match, not surprisingly, went about the same as the first. However, Riko did find herself highly amused by the colorful sea animals that appeared during the special moves Yoshiko used. She could see why the audience liked that character.

Then it happened.

Riko’s eyes widened as a huge pink whale, breached across the screen to crash down over her character, along with a tidal wave of water. The remainder of Riko’s health bar was destroyed and the match was over.

Hearts, whales and other emojis flooded the chat and Yoshiko giggled.

“Heh, managed to actually pull it off again.” Yoshiko said with a toothy smile, seeming to forget her fallen angel persona again.

“What was that?” Riko asked.

“One of her super moves.” Yoshiko explained.

“It was very… cute.”

“I know, right?”

“Even if I did take a lot of damage from it.”

“Well, again, it is one of her super moves.”

“Can I try her next?”

“Of course!” Yoshiko excitedly turned her controller toward Riko. “It’s not the most complex combo, but I sometimes struggle to get the timing right when in active play.” She demonstrated the button sequence.

Riko nodded, selected the anchor-wielding girl and the next match began.

----------

“Oh, is that the time?” Riko asked, happening to notice Yoshiko’s alarm clock out of the corner of her eye.

“Hm?” Yoshiko turned her attention to where Riko was looking. “Oh… heh… I guess we have been playing a while, haven’t we? Time flies like an angel when you’re having fun, huh?”

“Mm…” Riko nodded.

The two girls had been playing, almost nonstop for over three hours. Riko barely remembered Mrs. Tsushima delivering a lovely, light lunch of mini sandwiches and crudités; easy finger food for gaming, as Yoshiko had described it.

During the session, Riko had started to learn how to skim chat with the side of her vision as her primary focus was on the game. As such, she was eventually able to join in on the conversation. She wasn’t nearly as good as Yoshiko, and missed some things and misunderstood others, much to every else’s amusement. Still, she found that the interaction enhanced the overall experience. And she now had a better understanding as to why Yoshiko loved streaming so much.

“I suppose I should at least get up and stretch a bit.” Yoshiko said, standing and raising her arms above her head.

Riko grimaced as she heard several joints pop.

“Eheh… Sorry, Riri…” Yoshiko offered an amused apology before twisting her shoulders to cause a cacophonous cascade up her spine.

“That… can’t be good for you…” Riko mumbled.

“This mortal shell can get a bit rickety at times.” Yoshiko finished by cracking her neck. “I look forward to resuming our practice sessions as it provides a good reminder to stretch properly. Though I do wonder who will take up Dia’s place as taskmaster.”

Riko chuckled. “She wasn’t that bad.”

“Hrm…” Yoshiko leaned forward to check something on the screen. “Ne, Riri, do you have any plans for dinner?”

“Yes, Chika-chan and I were going to write get some early drafts in so as to possibly have a new song or two before the new school year.”

Was it Riko’s imagination, or did Yoshiko’s expression change, strangely, for the briefest of moments? If she had blinked, she may have missed it.

“Ah. That sounds like fun.” Yoshiko’s normal…? smile returned. “Maybe sometime later.”

“If I may ask, was there something in particular you wanted to do or somewhere you wanted to go?”

Yoshiko pointed to where she had been looking a moment ago. “That’s the total donations I’ve received this stream. It’s more than I normally make. A lot more. And I believe that is because Riri agreed to join us today.” She paused and read several messages affirming her theory. “And I wanted to show my appreciation.”

“I see. Thank you for the offer. Uhm…” Riko reviewed her weekend plans. “Tomorrow night, I’m having dinner with my parents… But I’m free around this time, so…”

“I can do lunch.” Yohshiko offered quickly. “I was going to stream again, but I can move that to any other time.”

“Or we can eat lunch again like we did today.”

Yoshiko blinked. “You… want to stream with me again tomorrow?”

“If you’re alright with that, yes.”

Now that was unquestionably a genuine smile. Yoshiko’s eyes sparkled and her shoulders drew up with excitement. “Of course!” She cried joyously. “Riri is always welcome as a guest… no, better yet, co-host!” She turned to the camera. “Didja hear that everyone!? Riri is gonna come back tomorrow and join us again!”

The chat exploded again with emojis.

Riko couldn’t help smiling as well. It was a little embarrassing being the center of such commotion, but Yoshiko’s excitement was as contagious as it was adorable. And she wanted to see more of it. She liked seeing this side of Yoshiko.

Not that the fallen angel thing was bad or anything, but… Right now, Yoshiko was her happy human self. She wasn’t getting hurt or sick, losing or breaking anything, or anything else the fates decided to torment her with, and make Riko worry about her wellbeing. Yoshiko was happy. And that made Riko happy.

“Anyway, I had a lot of fun today.” Riko said, getting up. “Thank you for that.” She turned to the camera. “See you all tomorrow.” She offered a small parting wave.

“I’ll see you out.” Yoshiko popped up as well. “Be right back, my little demons. Then we’ll see who else is brave enough to face Yohane in combat.”

Still giddy with excitement and bubbling about plans for tomorrow, Yoshiko escorted Riko to the door. From there, Riko bid her farewell to the Tsushima family and headed home for the day.

----------

Riko’s brow furrowed and she grunted in frustration. Another match lost. She sighed and set her controller down on her desk.

Or rather, it was actually Chika’s controller. While the two of them were composing in Chika’s room, Riko had noticed the device and asked if Chika had the game she had played earlier that day.

Chika did not actually own the game but had been able to show Riko where to obtain it for herself, as well as order her own controller. In the meantime, while awaiting delivery, Riko was able to borrow Chika’s device, which Chika also showed her how to pair with her laptop.

So now, several hours later, Riko was practicing for the next day’s stream.

Suddenly, a notification popped up in the lower corner of her screen. Riko leaned forward and moved the cursor to click on it. A new window came up with a message.

Sventa: Greetings

Sventa? Had that been Yoshiko’s screenname? No, Riko was pretty sure it had something to do with a fallen angel. Actually, that literally was her screenname, Riko remembered, TheFallenAngel. Perhaps this was one of her other friends? Maybe Chika? She didn’t have the game, but she had the program through which it was installed and run.

YuriYoukai: Hello

YuriYoukai: Is that you, Chika-chan?

Sventa: No

Sventa: I do not believe we know each other

Sventa: But I am a fan of Yohana-sama’s streams

Sventa: Are you the same little demon Riri that appeared on Yohane-sama’s stream today?

Riko paused, wondering if she should confirm.

Sventa: If you are, I wanted to say that you made for a very fun stream

Sventa: We got to see a rare side of Yohane-sama because of you

Sventa: You are obviously someone she cares for deeply

Sventa: She talks about you and some of her other friends a lot

Well, Yoshiko had admitted as such earlier. Riko wondered again what all Yoshiko talked about with her followers.

Sventa: But this was the first time she’s brought one of you onto her stream

Sventa: And it was fun to see her having so much fun

Sventa: So thank you for that

YuriYoukai: You’re welcome.

Riko wasn’t quite she sure had really done anything worth thanks, and she had fun as well, so… Well, she had thanked Yoshiko herself, so maybe this individual just wanted to do the same.

Sventa: And now you are playing this again

Sventa: Practicing for tomorrow?

YuriYoukai: I didn’t win a single match against Yoshiko-chan

Sventa: That is true

Sventa: But Yohane-sama is an experienced player and you only started playing today

Sventa: Still, I must say you showed great potential

YuriYoukai: I still can’t win now

Sventa: But you are having fun, right?

YuriYoukai: Yes

Sventa: That is good

Sventa: And more important that how good you are or how much you win

Riko chuckled as she remembered Yoshiko saying something similar.

Sventa: Still, perhaps I can offer some advice?

Sventa: The character you used today was my first favorite when I first started playing

Sventa: And I would be happy to recommend some other characters as well

Sventa: Even the one I know Yohane-sama struggles against

Sventa: Perhaps you can catch her off guard

YuriYoukai: There is a character Yoshiko-chan struggles against?

Sventa: The game is a complex set of Rock Paper Scissors, with every character having strengths and weaknesses

Sventa: Some of these strengths can be exploited against the weaknesses of others

YuriYoukai: I see

Sventa: A skilled player can still work around it all and win

Sventa: But if they are not expecting their opponent to know certain things, they will not be ready for them

Sventa: I think it would make for a really fun stream if you were able to surprise Yohane-sama like that

Riko smiled. That did sound like fun.

YuriYoukai: Alright

YuriYoukai: Teach me what you can, Sventa-sensei

The other player invited Riko to a network game and the two started playing.

----------

Author’s Notes Continued in Followup Post

#YohaRiko #YoshiRiko #Sakurauchi Riko #Tsushima Yohane #Love Live Sunshine #Happy Life #fanfic #Tsushima Yoshiko

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mewtonian-physics · 3 years

Note

okay im curious who is it that orders the beheadings in alice in wonderland? im not super familiar w the book =-0 also whats your opinion on the songs alice of human sacrifice and alice in ny bc theyre two of my favorite vocaloid songs

OH YOU'VE ACTIVATED INFODUMP MODE watch out. anyway okay okay so short answer is the queen of hearts is the one who is known for ordering the beheadings, as exemplified in the classic line 'off with their heads!' (pronouns interchangeable.)

long answer is still the queen of hearts but it has more background. the red queen is a character from the alice in wonderland series, but she's actually from the second book, through the looking glass! while the queen of hearts is a playing card, the red queen is a chess piece, as the book she hails from has a lot of chess stuff going on in it. the queen of hearts is pretty unquestionably an antagonist, in that she is very fond of ordering executions and also puts alice on trial, but the red queen is way more complicated. she's stuck between being actually helpful, being annoyingly cryptic, or both.

it's a strangely common misconception that the red queen is the queen of hearts, especially among people who are more familiar with various adaptations than they are the books--one notable example is in the tim burton live-action movies, where the red queen and the queen of hearts are merged in a very strange way (they kept the chess motifs from the original red queen, but the heart imagery and the fondness for beheadings from the queen of hearts). in those movies, she's called the red queen, and there's even a white queen too. (the white queen is also a character in through the looking glass, but she's VERY different from the white queen in tim burton's films.) that's one of the most well-known examples, but it's older than that--the song i was talking about is a cover of a song from the 1960s by jefferson airplane. i have no idea how the misconception got started, but at this point it's so prevalent that i just kind of shrug and shake my head in resignation when i see it. (ways to make me really happy wrt alice adaptations: don't mix up the two, and if you DO, give an in-story reason as to why this fusion or role-swap occurred!)

TO BE CLEAR im not like judging you or anything for not being aware of this because like i said it's really common for people to not know. even some book fans get it mixed up. (i'm immune, because alice in wonderland is a special interest... i know all the things /joke) i know sometimes i can sound kinda judgemental (of corruption--/hit really hard) but i really only judge the people who are coming up with adaptations and doing this over and over again lol. 'at least read the book!' i yell, but they simply do not pay attention... oh well

for real though i do really recommend the books, i love how absurd and whimsical they are. a lot of people try to ascribe some sort of hidden meaning to them but i don't think they really need one... i mean it's fun to overthink things sometimes but sometimes it's also good to just sit back and soak in the nonsense

anyway, about the songs! i like alice of human sacrifice a lot, but i can't listen to the original because it makes my brain hurt... i listen to the re:a version instead. it's not vocaloids anymore but... i can listen to it and i think that is what is important :) have to get my music on y'know how it is

alice in ny... it's catchy but it's so fast that i have a hard time keeping up with what it's about so at this point im just like alice in wonderland fashion designer au, surface analysis is enough for me

congrats if you read through all of that rambling lol the problem with asking me about alice in wonderland is that i will inevitably have a lot to say

#ask #alice

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solesurvivorpaigeargot · 4 years

Text

Okay but let’s talk about the opening of Fallout 4

And I’m not talking about the part where you gotta pantomime your way through a half-hour of BS at least before you’re actually allowed to step out into the world and get shite started [seriously Bethesda, if you’re gonna keep making openings like this, please include a ‘get to the point’ option and stop making modders do it for you. First time it’s interesting, second time it’s mind-numbing.] I’m talking about when you roll up on the museum and have to help out Preston and the gang-- and I’m just gonna rant for a few paragraphs here so here’s a read-more cut so I don’t clog up dashes too badly.

Fallout 4 never gives you the chance to value human life.

Fallout 3 had this issue as well, but it’s even more glaring in 4 because in 3 an order came down for your death. When you aren’t given a choice, what you’re doing can at least be penciled in as self-defense. 4 expects you to devalue raiders and treat them as unreasonable threats, to see them as a shooting gallery and nothing else... but there’s a serious problem with the framing.

You made me pantomime being a normal person for the first 30 min to hour of your experience, and now you’re telling me a normal person can just pick up a gun and start popping people with no moral issues.

This is required to even get close enough to talk to Preston. He might take out all the raiders if you’re willing to wait 20 minutes, but when you put yourself into the role play head space of a character, what kind of person ducks behind the sandbags and waits for the dude with the laser to pick everyone off? And there is no force preventing you from simply running away, this is true-- but doing so simply removes your ability to interact with what is a core mechanic of the game a-la the minutemen and establishing settlements. So if you wanna keep the game experience intact, and follow along with the mission? Murder is required, without any time taken out to consider the value of human life or if that murder is justified, or if your character is capable of that kind of violence.

To say I dislike this headspace in shooters, that whomever the denoted ‘bad’ group is are just okay to treat as squishy playthings, more so in shooters that try to integrate choice and morality, is a massive understatement. There are plenty of other things in the commonwealth that could threaten a group of settlers that aren’t people, and framing us as a normal person [PARTICULARLY IF YOU PLAY AS ‘NORA’ WHO WAS NOT A MILITARY MEMBER] who is just immediately ready for this is ASSUMPTIVE BULLSHIT. More so when you remember that if you played as ‘Nate’ this dissonance would be less-- it assumes a male audience who would choose the male protagonist, and his military service makes this opening a lot smoother. But when you don’t? It becomes batshit insane. Your average lawyer is not ready to just pick up a gun and wreck people, even when there are innocents on the line.

So, if ya like, I’m gonna propose an ‘alternate’ idea for what this mission could have been that would have kept all the same elements. The raiders, the power armor, the deathclaw-- but not forced the player character directly into murder.

Step 1: Finding Dogmeat.

When we find Dogmeat, he appears to be just... wandering the gas station? And yeah, he’s in our path, but Mama Murphy appears to think that Dogmeat went and found you, so let’s take that a step further. Let’s say Dogmeat actually ran and found you-- that he spawns into the world when you get past the footbridge, and no matter where you go from there Dogmeat will find and bark at you. That no matter how you treat him, Dogmeat will try to lead you to Concord and ruin your stealth by running in circles around you and barking if you try to go the wrong way. That this pupper is trying to find someone to help his group, he found you.

Step 2: The approach.

So say we follow Dogmeat, who leads us to where the raiders and Preston’s group are in standoff. And yeah, sure, we pass the main road where they’re all sandbagged up, but Dogmeat leads us around back to a rear entrance the raiders have not yet realized exists. Possibly a fire escape that has a ladder that could be released from above that was pulled up when Preston and co hunkered down. While, yes, the player could choose to engage the raiders at this point, deciding they’ve seen enough and take on the museum from the front? Going around, Dogmeat barking, and Mama appearing to let the ladder down because she probably knew you were coming gives you a non-violent in. Why haven’t the group left? There’s too many of them to just sneak out, Mama is old and slow, and Jun is nearly catatonic. No changes have to be made to the group to make that path out non-viable, it’s simply a way for you to get in, speak to Preston, and understand what the fuck we’re dealing with here without the one and only solution being kill everyone-- though the power armor is posited as something that might be helpful in a show of force to get the raiders to fuck the fuck off.

Step 3: The Raiders.

Banditry is not something ‘bad people’ do. It is an act of desperation. The idea that all the raiders are just the most repugnant people on the planet, and there appears to be no fuckin’ end to them is the same flavor of bullshit that’s used in all that war on drugs propaganda 50′s politicians were so high on. The idea of ‘Oh, the raiders are just bad people, so it’s okay to shoot at them’ ignores that they are people. People with lives. People with motivations. People who had their own path that led to where they are and what they’re doing. And what motivates a person to this kind of violence?

Starvation, usually. And I’ll be the first to say I don’t make great decisions when I’m hungry, either, but let’s dig a little deeper on this. Let’s step into the role of the leader of a raider group for a few seconds, get into this head space, and think about what’s going down with Preston’s group.

Imagine that I am a leader of a raider band. Let’s imagine that it started as me and a friend getting forced out of Diamond city, possibly given exile, because we couldn’t find work and decided to steal some food. The lack of work was no fault of our own; me and my friend may not have known the right people, or had the right skill sets, or been willing to take work that risked our lives as if we were worth nothing. Maybe we survived on good will for a while, but after so many hungry days got desperate, held up the Dugout for all the caps they had, or stole food from the general store, and tried to run with the take before we got caught. Whether we were caught, stripped of our gains, and then thrown out, or we got away-- we now have a place we can’t go anymore, and are at the mercy of the outside world. Are we bad? Are we bad because we were starving to death and desperate? Am I bad for coming up with a not great plan but at least trying to take action rather than just quietly dying in a gutter? I just wanted to eat. So now me and my friend are drifters, and we stick together because we’re all we got. And maybe we meet another drifter here, and another one there, and on some hungry night someone gets the idea that hey, if we all jump out from the side of the road and threaten a trader, maybe they’ll drop some of their stock without a fight?

We don’t want caps. We want food. We can’t spend the caps, and we don’t wanna get into a fight because none of us can get treatment-- we’re exiles and criminals. We don’t want blood, we want to eat.

So we threaten a trader, and that goes well-- we got supplies! But those supplies don’t erase our records. We still need to live, and this food is only gonna last so long. The traders know about us now, they talk-- even if we got money, who the hell would trust us? No one, that’s who. Even better, sounds like our little hold-up horned in on some other group’s territory that we didn’t even know about, and they ain’t happy with us. We all have guns, but none of us have ever killed anyone. None of us want to. We just wanted to eat.

So did the other group. They just wanted to eat, too, but they saw us horning in on their territory. Their take. Those supplies belonged to them. They have mouths to feed. More than us, probably. We stole from them, and all we wanted was to eat.

Whatever happens next is desperate, and it’s a baptism in blood. It’s a process of alienation. While there may be a select few who are actually out of their gourd and enjoy the violence, the majority of people who engage in banditry are desperate and hungry.

So what the hell does this have to do with the group holding up Preston’s group?

By all rights, Preston’s group does not have anything a gang of raiders wants. Even if they’re far enough along that caps have value to them again, able to do trade with their own network, injuries are expensive and often lead to permanent disability because these groups lack consistent access to medical supplies and knowledge, and fatalities means your crew is down an important and useful member. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY WANT?

In the canon encounter, what they want is nothing. They want to wipe out Preston’s group because the game said so [I think there’s a terminal entry about it later, like they’re getting paid or something, but no payment is worth getting wiped out the way they did, and you don’t run a group that big on blind arrogance alone. Gristle woulda been displaced by then. All the caps in the world aren’t worth your life; you can’t feed dead crew members, and greed is useless when you’re blacklisted from all the settlements with any sense of luxury] They exist to shoot at. But when we ascribe motivation to them, what the fuck do they want?

The power armor.

It’s a tool; something that would change the balance of power in the area, make other groups think twice and lower the chance of losses when trying to gain supplies. Screw wiping these morons out, there’s only five of them left-- hold them at stand-off for a day or so until someone breaks and asks to negotiate, make them drop everything they’ve got as the toll for getting out, and then the group steps in to take the prize. There’s no need for anyone to get shot, just gotta starve ‘em out a little and then let them run with their lives.

Step 4: The Death Claw

So we have a stand-off situation that could... probably be pretty easily negotiated through without major loss of life. Your player character is a third party, after all. Opens up some non-lethal ways of doing things if you wanna convince Preston and co to give up all their stuff if it means getting out with their lives. Likewise, a high speech character could possibly go to Gristle and convince him that you’ve seen the power armor and it’s wrecked, no worth the effort he’s spending on bottling this crew up, and the men he’s probably already lost in the process. Or maybe a character with high intelligence could work with Sturges to sabotage the power armor, handing it over to the raiders knowing that in a day or two it’ll fall apart. All of these make for some interesting shades-of-gray choices...

Then the deathclaw shows up. In the middle of negotiation. Everyone gets forced up to the upper floor; no time to kill each other, there’s a giant murder machine prowling around the lobby and it is only a matter of time before it climbs up to the second floor and starts ripping out walls and doors to get at people.

This could have served to make the situation even more interesting-- if you’d gone aggro in the beginning and started killing raiders in the streets, you have less people to deal with a massive threat that could kill the fuck out of you. If you’d been in the middle of convincing the raiders to take a sabotaged set of power armor, you’d have to explain to them why the power armor isn’t gonna help you... or let Gristle take it and get murdered when it freezes up and leaves him stranded to get ripped out of the can and munched. Is that murder? How’s the player feel about that? Meanwhile, if you hadn’t killed anyone and were in the middle of negotiating a bloodless solution, you might have a chance of unifying everyone to take down the deathclaw-- possibly with a future bonus that Gristle and his crew wanna go straight and giving you the choice to set them up within your settlement system, or becoming yet another ‘civilized’ system that won’t work with them because they’re too far gone.

...................... I may have to write another fic just to explore these ideas in a modified canon.

#Fallout 4 #Preston #Raiders #Gristle #speculation #choice

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rpbetter · 3 years

Note

Hi Vespertine. Sorry to add to the pile, I promise I will send in some writing related things to compensate later. I also misgendered that user in a comment by accident with she/her. I blocked them, but they still looked at my blog, and they made a post that said by using the wrong pronouns, which they thought was intentional and meant to hurt them, I purposefully called them a hysterical woman stereotype. Obviously that wasn't true. I was just going off a comment someone else made on my blog where they used she/her, and I thought I had to correct myself. It was a case where good intentions, even if I was not happy with the user's behavior or expected to talk to them again, I was still going to use the right pronouns, but my intentions were warped by someone with an agenda. I'm sorry to hear you're getting the same heat. I didn't use my rp blog to interact with the user or talk about them because I was sure something like this would happen, either by them or other people like that callout blog, and I think other people had the same idea. I dodged a bullet there, but I'm still paranoid. I'm paranoid I'll hear a notif and see my rp blog in a callout for this, because someone hunted it down, or a callout for trying to talk to the person who started all the drama. Nobody should be scared to talk about someone on their own blog. Nobody should be scared to talk openly, in general. Nobody should be called out for trying to talk with someone either. This culture of fear is so disturbing to me.

Hey there, Anon!

Oh, I would love that, but you totally don't have to, of course. Don't feel bad for adding on, I'm here for anything at all, and honestly, with the job I'm doing IRL right now, it's really hard for me to concentrate well enough on finishing any of the advice posts (at least, to be the quality y'all deserve). It's a hot topic, it's included so, so, terribly many people in the RPC. It's also one that's generating some great, needed conversations. So, it isn't like you're adding to anything bad, annoying or distracting me, or contributing to the inflammatory side of this.

Hell, it's got to be really nice for some of the people in messages I've received to see proof that they weren't alone in this experience. I can keep publishing the hate anons for exactly that reason, and I can promise people they aren't the only ones (in this or in any such horrible behavior), but it's different to see it coming from a third party! So, thank you for that.

Though, I am deeply sorry that you were treated to more than a ringside seat in this debacle.

It's not very encouraging to be thoughtful and respectful of other people when literally nothing you can say or do will result in anything other than more twisting of your words, and that's a big problem I have with this shit. Things like actual transphobia, intentional misgendering, actual infantalization and shit treatment of ND people, actual harassment, etc. etc. etc. matter. It's just more trivializing of real problems for the sake of blowing nonexistent bullshit up, and that is immensely disgusting to me. The fact that you damn well know someone out there has had the reaction to this behavior of, well, fuck you then, fuck trans people is really upsetting.

Like, yeah, let's be real, if you require social rewards to do the right thing, you have some problems lol but at the same time, you know who does require social rewards to develop themselves? Young people. And the RPC is largely comprised of people in their early twenties who, for a variety of possible reasons, are still at that point

Furthermore, no, it's not anyone's job to be good representation at all times, especially when that performance comes at a cost to themselves, but maybe don't go out of your way to be the person that is the necessary push in the wrong direction of someone's formative experience with people of your community. If it's costing you nothing to not clown on serious issues, but is costing the entire world another bigot for you to clown on serious issues, the choice should be a bit obvious here. Whenever you're in a safe place - physically, emotionally - and capable of that kind of logic, exercise it, damn.

It's definitely a better course of action than playing out skewed activism by vilifying innocent people, more worthy of one's effort than losing their collective shit over a very easy mistake. One that I'd say was even less avoidable in your case. AGAIN, how, exactly is anyone supposed to know this shit when they're blocked? When they aren't subverting the blocks they, themselves, put in place? I know for a fact none of them are looking at the information of the people they choose to try to drive out of the RPC, but everyone else is supposed to make zero reasonable assumptions, check and recheck blogs they have made an effort not to visit for good reason. Sounds absolutely reasonable and sane!

So, you know what? I'm going to be even more offensive here and talk for a moment about why these mistakes are reasonable.

When we see a post and reblog it, it's not unreasonable to assume that the OP had knowledge we didn't. Since we blocked the offending party, but they're discussing them. OP uses the incorrect pronouns, we end using the incorrect pronouns as well. This is not malicious intent. It isn't intentional at all, it's just having a discussion. A discussion that wouldn't have even transpired if they hadn't taken it upon themselves to (what a coincidence) take personal issue with a RPer they repeatedly took out of context and decided to shame for it, before proceeding to get an even bigger stick and pot.

When we decide to block a blog, it's our responsibility to stay off of it. Not go looking at it for any reason. That is now off-limits. When someone blocks us, it's also our responsibility to respect that decision, no matter how outrageous it was, no matter what we might need to verify. That's the issue with blocking when we don't exploit how easy it is to get around blocking on tumblr; we've cut ourselves off from any further meaningful communication, including passive communication like rules and posts. Kind of like how you cannot expect an apology to mean a damn thing when you've blocked everyone you harassed, then made that apology in a post on your blocked blog. Don't put up walls you expect people to see through, then get upset when they can't see through them.

As a community, the RPC is primarily afab. That's never a problem to bring up when someone wants to be angry about their female muse not getting equal attention and so on, but it's a problem to discuss any other time, about any other problem. Dealing with the things that we're socially raised to ascribe to as afab people is that problem. It's reflected in our behaviors, interests, and speech. We may not want to live in a gendered world, we may eschew that, but we were raised in a gendered world and it shows. One which has a lot of complications for being that, like almost everyone feeling safer around afab people by default of the All Men Are Bad, All Women Are Harmless bullshit.

We not only know that the RPC is primarily afab, we tend to assume comfort, especially in hostile situations, by assuming those pronouns in others.

And it so does not matter how much any of us like it, some people have more masculine or feminine tones. Even in text. That means neither that someone's gender identity should be disregarded nor that this text-based presentation is correct, but like every other unfair thing that exists, it's a thing. Like you, Anon, you genuinely come across in tone as primarily neutral, slight lean toward masculine. Even if I wasn't inclined to do so, not knowing you and all, I'd use they/them for you instinctively because that's what your speech is giving me. That isn't any more unreasonable than ascribing another set of pronouns based on the same information.

Oh yeah, I know, lurkers, the difference is that they/them is the appropriate choice when one does not know. I know that logically, but people aren't always operating like robots, weirdly enough. We default to a lot of instinctive behaviors, and we aren't always operating at the top rung of cognition either. Being human works like that, it's really that simple and not malicious if you're not reading that into it.

As we're all aware, it is being read into, and your experience is exactly why; you now feel worried every time you get a notif, you've been outed as a supposed transphobe, and while it is incredibly fortunate you stopped this from transpiring on your RP blog, it still transpired somewhere and has had a negative effect. If they find they correct thing or set of things, they can get so many more people to dogpile you over it. Get enough people to do that, make someone miserable enough, especially people who are already going through a hard enough time already, they'll leave.

It is a terroristic act, and it has the effect of all terroristic acts; people are afraid to exist outside of shifting bounds (that shifting is a part of the terrorism). They can't have an opinion, write any muse/topic they wish, be honest on their own blogs, support the "wrong" topics, muns, or blogs. Attacking people for a mistake, not allowing them to address it either, just furthers all of that. It's showing the community what happens when you aren't on the "right" side, even if that isn't even the case. They certainly turn on their own quickly enough.

So, of course, it's a culture of fear and it is disturbing as hell. No one has any right to make someone feel unsafe over fiction or a hobby or a difference of opinion. Everyone has the right to say whatever they want on their own blogs, to talk openly, and yes, to try to talk to others without feeling at risk.

Even if what someone says is genuinely unpleasant. This isn't the way one handles it. By all means, have a problem with something, have a problem with someone, but grow up and talk to them openly, without bringing everyone you can dredge up to join in. I have no issue with people arguing, I have an issue with bullying. If it's your whole goal to harass people without consequences to the end result of deactivation and lockstep behavior from everyone else, that's what you're doing, folks. Bullying.

If you can't win an argument, especially one your own ass began, in any other way than this, you're not engaging in an argument.

#vespertine #answered #anonymous #callout culture #rp harassment

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years

Text

Can the Mormons talk honestly about polygamy?

▲ The Unification Church bought this church in Washington, DC, from the Mormons.

Can the Mormons talk honestly about polygamy? A new book could help. The unknowns about eternal polygamy are ‘answered with speculation and myths, creating undue fear and angst,’ says the author of a new book.

Religion News Service July 29, 2021 By Emily W. Jensen

https://religionnews.com/2021/07/29/can-the-lds-talk-honestly-about-polygamy-a-new-book-could-help/

Ten years ago, as I finished up teaching a Relief Society lesson, in which I discussed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ history of polygamy, my local Relief Society president came up to me and whispered, “You know, the Holy Spirit left the room the moment you said the ‘p’ word.”

The idea that a word could cause the Holy Spirit to flee in terror still makes me stammer — which is just what I did that day in response to the Relief Society president.

Oh, how things have changed. Today most of us own that polygamy was practiced by church members before it was outlawed in Utah in 1890. We should also be able to admit that its theological framework is still found in the church in many places. Talking about it shouldn’t be discouraged.

The church seems to agree, at least so far as to publish through Deseret Book a new tome called “Let’s Talk About Polygamy” by LDS church historian Brittany Chapman Nash. At a slim 134 pages, this little book delves deeper into the practice than its size lets on, hitting the points that every church member should know.

But they generally don’t. Even with the church-sponsored Gospel Topics essays on the subject and various historic works, including those in the church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers, far too many members still believe that polygamy is an unspeakable word or maintain that Smith never practiced it.

Nash’s little book fills that informational void nicely. At its very beginning, she defines the practice, explaining that what went on among early LDS leaders’ families was actually polygyny (the taking of multiple wives), not polygamy (the taking of multiple spouses), but that polygamy is the more common term.

The book relates the history of the practice in the early church and its messy untethering process at the dawn of the 20th century. Nash wonderfully includes many women’s voices of the time in describing their reasons for embracing polygamy or rejecting it, and she explains the polygamous sealing process, which today’s temple sealing ceremony obviously echoes, even though the sealings are now done monogamously.

She also makes plain why so many early members felt they had to ascribe to the practice: Brigham Young, among others, taught that those men who were to be elevated to the highest degree of heaven and become Gods were those who entered into polygamy. Later, Wilford Woodruff, the LDS president who ended it, tried to soften Young’s dictum by explaining that men only needed to marry one other woman, not many multiples of women like so many high church leaders were doing at the time.

The book busts the myth that not many Mormons practiced polygamy, explaining that although the numbers aren’t exact because existing records are incomplete, taking Manti, Utah, as an example, at its height, just over 40% of its population was in polygamous households.

I appreciate that Nash trusts me as a reader and gives the age of Joseph Smith’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, as 14, not, as the Gospel Topics essay does, “sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.”

In her final chapter, Nash asks, “What does polygamy mean to saints today?” She goes head-on at the idea that many members are uncomfortable with the idea of polygamy as it was practiced then and worry that it will be practiced in the hereafter. Clearly, we are still haunted by our polygamist past.

As perhaps we should be: Nash explains that the revelation has “never been denounced” by the church. This means that while men can be sealed to multiple women eternally — if their wife dies or they are divorced and granted a clearance, say — women are painfully and misogynistically not afforded the same sealing promise.

The unknowns about eternal polygamy, Nash notes, are unfortunately “answered with speculation and myths, creating undue fear and angst within some Saints.”

Nash cites President Dallin Oaks, who in 2019 began his general conference talk describing a letter from a woman who was afraid of having to live in the same eternal home with her husband and his first deceased wife. The remark was greeted with laughter from the audience and a smile from Oaks.

I noted on Twitter then that you should never make fun of women afraid of eternal polygamy. Or, as another writer has said: “We haven’t really engaged with the issues, either institutionally or culturally. And by refusing to engage with the problems, we’re essentially telling our sisters and brothers who face them that we don’t care about their situation, because all is well with us.”

After all, Doctrine & Covenants 132, Smith’s revelation on eternal and plural marriage, which we are studying in this year’s Sunday school curriculum, is still canonized.

Overall, I do think this book will shake some members’ faith. That’s because many members still see polygamy as a “p” word, not to be uttered. But I’m grateful for the deft historical hand Nash wields in constructing a small but powerful work on polygamy. Let’s do talk about it. Emily Jensen She is the web editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and co-editor of “A Book of Mormons: Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion.”

(The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

_______________________________________

Can the Moonies talk honestly about polygamy?

VIDEO: Hyung Jin Moon admits his father had sex with six Marys

#Mormons #LDS #polygamy #six wives of Sun Myung Moon

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kayr0ss · 4 years

Text

Appointments Chapter 5: Headaches and Some Music

[LWA, Diakko, Small Town AU, Fluff and Slow Romance, Pining™ lol]

Chapter 1 & Table of Contents AO3 Link

Diana pursed her lips, locked in a heated stare-down against the newest occupant of her apartment.

“Please behave yourself until I return.”

The cat ‘mew’ed’ in reply as though he understood and resumed licking the back of his paw. All things considered, he seemed to be a surprisingly well-behaved cat. Who looked polite. This small comfort was enough to make up for the ridiculousness of having to talk to a cat, and Diana realized that she had never been more excited to return to her clinic as she was now.

The normalcy of work, she thought to herself, is beginning to feel like a comfort versus the absurdity of my home’s current state of affairs.

She stepped through her doorway into a lovely Blytonbury morning. The habitual glance towards her watch read 09:51, urging her to walk at a quicker pace than usual. She regrettably strode right by Jasminka’s café—there was no time to pass by tea, and she hadn’t woken up early enough to make some for herself that morning.

Of course, because of the cat.

The day prior, she’d had to return home later than usual to fetch her feline tenant the basic supplies: a small can of cat-food, a litterbox, and two bowls for food and milk. The real challenge was in the ‘teaching him not to leave any form of excrement where he shouldn’t.’ Pleasant behavior aside, it seemed Toby was actually quite intelligent—although by the time it was two o’clock in the morning, her NewTube suggestions were a peculiar mix of medical lectures and ‘How to Potty Train Your Cat’ videos.

She made her way through the crosswalk—ensuring that no brunettes were running about—and mentally prepared herself for the day she was about to have. There were no scheduled patients before lunch, giving her enough time to review case files for a busy afternoon.

When she stepped through the glass door to her clinic, Barbara was already lounging behind her desk and flipping—as usual—through a novel.

“Good morning,” she peaked out from behind ‘NightFall 12: The Oblivion of Love’. “You’re on the dot today.”

“I always am,” Diana replied lightly. “Good morning to you as well.”

“You’re always at least fifteen minutes early,” Barbara corrected, smiling kindly. Then the nurse leaned forward, scrutinizing Diana with an observant gaze. “You’re…”

The blonde lifted her eyebrow in silent response.

“Something.” Barbara said slowly, as if trying to figure a puzzle out. She waved a hand to dismiss the thought. “Must have been my imagination, just thought there was something off. Anyway, I’ve laid down the patient files for the afternoon. We’ve got ourselves a slow morning.”

“Thank you,” Diana nodded politely, slipping into her whitecoat and thankful that she didn’t have to explain the kind of morning (and evening) she’d had. She settled into her chair, entertaining the thought of going through the documents Barbara had prepared before deciding she wasn’t in the right headspace for that. A headache. Massing her temples, she ascribed her irritability at a lack of sleep and constant worrying over her furniture’s wellbeing. She inwardly cursed her lack of morning tea—and really hoped her furniture were okay.

Learning back with a sigh, her eyes drifted towards a pamphlet at the edge of her table. It was the St. Beatrix MMC residency brochure on Cardiology. She’d probably read its contents nearly ten times over by now. In truth, the hospital had already reached out to her: she was “everything they were looking for”, or so the chief resident had said—a young doctor with an impeccable educational background. Diana had been truly grateful, but she was committed to taking the time she’d need to be absolutely sure. Which she wasn’t. At least, not yet.

There was a knock on her door, and Barbara was peeking through the doorframe. “Water. And an aspirin. Because for some reason you look—uh.”

“Off?” Diana tilted her head.

“Like shit.” Barbara nodded, and Diana would have had something to say about her choice of language if it weren’t for the fact that she was probably right. “Did anything happen?”

“Just a few issues to iron over at home,” she replied cryptically.

Barbara looked like she wanted to ask more, but decided not to prod. “That won’t do. We’re having lunch over at the Russian lady’s and getting those croissants you love so much, but in the meantime drink that Advil because someone’s gotta look after the doctor looking after everyone else.”

Diana smiled and felt a wave of gratitude pour through her over Barbara’s thoughtfulness.

“Which reminds me,” the other woman set the items down to Diana’s desk, “the cat’s gone.”

The blonde immediately looked down at the suddenly-very-interesting-patient-files. “I—Indeed.”

“You know, I think I’ll actually miss him. He was kind of cute.”

Diana was ready to remind her of the importance of workplace cleanliness when the front bell chimed louder than usual. The glass pane of the door practically swung open with force.

“Heya, doc! And miss nurse!”

Oh.

Barbara was the first to recover. “Where did you fall in this time? Was it a ditch? Or did you fly off your bike again?”

Atsuko Kagari-with-blood-ty—Oh, enough of that! She’s just Akko!—had come barging in with a large paper bag, effectively elevating Diana’s headache through several numbers up the VNRS pain scale.

“I—” Akko shot the nurse a smug look “—have yet to experience an accident this week!”

“That’s a first,” Barbara crossed her arms.

“But I’m here for you!”

Those stunning red eyes locked themselves onto Diana, and suddenly she couldn’t speak. Me? The brunette strode into her office. She dropped the paper bag onto her desk.

“I’m not quite sure I follow. What is this?”

“Child support!”

Diana flinched. Barbara blinked. Akko simply nodded to herself in smug satisfaction.

“For Toby. Since we’re co-parents now.” Akko clarified, looking completely serious. “There’s a bunch of cat food that should last a while, a cute mouse squeaky toy, and animal milk.”

The blonde felt her ears redden at the incredulous look Barbara was giving her, and seriously—was this seriously happening right now? “C—Co-parents?”

“Yes.” Akko nodded with a determined glint in her eyes. “And I’m no deadbeat mom!”

“I—I see.”

“Anyway,” Akko took one of the pens from Diana’s stand without asking (“Don’t do that.”), and leaned over to write on the blank prescription pad on the blonde’s desk. “Here’s my number so you can text me about anything he needs and so we can arrange my visitation rights!”

Visitation rights?

“Oh.” Akko paused, lifting her thumb to her chin. “We probably need to schedule a trip to the vet and get him a collar, too.”

We?

Not knowing what else to say and still completely blindsided by Akko’s—well, everything—Diana simply complied. “I… know a veterinarian. He’s a childhood friend.”

“Perfect!” Akko beamed.

Once again, it was disarming. She really had to stop doing that to Diana.

“I’ve got to study for a test so I gotta bounce but I’m so excited to see him again!” Akko leaned across the table, moving around at a pace faster than Diana’s sleep-deprived-due-to-Toby’s mind could follow. The brunette wrapped her hand around her forearm and gave her another smile. It was warm. “But really—thank you Diana! I’ll see you around!”

She turned on her heel like the bundle of energy she was and bolted right out the door with a wave to Barbara.

Barbara—who looked right about ready to explode into laughter in the wake of Akko’s departure.

“You kept him.”

“Please don’t.” Diana pleaded.

The nurse finally caved, leaning against the doorframe to her office for support while she snickered. “That’s why you look completely out of it! You’ve got to tell me everything.”

But then the thudding sound of footsteps interrupted their conversation yet again and the door swung open. Poor thing. Might need to have its hinges checked at this point.

“I almost forgot!” Akko came bursting into the room like a cannon ball. “I got this on my way here for you!”

She slammed a paper take-out cup from Jasminka’s café onto Diana’s desk.

“I have no idea what it is to be honest.” Akko yelled, already rushing back out in a hurry. “I just asked Jas for a cup of whatever your usual is! Okay-bye-for-real!”

She was gone in a flash. Diana could smell tea.

English Breakfast, prepared exactly the way she liked it. The aroma was enough to chase away the tension along her brow, and when she glanced towards Barbara, who looked just as lost as she felt—

—they shared soft laughter.

The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous. Including the fact that her cup was labeled: ‘Dr. Grumpy >:(’

---

It was 5:30PM and Akko was in despair.

“Chikusho! That was a disaster.” Akko banged her head against the lecture room desk. She was reeling from the mental assault that was ‘Applied Physics Examination 1.’ Judging by the scowl on Sucy’s usually nonchalant face, it hit her pretty hard too. “How’d you do?”

“Tanginang test ‘yan.” She glowered in her native language.

“I’m going to assume that was a string of curse words.”

“For once in your idiot life, you are correct.”

“Mou!” Akko huffed.

“I’m out.” Sucy declared, and likewise, every fiber in Akko’s being wanted to get the hell out of this classroom as soon as possible. The purple-haired girl lazily slung her bag over shoulder and looked down at Akko (who was still very much slumped over the desk) through one eye. “So are you coming or should I leave you behind?”

Akko groaned. And then sighed. And then groaned another time while pointing towards the podium because—“First I have to walk over there and ask if she wants to join the running club.”

“The professor?” Sucy blinked.

“Ya, dude.”

Then Sucy was grinning daggers. “I think I’m gonna stick by and see if she’ll actually murder you this time.”

“Not funny!” Akko pouted while finally standing up and cursing the fact that she can no longer exist as a worry-free blob on a desk.

“It is. A little. Now go.” Sucy prodded on, repeatedly poking at her arm.

“Going, going!”

While the students slowly filed out of the room—in despair, mind you—Akko approached Dr. Meridies with Sucy lingering a safe distance behind her.

The lilac-haired professor looked up from a test sheet she was inspecting, looking, as one would say, way too tired for this shit. “No amount of begging is going to convince me to pass you.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Akko crossed her arms defiantly.

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

Well. There wasn’t any other way for this to go down than directly, so it was best to just blurt it out. “Do you want to join the running club?”

Dr. Meridies reeled, squinting. “The running club?”

“Yes.” Akko nodded. “The running club.”

“So many people are asking me to join this running club that I think I’m gonna start declining just out of spite.”

“Ugh!” Akko groaned. “I tried—can’t force you! Maybe Professor du Nord can, Kami-sama, why did I even both—”

“Wait wait wait—” Dr. Meridies raised a hand to shut Akko while scowling. “du Nord?”

“Yeah,” Akko said looked to the side with slumped shoulders, “the club moderator. And I’m here cause Diana asked so now that I’ve done that I’m just gonna boun—”

Oddly enough, the exasperated professor seemed to have tuned out. “Chariot du Nord, from Humanities?”

“Uh, yeah.” The brunette blinked. “Do you know her?”

“O—Of course.” The older woman began stare so hard at the table she could have burned a hole through. “Faculty and all.”

Akko caught on like a wolf, grinning mischievously. “You know her!”

“Like I said we both teach—”

“You know know her.”

“Out!” Dr. Meridies barked, “of my classroom!”

With a devious glint, which Akko swore she could see in Sucy’s eyes too, she waved in exaggerated politeness and made her way to the door.

“Okay, professor!” Oh, she loved this sort of drama! “Just saying—it’s on Monday evenings!”

“You should have seen her face!” Akko squealed with almost manic glee. “Oh, Lotte you’re gonna love it—I know you’re a sucker for this kind of stuff.”

“But I can’t imagine it! How does Professor du Nord—” Lotte gestured towards her life with both hands for emphasis “—who seems super sweet and kind of introverted but is generally made of sunshine, find herself with a history of romantic involvement with someone like Dr. Meridies—” she made a quick jerking motion towards the right. “Who I haven’t actually seen in person, and if I were to base my judgments off your descriptions she sounds like some mad-scientist antagonist in an anime who’d wear a cape.”

Akko blinked. “That’s a good one.”

Sucy actually nodded.

“It makes no sense!” Lotte shook her head. And then… she swooned. “But love never does, does it?”

“Makes about as much as sense as this idiot getting that doctor to adopt the cat.”

“’The cat’ is named Toby!” Akko chided, “and you’d be hard-pressed to deny him if you’ve seen that cute little face of his.”

The three women were lazing about Lotte and Sucy’s living-and-dining area, with Akko sprawled across the couch that she’d be sleeping on since the pair—or just Lotte—invited her to stay over. There was take-out and beer (which Sucy and Akko had picked up on their way home), and the mini-get-together served two purposes: to recover from that horrid examination, and to keep Akko company because “tomorrow’s my first day of work and I am way too nervous to fall asleep without beer or Lotte nagging me to!”

There was something deeply comfortable about the small apartment. The furnishing didn’t match up and yet every piece felt like they belonged. Pots and pans hung above the stove, used yet well-maintained. They always had an extra set of everything—as though guests were welcome and often come and go. She loved it. And loved how welcome she felt in it. And though she’d never impose unless invited, Akko felt… cozy. Books, and mushrooms, and odd test-tubes, and literary manuscripts and all.

Lotte was in the middle of sharing the gist of her latest writing exercise when Akko felt her phone buzz.

“Hold on,” she excused herself, “I swear if this is a Canvas notification I’m gonna cut a bi—oh!”

“What is it?” Lotte asked.

18:53 Good evening. This Dr. Cavendish’s number – I’ve been able to secure an appointment with Dr. Hanbridge, the veterinarian I had mentioned. I apologize for the short notice but his soonest availability is tomorrow at around 1:30PM. Check-up aside, an agent in his clinic should likewise be able to assist with any documentation that needs sorting out given our arrangement. Your prompt response will be appreciated.

18:54 Heeeya Doc! 😊 u sound like an e-mail. :P

18:54 But sure lol I get off work @ Arcturus school around lunch time

18:55 Is it gonna be far?

18:55 But srsly lighten up abit it’s just me we can me at the bus stop or whrvr

18:56 I’ll be hailing a taxi service from my home and will collect you from your workplace at 12:30PM. Please be on time.

18:56 PLS add me on WhatsUpp through this number PLS omg I want pics of my little bby!!!! DO U FEED HIM and I can send you memes to show him so he’ll laugh LOL

18:56 LOL wtf ‘collect’

“It was Diana.”

Sucy cocked an eyebrow, “’Diana’?”

“I have a vet trip with Toby tomorrow!” Akko buzzed. “Oh bother, now I’m never going to get any sleep.”

“Is she for real?” Sucy indifferently pointed towards Akko while speaking to Lotte. “She’s like some ‘instant-friendship’ anomaly. Even I feel personally victimized.”

Lotte only smiled. “You have to sleep lest you subject poor children to a zombie for a teacher tomorrow.”

“That’s mean!”

Akko shared a laugh with Lotte, urging her to carry on with her story. They were getting to the good part—Edmund was about to confess!

One successful synopsis reading and a few topic changes later, Akko’s phone had buzzed once more.

It was a picture.

She squealed so hard her cheeks hurt.

“Akko, down! Yes—I see him—stop screaming or else I’m going to poison your drink.”

The driver pulled up at Arcturus School’s main driveway at exactly half-past noon.

“Please wait a moment.” Diana politely requested, mildly aware of the fact that she was beginning to miss the luxury of having her own car and service.

“Sure, just don’t leave me alone with that little fella, don’t matter how cute he might be.”

With a sigh—which was one of many at this point—she gently peered over to Toby whose head was poking out of the most comfortable canvas tote bag she could scavenge. It was that or nothing at all, and no, she wasn’t going to carry him in her arms.

‘Mew.’ He stared back up towards her. At least he seemed comfortable—and she tried to fight it but then she gave in and chuckled.

“Oh, come on then.”

Diana stepped out of the vehicle with Toby in tow. She pulled out her phone, putting a call through for the latest addition in her phonebook.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Typical. She wasn’t picking up.

Fortunately she had anticipated this, there was a half-hour allowance in her schedule. Instead of bombarding the brunette with several missed calls, she opted to walk towards what looked like the waiting area where children were fetched. She took a moment to look around, noticing that the school grounds had an abundance of trees—much like the rest of Blytonbury and the campus of LNU. The morning classes were dismissed and children ran about. A few of them began to notice her special baggage, and one little girl ran up to her and nearly hugged her legs.

She had hazel eyes, and big, goofy grin. “You’re so pretty!”

Diana blinked. “Thank you.”

“Is that a cat?”

“Yes.” She lowered the bag a little, appreciating the wonder in the little girl’s voice. “But I can’t let you pet him yet, I’m afraid. He still bites.”

“But I—”

The little girl was cut-off by the sounded children cheering. Diana followed her line of sight and saw…

Akko.

She was playing music. And laughing. But more than that—everyone around her was smiling just as bright. Children sang while they danced in a circle around her, clapping their hands to the beat of what sounded like a ridiculously complicated rendition of the ABCs on the violin. The pace was quick while she played a progression of eight and sixteenth notes. The feel of the song was less classical and more like an upbeat Celtic dance.

And dance they did. Laughing, and clapping, and bouncing around in mirth without a care in the world.

Akko played with such joy and passion that Diana could feel the warmth from several meters away. She kept still—already forgetting her earlier dismay on being behind schedule—and simply watched.

“Do you know her?” The little girl with hazel eyes asked in a small voice.

Diana nodded, smiling to herself while trying to wrap her head around the conundrum that was Atsuko Kagari—who had red eyes, who tripped over nothing and scraped her knee, who could barely make it to her classes on time and yet could bewitch a crowd with a smile and a bit of music.

“She’s…”

Even Toby looked he was watching.

“…my friend.”

end chapter

A/N: Hello everyone! Hope you're doing well, stayin' safe and staying home. So anyway here's another chapter and admittedly I only have a very rough outline of where I want this story to be and well... I like writing one shots because I'm REALLY bad at plotting out longer stuff like seriously, when I started this, I thought it would be 5 chapters long at most and yet here's chapter 5.

So I've decided to just go with it and take the time to explore and narrate the relationships/interactions I've got in my head AND I don't know anything about taking care of cats I AM SORRY IT PROBABLY SHOWS

Hope you're enjoying it so far! (AND I still owe Diana a happy birthday fic that may or may not involve feet due to some shenaginas I've seen on tumblr which I don't know if are jokes or not)

#Diakko #Dianakko #Diana Cavendish #Atsuko Kagari #Akko Kagari #Diana x Akko #LWA #AU #Little Witch Academia #Charoix #Chariot du Nord #Croix Meridies #Fluff #Fanfic #Luna Nova #Sucy Manbaravan #Lotte Yanson

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honestgrins · 4 years

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Pretty Good Bad Idea || Klaroline

As the CEO of admitted hellcorp Original, Klaus was used to professional criticism. Caroline, however, was really, really good at it.

The ballroom was full of people, animated and cheery with the holiday spirit. Original's annual corporate celebration grew more lavish by the year, thanks to Rebekah taking full advantage of the expanded budget she'd sweet talked out of the board. Well, she'd sweet talked Mikael, who strong-armed the rest of the members into compliance as a boon to employee morale.

Never mind the numerous proposals Klaus tried to implement in order to actually improve salaries and benefits, he thought bitterly to himself. Heaven forbid the board approve any of his initiatives, he was just the CEO. He should have known Mikael wouldn't allow him to wield any real power within the company; if anything, he was more constrained than ever under his step-father's thumb. Still, he was good at his job and they were all billionaires for it.

He ran the highest valued company in the world, yet he was miserable at his own party. Somewhere, a very small violin was surely playing for him. Groaning at his own self-pity, he made his way to the bar. Whatever specialty cocktail Rebekah had the waiters passing around wasn't nearly strong enough for him.

Ordering a scotch, he leaned back to survey the room. His sister was coaxing her date onto the dance floor; his own date was chatting with his mother. He rolled his eyes at the sight. Clearly, Genevieve was getting too comfortable with imagining herself his girlfriend. If she thought ingratiating herself with Esther would improve her chances, she deserved whatever his mother threw her way. Intimidating the significant others of her children was a point of pride for her, until those that made it all the way to the altar met her complete approval.

Honestly, it was easier to avoid serious attachments altogether than face that kind of scrutiny. He sighed, wondering when Genevieve lost sight of their casual status.

Before he could text his assistant to send a breakup bouquet sometime during the next week, however, his gaze caught on Mikael and a woman hanging on his every word. She was dressed more simply than most of the guests, but her jumpsuit was sleek and well-fitted. Blonde curls gently fell down her back, red lips tilted up in a curious grin.

She was beautiful, and Klaus couldn't take his eyes off her.

But nothing could make him willingly approach Mikael, let alone in public with witnesses to what would surely be a hostile conversation at best. They mostly traded barbs via intermediaries, and their familial relationship had never been better. Her, though, he would have to maneuver an introduction to her.

His moment came when Esther interrupted them to claim a dance with her husband, the younger woman demurring with a nod. No handshake - they must have known each other already. Interesting.

Left alone, she slipped toward the bar, and Klaus couldn't help a sly smirk that he hadn't needed to intercept her at all. Instead, she was walking straight toward him. He threw back the last remnants of his glass, turning to order a refill just before she stepped up next to him. "Can I get a ginger ale, please?"

The bartender quickly went about his business, but Klaus seized the chance of a briefly captive audience. "I don't believe we've met. Klaus Mikaelson," he greeted, offering his hand.

She seemed to be biting back a smile, shaking his hand like she was laughing at him. Eager to be let in on the joke, he was content to bide his time. "Caroline," she responded. "Caroline Forbes. I'm surprised. I was under the impression you don't enjoy company parties."

His eyes narrowed, wondering what tales Mikael had been telling. He had no desire to talk about him, however. "They have their upsides," he hedged. "You're here, for example."

"Charming," she laughed. The bartender finally slid over her drink, but to Klaus's triumph, she didn't move to rejoin the crowd. She watched him shrewdly while she sipped. "Do you flirt with all your employees?"

"You're not one of my employees."

Her expression turned skeptical. "You have hundreds of thousands of employees all over the world," she shot back. "I doubt you have them all memorized."

Klaus smirked from behind his glass, thoroughly enjoying the taste of victory. "It would take some studying and better context, but I'm better at knowing my team than most expect. That said, I do recognize your name, and not from the Original directory."

With a dejected sigh, she gave a rueful smile. "Damn that byline exposure."

"For good reason," he noted. "Your writing is particularly memorable, love. I think I have one of your articles hanging on my wall. 'Nepotism is Alive and Well: Another Mikaelson Assumes Role as Original CEO' was one of yours, wasn't it? I had a few headlines to choose from when I moved into the new office, but I liked the bite of that one." Honestly, he kept that one to remind himself that he ascended to the position despite Mikael's wishes; that others assumed Mikael tacitly endorsed his leadership was just a fringe benefit. "I wasn't aware Rebekah invited press to the party."

"She didn't," Caroline admitted. "My roommate is on your security team, though, and he brought me as his plus-one."

"Josh?"

"Enzo. San Francisco is an expensive city, and you have a habit of not paying your staff an adequate wage to live here."

He shrugged, feigning a lack of concern when he'd been arguing for exactly that to improve retention. It was more a ploy to keep employees loyal to him rather than Mikael, but he was still making the effort. "Yes, I'm sure you're the breadwinner, what, with your esteemed work at the local paper."

Her cold smile burned right through him, and he'd never been so delighted. "At least my pittance of a salary comes with integrity and a firm grasp of ethics. You should stop by our union meeting sometime, see what it looks like when workers actually have a say in their standards."

"My employees are free to petition their managers for a negotiation," he answered easily, enjoying her little, indignant huff.

"And your managers are trained to pass the petition up the ranks until it's nothing more than a bullet point on your morning memo, which you pass off to one of your directors without taking the terms into consideration."

Smirking, Klaus tipped his glass to her. "I assure you, my morning memo isn't listed in bullet points."

"That's not an answer," she insisted, her voice stern.

It only made his smirk deepen. "No, you'd have to talk to my media director for that. She's right over there, doing a poor rendition of the Macarena, I believe. Care to dance, love?"

Caroline rolled her eyes with a scoff. "You know, I also talked to Genevieve tonight. She actually introduced herself as your date, which is so sad that I can't even laugh about it. You should ask her to dance. You're not even worth the calories I burn talking to you."

Oh, how he wanted to change her mind about that. "Yet here you are, crashing my party. What's the story this time?"

Her jaw tightened as she seemed to consider her best course of action. He was pleased when she favored bluntness, a trait he ascribed to her natural personality. "Rumor has it you're trying to force your father out of the business. Any truth to that?"

The room might have frozen with him, not that he was paying it any attention. "For a journalist with integrity, you're putting an awful lot of trust in Mikael Mikaelson as a source," he bit out.

"I am a journalist with integrity," she replied in kind. "That's why I'm verifying the firsthand account of a very high profile source within the company. I can see he's paranoid and holding onto his chairmanship with a white-knuckled grip, and he has a history of twisting media attention to his favor. But then," she paused, watching him carefully. "So do you."

How else was I supposed to wrest the chief executive from him? he wanted to ask, but it would do no good to confirm her suspicion - not while Mikael was clearly making moves against him. Best the board as a whole didn't find a reason to remove him as CEO, and proving how well he manipulated them would surely create a motive to do so. "As I said, feel free to seek comment from my media director. Preferably during business hours, of course."

Her smile returned in full force, leaving him wary and completely taken. "Of course, sorry to disturb you, Mr. Mikaelson."

"Miss Forbes," he nodded. She brazenly held his stare for a long moment before she turned and strode away, the path she cut through the party holding his attention for far longer. That wouldn't be the last time they went head to head.

He'd make sure of it.

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #kcauweek2020 #day 4 #enemies to lovers #this is more about the enemies part but we all know where it leads #captive audience #fic: pretty good bad idea

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wodexuexiao · 4 years

Text

@gwndlnstudies tagged me in this game. Thanks sweetheart!

If you wrote a book, what would it be about?

I’ve long wanted to write a book about an 18th Century Rake, using it as a space in which to explore gender, sexuality, and religion. I’ll probably never write it, but I did an absolute boat load of research back when I was 18 hahaha

Do you find the most comfort in the forest or by the sea?

I love both, but the forest feels more comforting to me. It provides cover, and there are so many things to see! Insects and animals and lots of plants. The sea is exhilerating, but the fact that it is so open means I never feel like I can just let go and enjoy it, as I fear I am being watched.

Name at least one lovely thing about yourself or that happened to you in the past few days

I’m afraid that the past few days have been rather nothing-y for me, so I’ll have to go for something I appreciate about myself. I like to think that I’m a rather kind person, and I enjoy helping others feel accomplished.

Are you a hopeless romantic or a realist?

A realist, I reckon. But being a realist doesn’t mean I’m not entirely romantic. For example: I don’t believe in soul mates, but I believe that you can love someone enough to put in the effort to make your relationship similar to soul mates.

What do you do to take care of yourself and feel at peace?

I’m actually AWFUL at doing things to take care of myself. Every now and then (read: once a year or less) I’ll buy a face mask, but that’s really it. If I’m really ill I’ll curl up and watch a film from my childhood. If I’m feeling jittery, I’ll drink some good quality tea. Otherwise, I’m known for not really looking after myself very well (as my doctors will attest).

Does the weather have a strong effect on your emotions?

Horrifically so! My mother is the same. On a sunny day I have boundless enthusiasm and happiness, it’s really hard to get me down. On cloudy days (or worse, rainy) I get really really down to the point of sometimes struggling to get out of bed. I have big fluctuations with the season, too. Winter is the hardest time of year for me, and late Spring to mid Summer is the easiest.

Describe a cute date idea (either as a date with yourself or with someone else)

Oh! Okay, so a trip to London, definitely. In the morning go to The Wallace Collection. At lunch find a cafe. In the afternoon go for a walk around Hyde Park. In the evening, eat Pho. I really miss living in London hahaha. Alternatively: go to Oxford, go through museums, take a walk along the Thames in the afternoon, swim in it in the evening, say hello to the cows.

Where is it that you would most like to be right now?

London. Honestly I don’t really know? I think with the whole world at a standstill at the moment (or moving when it really, really shouldn’t be) I’m quite content to be at home. If it weren’t for COVID-19, though, I’d want to be returning to Shenzhen. I miss living in China and I miss working as a teacher hahaha.

What is your definition of art?

Allow me to don my art historian hat for a moment. I used to be very much in the “Art is something very specific” school, but after my studies I’ve become one of those very annoying people who honestly enjoys contemporary art and will go on for an age about the validity of the “readymade”. Art is anything one ascribes artistic significance to. Through the act of looking at something and contemplating it, it becomes art. If you put your glasses on the floor in an art gallery and “pretend” it’s art - congratulations, you just made art! The banana on the wall was art.

What is your definition of beauty?

This is a tough one. I think beauty is a malleable, fluid concept and that it changes based on circumstance, experience, and opinion. Personally, some of what I sometimes find beautiful can be found in the following, non-exhaustive list: bird song, cherry blossoms, the smell of a farmer’s market, crowds of people singing together, tiny little mice running along the tracks in the tube, the colour green, disgustingly over the top furniture from the baroque and rococo ages, humanity’s desire to communitcate with one another, crows, cows, well-planned public transport systems.

My questions for the following five people: @i-hope-its-raining, @jingxixuexiblr, @whorumadh, @studiousghost, @studylikeara

What is one place you’ve always wanted to visit (and why)?

What is one thing that never fails to cheer you up?

Do you prefer hot weather or cold weather?

What is one thing you think everyone should be taught at school?

Would you rather be unable to taste things that are sweet, or unable to taste things that are salty?

What is one good memory you like to revisit?

If you had to pick your greatest achievement, the thing you were most proud of, what would it be?

Which song do you think everyone should listen to at least once?

If you could choose one language to be able to speak fluenty without studying, which would it be and why?

If you could somehow befriend and keep the companionship of any animal in the world, what sort of animal would it be?

Of course, no pressure to play! Thank you again @gwndlnstudies for the tag, this was actually really fun!

#我说得 #long post #tag game

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cassianus · 4 years

Text

--Turning my eyes carefully upon myself and watching the course of my inward state, I have verified by experience that I do not love God, that I have no love for my neighbors, that I have no religious belief, and that I am filled with pride and sensuality. All this I actually find in myself as a result of detailed examination of my feelings and conduct, thus:

1. I do not love God. For if I loved God I should be continually thinking about Him with heartfelt joy. Every thought of God would give me gladness and delight. On the contrary, I much more often and much more eagerly think about earthly things, and thinking about God is labor and dryness. If I loved God, then talking with Him in prayer would be my nourishment and delight and would draw me to unbroken communion with Him. But, on the contrary, I not only find no delight in prayer, but even find it an effort. I struggle with reluctance, I am enfeebled by sloth and am ready to occupy myself eagerly with any unimportant trifle, if only it shortens prayer and keeps me from it. My time slips away unnoticed in futile occupations, but when I am occupied with God, when I put myself into His presence, every hour seems like a year. If one person loves another, he thinks of him throughout the day without ceasing, he pictures him to himself, he cares for him, and in all circumstances his beloved friend is never out of his thoughts. But I, throughout the day, scarcely set aside even a single hour in which to sink deep down into meditation upon God, to inflame my heart with love of Him, while I eagerly give up 23 hours as fervent offerings to the idols of my passions. I am forward in talk about frivolous matters and things which degrade the spirit; that gives me pleasure. But in the consideration of God I am dry, bored, and lazy. Even if I am unwillingly drawn by others into spiritual conversation, I try to shift the subject quickly to one which pleases my desires. I am tirelessly curious about novelties, about civic affairs and political events; I eagerly seek the satisfaction of my love of knowledge in science and art, and ways of getting things I want to possess. But the study of the law of God, the knowledge of God and of religion, make little impression on me, and satisfy no hunger of my soul. I regard these things not only as a non-essential occupation for a Christian, but in a casual way as a sort of side-issue with which I should perhaps occupy my spare time, at odd moments. To put it shortly, if love for God is recognized by the keeping of His commandments ("If ye love Me, keep My commandments," says our Lord Jesus Christ), and I not only do not keep them, but even make little attempt to do so, then in absolute truth the conclusion follows that I do not love God. That is what Basil the Great says: "The proof that a man does not love God and His Christ lies in the fact that he does not keep His commandments."

2. I do not love my neighbor either. For not only am I unable to make up my mind to lay down my life for his sake (according to the gospel), but I do not even sacrifice my happiness, well-being, and peace for the good of my neighbor. If I did love him as myself, as the gospel bids, his misfortunes would distress me also, his happiness would bring delight to me too. But, on the contrary, I listen to curious, unhappy stories about my neighbor, and I am not distressed; I remain quite undisturbed or, what is still worse, I find a sort of pleasure in them. Bad conduct on the part of my brother I do not cover up with love, but proclaim abroad with censure. His well-being, honor, and happiness do not delight me as my own, and, as if they were something quite alien to me, give me no feeling of gladness. What is more, they subtly arouse in me feelings of envy or contempt.

3. I have no religious belief. Neither in immortality nor in the gospel. If I were firmly persuaded and believed without doubt that beyond the grave lies eternal life and recompense for the deeds of this life, I should be continually thinking of this. The very idea of immortality would terrify me and I should lead this life as a foreigner who gets ready to enter his native land. On the contrary, I do not even think about eternity, and I regard the end of this earthly life as the limit of my existence. The secret thought nestles within me: Who knows what happens at death? If I say I believe in immortality, then I am speaking about my mind only, and my heart is far removed from a firm conviction about it. That is openly witnessed to by my conduct and my constant care to satisfy the life of the senses. Were the holy gospel taken into my heart in faith, as the Word of God, I should be continually occupied with it, I should study it, find delight in it, and with deep devotion fix my attention upon it. Wisdom, mercy, and love are hidden in it; it would lead me to happiness, I should find gladness in the study of the law of God day and night. In it I should find nourishment like my daily bread, and my heart would be drawn to the keeping of its laws. Nothing on earth would be strong enough to turn me away from it. On the contrary, if now and again I read or hear the Word of God, yet even so it is only from necessity or from a general love of knowledge, and approaching it without any very close attention I find it dull and uninteresting. I usually come to the end of the reading without any profit, only too ready to change over to secular reading in which I take more pleasure and find new and interesting subjects.

4. I am full of pride and sensual self-love. All my actions confirm this. Seeing something good in myself, I want to bring it into view, or to pride myself upon it before other people or inwardly to admire myself for it. Although I display an outward humility, yet I ascribe it all to my own strength and regard myself as superior to others, or at least no worse than they. If I notice a fault in myself, I try to excuse it; I cover it up by saying, "I am made like that" or "I am not to blame". I get angry with those who do not treat me with respect and consider them unable to appreciate the value of people. I brag about my gifts: my failures in any undertaking I regard as a personal insult. I murmur, and I find pleasure in the unhappiness of my enemies. If I strive after anything good it is for the purpose of winning praise, or spiritual self-indulgence, or earthly consolation. In a word, I continually make an idol of myself and render it uninterrupted service, seeking in all things the pleasures of the senses and nourishment for my sensual passions and lusts.

--Going over all this I see myself as proud, adulterous, unbelieving, without love for God and hating my neighbor. What state could be more sinful? The condition of the spirits of darkness is better than mine. They, although they do not love God, hate men, and live upon pride, yet at least believe and tremble. But I? Can there be a doom more terrible than that which faces me, and what sentence of punishment will be more severe than that upon the careless and foolish life that I recognize in myself?

On reading through this form of confession which the priest gave me I was horrified, and I thought to myself, "Good heavens! What frightful sins there are hidden within me, and up to now I've never noticed them!" The desire to be cleansed from them made me beg this great spiritual father to teach me how to know the causes of all these evils and how to cure them. And he began to instruct me.

"You see, dear brother, the cause of not loving God is want of belief, want of belief is caused by lack of conviction, and the cause of that is failure to seek for holy and true knowledge, indifference to the light of the spirit. In a word, if you don't believe, you can't love; if you are not convinced, you can't believe, and in order to reach conviction you must get a full and exact knowledge of the matter before you. By meditation, by the study of God's Word, and by noting your experience, you must arouse in your soul a thirst and a longing- or, as some call it, 'wonder'- which brings you an insatiable desire to know things more closely and more fully, to go deeper into their nature.

"One spiritual writer speaks of it in this way: 'Love,' he says, 'usually grows with knowledge, and the greater the depth and extent of the knowledge the more love there will be, the more easily the heart will soften and lay itself open to the love of God, as it diligently gazes upon the very fullness and beauty of the divine nature and His unbounded love for men.'

"So now you see that the cause of those sins which you read over is slothfulness in thinking about spiritual things, sloth which stifles the feeling of the need of such thought. If you want to know how to overcome this evil, strive after enlightenment of spirit by every means in your power, attain it by diligent study of the Word of God and of the holy Fathers, by the help of meditation and spiritual counsel, and by the conversation of those who are wise in Christ. Ah, dear brother, how much disaster we meet with just because we are lazy about seeking light for our souls through the word of truth. We do not study God's law day and night, and we do not pray about it diligently and unceasingly. And because of this our inner man is hungry and cold, starved, so that it has no strength to take a bold step forward upon the road of righteousness and salvation! And so, beloved, let us resolve to make use of these methods, and as often as possible fill our minds with thoughts of heavenly things; and love, poured down into our hearts from on high, will burst into flame within us. We will do this together and pray as often as we can, for prayer is the chief and strongest means for our renewal and well-being. We will pray, in the words holy Church teaches us: 'Oh God, make me fit to love Thee now, as I have loved sin in the past'"

The Pilgrim Continues His Way

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