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violettelueur · 3 years

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— RYOMEN SUKUNA || LET ME MARK YOU THEN

↳ featuring : ryomen sukuna from jujutsu kaisen

↳ warnings : mention of sex, mention of hickeys and grammar issues

↳ form : imagine

↳ published : 22 january

↳ pronouns : she/her

↳ word count : 3.7k

↳ synopsis : (modern!AU) after your lectures, you decided to pay your tattoo artist boyfriend a little visit only to then be persuaded to let him draw a tattoo design on you even though you never actually wanted a real one to be marked with.

↳ barista’s notes : just a little gift to you all before today’s episode and the reset the ‘coffees in progress’ list (wip) when i get enough sleep and after my disgusting online classes, i hope you enjoy the free cup of coffee everyone ʕ•ᴥ•ʔﾉ♡ - also i feel like this is the longest imagine i have ever posted ʕ ㅇ ᴥ ㅇʔ

Having a morning full of tedious lectures was not someone’s ideal day and it was definitely not yours. Although, there was nothing you could do but pursue them through with as much enthusiasm and determination that you could possibly muster while being impatient about the hands on the clock taking forever to move a single inch.

However, at this moment in time, you were able to escape the suffocating lecture hall after many hours for today and was now walking down the busy streets of Tokyo with a white plastic takeaway bag in one hand while the other was occupied with your tote bag that was resting on your shoulder, which surprisingly kept hold of some of your textbooks as well as your laptop giving you some reassurance that the bag that your boyfriend gave you was going to last for quite some time.

Looking around the busy quarter of the capital, you began to notice a few high school students roaming about here and there with some hanging out with their friends - mostly likely going to a cafe or to the nearest karaoke lounge that they could find - while other were either rushing home as they entered the station or to their part-time jobs that they had managed to obtain for a few extra bucks to save up for their next step in life. Noticeably, there were also a few adults out and about with some working as street-food vendors selling delicious treats that you would be craving if you weren’t so full while others were dressed extremely professional with their laptops out on their cafe/restaurant table to what seemed like they were on their lunch break.

‘He should be on his lunch break right now, but if not, I’ll just put his food in the shop’s fridge’

Continue walking to your destination, you finally reached to a quieter area with the city leading you to then stand in front of a glass order with a ‘closed’ sign in front along with another extremely noticeable sign proudly stating ‘Malevolent Shine’ to which if you had said that to any tattoo fanatic within Japan, they would instantly know what you were talking about.

Opening the door, there was a sudden noise of a ring being heard leading you to immediately look up to see the silver bell that you told him to arrange since he always got annoyed about the number of potential clients popping up without his acknowledgement only to tell him that they didn’t book an appointment at all causing him to become more irritated - and as a matter of fact, you couldn’t blame him at all.

Looking around the tattoo shop that you had entered, there wasn’t a single person in sight leading you to come to the conclusion that you were right about his lunch break since his assistant would be at the front desk if they weren’t. Although there was no one to greet you, the dark atmosphere did. It gave an odd sense of comfort with its hints of red that could calm a customer down if they were worried about the tattoo they were committing to having on their body or if it was their first - especially when it came to him.

“Oya~ ain’t you a sexy customer? But I’m afraid we’re closed, but I don’t mind giving you a private session if you want, kitten” someone smoothly stated, leading your eyes to slowly shift to the person who was leaning against the desk with a confident smirk on his face. There he was, the mastermind behind the whole shop itself.

“Well, I’m not coming in for a tattoo but I am here to give a little gift, Sukuna,” you mischievously stated, as you lifted the white bag with the takeaway you had ordered for the man himself, leading him to look at you in surprised before tilting his head indicating you to come to the back with him.

Following his lead, you placed the bag on his table once you reached the backroom before placing your tote on the floor beside the table’s leg so it didn’t fall, letting any of your precious studious contents to be lost as well as avoiding any damage to your laptop.

“I’m surprised you’re using the bag, kitten,” Sukuna suddenly commented, as he sat on his chair while pulling out the white styrofoam box of Thai food that he always ordered along with a bento box that was wrapped in a black cloth.

“Well, how could I not? You did buy it for me,” you quietly mentioned as you took off your black longline coat before placing it behind your chair since there was nowhere else to put it.

“Did you make this?” Sukuna quickly questioned as he lifted the bento box causing you to nod at his question once you saw what he meant leading you to state, “I didn’t know if you were going to stay back tonight, so I prepared some food for you in case,” causing Sukuna to smirk since you were right about your assumption and it did catch him by surprise since he didn’t mention it to you today when he left your shared apartment.

“Thanks,” he quietly muttered before pulling his chair closer towards you so he could place a lingering kiss on your cheek to show his appreciation towards you. “How was class?” he then asked, as he began to unwrap the cloth of the box to your surprise since you bought his favourite item from the Thai restaurant but made no mention of it.

“Annoying, it was suffocating in there but the lecture was interesting so that’s a plus,” you answered, as you began to scan his messy desk that displayed the many drawings that he was working on. Some of the designs that Sukuna was drawing were almost complete, while others were in the same situation but for some odd reason, it was crossed out as if he was unsatisfied with the outcome that it was going to have which lead you to be perplexed since some of the drawings were incredibly detailed and beautiful. However, you didn’t have the eyes of an artist like your boyfriend did, instead, you had the eyes of someone that was able to analyse things exceedingly well hence why you decided to pursue a career as a criminal lawyer.

“How has the shop been while I was away?” you asked, as you carefully picked up one of the designs that the tattoo artist seemed to have scraped leading him to answer with an annoyed huff. “A pain, there’s been so many dumbass people coming in thinking they could just walk in and get a tattoo done immediately without even booking a meeting,” Sukuna answered before taking a bite of the soy-glazed fried chicken you made as he then continued with, “it was a good idea to get the bell since I could see if it was a customer I knew or not,”.

Looking at your boyfriend, you couldn’t help but smile at the man as he continuously munched the context in the box as if he hadn’t eaten in the past week when in reality he had been raiding the fridge back home only just this morning. Slowly, you turn your head back to the paper that you were holding as you continued to admire the work of art right in front of you.

To be honest, it was quite simple compared to all the other ones that were lying about on his work desk but that didn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful. The light sketch depicted a short section of a branch or stem decorated with different types of beautiful flowers and next to it was the same design with the only difference of it being coloured lightly in case the client wanted to have options.

“What happened here?” you asked before tilting the paper to the side, letting Sukuna have a glance at the design he decided to discard.

“Oh, the client cancelled since I wouldn’t have sex with her,” Sukuna casually stated leading you to nod before taking another look at the design with a small smile on your face. Sadly, it was such a waste since the design was beautiful and it was disappointing to not see Sukuna put this beautiful art into life.

Some people might wonder why you were so calm about the statement he had just given you, heck even his younger twin brother Itadori Yuji thought it was weird that it didn’t bother you as much as other girls would have been. The reason was that you were so used to him having female attention as well as male attention and it wasn’t a surprise when people would book an appointment with him just for a fling or hoping for something more than just that - and even though you were calm, there was also a hint of jealousy and fear within your heart that you couldn’t help.

It was like the first time you saw him in your second year of high school.

ꕥ

Stretching your arms, you had finally finished the last sheet of the budgets for the school clubs leading you to carefully clip the pile of sheets into the folder as you then stood up from your desk before quickly heading out of your homeroom, so you could give the documents to the student council president, who was a third-year within your school.

However, as you were walking past a few classrooms with some people greeting you with a smile, you came to a sudden halt when you saw a whole crowd of female and males students in front of you leading to a blockage of the halls and a blockage of the classroom you need to go through to hand the documents to your senior.

“Did you hear, I heard he was back?!”

“I can’t believe he’s back, I missed him so much!”

“I like Yuji’s kind and goofy personality, but how could you not love a bad boy like him?”

‘Bad boy?’

Carefully, you managed to find a gap between the sea of students and forcibly made yourself fit within the gap before badly struggling to make it through the arc of the classroom door leading you to nearly trip the second you got the chance to push through the gap to ender the class. Quickly looking around, you found your senior sitting next to someone who looked like your friend and basketball club member Itadori Yuji - well more like a mature replicant of the boy you were used to. However, unbothered by the sudden appearance of the new third-year, you speedily made your way to the council president and handed him the booklet that he needed today leading you to receive his gratitude.

Yet, before you could even take a single step away from your senior, you unexpectedly felt someone grab your wrist causing you to quickly turn around to find Itadori’s replica behind you leading to a few gasps coming from the students from the outside as well as in the homeroom.

“Is there an issue?” you firmly asked, as you looked down at his hand that had a tight grip on your wrist causing you to have a small glance at the two black bands that were tattooed around his wrist - even though it was prohibited to have any in your school, you weren’t the type to scold someone for having them since you weren’t sure on how the teacher’s thought it affected someone’s education.

“Have you ever thought about getting a tattoo?” the salmon-haired third-year curiously asked, as he began to admire your wrist by gently turning it for your veins to come into view before beginning to trace your skin with the tip of his thumb causing a light shiver to go down your spine due to the ticklish feeling as well as his deep voice which was the complete opposite to what you thought it was going to be.

‘So this is the infamous Sukuna everyone was talking about’

“Not really,” you answered as you looked at him causing his eyes to look back at you before you continued with “I don’t think it would suit me at all,”.

“I disagree,” Sukuna counteracted, as he went back to admire the blank canvas of your wrist that he wanted to draw on so badly. No not draw. Mark. “I think you’ll suit something, maybe something on your neck or collarbone at best actually,” Sukuna mentioned leading you to give him a confused expression before he then proceeded with his speech by saying, “I’ll convince you one day and mark you brat”,

‘What...did….he….just….call….me..?’

“Ah...good luck with that idiot,” you stated in an annoyed tone leading to a few of the admiring student to gasp at your wording as well as sudden confident as they were scared on what was going to happen to you now since Sukuna wasn’t the type to tolerate insults in a nice way no matter what gender you were. However, exceeding the audience’s assumptions, Sukuna began to smirk excitedly at your attitude as he suddenly found you more interesting than any other girl he has met at the back of the school.

“Be prepared, little kitten”

ꕥ

‘That nickname….’

Back then Sukuna was known to be a playboy from what you could recall, every week there was news on the new girl he had managed to convince to meet at the back alley of the school while you were just being a model student with the dream of going to law school. However, during the middle of the school year, you began to realise that the common scandalous news that seemed to be popular enough for it to be on the front cover of the newspaper began to gradually fade as Sukuna slowly pushed himself into your life since you were close with his twin brother due to your friend being part of the basketball team as the assistant coach - she even mentioned that ever since Sukuna came into your life he had stopped his acts and change slightly because of you to which, of course, you denied at the time.

It was during the first term of your third-year that you agreed to give Sukuna a chance since he was constantly annoying you by popping up at the school gate after school to ‘walk you home’ ever since his graduation - when in reality it was to take you out somewhere - without fail even when you had to stay in a few hours. However, you had given him three conditions since you were still conscious of the consequences of dating someone with such a disgraceful built reputation - much to his dismay, he shockingly agreed.

If you are going to have a fling with someone behind my back, don’t think about seeing or talking to me again.

I know you are sexually active, but you have to wait until I’m ready.

Don’t tattoo me.

Let’s just say that Sukuna had managed to keep condition number one in check and you didn’t have to worry about it at all, while with condition number two he didn’t have to wait that long for you to give in to your desires which you could tell he certainly enjoyed when you finally gave him the ‘okay’.

Number three though...

“Do you want to try that design out?”

Breaking from your daze, you quickly turned your head to find your boyfriend staring at you - with the bento box practically empty at this point - while tilting his head to the paper that was still within your grasp.

“I think you giving me hickeys are enough in my opinion, babe” you jokingly mentioned leading to both you and Sukuna laughing at each other slightly.

“I mean, do you want me to draw it on you to see how it looks?” he then asked, causing you to look at the floral design one last time before giving him a hesitant nod.

‘Trying it out won’t hurt right?’

“I need a confident answer little kitten, where did that feisty attitude of yours back in high school go?” Sukuna teased, causing you to give him the side glance before giving him the verbal permission that he wanted, leading him to smirk at you since knew his mockery would get you to give him what he wanted since you were also the stubborn type - a side that he always loved to play with.

Grabbing his pen and a black pot full of his thin-tipped coloured skin markers, he wheels his chair even closer to your before pausing, leading you to look at him in confusion since you had already pulled your wrist in front of him, the same area he had grabbed back in high school.

“You’re wearing a lot of clothing today,” Sukuna muttered as he began to fiddle with the collar of your white silk dress shirt causing you to look at him with extreme confusion before mentioning, “well it is getting colder since the Autumn season is coming around,” leading him to hum in an understanding tone as he continued to play with the smooth fabric.

“I want to draw on your collarbone area, I don’t want to draw on the area where the client wanted it to be,” Sukuna stated as he lightly pushed away your wrist leading you to realise why he paused. “You can,” you quickly mentioned leading the tattoo artist to look at you to see if you were lying, only to see nothing but the light of the trust within your eyes.

Slowly, Sukuna began to reach over to the top button to then unhook it from its loop before continuously doing the same with the others until enough skin of your shoulders were exposed with the top half of your shirt resting on the side of your arms to which then he slowly moved away the right-hand side of your bra strap to fully expose the canvas that he wanted to mark so eagerly.

Admiring the skin that was in front of him, Sukuna began to trace the area with his thumb before leaning in to place a chaste kiss on the same side of your neck before cradling your face on the other side with his other hand - as if it was a way for him to say ‘thank you’ for letting him do this.

Regrettably pulling away, Sukuna quickly grabbed his black pen as he then leaned in towards your collarbone to start drawing the outline of his design on his now favourite canvas causing you to shiver somehow due to how ticklish and weird the sensation felt when the ballpoint pen continuously gently gilded upon your skin. However, what got you shaking the most was the constant feeling of your boyfriend’s breath being felt on your upper body now that your shirt was basically off - it wasn’t completely off to the same feeling when you were underneath him the first time you allowed him to make his claim on you.

“Baby, it feels ticklish,” you commented, the second you felt a different sensation upon your skin leading Sukuna to glance up to check if you were alright like you were an actual client before placing another kiss on your jawline in a way to comfort you since he had switched to his skin markers to colour in the design he had drawn on you.

“You’re being a good kitten though, you’re not moving a lot then I thought you would,” the tattoo artist whispered leading you to quiver as his deep voice was not helping so much with your beating heart - erratic to the point where you thought he could hear or even feel.

Due to Sukuna concentrating, you couldn’t help but keep silent to help him continue with his work causing you to glance around your room with your eyes before landing upon a wall where there was a multitude of messages written leading you to carefully scan the writings that were visibly presenting themselves.

As expected, there were messages of encouragement - not that the arrogant Sukuna needed it to be honest, but it was nice of the client to do so - and a few drawings from other tattoo artists that Sukuna had famously done. However, not to your surprise, there were a few numbers here and there causing you to sigh since you couldn’t help it - you couldn’t blame your boyfriend for being an extremely handsome man.

Unexpectedly, you felt another kiss being placed upon your cheek causing you to look towards your boyfriend with a smile on your face - it was as if he knew what you were looking at. “I’m finished by the way,” Sukuna announced, causing you to look at him with widened eyes since the drawing session was a little faster than you had anticipated.

Reaching over to a drawer in his desk, Sukuna suddenly pulled out a mirror before passing it to you, leading you to lift up the little instrument to see the result that was drawn on your skin.

“You changed the design,” you quietly stated, as you began to tenderly trace the design with your index finger as you began to admire the piece of art that was masterfully drawn on your collar bone. The tattoo beautifully depicted a single strand of a blooming lavender across your collarbone with each petal in different shades of purple while the buds that weren’t in bloom were in a slight pale pink shade making you smile more since Sukuna drew this straight from his head causing you to have a hint of proudness for him.

“I wasn’t going to give you that previous design, it doesn’t suit you one bit,” the salmon-haired artist mentioned as he continued with, “I’m not going to let that disgusting design touch your skin, especially since this is the first time you let me mark you somewhat,” as he then moved behind you before placing his chin on your shoulder to look at you through the mirror you were holding.

“I might let you mark me permanently then,” you suddenly announced causing your boyfriend to look at you with a surprised look on his face leading you to giggle at his reaction.

“Yeah, let’s break condition three then, you can mark me this one time,” you informed him as you turned to look at him, causing Sukuna to give you his classic smirk before possessively grabbing your chin leading him to lean closer to you.

“Let me mark you then”

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interstellarflare · 4 years

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Bend and Break || Homelander

-PART FIVE-

Warnings: Gore, violence, course language, angst.

Summary: People can only bend their morales so far before they break. Homelander is the world’s greatest superhero, and you, a tech analyst, somehow become entangled in his world when he learns that you provide intel to The Boys. He makes it his personal mission to find out exactly what you know, but he never expected such resistance from someone as damaged as you. But broken things can be mended, sometimes in the most unexpected ways possible.

Author’s Note: As a bit of a disclaimer, I have only seen snippets of The Boys. I haven’t actually watched all of it, so forgive me if there are some details that are wrong, as well as the many spelling errors that will undoubtedly be in this series. There is a tag list open for those who wish to be added. I apologise for the long chapters. Gif by @theseymourbirkhoff

“We’ve been at this for hours, and you still haven’t managed to break into Vought’s servers”.

“Well by all means, you are more than welcome to try and hack through dozens of impenetrable firewalls yourself...” You replied, bitterly, running your tongue over your bottom lip “or would you rather that I get through them undetected?’.

The two of you had been arguing for hours and hours, neither if you coming up with a solution. Max sat beside Noir on the couch, the two of them exchanging wordless and annoyed glances in relation to your constant bickering. Homelander groaned, rolling his eyes as his head fell back against the back of the armchair. “There has to be something you can do” He whined, folding his arms over his chest as he began to pout. You glared at the Supe before breathing deeply. There was no point in yelling and screaming at each other. You figured that the leader of The Seven was just as stressed as you were. Pinching the bridge of your nose, you grimaced as your headache began to worsen. “Maybe you’re right, there has to be something else I can do”.

You sighed heavily, trying to come up with a way to retrieve the intel you so desperately needed. You stood up from you seat at the dining table, stretching your legs as you paced about the living room. You bit your lip in deep thought, ignoring Homelander’s ever-watchful gaze as his eyes followed you about. You were completely stumped, clueless as to what to do. Then Homelander laughed. It wasn’t a laugh of amusement, oh no. It was a mocking laugh, one that made the Supe smirk evilly. A shiver ran down your spine, the hairs on your arms standing on end as you turned to face him. “What?” you asked slowly, not liking the way Homelander’s expression changed to a shit-eating grin. “If I’m correct...” he began, standing up from the couch with a small groan “it’s easier to obtain the intel we want from inside the building, right? It just so happens that Vought is holding a Gala to unveil a new...something, I wasn’t really paying attention to what. But the Gala is tomorrow night”. You nodded along to his words, taking in what he said without really listening. Then you caught his suggestive stare, and you froze. A Gala at Vought International...a Gala!?

“Oh no, fuck no!” You shouted, pointing accusingly towards the man in front of you “I’m not going to a stupid fucking Gala. Have you seen my closet? There is not one expensive thing in there!”

“Y/n, come on now...” Homelander cooed gently, recoiling sharply as you swatted his hands away “we need to work together on this-” “And when I get caught, what happens then? That is a stupid idea, we’re not doing it”. The room fell into a deadly silence as both you and Homelander stared each other down, neither of you wavering. But when Homelander’s serious glare suddenly contorted into a teasing smile, your eyes widened in horror. “The Gala starts at seven tomorrow night. I’ll send a car to pick you up at six”. Before you could process what had actually been said, Homelander bolted for the open window before you even had time to retrieve a plush black cushion from the couch. You chased after him, throwing the cushion out of the window and towards the Supe’s retreating form. You missed horribly, of course, as the cushion bounced into the overgrown vacant lot next door. “You’ve given me very little time to find a dress!” You shouted angrily, your knuckles turning white as your hands clenched the windowsill in fury. Homelander laughed obnoxiously, no doubt thankful for the safe distance between you as he replied “I’ll take care of that, don’t worry your pretty little head about anything”.

Gritting your teeth in frustration, with an annoyed growl escaping your lips, you slammed the window shut to hide the growing blush on your cheeks. Taking a long and exasperated breath, you turned around to face Max and Noir, your eyes widening slightly as you shamefully realised that you had forgotten that they were even there. “He still doesn’t know about about the accident, does he?” Max questioned, his eyebrow rising in emphasis. When you nodded your head slowly, Max scoffed. “He will never find out. Understood?”. Your nephew grumbled. Noir, confused and unsure how to respond, merely shrugged awkwardly.

You groaned loudly, storming into your room and slamming the door harshly.

When the dress arrived early the next morning, accompanied by a box of expensive high heels, you tossed both boxes onto the bed and refused to look at them. You didn’t want to know what horrific thing Homelander had chosen for you. You didn’t have the nerve to even enter your room until three in the afternoon.

The curiosity of knowing had been eating away at you for hours now, the nerves in your chest growing as you finally gave in. With two hours left until you were whisked away to the worst night of your life, you hesitantly entered your room and begrudgingly opened the box containing the dress.

The dress was beautiful.

You marvelled at the beaded lace bodice, running your fingers gently across the fabric fearing that it might tear at the slightest increase of pressure. The dress itself was a deep royal blue, a fraction off the same colour as Homelander’s suit you realised with an amused roll of your eyes. It was the prettiest thing you owned, by far. And the shoes, a spectacular glittering silver that matched your dress perfectly. You were left in awe. But the question now was, would they fit?

You ignored all of the negative thoughts as you entered your bathroom, beginning the tedious task of applying your make-up. You didn’t want it too heavy, but light enough so that you were bold and noticeable, but just another face in the crowd. You had to apply enough make-up to completely cover your dark circles, which had become prominent due to your prolonged experiment creating a device that would hack into Vought’s servers all last night. You chose a light smokey eye and bold deep red lips, a deep crimson, almost burgundy. Perhaps a little darker. You allowed your hair to fall in loose natural waves, to complete the look, leaving you with a few minutes to spare to put on the dress.

You felt sick to your stomach as you slipped through the gown over your form, not liking the way the fabric stretched and tugged. The shoes fit no problem, then you moved to the bathroom to see the final product...and your mouth fell open in a stunned gasp.

You looked absolutely gorgeous.

The dress fit perfectly, hugging all the right curves and all the right places. You hadn’t realised how revealing the dress actually was, entirely backless with the base of the lace bodice stopping at your lower back. It left you completely exposed. But you felt powerful, you felt incredible.

There was a loud knock at your door, and you released a string of unladylike curses as you realised that the time was now six. Stuffing your newly invented device, disguised as a pager, into a black clutch before walking out into the hallway of the building, locking the door to your apartment behind you. You were met by a man in an expensive-looking tux, who motioned for you to quietly follow. The elevator seemed to move agonisingly slow as you couldn’t wait to reach the lobby floor.

The man led you out to an awaiting limousine, opening the door for you as you stood on the curb completely dumbfounded. ‘He’s really pulling out all the stops, isn’t he?’ you thought to yourself, nodding your thanks to the man as you clambered inside the limousine. Sooner than you thought, the limousine pulled away from the curb, and you were on your way. Your stomach backflipped with butterflies, and your palms became sweaty as countless thoughts raced through your mind. What if everything wen wrong? What if your little device couldn’t break into the servers? What if...this was a trap?

You were so consumed by your confusing thoughts, that you hadn’t realised that you had arrived at your destination. The door to your left flew open, allowing a chorus of excited cheers to flood the interior of the limousine. Your eyes widened as your (eye/colour) hues landed on the luxurious red carpet leading up to a horrific staircase that belonged to the architectural wonder that was the Town hall, lit up in the colours of red, white, and blue, with banners of The Seven illuminated by individual floodlights. For a brief second, you hesitated on staying the car. Away from prying eyes. But you forced yourself to move, out into the open, where you found yourself shying away from the flashing lights of photographers and the microphones of journalists.

You weaved your way through the crowd of famous celebrities, politicians and high-end government officials, smiling an awkward greeting if your if your gaze met their own. you had just reached the middle landing when you heard them, the ecstatic shouts of ‘there he is’ and ‘Homelander’ taking the crowd by storm. You turned, careful not to step on your dress as your gaze followed that of the crowd.

And there he was. The Homelander, The World’s Greatest Hero, descending from the sky and onto the red carpet below. The crowd loved him, they cheered for him. They loved him. A sad smile formed on your lips as you watched him indulge the crowd with glorious waves and Hollywood smiles, stopping to give the occasional interview with the odd reporter here and there.

Whilst in the middle of talking to a blonde bombshell of a reporter, her hair a stark contrast to the blood red dress she wore, her lips a little too red for his liking, Homelander’s eyes wandered over the a-listers gathered here tonight...until his gaze met your own. He stopped short, his words catching in his throat as he stared up at you, two flights above him in dumbfounded awe.

You were breathtaking.

To him, you stood out amongst the crowd, and not just because you looked slightly out of place. You outshone many of the women here tonight, highlighted by the numerous flashes of cameras left right and centre. The dress complimented your figure well, and he felt his chest tighten in a rush of unfamiliar emotion. Not bothering to excuse himself from the infatuated reported beside him, Homelander scaled the next two flights to stop on the landing in front of you.

All eyes were on the two of you now, and you could feel them burning holes in your gorgeous dress. You swallowed thickly, timidly casting your gaze to the carpet below as you spoke teasingly “That was quite an entrance”. Homelander’s smile was genuine as he stared down at you brightly. “Anything for you...” he spoke quietly, quiet enough so only you could hear “shall we?”. With your heart leaping into your throat and a bright blush covering your cheeks, you nodded. Homelander ushered you up the remaining stairs, his hand resting on your lower back as he guided you through the crowd and inside.

“Town Hall? Bit of a weird place to hack Vought International from” You spoke lazily, to which Homelander laughed. “There is a direct line to HQ from here. It would be easier for you to get through here than there”.

You laughed bitterly, finding slight amusement in the situation. “Why am I not surprised?”.

Tag List: @lauraaan182 @tardis-23 @freshmakertaco @shilsvampsinger @cynthianokamaria @delicatetimetravelarcade @coloursunlimited @clean-soap @themarch-oftheblackqueen @soft-hargreeves @kennedywxlsh

#homelander x reader #homelander #homelander imagine #the boys x reader #the boys #the boys imagine #antony starr

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thetypedwriter · 3 years

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Book Review

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Book Review by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It’s funny. Two book reviews ago I went on a lengthy diatribe about how giving people books is often annoying and unwelcome (or maybe that’s just me). Recommending and suggesting books I love and can do all the livelong day.

I encourage people to tell me about their latest foray into fiction or that one novel they haven’t been able to stop thinking about for years, but when you actually physically give someone a book, well.

There’s pressure involved.

In that other book review post, A Man Called Ove, I outlined how one of three things would happen if someone gives you a book and you read it:

1. The book is good and you chastise yourself for being a moron and not knowing about it earlier.

2. The rare occurrence of the book being a home-run and has a place proudly sitting on your favorites shelf forever.

3. The book sucks, the whole journey was tedious and annoying, and the person who lent the book to you in the first place is disappointed or butt-hurt.

In the last review it was the third option, and to be fair, it usually is. Oftentimes this isn’t even because the book is bad per se, but more so because the book isn’t for me and my interest in it to begin with was tenuous and shaky at best.

Fortunately, in the case of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo it was option 1 with a small leeway into option 2. I had never heard of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo before or the author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, for that matter, and when my friend gave it to me I put it off on my shelf to collect dust for several months.

However, as my to-be-read list dwindled down to nothing and my newest shipment of books was not yet ready (I might have been waiting for all those Barnes and Noble gift cards I knew were lurking in unopened Christmas cards) I decided to give it a try, and oh boy, am I glad I did.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is an adult fiction LGBT novel that focuses on two different timelines running parallel throughout the book. We start off with our main character in the present day of 2017, Monique Grant, a biracial journalist in her 30’s who currently works for a publication called Vivant in New York City but wants more.

In the midst of an impending divorce, stagnating at work, and missing her long ago deceased father, the only thing Monique takes pride in is a piece she did about euthanasia and how there is mercy in killing before suffering a few years back.

Her life takes an unexpected turn when Hollywood legacy, Evelyn Hugo, reaches out to her through her job and asks to meet with her. What she thinks is simply a meeting about Evelyn’s recent gown donation turns out to be a life-changing decision where she not only learns about the life and loves of Evelyn Hugo, but also about herself and the choices she made along the way by being tasked to write Evelyn’s biography.

Monique’s POV is sprinkled throughout the story, thrusting us back into the present every so often, but most of the book is now an eighty-year-old Evelyn dictating her rise to fame from the 50’s all the way to the 80’s and beyond as she lays out the ugly, the beautiful, the sordid, and the desperate actions and choices she made to where she rests as an old woman before Monique, alone, filthy rich, and ominous about the end of her life from a first person perspective.

To be very blunt, I didn’t care much for Monique.

I liked the representation of her character, but she often came across as judgy, annoying, and rash. Several times throughout the novel, she has to apologize for speaking too quickly or for jumping to conclusions and for someone who is a journalist I found it to be an odd trait.

Her growth as a character as a direct involvement with Evelyn was interesting, and I truly enjoyed the fact that at the end of the day, Monique remains a single woman who didn’t want to settle for something less than she deserved.

That’s more than I can say for most YA protagonists who almost always end up with someone romantically because god forbid they remain alone.

Evelyn, on the other hand, I immensely enjoyed.

She’s snarky, manipulative, mean, catty, ruthless, and greedy.

She’s also hardworking, confident, intelligent, and passionate.

She came across as a real person to me, a real person with flaws and with qualities I admired. She was kind of a bitch, and I loved that about her. The other characters from Evelyn’s tale, mainly her seven husbands, her friends, and Celia St. James, were also well developed and nuanced characters.

Nobody was good or bad. Everyone had aspects of both in them and it was so good to see portrayals of characters that resembled real flesh-and-blood human beings.

As you would expect, there is a lot of scandal, romance, sex, and the glitter and glamour of Hollywood throughout these pages. What I didn’t expect were the themes of race, of sexuality, of gender roles, of death, and of forgiveness.

Having a bisexual Cuban-American main character detailing her rise to fame in 1950’s America was incredibly interesting from a variety of standpoints.

To me, though, the biggest theme was about love.

As the book is called The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, there is of course, an explicit understanding that love will play a large role in the novel. What I didn’t expect was the complex way in which love was depicted.

The author Reid wanted to convey that romantic love wasn’t the only love worth writing about, and how there are all kinds of wonderful and all-consuming loves that have nothing to do with romance or sex at all.

Parental love, friendship, inspiration, romance, and familial bonds were all represented and not one was shown to be more valuable or more interesting than the other. All of Evelyn’s relationships had merit, and at the end of the day, everything Evelyn did, start to finish, was for someone she loved one way or another.

In some ways, aren’t we all Evelyn Hugo?

Together with the myriad themes, the alternating timelines, the representation, and the juicy plot, the story was enjoyable from the first page to the last. The writing itself is very fluid and very easy.

This is not a hard read by any means. The vocabulary was simple and the writing was simple, but it was very entertaining and at the end, even thought-provoking.

It made me think.��

Was I making the right choices in my life? Or was I settling for easy? For forgettable? Was I holding myself to high standards and getting what I wanted? What I deserved?

Books that make me sit in silence after I finish reading them, tears in my eye because I’m so emotionally overwhelmed are few and far between. This is what I did after finishing reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I simply sat on my couch, mind spinning, and tried not to cry.

That, to me, is the mark of an excellent book.

Recommendation: If you like strong and sassy female characters then this is definitely a novel worth checking out. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a whirlwind romance, but perhaps not in the way you would suspect. With fluid writing, engaging characters, a scintillating plot, and themes that will leave you gaping, what better way to start off the year 2021 than by giving yourself a truly fantastic read?

Score: 9/10

#the seven husbands of evelyn hugo #taylor jenkins reid #book blog #book #book review #Book Recommendations #popular fiction #LGBTQ fiction #lgbt representation #cuban american #books with poc #book rec #book reccs #romance fiction

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eryiss · 4 years

Text

Chapter One - The House

Summary: Freed and Laxus live incredibly different lives. Freed is a corporate lawyer in the capital city, and Laxus works as a handyman in a countryside hotel. Despite their differences, their lives collide when Freed inherits a house in Laxus’ village, and hires him to make the derelict building liveable. But the closer they get, the more they seem to offer each other. [Fraxus Multi-Chapter]

This was written as my admission for Fraxus Day 2020, hosted by @fuckyeahfraxus. It ended up becoming a multi-chapter, and I thought the first chapter should go up today, as a holloween gift. The next one will be published on thursday, and will continue on weekly.

You can read this under the cut, on Fanfiction, or on Archive of Our Own. You can find the chapter masterpost here.

Chapter One – The House

Freed hadn't expected his mother's death to be so tedious.

He should probably feel more emotional about it. He and his mother had no ill-will towards one another – there was no tragic secret nor history of arguing or abuse between them – but he found himself oddly unbothered by hearing of her death. Not a numbness of any kind either, he felt very much the same as if a colleague had told him their mother had passed. It was just an event that had happened, and something that affected his life, but not his emotions.

His apathy probably came from the fact he and his mother hadn't spoken for years. Again, not for any great reason, just because they didn't. He and his father had always been closer, and when he had died four years prior, Freed had grieved and got over it as best a person can. His mother was the worker of the family, and thus the emotional relationship hadn't been as strong. Neither had made an effort to connect in their adulthood, only really linked by his father. And so once he had passed, there wasn't really any reason to speak. Neither person was overly emotional, so they didn't seek comfort in one another's arms, and instead just drifted off.

And so, the death of his mother was tedious.

Death was followed by a lot of things. The need to plan a funeral, people being completely unaware of how to act around him, and an odd amount of pity coming from people who didn't know him at all. Freed was something of a pragmatist, and as such it became an experience he didn't want to repeat. At least with the death of his father, he'd had his sadness to distract him. But this was just, well… tedious.

Perhaps the worse thing to have happened occurred two days prior. As was customary after someone passes, there was a reading of the will. A pointless exercise for this instance, given Freed had literally inherited everything. Freed knew this already – he was his family's lawyer for god's sake, he drafted the damned thing – but he still had to attend the reading. So, for an hour in a busy work week, he was forced to travel down two floors in his building, and sit there while another lawyer – Natsu Dragneel, who had actually interned under Freed for a year – explained the law and what the will meant. To the man who had taught him it!

Further adding to the annoyance of the situation, almost everything he'd inherited had strings attached. There was a lot of debt, from both loans and gambling, apparently. Freed's credit score was going to take a hit, given how much there was. There were also her belongings, which he would have to look through at some point. She also apparently owned property, which was now his.

This would be good, had it not been for its location. Freed's life was centred in the city, this house was in the middle of the countryside, miles from what Freed considered civilisation. Why she had owned a house there was beyond Freed, she was more metropolitan than him; she lived in Era and Era alone. But unfortunately, now it was his.

So now, he was nearing the end of a three-and-a-half-hour train ride.

He was going to sell the place, of course. Why his mother hadn't done so confused Freed, given her debts. Property values were high in this area, many rich older people wanted to retire there, and a three-bedroom cottage was perfect for that. But he needed to see it, speak with estate agents, and sign away the rights. All in all, tedious.

When he got off the train, he was hit by how different it was to Era. It was open, the air smelt different and it looked like an illustration from a Victorian romance novel. All very idyllic, but Freed had no intention of staying long enough to appreciate it. Instead, he located the taxi service, and ordered a car to his new property.

Apparently Uber hadn't arrived there yet.

The car came soon enough, and after a few failed attempts to illicit more than a curt answer from Freed, it was a quiet ride. It took about forty minutes, and Freed watched as fields passed by, the atmosphere dampened by the scent of manure filling the air. People raved about the fresh air in the countryside, but Freed much preferred the smell of petrol and faint piss of Era to literal crap. Better the devil you know.

Thankfully, the smell of muck spreading was interrupted when his phone lit up. He glanced at the contact name – 'Estate Agent' – before lifting it to his ear and accepting the call. He needed an evaluation for the property, and apparently this man was the best in the area. Hopefully the fastest too.

"Mr Clive," He greeted, leaning back.

"Mr Justine," The estate agent replied in a more jovial tone. "Just to let you know, I'm at the property and waiting for you. There's been a few evaluations over the years and they're all pretty similar, so it shouldn't take long."

"Thank you," Freed nodded to himself, glancing past the front seat to see the GPS saying they should be at their destination in about five minutes. "I'll be there soon."

"Great," Gildarts' grin was audible in his tone. "Sorry that you had to come down here to deal all of this."

"It's not your fault," Freed said placatingly, though not honestly. "The sooner it's done, the better."

"Couldn't agree more," Gildarts grinned.

"Why had it been evaluated before?" Freed asked, brows furrowing slightly.

"Apparently your mother has tried to sell it a few times. Twice with independent online stores, and once with an estate agent. Clearly it didn't go well," The man laughed. "But we'll be more successful. We know what we're doing."

After some pointless pleasantries, the call was ended. Freed found himself frowning; a cottage in this area should have been sold without any difficulty. The fact this one hadn't, despite its perfect position and seemingly positive qualities, didn't bode well. He tried to be optimistic, but at this point, it was almost certain that even selling the house would further add to his annoyances.

It was ten minutes later – it took longer than expected because he got caught up in traffic caused by a heard of cows crossing from one field to the other, followed by an uncaring farmer who glared at the taxi as if it were an affront to his lifestyle – when he saw the house.

It was clear as to why his mother couldn't sell it.

The place was practically derelict. In its prime it would have been the ideal village cottage, with white walls and a slated roof. It would have had a garden filled with perfectly trimmed flowers, a large but well-groomed oak tree, and most likely a cliché dog running around. Unfortunately, the house's prime was clearly centuries ago because it embodied the world decapitated in a way Freed had never seen. The roof was falling apart, the garden filled with so many overgrown plants nothing else could be seen, and a window was hanging out of the wall. It was unliveable, and practically unlovable.

Perfect. His mother had left him debt, three wardrobes filled with wrinkled clothes, and a building nobody could use without a death wish. Now his hopes of selling the place was unrealistic.

As he approached the building, a man made his presence known by leaving a car with a smile on his face. He was older than Freed, in his late forties if Freed was being kind, and he gave a polite 'Hello' as he approached. It was clearly the estate agent, who was showing a lot more optimism than Freed felt at that moment.

"Mr Justine, nice to meet you in person," He greeted.

"Likewise," Freed nodded, though his tone didn't reflect the sentiment. Gildarts laughed.

"I can see from your face that you were expecting something a little… different," The man chuckled, and Freed found himself annoyed by the man's enthusiasm. "You probably thought it'd be a little more liveable, didn't ya?"

"Something like that," Freed agreed, looking at the building almost accusingly.

"Well if it's any kind of relief, the building's structure is actually very secure. I won't lie, there's probably hundreds of problems going on in there, but at least the roof isn't going to collapse on our heads," The agent laughed, and in any other situation it might be less grating. "I can explain the details as we look through it, I'm sure that you want to get this done quickly."

"If that's possible."

Gildarts nodded, then jogged back to his car. When he returned, he was holding two hardhats that one would see on a building site, and Freed looked at it warily. Gildarts smiled and patted him on the shoulder with an unneeded amount of strength.

"The roof itself won't fall, but there's always a chance that the ceiling tiles might, so we can't be too careful, can we?" He chuckled loudly, placing on his hat, and walking into the building. Freed, after a moment of hesitation, joined him.

~~~

"So, you're sayi-" A small scratch. "-basically unsellable."

Freed ground his teeth together slightly. He was pacing down a village high-street, holding his phone to his ear and trying his best to listen to Evergreen's stuttering voice. Apparently random country roads were perfectly fine with phone signals; but for the most built up area for miles, it was practically impossible to have a conversation without some kind of interference. It was something very quickly grating on his nerves.

"Essentially, yes," Freed sighed, sidestepping a couple walking towards him. "It's too run down for anyone to want to buy it. My estate agent said the best thing to do is to see if a property auction will take it and sell it cheap."

"Why don't you-" Another scratching sound. "-it down. Sell the land-" A quick, high pitched noise. "-farmer or property developer."

Freed's muscles tenses slightly at the suggestion. He had thought about that, but of course when he had told Gildarts that it was the logical course of action, the man had looked at him with something akin to pity in his eyes. He had then patted the man on the shoulder – again making Freed's body jerk slightly with the power behind the action – and added another layer of annoyance to this ridiculous situation.

"Apparently it's a listed building, and has some kind of historical preservation status," Freed sighed, slowing slightly when the buzzing on the phone went quiet. Hopefully, he had a stronger signal now. "Essentially meaning, the building has to stay."

"If it's so important, why did they let it get so run down?" Evergreen asked, voice clear now.

"They didn't, my mother has been receiving phone calls and letters from local council about it for years," Freed wiped at his eye with his free hand, deflating slightly. "Which I will now be getting, I suppose. Along with the letters and phone-calls from debt collectors, no doubt."

"How much would it sell for as it is?"

"Optimistically, 25 thousand. Since you can't make any modifications to the outer building, something in this state is hard to get customers for."

It wasn't anywhere near enough to cover his mother's debts, even when combined with the savings he was unwilling to give up. Though a successful corporate lawyer and having saved a substantial part of his earning for over ten years, Freed was by no means rich. His family came from money, but never gave any to him as they wished for him not to be spoiled. So far it hadn't mattered, but now with six figures of debt from nowhere, his comfortable life seemed unstable. This wasn't helped by the fact he only wanted to use his savings as a last resort; he'd saved this money for himself, not to give to online casinos because of his mother's apparent addiction.

"Couldn't you make it a bit more marketable," Evergreen suggested, and Freed found himself irrationally irritated by the chewing he heard. They were colleagues, and he knew that her lunch break wasn't for another hour. "Tidy it up slightly."

"It's not run down, it's unliveable," Freed grunted. "The windows are boarded up, the garden practically a jungle, bare floorboards, furniture that is practically rotting, and a bird had nested on the oven."

"Maybe plant some flowers and bake a cake when showing people around," Evergreen joked, and Freed almost laughed.

He couldn't resent his mother. He did love her, and perhaps if he had made some kind of effort in talking to her then maybe the debts wouldn't have happened because she could talk to him about her gambling. Of course that regret was pointless now, thinking about what he could have done wouldn't change anything. He just had to deal with the consequences.

"You'll figure something out," Evergreen spoke up again.

"I know," Freed nodded. "But I'm not quite sure exactly how, yet."

"Well, I've just checked, and there's a nice-looking hotel near you," Evergreen smiled, and Freed could hear the clicking of a computer mouse through his speakers. "All good reviews, apparently a brilliant kitchen and very nice staff."

"Good for them," Freed said with furrowed brows.

"I've booked you a room," Evergreen declared, clearly grinning. Freed went to speak but Ever went first. "You're staying there for a week. You can either spend it thinking what to do next with your house, or just have a nice break, which you're overdue. Climb one of the mountains or something. I'll have a suitcase sent down with everything you need."

"No," Freed said firmly.

"I don't believe I gave you a choice, dear," Evergreen smiled. "And I've already paid for it. If you stay, consider it a gift. And if you don't, you'll be in even more debt, and I'm much worse than any bailiff you can think of, and we share an office, so I will make your life miserable."

"You're both blackmailing and threatening me," Freed grunted. "I could technically sue you for workplace harassment."

"Yeah, but you're my lawyer so you'd have to argue with yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Which you could, you've got an ego big enough you probably crop up on those reddit pages about people who think they're really smart," Freed let out an indignant sound at that, and Ever just laughed. "Just take some time off, you know you have to have a week off eventually. Why not just do it now? Enjoy the countryside, smell the fresh air, read a book."

"I read constantly, the fresh air is laden with the scent of literal shit, and so far the countryside is a pointless expanse of green that makes me want to take on more cases against environmentalists."

"Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Find your hotel, get yourself a drink, and relax for a week."

After a second of consideration, and a deflated sigh, Freed spoke again. "What's the hotel called."

"Fairy Tail Inn," Evergreen read aloud. "Sounds a bit cliché, but the rooms look great and the reviews are all good. Should be at one end of the high street, at the top of the hill."

Freed looked back over his shoulder, he had walked past the hotel in his search for a reliable amount of signal. He hadn't paid it much attention, as it was at the start of the conversation and he'd been attempting to understand any of what Evergreen was saying, but it looked nice enough. The only real reason he had actually remembered the place was because he was fairly sure they had mistaken the two spellings of the word Tail. He started to walk back up the steep high-street, telling Evergreen that he knew where the place was.

"Okay, I'll leave you to it then," Evergreen smiled, and the buzzing on the phone returned slightly. "See you in a week. Oh, and text me a picture of the house when you're tetchy so I can make fun of you. Bye!"

She cut herself off before Freed could reply, and the lawyer rolled his eyes slightly.

When he reached the top of the hill, he walked through a quaint beer garden and into the Fairy Tail building. He was confronted with a small front desk, behind which a woman with a light bob smiled up at him. He walked towards her, scanning the name tag – Lisanna – before she gave a polite introduction to the hotel.

"Are you here to eat, or to stay sir?" She asked, voice enthusiastic and happy.

"To stay," Freed explained. "I believe my friend just made a reservation for me. Freed Justine."

"One moment," She smiled, leaning down, and typing on the computer.

As she worked, Freed glanced around the lobby area. From the outside, the building had been incredibly rustic looking, and Freed had feared slightly that it was going to be as old fashioned and outdated inside as well. But it was contemporary, clean, and relatively nice. It was clear that it was made to look farmhouse-ish while keeping all the needed amenities, making a distinction from the branded hotels while also keeping to a high quality.

They had a few certificates hung on the walls, mainly hotel awards from different companies. There was also something proclaiming 'MAGNOLIA: Village of the Year 2019' in proud prominence. Freed vaguely wondered if this was something all businesses got, or if Fairy Tail was some kind of hub for the town.

"There you are," Lisanna said suddenly, and Freed turned back to her. "Room 17. If you'd like to follow me, I'll take you there. I can carry your bags if you'd like."

"I don't have any bags with me, actually," Freed said, and Lisanna looked at the floor with a frown to confirm his words. "This is rather impromptu, I'm afraid. I'm having a suitcase sent down here, I expect it'll be here tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," Lisanna smiled, though Freed could clearly see she was somewhat confused. "What brings you to Magnolia, if you don't mind me asking? We don't get many people here in autumn, you're our only guest actually."

"It's not for pleasure," Freed explained. "I inherited some property, and selling it isn't as easy as I thought, so I'll be here for a little while."

"Is that the Albion House?" She asked as they turned a corner.

"Yes," Freed answered a little slowly.

"Oh, sorry, that probably sounds a bit creepy that I know it so fast," She laughed. "It's just that news sort of travelled about it getting a new owner. It's been run down for a while, and people thought that maybe the new person would try and renovate it. But if you want to sell it then that's your choice of course, I hope it goes better than it did with your mother-" She stopped talking, and clearly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, I'm sorry. For your loss, and for that."

"You don't need to do that," Freed waved her off. "I'm not going to start crying at the sound of her name."

She looked relieved at his reaction, and Freed tried not to show a small scowl on his face. The young woman hadn't done anything wrong, but the fact she knew both the house and the fact his mother had died meant that other people knew as well. He had hoped that, at least for one week, he wouldn't have to deal with people knowing about his bereavement. Apparently he wasn't even going to be given this.

"Is the house important for some reason?" Freed asked as they climbed the stairs. "It's got historical preservation, and you said people were interested when they found out I own it."

"Not exactly," Lisanna smiled. "I think all the buildings in the town have that status, they want to make it look like it did when it was made. Personally, I think they do it because the council makes a lot of money from film shoots coming here," She laughed a little. "And we're a fairly small community, so news gets around. They were the same when it got sold last time, actually. They thought it'd get renovated too."

"So my mother wasn't the reason it looks like it does, then?"

"I've never seen it in a better state," Lisanna shrugged, before pausing in thought. "I think there's a painting of what it used to look like in your room. That's a coincidence."

She laughed to herself before continuing to walk, Freed following her. They walked through a few more corridors and up another staircase before they stopped at the old looking door of one of the rooms. Lisanna pulled a key from her pocket and opened the door, revealing the room that was to be Freed's home for the rest of the week. Freed walked in after, and looked around.

It was a nice room, also designed to look like it belonged in a farm house while still being relatively luxurious. It was on the smaller side, clearly Evergreen hadn't wanted to spend too much if the single bed was telling, but nice enough. A private bathroom, TV, and area for making drinks. It was essentially everything one could want from a hotel room. Although the fact that the slanted roof above the bed was low did make Freed pause; he would have to make sure not to bang his head when he awoke.

His eyes fell to a painting on the wall. Sure enough, there was an illustration of the house he'd been inside, only in a much better state. It looked rather homely.

"It's nice, isn't it," Lisanna smiled. "I think that's why people want to see it renovated. Just because it's nice."

"Well, perhaps soon it will be," Freed mused. "I'll most likely have to sell it to a retail auction, they often attract people looking for cheap property to work on, or so my estate agent said. So perhaps that'll happen."

"You don't sound enthusiastic about the idea?"

"I was hoping for more than an auction house would be willing to pay, I must admit," Freed sighed, still looking at the painting. "It's a last resort, but I doubt I'll find a better offer over the next week."

"You could renovate it and sell it when you're done?" Lisanna suggested.

"My knowledge of property development extends to the legal side only," Freed chuckled to himself. "If I were to try and work on it, there's a good chance I'd set it alight. I expect that doesn't align with the preservations society's rules."

"I suppose not," Lisanna laughed. "I should get back to the desk and leave you alone. Breakfast is served from six until twelve, you get it included in the price of the room. And if your bags come I'll bring them up for you, or have my brother do it since he's working the desk tomorrow If there's anything else you need, just call reception," She smiled. "And we hope you enjoy your stay."

Freed watched her leave, before standing alone in the room and letting himself decompress for the first time since he arrived.

Peculiarly, he found his gaze land on the painting.

#Fraxus Day 2020 #Fraxus Day #Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #fairy tail #fanfic #writing #event #Multichapter #Word Count 3.9k #Fuckyeahfraxus

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pass-the-bechdel · 4 years

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The Good Place full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

96% (forty-eight of fifty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

49%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Forty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

Positive Content Status:

Good - you might even say, strong - in the sense that it’s all there, pretty much all of the big representation bells are ringing, particularly the ones for women and racial diversity. That said, the show is generally content to sit pretty and not push the envelope on inclusivity, so if you’re looking for inspiration in-text instead of just in casting, you might be disappointed. At any rate, it’s a solid feel-good time, and not likely to make you mad (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

The numbers stay pretty consistent across the whole series, but if I had to call a winner, it’s season four, which has the highest percentage of female characters and the only above-average positive content rating (though that was awarded somewhat cumulatively, and so doesn’t feel particularly well-earned by that season above the others).

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

It’s such a close call, but season three must be the loser here by virtue of the lowest ratio of female to male characters; it also had one of the series’ two Bechdel fails. Like I said, it’s...a really close call.

Overall Series Quality:

There’s so much about it that is fresh and original and interesting, I wish I could love it more. After a magnificent debut season, the show suffers immensely for a lack of pacing and the absence of coherently-planned plot, and at times the stagnating characterisation and pointless filler caked into the cracks in the storytelling can be frustrating and/or tedious. I’m only as disappointed as I am because the potential for greatness was so strong. That said, even at it’s worst The Good Place is still entertaining, and most of it is better than that. It’s irreverent, it’s fun, it’s surprising, and sometimes it’s even as poignant as it is remarkable. I have my gripes, in droves, but that doesn’t mean this show is not worthy.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Imagine. Imagine a version of this show where the first season is basically the same, and the second season is...somewhat similar to how it is, but with more focus and direction, less time-wasting; a second season where figuring out that some fundamental change to their circumstances is necessary comes early, and instead of faffing about with ethical lessons in the fake neighbourhood again while Michael pretends he can get everyone to the Good Place, we get down to business with going on the run and into the Bad Place to find the judge and petition for help. Imagine this show, but the third season has none of that return to Earth crap, and instead, is the neighbourhood experiment from season four, properly fleshed out. And then season four is all about going to the Good Place and solving the problems there, addressing issues with the concept of utopia and the ineffectual bureaucracy of obsessive niceness (used for comedic effect in the actual show, but c’mon, there’s a whole untapped reservoir about morality there). Each season could have (gasp!) a properly-planned and plotted arc, dealing with a different school of ethical considerations, and I dunno, maybe the characterisation could have trajectory too, and the characters could vitally shape the storytelling, and maybe not get their personalities and experiences erased and rebooted over and over again, nullifying large swathes of the narrative which came before? Ideally, they could be reset zero (0) times, or at least have all their reboot experiences dumped back into them in the first few episodes of season two, so that they could proceed from there as whole people. Rebooting everyone’s personalities is not actually necessary to the plot in any way, and is, actually, incredibly detrimental to storytelling and especially, character development. Imagine this show, but just chilling out and actually telling a coherent story?

I am all the more annoyed by how things turned out on this show because I know that the four seasons were planned for, rather than being the result of cancellation; the idea that the creators sat down and ‘plotted’ (using that term loosely) to make this mess drives me a little wild. The (attempted) avoidance of the dreaded ‘stagnation’ seems obvious, and it leads to major narrative shortcuts and jumps and instances where the show spends an episode or two on what should have been a half-season’s development, minimum, and yet at other times all momentum grinds to a halt for a bizarre bottle-type episode where the characters just talk about a concept for a while or work on some unimportant romantic subplot. The various ethical concepts that the show heavily incorporated as its bread and butter in the first season start to stick out like sore thumbs in season two, seemingly wedged into one episode or another for no real reason other than just to be there, and the fact that the show lets go of the idea of moral choices in the life mattering at all in the end leaves the backbone of the show in a very strange shape. I said in the season four review that I didn’t expect the show to come up with some One True Answer about how people should live their lives, but that I was baffled by the fact that the show side-stepped that altogether; what I expected them to conclude was something in the line of ‘we recognise that life is complicated, not all situations are created equal, and it can be hard to know how to proceed ethically or even to access ethical options within one’s circumstances. Still, it is important to do your best, not only for yourself but for your community, because the more good you put into the world, the more there will be to go around and come back to you. What matters most is that you are doing your best with what you’ve got’. The fact that the show distracted itself with fixing how the afterlife rewards people within the afterlife means that it suggests no incentive to perform moral actions in life, and frankly...who gives a fuck? The real world is the place we’re all living in, and there’s no point starting a conversation about morality in real life if the conclusion is just ‘guess we’ll straighten out all the fascists and bigots and the other pieces of shit after they die, so don’t worry, everyone gets to Heaven eventually!’

Anyway, if that seems like just a reiteration of what I said in the season four review, well. I’m still baffled by it. The other thing I was going to talk about in the season four review but held for the full series instead was that one big thing that I have railed about all the time since season one, and that’s PACING. For all ye wannabe-writers out there, please understand how important pacing is. Even vital plot or character beats can seem like meaningless filler in a poorly-paced story, because your audience’s mind is hardwired to try and follow narrative cues that are being incomprehensibly muddled. Standard structure can be played with, but if you toss it out in favour of ‘stuff just happens, ok? Except when it doesn’t’, you just end up with a soup of disconnected story ideas, and nothing threading it together. Character interactions and especially developments can help to create the through-line you need to keep the story functioning despite itself, but as variously noted with The Good Place...initial characterisation? Strong, excellent. Development? Not so much, not least because they kept getting deleted and rebooted. Also, time skips kept happening, and that’s a great way to fuck over your narrative coherence even more: remove the recognisable constant we call time! It’ll be fine! As with all things, it is perfectly possible to play around with this stuff, but you have to know what you’re doing and be doing it for a good reason, and that’s not what they had going on here. This was narrative soup, and when you have a soup, the pieces all kinda meld together and lose any individual purpose, meaning, or power they may have had. The result in this case was not bad, but it really could have been so much better, and literally all it needed for that was some attention being paid to the story structure via pacing.

So. The good news is, I think I have pretty well exhausted all of my complaints by now, and that leaves us with the good stuff, of which there was no paltry amount. The show was not a hit by accident (even if I do feel that it’s success had a lot to do with people sticking around after the spectacular first season, and not because it stayed strong throughout), and even if there was a lot of soup going on, what comprised that soup was all really fun and unique, and this made for a wonderful piece of light-hearted television that could be as hilarious as it was insightful. It still had a lot of great takes on things, the commentary was strong (even if it pulled all its punches towards the end), and whether the storytelling was ebbing or flowing, it was always delightful. The show also managed to pull a miraculous finale out of its hat, and that’s a rare thing in television; however the story wobbled over the course, the ending provided enough satisfaction to forgive just about any sins, especially if you don’t happen to have been watching with a deliberately critical eye. Do I wish that Eleanor got to hook up with a chick on-screen some time instead of just making a lot of bi remarks? Yes. Do I consider the show to have queerbaited instead of providing genuine rep? No. Is the underselling of the queer content my most significant representation complaint? Yes, it is, and that's good news considering the world we live in and the dearth of quality representation that the industry has brought us to expect.

There's an important distinction to be made there, regarding the tokenistic representation that is very common these days in tv trying for brownie points and good publicity, exactly that kind of 'political' inclusivity that conservatives are always bitching about. It should not be surprising that I support that tokenism over the alternative of having no representation at all, but it can still be quite disheartening to feel like your identity or the identities that you value are being referenced as nothing more than an opportunity for some shitty producer to perform wokeness for attention, praise, and the almighty dollar. I bring this up because - even though The Good Place never really worked up much of a boost to its content rating - one thing I felt that it did really, really right was providing representation without it feeling tokenistic at all. Eleanor's bisexuality wasn't as prominent as I might have preferred, and as noted through the course of the show, there were times I feared it was more bait than real rep, but reflecting on it at the end, the way it was included feels organic, it never gets in the way in order to ensure the audience notices and is dutifully impressed. The number of women around and the multicoloured casting plays out even better; I never once felt cynical about the gender balance I was seeing, and I've said it before but I'll say it again: the fact that the show was packed with names from across the world gives me so much life. I'm still a little salty about Chidi's Senegalese origins getting the shaft (and we won't talk about 'Australia'), but the nonchalant diversity of naming goes such a long way to embracing the idea that this is a world for everyone (and an afterlife for everyone, too). And where anything else might fall apart or lose its way, that is an affirming thing. If you want feel-good tv, it’s here. This is the Good Place.

#The Good Place #full series review #Bechdel Test #female representation

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ckret2 · 4 years

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How long does it take for you to write a story (not oneshots but like multi-chaptered shit or just a very lengthy one chapter) and how much do you research and map it out? Is researching fun, tedious or exhausting for you?

It depends on how long the story is! “Man Of Dreams” on FFnet, about 108k, I wrote in uhhh, I’ve been saying “about a month” for years but I don’t remember exactly how long I spent where writing it was my primary project, but I DID write it over one summer break and spent about another month proofing it. “The Cop & the Cryptid,” about 130k, I wrote in about a month and a half and proofed over a few weeks. (That’s not counting the time those fics were with betas.) Cold Day In Hell, at 24k, took me... god, idk when I started it. Maybe a couple weeks, week and a half? I’m pretty sure I didn’t have time to start it until NaNoWriMo ended on Nov 30, and I posted it Dec 13, so.

If you want to see exactly how much I map out a long fic, you can directly compare “The Cop & the Cryptid” to its outline. In a lot of places you can go paragraph-by-paragraph in the fic and find a corresponding line/sentence in the outline. TC&TC is 130k, and its outline alone is 40k.

I was able to write the outline super fast because it’s incredibly goofy. When I write an outline, I just ramble it out at a couple friends in a chat room, and i can write like 10k a day if all I’m doing is rambling. And then, once I have that outline, I can also write the fic super fast, because I’ve already written the fic, I just need to make it sound like a fic instead of like i’m gossiping about someone’s weird workplace drama that i overhead. So even though in total I’ve written 170k between the outline and the fic, it goes a lot faster than if I’d just tried to sit down and write the 130k fic all by itself, because the first time i’m only worrying about plot but don’t have to worry about word choice and the second time i’m only worrying about word choice but don’t have to worry about plot. When I was writing TC&TC, I literally had the screen split between the outline and the actual fic, and just glanced back and forth going line by line on the outline and expanding it into proper narration & dialogue and tweaking as needed as I went.

And jeez, how much do I research. That is a difficult question because like. I’m constantly researching. If I get a tiny seed of an idea for a detail in a story, and I don’t know whatever I need to know in order to write that, my next instinct IMMEDIATELY is to look up whatever it is I need to look up in order to know enough to write that thing.

Example: when I was writing “You Made That?” and decided this giant frigging pteranodon was going to blow glass using a volcano as the oven, I had to go look up how exactly blowing glass works, because like, I know Apply Heat To Sand, but I wanted to be realistic, I wanted to know what kind of sand Rodan would have to get and what other ingredients. And because of that research I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t actually hot enough to melt glass. And then I discovered that the lava in volcanoes isn’t hot enough to melt lava. The mantle where rocks melt into magma isn’t hot enough to melt rocks. And then I spent the next five hours feverishly trying to find out first how rocks melt into magma if they’re not hot enough to melt, and then how the hell humans got fires hot enough to melt glass back when all they had was wood fires to work with. And I read a lot of very academic papers about volcanoes and glassmaking with a lot of words that I had to go look up, because I have not studied either of these fields, except to the extent that I’ve learned about volcanoes in order to write about Rodan.

(The super simplified answer, for those of you who are now going to be haunted by the thought that the mantle isn’t hot enough to melt the rocks that it clearly is melting: the melting point of a rock gets lower when a) it’s mixed with water, or b) the amount of pressure on it is suddenly reduced. As rocks in the mantle are pushed upward toward the crust, water from the surface gets sucked underwater that mixes with the rocks, and the pressure on the rocks is decreased because it’s now closer to the surface/has less weight pushing down on it; and both of these things combined lower the melting point of the rocks enough that they can melt into magma. Then, once it’s on the surface, it’s no longer mixed with water and the pressure is stabilized rather than decreasing, so the melting point of the rock increases again and it solidifies. And you can melt glass with a wood fire by, first, putting it in a little oven so that none of the heat escapes, and second, blowing air over it at the EXACT right speed so that it maximizes the amount of oxygen reaching the wood fire and makes it burn hotter but doesn’t go so fast that it blows some of the heat away. Trying to maximize the heat of a wood fire in an oven like that is all about trying to hit the exact balance between “add more oxygen” and “don’t blow away heat” where you reach the point where the fire is as hot as you can mathematically make it.)

And like once I knew that, I just made sure that Rodan had a makeshift oven in order to contain heat and the ability to blow air over the fire to make it hotter and bam story’s done.

And like... nobody was making me do that. I needed a tiny factoid for the story, and I was possessed by an all-consuming hunger to obtain that factoid and nothing could drag me from my course until I’d obtained it. I didn’t need to know how the mantle melts rocks, but like... I needed to know how the mantle melts rocks.

Sometimes when I do research it’s like that, I know I need a specific factoid and I go out and find it; sometimes it’s more general, like, “oh, one of the characters I’m dealing with worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, what was that like?” and when I’ve got spare time or am bored I go read up on the history of radio, even though I don’t need it right now, but because I don’t know what I’m gonna need until I need it. What if it turns out that people who worked in the radio industry in the 1930s, like, carried around forks for good luck? Then I can say this character carries a fork everywhere and that’s a weird character detail I never would’ve gotten if I hadn’t done the research even if I didn’t know I needed it. (Note: to my knowledge, there is no association between lucky forks and the radio industry. I made up this example to illustrate the kind of thing you can’t possibly know you don’t know unless you’ve already done the research without looking for a fact like that.)

And sometimes research flows into each other. Like for one thing I needed to know what a traditional radio sign-off format sounded like, back when radio stations turned off at night and played the national anthem before they went dark; and because I was looking that up, I found a YouTube video talking about how a radio station in 1939 recorded an entire day of broadcasts, so now I know I can go look that up and listen to an entire day on one radio station in the 30s and learn a lot more about how radio broadcasts sounded within a few years of the timeframe I’m working with for the above character. I wasn’t looking for that when I was looking up radio sign offs, but because I have that it’s gonna be hella useful.

So, like, tl;dr: I research a lot. I research anything that crosses my mind as something I want to put in a story that I don’t already know enough about to write about. I research for tiny details and I pre-research big broad concepts that might be relevant to my stories later. My research leads to more research, and prior research tells me about things I can look into on future research. The research never ever ends. There is a whole amazing world out there with billions of people alive and that’s only counting the people alive right now, not all the people that were alive before, and ALL of those people were Doing Stuff and Creating Things and Making Discoveries and ALL of it connects together and you’ve gotta understand all of it, the whole universe and everything in it, all of the science and every single human achievement, before you can write a story.

But failing that you’ve gotta at least understand whatever’s surrounding your characters.

If I try to write without research like that, it kind of feels like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only 20% of the pieces. I am annoyed and dissatisfied that I don’t know those things.

The argument against that much research is typically “oh if you’re writing sci fi/fantasy you can just make that stuff up” but let me tell you, the creativity of one single human writer will never match the creativity of tens of thousands of hardworking humans trying to make a discovery or accomplish a task. One single human writer all alone will never be able to match the fascinating weird details of the real world and all the things we’ve put into it or discovered in it. If you try to make all that stuff up—like, if you’re writing high fantasy and you just make up how forging a sword works—then you have shackled yourself to the limits of your own imagination. If you do the research, dig into how actual swords are made in the real world, then you have supplemented your own creativity with the creativity of however many humans over the millennia have contributed to that craft. There’s so much interesting stuff out there. And I am bound and determined to find it.

#anonymous #ask #writing #about my writing

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed 3 (Ubisoft, 2012; Remastered 2019)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Desmond Miles and his team use the Apple of Eden to locate the Grand Temple of the First Civilization. To open it, Desmond must locate a key, known to his ancestors Haytham Kenway and Ratonhnhaké:ton (also called Connor) who were active during the American Revolution.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will be evaluating the remastered version of this game on its own terms, so I cannot speak to how it is different from the initial release.

Content Warnings: violence, blood, colonialism, racism, domestic violence

Story: Assassin’s Creed 3 initially follows Haytham Kenway, a new PC character and ancestor of Desmond Miles, as he journeys from Britain to America during the 18th century. Haytham is attempting to find the Grand Temple, a chamber once belonging to the ancient First Civilization, with the help of several colonists and a Mohawk woman named Kaniehti:io. Unable to open the Temple, Haytham initiates a romantic relationship with Kaniehti:io, resulting in a son (Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor). It is revealed that Haytham is a Templar when he initiates one of the colonists, Charles Lee, into the order.

Years later, Ratonhnhaké:ton is now the PC character. His village is burned by Lee and his cronies, resulting in the death of his mother. The clan leader gives Ratonhnhaké:ton a sphere which contains a message from Juno. Juno leads Ratonhnhaké:ton to Achilles Davenport, a retired assassin who agrees to train him and renames him “Connor.”

The rest of the game focuses on Connor’s evolution as an assassin, his plan to seek revenge against Lee, and his angst regarding his parentage. I very much enjoyed the moral conflict in Connor’s storyline; Connor is resentful of his father’s involvement with the Templars, but also desires to find common ground with him once he hears of Haytham’s goals. I also really liked the Haytham plot twist, as it took me by surprise and prompted a lot of emotional investment in the family drama.

However, the sheer amount of things to do in the open world distracted from the plot and at times threw the pacing off. I also did not like some of the tropes that this game utilized to tell a story involving indigenous characters. Connor’s mother, Kaniehti:io, was a competent warrior and formidable personality, but was primarily present to have a white man’s child and then be killed for emotional shock value. I also don’t think this game pushed hard enough against colonialism, making the Americans out to be morally right despite their supposed “flaws” and showcasing some violence against indigenous people for shock value. However, I appreciated that this game featured many indigenous actors and put a lot of dialogue in indigenous languages.

Desmond’s story was much improved from Revelations. He’s back to working with his team, which made for fun character interactions, and his father also joins the mix, which nicely parallels the tumultuous Haytham/Connor relationship. The stakes are also much higher than in previous games regarding the First Civilization - whereas the team was previously looking for artifacts in the Ezio games, this game features the exploration of an actual Temple housing more information.

I also played the DLC, “The Tyranny of King Washington,” which follows an alternate timeline in which Washington has been corrupted by the Apple. Washington has declared himself King and rules America with ruthless tyranny. To take him down and combat the power of the Apple, Connor must channel supernatural powers derived from animal spirits. While the premise was incredibly interesting to me, the execution was rather poor, especially in terms of indigenous representation. Kaniehti:io was resurrected only to be killed again, and the story featured a lot of scenes of indigenous suffering, including slavery and violence. I also don’t think the “spirit animal” powers were portrayed in a way that was respectful of the actual religious/spiritual significance of spirit animals in Native cultures. I’m somewhat ignorant, though, so I would prioritize criticism from indigenous gamers rather than mine - see what they have to say about the base game and the DLC.

Characters: Haytham Kenway, the first PC character, is initially pretty likable in that he’s witty and charismatic. I like that he was sarcastic and seemingly well-polished, holding in his emotions like only a posh British character can. He was also shown to be brutal at the drop of a hat, and his feelings tended to get the better of him when it came to certain topics, both of which kept me on my toes. The fact that he is the first PC character creates a lot of sympathy for him, mirroring Connor’s later emotional turmoil when he’s being pressured to kill his father despite desiring an alliance.

Connor is a lot more stiff and broody, which is understandable due to the trauma in his past. While he isn’t very charismatic, I did like him as a character, since he was willing to call out the hypocrisy of everyone around him. I particularly enjoyed the way he highlighted how the Americans were all about freedom for the select (white) few - no one, not even Washington, escapes criticism, and it was refreshing to see a non-idealized portrait of the Founding Fathers through Connor’s eyes. Connor did have his sweeter moments, especially when interacting with the people living on his homestead, and I loved when he found joy in the family he made. I do wish he had been given more joy throughout the game - he so rarely expresses positive emotions that he seems like a stick in the mud.

Side characters, such as the Founding Fathers, were well-realized in that they weren’t portrayed as heroes. Washington is shown to be unable to deal with problems in any way other than by violence, and Adams is called out for his insistence that white colonists need to be free before enslaved Africans can be freed. NPCs living on the homestead are also given unique conflicts and storylines that made them feel real, and being able to converse with them at any point in the game was a fun way to feel connected to them.

Desmond is back to being his pre-Revelations self, balancing charisma and determination in a way that makes him compelling. Nothing is necessarily new regarding his characterization, so he acts more like a staple that links the Ezio games to the Haytham/Connor story, making them feel part of the same continuity.

Gameplay: I really enjoyed the way much of the gameplay from the previous Assassin’s Creed games is updated and reimagined for an 18th century setting. Parkour/free running is simplified, and target lock has been eliminated for a more fluid combat experience. Players also no longer need to use medicine to heal, as health regenerates automatically with time. Players can also use more of the environment to assist with stealth; haystacks and wells make a reappearance, as well as groups of people for blending, but Connor can also hide in tall grass, bushes, and behind corners. I also liked that Connor could whistle to lure enemies towards a hiding spot before taking them out.

In terms of weapons, Connor has access to some staples, such as the hidden blade, sword, bow, pistol, etc. but also has some interesting options, such as the tomahawk and rope dart. All of these options were simple to use and required very little practice to get right, though combat itself felt significantly more difficult than in previous games. Several enemies are difficult to take down, such as the Scotsmen wielding giant axes, but players who like a challenge might enjoy the increase in difficulty.

Connor can also recruit new assassins and level up their abilities, similar to Ezio’s actions in Brotherhood. The recruits are able to be used in a number of new ways, not just in a fight, which makes them fun to play around with.

Connor is also able to control his notoriety in much the same way that Ezio could, though instead of “heralds,” there are “town criers” and instead of assassinating a corrupt official, Connor can bribe a printer to create counter-propaganda. Pretty clever, if you ask me.

Collectibles such as Benjamin Franklin’s almanac pages, feathers, and treasure chests are also available and pretty standard - you collect them, you get rewards. Connor can also participate in side quests and challenges, such as a fight club and assassination contracts. To move around the large map, Connor can use fast travel, though to be honest, the map was so big that exploring it all could get tedious.

Also returning is the concept of full synchronization, which was a pain. Like the Ezio games, conditions for full sync did add some challenge to the game, but it was incredibly annoying to do a mission over and over again in order to reach 100%. I’d much rather have a single goal and go about it my own way without the impression of being penalized (even if that penalty doesn’t affect the gaming experience overall).

In terms of the economy, Connor is tasked with managing a homestead. Instead of improving the property or buying monuments, Connor recruits tradesmen such as loggers, miners, and farmers, as well as artisans such as tailors, innkeepers, and blacksmiths. The former group produces raw materials which can be turned into crafted goods by the latter, which Connor then puts on a caravan to be sold in town. Profits enable Connor to buy more weapons and consumables, and tradesmen/craftmen can be leveled up to produce more profitable goods through “homestead missions” which advance NPC stories.

Hunting is also introduced as a way for Connor to gain resources (such as pelts and meat), which are then used for crafting or for sale at trading posts. To hunt, Connor can use a range of tricks, including reading the environment for clues, planting snares, and using bait to lure skittish animals. I liked that hunting was always an option, but never required, since actually finding certain animals could be a chore. Connor also has the option of playing games such as Nine Men’s Morris to earn money through gambling at taverns, though I personally never opted for that. I did think the idea was clever, as it was a neat way to include micro-games in the larger structure.

By far, the most interesting new addition was naval combat. Connor can upgrade his ship, the Aquila, and go on a number of naval missions which earn him rewards. It took some getting used to, and often, the combat could be cumbersome, but I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit. These missions were never overly long, and some of them had interesting world building details.

The DLC has a lot of the same gameplay mechanisms, with the added bonus of “spirit animal powers” (see my assessment above). Basically, these are supernatural abilities that allow Connor to briefly turn invisible (wolf), fly short distances (eagle), and take down multiple enemies or smash through structures with great strength (bear). These abilities were somewhat insensitive thematically, but fun to use in terms of gameplay; I liked being able to sneak past enemies without needing to dart between bushes, and I loved flying across rooftops rather than jumping and climbing them. However, these powers also made exploring the map somewhat irrelevant - treasure chests primarily included consumables, such as arrows and rope darts, so if players find themselves preferring combat using a blade and animal power, there’s not much incentive to clear the map of points of interest. Nor is there much incentive to do side quests or challenges, as their rewards don’t add much to the gaming experience unless you use a lot of consumables.

Visuals: Assassin’s Creed 3 is a beautifully rendered game. The environments are stunning, whether they are seascapes or the wilderness on the “Frontier.” I also think the cities were well-done and eye-catching; even though buildings and streets were somewhat monotone (earthy tones), they never felt dull and little details made the design pop (things like posters/broadsides or splashes of color here and there).

Connor’s assassin outfit is also appealing in that it mashes up some 18th century fashion with accessories that denote his indigenous heritage. The red and white color palette from the Ezio games is replaced by a blue and white scheme, perhaps to show that Connor is not aligned with the British Redcoats, but even so, it still felt like an assassin uniform. I also liked the designs of Haytham’s cape, coat, and tricorne, as well as Achilles’ nod to his past through his accessories.

Animations were very fluid, and Connor’s combat maneuvers were interesting and varied. I think they were much more aesthetically pleasing than Ezio’s, and I liked how the body movements (tumbling, spinning) made them feel physical. There were some moments when awkward camera angles would obscure my vision, which cost me some kills or opportunities here and there, and there were occasionally some glitchy graphics, but they didn’t pull me out of the game the way Revelations did.

Final Verdict: Despite the plot being weakened by pacing problems and some questionable Indigenous representation, Assassin’s Creed 3 is beautifully rendered and improves on the franchise’s formulae by reimagining the Assassin-Templar conflict in a new setting.

#video game review

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deltaengineering · 4 years

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winter anime 2020 part 6: it is fin(e)

Part 5 seems to have fallen into some sort of Tumblr memory hole (it’s not flagged and I know this because I have plenty of actually flagged posts, and people can see it just fine with direct links, but it doesn’t even show up in my own timeline), possibly because of screencaps of shota bulge. But that’s just Interspecies Reviewers, and I’m a honest dude with honest screencaps. You can find it here.

A3! Season Spring & Summer

Oh, P.A. Works. You never know whether you’re getting Dr. PA (Shirobako) or Mr. Works (Glasslip) with them. The last thing they did was most definitely a Mister production (since it was Fairy Gone), so maybe they’re up for some greatness again? In short, no. A3 isn’t dreadful, but it’s more reminiscent of the likes of HaruChika, so maybe an undergraduate at most. It’s more than a bit confusing but at the end of the day it seems to be about a girl that inherits a shitty theater house and now has to make the various boys that hang around in the vicinity do actor things. This is based on a mobile game of the otome persuasion and while I was sussing that out, I saw some people be very insistent that it's MOST DEFINITELY NOT A REVERSE HAREM. It must be some other genre of fiction that is all about one girl being surrounded by pretty boys all day then. Anyway, the main girl is alright, so it seems fairly watchable, but overall it’s just somewhat clunky and not of the highest quality, so I don’t think it’s for me.

ARP Backstage Pass

ARP is a boyband anime, remember those? It’s a really predictable one too - mostly just introductions of the characters, who are all the kinds of characters you might find in a boyband anime doing vaguely boybandish things. You know how these go. What’s funny though is how it looks, which is to say it looks painfully cheap. Not that that’s rare for boyband cash-in anime (I’ve covered the topic extensively), but ARP is unusual in that it has above average looking CG performance sequences too. In the end this makes it look like they had these fairly okay CG music videos already and thought “I know a guy, we’ll pay him 10bux and have him bang out some flimsy connective animation and then we can pretend we have a TV show.” A+ hustle if true.

Dorohedoro

The manga Dorohedoro is a fairly known quantity, and that’s a good thing too because fuck me if I have to explain what it is. Okay, what it IS is not hard to explain: It’s a surreal tone piece defined by a grimy punk-on-acid aesthetic and an irreverent and dark comedic tone mostly based on ultraviolence - what’s hard (and tedious, and beside the point) is to explain the narrative content, so I won’t. The line between lolrandom nonsense and on-point surrealism is very thin, and you need a ton of style to pull the latter off convincingly. Dorohedoro definitely manages to make it work so far, and the only thing I don’t like as far as style is concerned is that they do the main characters in CG. It’s not bad CG, but this is a show that’s particularly good-looking otherwise so it’s still a step down - though CG tends to hold up better when the looks deteriorate over the season, and MAPPA aren’t the most solid in that regard. Hey, at least with them you can count on a ballin’ OP and Dorohedoro definitely comes with one of those. It still makes very little sense, and going by the opinions of people who read it, this won’t change in the foreseeable future or possibly ever. As long as it keeps the style and the quirkiness coming, I don’t really mind.

Kyokou Suiri / In/Spectre

So I was pretty positive on the first episode of In/Spectre, in particular the way it escalates from people sitting on a bench talking about nothing to youkai hunt shenanigans. I also liked the main characters quite a lot and the chemistry between them even more. Still, a few doubts remained - it wasn’t very visually appealing, it’s obviously based on a very talky novel, and what it eventually ended up revealing is that it’s essentially just some modern edgy version of Gegege no Kitarou or the many, MANY imitators thereof. But so far, so good, seems like a winner.

Then I got to episode 2 and it was so excruciatingly bad that I dropped the whole show 20 minutes in because I couldn’t take it anymore. Episode 2 is 5 minutes of very stilted characters banter, followed by, no joke, 15 solid minutes of Kotoko reading a newspaper to a snake. It’s not particularly relevant or interesting news items either - apparently Exposition Shinbun does gangbusters in this universe. The lame direction doesn’t help with any of this, in the end it was the director of Endride after all. With my professional duty already fulfilled by this point and an episode that is a contender for worst episode of the season so far, I ain’t got time for this shit.

Natsunagu

Natsunagu is a short whose unique selling point is, and I quote, “the first over-the-air television anime produced by a local government that lasts one quarter of a year.” Thanks, Kumamoto Prefecture, that’s exactly my strike zone right there. Apart from that bit of hilarity, it’s quite alright I guess. There isn’t much to the first episode because it’s all of 3 minutes long and barely establishes the concept (girl goes to Kumamoto to find an internet acquaintance), but it looks nice and it has a smooth tone that goes down easy. Might just watch it to be able to say I did.

Runway de Waratte

Runway de Waratte is about a girl who wants to become a super, nay, hypermodel but is overly short, and a guy who wants to become a fashion designer but isn’t an asshole. You know, I’ve had some luck with fashion-based anime before, but Runway de Waratte is no Paradise Kiss. There, I said it. It doesn’t even have a Franz Ferdinand ED! Runway de Waratte is the most basic shounen take on the same material; while Paradise Kiss was about a bunch of weirdos and outcasts, this right here is about a rich girl who’s mad that she’s too short to get everything she wants for free, but makes up for it with trademark assertive shounen enthusiasm. Designerman is, of course, the sensitive type and the show thinks that makes it say something about gender roles, which is just adorable. Runway is also very peculiarly paced, to the degree that I’d say it does border on just plain badly written - there is so much time spent on establishing the characters in a vacuum (and they’re hardly complex), only to rush through the part where things actually start to happen during the end credits. And it’s a bizarre coincidence plot too. This is another show that isn’t fundamentally busted and borderline watchable, but would simply have to be significantly better for me to give it more chances.

Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

As someone who has been known to post charts about zettai ryouiki golden ratios and whatnot to social media with the comment “SCIENCE, BITCH”, I can’t really complain about this comedy in which science people attempt to get into romance but can only do so scientifically, graphs about chingrab angles etc included. Furthermore, I also think it’s more funny than not. Don’t expect too much from it, and in particularly don’t expect a show about ostensibly clever people to actually be clever itself. But I have an opinion about spicy romances between people trying to one-up each other, see #1 on this list for details. Of course, RgKnOndSs is nowhere near as good as Kaguya-sama, since it’s far more pedestrian and predictable, and it has some aspects that outright stink too; in particular, the obligatory interlude where science bear appears to badly explain some superficial science concepts is an annoying waste of time every time. Less bad but still not good are scientists #4 and #5, because they’re just very tired otaku clichees that I’ve seen a million times before. The main pair isn’t any less stereotypical, but at least a romantic comedy about them is news to me (no, fucking Steins;Gate does not count and even if it did, Okabe and Chris are tremendously unlikeable jerks with negative chemistry), and rounding out the cast is common sense girl that has common sense, which is probably necessary but not exactly innovative. In the end, this is a very minor production in all aspects, but Himuro’s incredibly dumb/adorable ponytail wag makes it worth watching. Q.E.D.

#anime #impressions #winter2020 #A3! Season Spring & Summer #ARP Backstage Pass #Dorohedoro #Kyokou Suiri #in/spectre #Natsunagu #Runway de Waratte #Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

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your-worst-knightmare · 4 years

Text

Red: Pt. 9

“Me think Red Him am waking up.”

“Wait Biz, I’m not done yet.”

“That looks bad. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Quiet and help with the stitches.”

My eyelids feel like they’re glued shut. Part of me doesn’t even want to open my eyes, for fear of the events of when I was last conscious to be figments of my imagination. Why else would Bizarro, Artemis and Louis be in the same room?

Someone slaps my cheek. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to be annoying. “Come on, don’t make me wait any longer…”

I peel my eyes open. It’s Artemis. The pain in my shoulder and side confirms that my last memory was, in fact, real. She must have brought me to my safehouse, somehow. I give her a small smile. “Hey.”

“Don’t hey me, Todd. What the hell was that out there? The All-Blades? And you took more Lazarus? You I know I had to, quite literally, carve those bullets out of you?” She sighs, probably realizing that her rant is more than my groggy brain can handle. She leans down to give me a hug. “ It’s just.. You’ve been so incredibly… stupid and…” she buries her face in my shoulder, and I hold her as she presumably finds the right words to scold me. “And I’m just glad to have you back.”

“Aw, Red, I- ow watch the shoulder-”

“Sorry.” She stands up, her face almost as red as my helmet. “ You should get some rest. I just needed to see you,” she says, smoothing her hair and her expression.

“ Arty, wait. Don’t go yet.” She raises an eyebrow. “Please.” I swing my legs off the bed, against the protests in my side. “Help me up.”

“Jason, you need to-”

“Artemis, I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“Well I don’t. Not when it’s about your well-being,” she says, giving me a hand anyway.

I grunt, thankful for her help. “Take me to the control room. We need to find out who captured you and Biz and why.”

“A fine idea, but I think I already know who it was.” She gives me a chair and pulls up another one for herself. The building is cold, ( I don’t really have the time to install heating) and I’m starting to envy Artemis’ hoodie.

I stare at her for a second. “Wait, is that my sweater, Arty?”

“You don’t care to heat this place, so yes, I took your sweater. Happy?”

“Cold is what I am.”

“Fine. I’ll call Bizarro and your friend and tell them to get you something. Now focus.” Artemis grabs a pen and a pad of paper and scribbles something onto it. She slides it over to me. “I saw a man wearing this mask at the place they took us to. I think he hired a group of mercenaries to do his bidding.”

I inspect Artemis’ drawing. It shows a mask, large enough to cover the whole face with only two holes for the eyes. The sinking feeling in my gut only worsens when I realize who the mask belongs to. “ Pray I’m wrong, Arty, pray I’m wrong, but that looks like a mask from the Court.”

“The Court of Owls? Why would they want you?”

“Not me specifically. They still need their… Oh God, Arty…”

“What?”

“They need their Gray Son. And I’m their link.”

Before I can even finish telling Artemis the rest, Bizarro and Louis barge in, Dog barreling after them. Louis’ face is one of concentration, intent on not spilling the steaming mugs of coffee on his tray. Bizarro drops a sweater in my lap. “Me am brought sweater for Red Him. Red Him am still hurting?”

“Yeah buddy. Life’s just like that sometimes.”

“Always with the dramatics, Todd,” Artemis says, leaning over.

I crack a smile, pulling on the sweater. The task is harder than I’d expected, especially with and injured shoulder and torso.

“Yo’ need some help there?” Louis asks, setting down the mugs carefully on the table.

“Nah,” I grunt, finally accomplishing my task. “I’m good.”

“So is there a reason you’re here and not resting or are you just too stubborn for your own good?”

“Both, actually,” Artemis cuts in before I can answer.

“Hey!” Louis raises an eyebrow, still waiting for an explanation. “ We had to investigate who took Arty and Biz and why.”

A crash comes from the back of the room. I turn to see a sheepish Bizarro, a spooked Dog and four broken coffee mugs. The coffee now forms a sizable brown lake across the floor. Said coffee, would not be good for Dog. “It’s okay Biz, we’ll clean it up. How ‘bout you take Dog outside?”

Bizarro nods. “Okay Red Him.” He scoops up Dog in his arms easily and heads out the door. The coffee is cleaned up rather quickly, despite the fact that I was made to sit out and watch. Louis and Artemis return to their seats to further pester me with questions about the Court.

“Ok, so run this by me again Hoodie. This secret society wants your brother to become their general-or-something or they will unleash hell on Gotham?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“And they’re using you as bait…”

“Mmhmm.”

“Then why in Bast’s name are you going to find your brother?” Artemis exclaims, punctuating her words with her hands.

“Red, no matter what happens, I’ve got to go back to the Manor. Someone’s gotta warn the Bats. And I’d rather go through with this with a little more manpower.”

“Your brother lives in Bludhaven, Todd.”

“We’re sticking together. If the Court comes for one of us, they come for all of us. That’s just how it rolls.”

“Hoodie, I hate to interrupt,” Louis cuts in,” but you can’t just up and leave. If the board finds out what I’m letting you do, I lose my job. And, I hate to be the voice of reason, but you just got shot. You can’t just run into another fight.” Louis plants his hands on the table, his voice firm.

“As much as he is a reckless idiot with no concern for his welfare, Jason lives a warrior’s life. With the Lazarus, he should be almost fully healed within a few days. You don’t have much to worry about, Louis.”

“Selfishly, I worry about my job as well, Artemis. How’s he magically supposed to fix that as well, huh?”

“I got magic,” I pipe in. The tension between the two is driving me nuts, although I’m honestly surprised Artemis sided with me. “When the right people get the right paycheck, the Red Hood gets off the hospital’s books. You might even get a raise.”

Louis looks disgusted. “You’re going to bribe the board?”

Artemis summons Mistress and begins to polish the giant blade. Louis’ eyes widen and inches away from her path.

“Essentially yes.” He looks unsure. “Don’t worry Louis, it’s worked before. Consider it done before noon tomorrow.”

“And what am I supposed to do now?”

“Try to forget you ever met me.”

“Hoodie…”

“Don’t get sappy on me now Louis. I don’t want to ruin your life.”

“Well I can’t sit here and do nothing Hoodie.”

“Keep an eye on Arty and Biz while I’m gone then.”

Artemis looks up from her blade. “I’m coming with you,” she says bluntly.

“What?”

“You heard me Todd. I’m coming with you to watch your sorry back. Louis wanted something to do? Well, he’s keeping Bizarro and Dog company now.” She stands up, Mistress in hand. “ Your conversations are tedious. I’m going to go train. You better be ready to leave by noon tomorrow.”

“Well, how do you plan on getting to the Manor? And I better not hear the word motorcycle involved.”

“I’m not carrying you!” Artemis yells as she leaves me and Louis alone.

“I’ll get ‘A’ to drop a car off. Or he’ll pick us up. Whichever.”

“Yeah. Glad to see you’ve planned it all out.” He gestures towards the door. “Quite the girl you’ve picked out there Hoodie.”

“What? She’s not my-” Louis amusement only grows as my face grows hotter.

“She cares about you, that much is clear. Even this old man could see it. Hold onto her.”

I’m about to argue with him but Artemis’ drawing of the Court mask catches my eye. I need to get back on subject. He’s right though, to some extent. She was probably one of the better things to happen in my life. But that doesn’t mean I necessarily want to discuss it right now.

“Hey Louis, when you were patching me up, did you notice anything weird?”

“Oh now you’re just changing the subject.”

“I’m serious here Louis. This is important.”

“Well you did just take the Lazarus, so of course it was weird…”

I run a hand through my hair with my good arm.” No, that’s not what I meant. Like, was there any implants or traces of metal in my bloodstream?”

“No, I didn’t notice anything. Why?”

“The Court. They’ve got to be tracking me somehow.”

“We could look for a chip…” Louis starts, clearly lost on the matter. He’s been thrown out of his normal routine quite violently as it is, and all this talk of the Court isn’t helping.

“I have an X-ray gun in the med-bay. Get it. Bring a scalpel and tweezers. You need to be ready to take it out if anything’s there.”

He swallows dryly and goes to look for the requested tools. I let myself slouch once I’m out of view. My eyelids droop closed, a testament to my tiredness. I’m exhausted, to say the least, with the Lazarus working my body overtime to heal me.

He comes back sooner than I’d expected, and has no doubt caught on to my tiredness despite years of training to be alert in an instant.”Hoodie, we can do this later if you want…” he starts, fingering the plastic-wrapped tools.

“No. I’m fine. Do it now.”

I stare up at the ceiling as he looks me over. An annoying beeping alerts both of us to the presence of something. “Base of your neck. Left side.”

I tilt my head so that he has a clear view of my neck. “Take it out.” I barely see his worried expression in my peripheral vision. “You’ve got this, Louis,” I decide to add.

He sighs, finger brushing over the spot before reaching for a numbing agent. I stop him. “It’s fine Louis. It messes with the Lazarus.”

“You sure?” he asks, not convinced.

I nod.

Louis disinfects the area carefully before making an incision with a scalpel. A small noise escapes my throat. It’s not from the pain– no that is bearable. It’s the acute sense of feeling it all. My body repairing itself almost as fast as Louis can cut through the flesh. Louis falters and the hesitation rolls off him in waves. “Keep going.” To his credit, he does it quickly, pulling whatever the hell the Court gave to me out. It’s an odd feeling, but I keep quiet.

“Done.” Louis places a chip, slick with blood on a tray. “Do what you want with it, but I’m not keeping it.”

“Thanks Louis. Really.”

“Yeah, yeah. Now get some rest before ‘ya actually fall asleep in the middle of the floor. And before you go partying in dreamland–” he affectionately slaps a smiley-face band-aid on my neck and hands me a bag of Skittles.

“Hey!” I protest. The band-aid, not the Skittles.

“Knock yourself out. I mean literally this time,” Louis smiles, before helping me to bed.

#red hood #jason todd #fanfiction #my writing #rhato rebirth #rhato #rhato 2016 #red hood and the outlaws #artemis grace #bizarro #oc #gotham #dc comics #dc #batfam #court of owls

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aliceslantern · 4 years

Text

Beyond this Existence: New Life, short 35--Someday

Recovery is a tedious, nonlinear process. Demyx, Ienzo, and the others living in Radiant Garden's castle have to learn to come to terms with their pasts and their memories, learn to grow, and begin to understand what, exactly, it means to be human. While there is unexpected joy in this, there is also unexpected sorrow. A series of oneshots set after Beyond this Existence.

Current short: “Someday.” Time passes. Those at Radiant Garden's castle continue to change and grow. Demyx and Ienzo live out the rest of their lives.

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

There was a sense that things had finally settled, finally calmed. Their days, though they were busy, found a sort of comfort. Time seemed to pass quickly, the weeks becoming months… becoming years. It seemed like Demyx blinked and turned twenty-five. He woke up with Ienzo’s cold feet pressed against his calves. “...Do you have to,” he mumbled.

“I can’t help it. You’re so warm. Like a furnace.” He blinked slowly, like a cat. “Happy birthday.”

“I’m old now,” he said.

He scoffed a little. “Hardly. I’m afraid things are barely beginning.” He pulled him close, spooning him.

“...Are you actually trying to cuddle, or are you just cold?”

“Does it matter?”

Demyx sighed heavily. “Come here. Bastard.”

---

Demyx wasn’t sure anything would ever be “easy.” He carried the memories within him, and every now and again they would rise and wrap around him, like vines. He’d jolt awake, covered in sweat, convinced that this was it. But then he’d return to earth, usually with Ienzo there to console him, or vice versa. This was home; they were comfortable with each other, worn into one another like stones in a river. Demyx watched Ienzo bloom, coming into his own so slowly, until the shadow of pain faded from his eyes.

It was a slow, tedious process, this healing. Demyx guessed he too must be getting somewhere. He felt like less of a stranger than before, like the world was more real.

They worked for the committee in a sort of tandem; and then for the city council, once they were elected, when a real government started to form. The work seemed to suit Ienzo; the planning, and brainstorming, and to a degree the coding too. Demyx figured using those abilities made him feel more comfortable in himself. He felt that way too. Caring for people always had the opportunity to be harrowing, but with the bad came some good. The deaths and losses were accompanied with the new lives. Pain came with catharsis.

In their spare moments, they walked without a destination. “It’s often hard to internalize how much time is passing,” Ienzo admitted.

“How so?”

“Well--there’s so much to do still. So much opportunity for growth, for betterment. Yet… for example, this morning before you woke I was looking out the apartment window. We’ve built so much. The face of the town itself has changed. I… almost forget how much work has gone into it.”

“It’s easier when it’s work you like,” Demyx said, with a wink.

“Much,” he admitted. “It helps when I know all I’m doing will only make lives easier… rather than harder.” He smiled a little. “I can see a sort of future, all of a sudden. Before there was merely noise.”

“...I know what you mean,” Demyx mumbled. “But we made it.”

Ienzo squeezed his hand.

---

One of these mornings, Ienzo was brushing Beans, trying to curtail her seasonal shedding. “Getting chunky, aren’t you?” he mumbled to her, and the cat meowed in response.

Demyx barely looked up from Arpeggio. “We’re not double feeding her again, are we?”

“I don’t think so. That’s what the schedule is for. Chunky, chunky.” Demyx could hear the cat purring. “Wait--” Ienzo began feeling at her stomach. Then, he laughed. “Come here.”

Demyx set the sitar down and came over. “What?”

“Feel her belly.”

Demyx did so. Sure enough, he could feel small little lumps inside of her. He laughed too. “Dilan did mention that there was a feral cat colony in the upper floors. I guess Beans found a boyfriend.”

Beans swished her tail, irritated at all the poking and prodding, so they let go.

Ienzo sighed. “We’re too young to be grandparents.”

Over the next few weeks, she began building a nest in one of the rooms on the floor with stolen things--towels left to dry from their bathroom, the odd sock. One of these days she came up to Ienzo, meowed insistently, and led them to said room. In the nest were four tiny kittens. She climbed in with them and began grooming them. “I suppose I am her mother,” Ienzo said, with a shake of the head. “Good job, girl.”

She blinked. They ended up naming these other kittens similarly; Peanut, Clover, Lentil, and Tamarind, based mostly on their coat colors. They would see Beans toting them around by their scruffs, tiny scratchy kitten mews. But eventually these kittens grew up, and only came around their floor to see their mother, give her a rub, before disappearing into the rest of the castle. Beans, however, seemed perfectly content to remain a housecat.

“She’s got a pretty sweet gig,” Demyx said, scratching her behind the ears. “Comfy bed, food without foraging. Two idiots to worship her. I wish I could be a cat.”

Ienzo laughed.

---

This was their someday. Change was continuous and expected, but love remained constant. And while it didn’t and couldn’t solve anything, it was there to give them stability.

“What do you want from life?” Ienzo asked him one rainy morning. Beans was curled at their feet in bed, purring contentedly.

Demyx turned onto his side. In this light, the thin chain of Ienzo’s scar was almost invisible. “Pretty deep question first thing in the morning.”

“Humor me, then.” He propped himself up on an elbow.

“I’m not… sure,” he admitted. “I have everything I used to want.” He touched Ienzo’s cheek. “I’m kind of okay with letting things play out how they are.”

“You know, I think I am too,” Ienzo said. “All this aching and faffing about for a higher calling… maybe this is all life is. Quiet contentment. I have meaningful work to fill my days, I have you and my family. Truthfully, I don’t need to ask for anything more than that.” He leaned forward and kissed him. “Let’s watch the world grow.”

---

In all this, something odd and funny.

As Demyx grew closer to Even, he was asked now and again for his help with the man's research project, surreally enough. Even was investigating the long-term affects of darkness on the body, the mind; he thought darkness might be something of an addiction and impact them similarly. Demyx didn't particularly want to think about it too hard, but it was good that Even again driven. Demyx helped him look at minds with his magic, as they no longer had equipment. Dilan was often there too, helping with this research. And so was Ansem, in his own time, though he was working less on the scientific and more with the council.

Demyx noticed things.

He might not do reconnaissance anymore, but that seemed to be one part of him that never quite went away--he was always observational, he guessed. Even and Ansem interacted differently. Things had shifted. They ignored each other less when they were all together, sniped at each other less. There was less tension; rather, tension of a different kind. Ansem looked at him with such warmth, and once when he thought nobody was looking he rested a hand at the small of Even's back.

Oh.

Demyx actually had to excuse himself after he saw that. He went into the bathroom and laughed into his hands. He'd known the two men had been friends for longer than he'd been alive, that they'd raised Ienzo when he was little. It wasn't surprising at all. But it was hilarious that after outing Ienzo those years ago, Even had a secret of his own to keep.

"You're not going to believe this," Demyx said, one day after dinner.

"I believe a great many things," Ienzo said, without looking up from his computer.

"Have you been paying attention to how Even's been acting lately?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Should I? He seems much the same as ever. Keeping himself busy."

Demyx leaned over the couch. He wasn't sure why he was being conspiratorial in their own home. "I'm pretty sure he and Ansem have a thing going on."

Ienzo paused. "No," he said.

"Uh, yeah."

He scoffed a little. "How can you be sure?"

Demyx presented his evidence. Ienzo raised his eyebrows.

"Huh," he said. Then, "oh, this is going to be delicious. He gave me such hell for getting with you." He grinned widely. "Let me talk to him."

Sure enough, after some prodding Even admitted it was all true. Demyx was glad for them, but at the same time the thought of getting to needle an Even in love was too tempting. The next time he was asked to go down to the lab, he was ready to tease and cajole and be incredibly annoying.

If anything, Even seemed displeased to see him. He wrinkled his nose. "Apparently there are still some things that remain of the old you," he said. "Was it quite necessary to inform Ienzo of my personal life--without asking me first?" Demyx laughed a little. "So it's true then?" He turned a bit pink, but his expression was neutral. "As I said. I don't think it's any of your business." "Why were you keeping it a secret?" "As if I need to flaunt such things," he said, waving his hand dismissively and turning back to the work at hand. "I'll leave that to you two." Demyx rolled his eyes. "Does it make you... happy?" Even looked up, as if confused he would ask. "Happiness is relative, I think," he said. Then, "I believe it is... only suitable these things happen now. Ansem and I have put one another through hell. There was a lot to mend for anything else to be realized. There still is. But I suppose... life is... not quite as heavy as it once was. And that's as much as you'll get from me." Demyx smiled a little. "Guess that officially makes you my dad too."

Even scowled. "Go on, then. We have a lot to do." "Sure, dad."

"Boy--"

---

They became older; Radiant Garden grew from something somewhat haphazard into a real city. Demyx was no longer a trainee, or an apprentice, but a full-fledged healer. Ienzo worked on a little bit of everything, but was mostly engrossed in developing mental health support with the new government. It was no longer always so easy to get out of bed; he also needed glasses now. It was only when he realized the first baby he’d delivered was now in second grade that he was conscious of how much had really changed. His thirtieth birthday loomed on the horizon; Ienzo wasn’t far behind.

The passion was still there, bright and intense and impossible to reckon with; after one of these nights they lay, holding one another. Demyx ran his fingers along Ienzo’s throat, the scars that were no longer quite visible. “You remember that day I gave you a haircut, and you said that within seven years we’d have new bodies?”

“New cells. Yes.” He blinked. “It… it’s been that long?”

“Longer, actually.”

“Every day still feels so new,” he murmured. “Am I silly for feeling that way?”

“Not at all.” He stroked Ienzo’s hair. He’d finally caved a few years ago and cut the bangs short enough to show his full face, but other than that it was all the same. Demyx was fairly sure the gray was a bit fainter now, more white. “Can I ask you something?”

“We’re beyond that, aren’t we?”

“Depends.” He took a breath. “I… I want to start a family.” Ienzo opened his mouth, but Demyx forged forward. “When I help those people give birth, you know, it makes me feel…” He trailed off. “Things are… better than they were. I really think I could be a good…” He faltered on “dad.”

Ienzo touched his face. “You’d be wonderful,” he said softly.

“...But that’s not something you want.”

His expression was unreadable; Demyx began bracing himself for the hurt. “I’ve been… weighing the options,” he admitted. “I’d be lying if I said I weren’t terrified, but if anything, it’s a… good sort of fear.” He blinked. “I’m all in, Demyx.”

---

There were only two options for them; adoption or surrogacy. Most of Radiant Garden’s children were wanted, leaving them with the other. But why would someone go through the roughness of pregnancy for nothing? Demyx was on the verge of giving up when he got a phone call from Yuffie, asking him to go for a walk.

She hadn’t changed much in the intervening years; she still did a lot of security detail, only now with the city government, not the committee. She was brash as ever. “Nice glasses. Nerd,” she said when she saw him. “I bet this was your husband’s idea?”

“Mine, because I need to see,” he said. “Used to irritate the shit out of me when Cid complained about his eyes. But here we are. So what’s up?”

“I can’t catch up with my good friend Demyx?”

“You can. Though I don’t know what’s changed since drinks last Thursday.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on.” They walked in the early spring air. The flowers were just starting to come into bloom. “So I’m going to just come out and say it.”

He had no idea where this was going. “Okay?”

“I know you and Ienzo want to have a baby. I also know that because people are having responsible sex or whatever that there aren’t a whole lot of extras hanging around. I’m healthy, I have a functioning uterus. I’d love to be the weird aunt to your nerd baby.”

He stopped in his tracks. “Sorry--am I hearing this right?”

She’d turned pink. “Make me say it again and I’ll kill you.”

Demyx blinked. He was on good terms with Yuffie, but they weren’t that close. “You’d do that for me?”

She exhaled heavily. “You two are good people,” she said, with a shrug. “Whatever kid you had, you’d love the crap out of them. I didn’t get that when I was a kid, and I don’t think you did either. Plus… I always kinda wanted to be pregnant, but without the responsibility. Weird shit happening to my body? An excuse to eat as much as I want and be a total bitch? Could be worse.”

He turned to face her. “It’s a lot to ask of you.”

“Well I’m offering.” She crossed her arms. “I mean, the way you and Aerith do things, it’s basically painless anyway.”

“But not easy. It’d interfere with your work.”

She shrugged. “You know the council kisses committee ass. They’d find something for me.” She squeezed his hand. “Talk to him about it. This thing? Has a vacancy sign on it.” She pointed to her stomach. “I’ll be around. Let me know.” She winked and wandered off.

---

“...Wow,” Ienzo said, once Demyx had told him the story.

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

He set his phone down. “Should we do it?”

“She’s offering. Pretty insistently. It wouldn’t be… hers, anyway.”

“Only by about one percent,” Ienzo said. “Mitochondrial DNA. It’s unavoidable.”

“...So we’d both jerk off into a dish, put it in her, and nine months later there’s baby?”

He groaned. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. She’d have to take hormones, to stimulate egg growth, then once those are harvested we’d have to exchange her DNA for one of ours, then fertilize the egg, implant it, and then , if you’re lucky, there’s baby.”

Demyx blinked. “...You have been looking into this.”

He shook his head. “It’s either this or trying to make some sort of replica.” He took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. “There’s a… slim chance we might not be able to conceive regardless.”

Demyx sat down. “What do you mean?”

“Nobodies are sterile,” he said slowly. “We know this from our studies. Not just biological males--Larxene, too, did not have a period or ovulate. I was one for twelve years , Demyx, through puberty.”

“So then you can go in the egg and I’ll do the rest.”

“You were one too.” He exhaled. “Thankfully we can test for these things. But… even if somehow we’re fertile… it’s a long shot.”

Demyx took a deep breath. “We’ve beaten bad odds before,” he said slowly. “Let’s see what happens.”

Ienzo ended up being half right; upon further examination of their… DNA, they found that he was, more or less, completely sterile. “...Shooting blanks,” he muttered, in a moment of unusual crassness. “The more work I put into this, the more I wanted it, and here we are.”

He squeezed his shoulders. “But if it’s just you we can still make this work. And me?”

“You have a count, but it’s not great. Not ideal or even passable. Before we put Yuffie through the misery of all those shots, perhaps we should… reconsider. Maybe it’s not meant to be at this moment in time.”

Demyx sat down heavily on one of the stools in the lab.

“I’m sorry, love. I know how much this means to you.”

“No… you’re right, we shouldn’t force what isn’t meant to be.”

He took his hand. “There may still be the off chance for adoption. We merely need to… wait for the right opportunity.”

He nodded slowly, treading heartbreak. “Yeah. Sure. That.”

---

He was trying to get to work when Even stopped him. “Again your DNA taunts me,” he spat.

Demyx raised an eyebrow. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He softened a little. “I’ve heard of your… desire, for a child. I’ve worked with bodies for years, boy. Why didn’t one of you come to me?”

He blinked. “Well, Ienzo figured--”

“Does Ienzo have my increasingly specific skillset when it comes to molding genetic information?”

Despite himself, a spark of hope. “...No.”

---

It took time, but eventually it did happen. Even never revealed exactly how he did it--he claimed that his research wouldn’t be released until he died, “and I do not intend to do that for many years yet”--but he made the embryo, the one that might maybe be a human, and combined with Yuffie’s strange fascination that she “grow a baby” for them, it went from something that was a vague dream to a real, tangible fact.

She sat on the couch in their living room. “I gave it five days,” she said. “Nothing. Nada. No blood. Just test my pee.”

“That’s not how we look for pregnancy,” he said. His heart was starting to race.

“Well then, doc, do what you have to. The anticipation is killing me.”

“Not a doctor.”

“Shut up. You’re basically a doctor.”

He held his hand over her stomach, searching, sensing, only to feel a weak, but very present, beginning of a new life.

“...Oh god. You’re crying. I lost it, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

He wiped at his eyes. “You didn’t lose anything,” he said. “You’re pregnant.”

She screamed. “You’re going to be a dad!”

---

None of them breathed until she passed the twelve week mark; even then Demyx lived in a state of anxiety. Ienzo fussed over everything from names to what sort of detergent they might use on the baby’s linens. But it was no longer an impossibility; before long they could see it, and even feel it move.

While Yuffie took immaculate care of it with an almost uncomfortable enthusiasm, getting used to having her around was… something of an adjustment. “I make an entrance now,” she said, flopping onto the couch. “Ba-bam, here she is. Belly first. I trip over everything.”

“The human pregnancy is technically aerodynamically impossible,” Ienzo said. “I think a loss of grace is not uncalled for.”

“People keep asking me who the dad is. I think my favorite way to respond so far is to say I’m not actually pregnant.” She rubbed her hand absently over the mound. “It’s really active. I think it likes the sound of your voice.”

He turned pink.

“Come here. Feel the baby,” she said in a weird voice. She took Ienzo’s palm and laid it on her bump. “It knows who you are.”

He blinked. Demyx expected him to say something like, “well it can’t know anything, it’s just a fetus,” but instead he said, “I should hope so. The lengths we went to to get it here.”

She laughed. For the first time in a long while life felt a little weird, a little performative, especially as the pregnancy only progressed. Demyx could feel his and Ienzo’s dynamic slowly shifting. They were no longer just a married couple, and wouldn’t always be able to just do whatever they wanted. Soon there would be a responsibility. It changed the way they interfaced, especially because they didn’t agree on anything when it came to raising the child. They squabbled over things like how to educate it, whether to feed it formula or breastmilk, and more intensely, how they would one day explain their pasts to it.

Yuffie had her own opinions on this. She stroked the bump absently. “Well, you shouldn’t lie to them,” she said, adjusting her swollen ankles a little on the ottoman. “Not the way people lied to you two, right? I think you should… keep it simple, at least until they’re old enough to understand. If they’re your kid, they’re going to be smart. Yeah. Simplicity, and vagueness. Aerith’s having the same problem with her daughter. How do you explain darkness? The Fall? But kids… hear things. And with all this lying around?” She gestured to the bookshelf closest to her, which happened to contain some of Ienzo’s research. “Once it learns to read it’s all out the window.”

Ienzo sighed heavily. “I… I don’t want them to feel unsafe, though, and learning these things might make that happen.”

She shook her head. “As long as you love them, and are present with them, and are kind , I think they can accept it with a grain of salt.”

Demyx gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Like you did with Ansem and Even.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

She shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Well. Glad to know you care so much, and I’m not doing all this for nothing.”

---

They spent time, the three of them, putting together the nursery in the room next door. Kids seemed to need so much stuff , clothes and pacifiers and bottles and so many other little things. Ienzo would spend hours reorganizing everything, and Demyx kept cleaning and cleaning. It was an old space; it got dusty quickly. Wasn’t that a bad thing? It seemed like everything he’d learned about the human body seemed to go out the window.

“This is why I don’t self-treat, or heal my loved ones,” Aerith said. Her daughter kept flipping through the heavy cardboard page of her picture book, holding it up to them and saying “Look! Blue!” “I know, sweetie,” she added, patiently. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Demyx laughed a little. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“I’m surprised as you about Yuffie,” she said. “I’ve known her for years and I can’t pretend to understand what goes through that woman’s head. Vincent’s been trying to get her to settle down. I wonder if this is something of a test run for her. To see if she can handle being a mom.”

Demyx thought about it. His niece handed him the book. “Blue,” she said. “I know!” He said to her. “What other colors do you see?”

This question seemed to blow her mind; she looked at the book. “Red?”

“On the next page, maybe.” He turned back to Aerith. “That… kinda makes sense. It did seem out of the blue, even for her. We thought she was… a little too into it.”

“She talks a tough game,” Aerith said. “But she’s… honestly, she just wants to love and be loved.”

“I can relate.” The little girl approached him and held up her arms, wanting to be picked up. Demyx obliged. “I think this is part of what started me thinking, you know?”

“Me being a mom?”

“Yeah. Being the babysitter.”

She picked up a cloth and wiped at something on the toddler’s face. “You’ve got a very nurturing personality,” she said. “It’s only natural, to want kids.” She smirked a little. “You’ve got about three weeks of freedom left. If you do anything, sleep. ” Her eyes became serious. “For the love of god.”

---

The weeks seemed to pass quickly. They all waited for the labor anxiously, especially Yuffie herself, not that Demyx could blame her. If he could take her discomfort for her, he would; all he could offer was some palliative care. She stayed with them, the last month or so, rather than do the long walk a few times a day. She tried to be in good spirits, but Demyx could tell this was wearing on her; she’d been unusually quiet, when before she chattered for hours on end about nothing much. “I can’t wait to, like, not be peeing every ten minutes,” she said. “God. It’s going to be so good. And sleep! I don’t think I’ve slept more than a few hours a night since November.”

It was rainy that day, and hot; February was always something of a nightmare. Ienzo was off at a city council meeting; Demyx was home under the guise of making medicine, but really he was trying to keep an eye on Yuffie, who was completely reticent, lying on the couch and staring into the middle distance. “...You doing okay?” he asked her. “I can get you another ice pack.”

“I feel… weird,” she said slowly.

Demyx tried to keep his face impassive. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know, just… weird. Heavy. More than normal.”

He went over to her and checked her vitals. Her temperature was a little high, but no more than an at-term person in the dead of summer. “Any pain?”

She thought about it, her eyes glassy. “I’m not sure.”

“Can I touch the baby?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said wearily.

He rested his hand on the bump, trying to sense it. He could tell without prodding much at all what was actually going on. He swallowed, feeling a little dizzy. “So you’re in labor,” he said.

“For real?” she ran a hand through her hair. “I thought it would hurt a lot more.”

“The heavy feeling could be contractions. How long have you felt like that?”

She blinked. “I don’t know, since last night, maybe?”

Nerves fluttered inside of him. “Since last night ?”

“Well I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel!” She sat up a little.

Demyx squeezed her hand. “I’m going to make a few calls, okay?” His hands were shaking; he didn’t trust himself to text. “You just lay down for a few minutes.” It was hard to be both a healer and an anxious parent. He tried to get himself under control. Ienzo answered at the first ring.

“It’s now,” Ienzo said, without prelude.

“Yeah.”

“I’m coming.” He heard papers shuffling. “Time for things to change.”

It was an easy birth, almost startlingly fast, actually. They kept her in as little pain as possible; their daughter was born just after four in the afternoon, small but otherwise healthy. Holding her for the first time overwhelmed him, and he cried ceaselessly for some time.

“She’s got your hair, look,” Ienzo said, running his hand oh-so-gently over her skull, a soft brown tuft. “I was hoping.”

Yuffie turned onto her side, flinching a little. “You know I didn’t even imagine what she would look like,” she said. “She was just, like, a question mark.”

“You okay?” Demyx asked, through tears. He passed the baby gently to Ienzo.

“I’m actually fine,” she said. “I can tell I’m going to be sore--but honestly that wasn’t so bad. I was expecting, like—”

“Screaming? Hair tearing out? Squeezing someone’s hand until it breaks?” He tried to dry his eyes. Ienzo had drawn the baby close, his eyes shut tight.

“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “But it was like, a little pull, oops there it is.”

“I don’t even know how to begin thanking you—”

“It’s not exactly over,” she said dryly. “There’s still… the matter of this.” She patted one of her breasts. “But I… I wanted to see if I could do it. In case I… wanted to have one that’s really mine, you know? My boyfriend… really wants it.”

So Aerith had been right. “You didn’t think you could handle pregnancy?”

“That’s not it.” She shook her head. “The idea of… helping bring a life into the world, and then having to let it go. I wasn’t sure I could do it.”

“But it’d be your baby,” Demyx pointed out.

Yuffie smiled. “Mine to take care of. But in the end, they’re their own person, you know?”

“And how did this answer your hypothesis?” Ienzo asked softly. He was also teary.

“Well… if it makes us as happy as it makes you two… then maybe it isn’t a complete waste of time. Could I hold the bugger? Nine months in me and I haven’t even seen her face.”

Ienzo hesitated, holding her a little more tightly, before handing the baby to her. “Sorry you ended up with neurotic squares. But they’ll love you.” Yuffie touched her cheek. “Someday I’ll teach you how to make their lives hell.”

---

There was a fullness to their lives that there hadn’t been before. While they were exhausted, with the feedings and the fussiness, Demyx knew they had done the right thing. It felt natural , comfortable.

“She needs a name,” Ienzo said, coaxing the bottle into her mouth. “I thought the one we’d picked was it, but…”

“Seeing her changed your mind.”

“...Precisely.”

Her eyes were open, newborn blue and unfocused. She ate like she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Demyx took one of her tiny hands and felt it close around his finger. “What if…”

He looked at him. “What?”

“What if we named her after your mom? Isn’t that a… tradition, here?”

Ienzo blinked a little. “I suppose…” He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Well that’s the one, isn’t it. Chiara. It fits.” He sighed. “You named the cat and our daughter. The next one’s mine.”

“The next one?” Demyx smirked. “We barely got this one.”

“I’m thinking ahead.” He smiled. “Who knows what the world has in store?”

---

It was a pleasure, to see her grow; even once they returned to their work, they had a slew of babysitters. Even put up a front of unwillingness, but Demyx knew he doted on her. “I feel I owe you that much,” he said, to Ienzo. “Goodness knows you two must need some time for yourselves. I think we’ll be alright, won’t we?” He addressed Chiara. She put her hand right on his nose.

“The bag should have everything you need,” Ienzo said anxiously. “And you’ll call me, if—?”

Even raised an eyebrow. “I have done this before, you know. And she returned with her head still attached, did she not?”

Chiara burped and smiled.

“Goodness, I do hope you don’t inherit your fathers’ anxiety. Off we go.”

Demyx rested his hand on Ienzo’s waist. “He loves it,” he said.

“He and Ansem are certainly vying for her heart. Little do they know that Moosie is number one to her.” Noticing the offending stuffed animal still sitting on the dresser, he swore. “Goodness. I should bring this to them--she’ll get upset if she notices it missing—”

Demyx took the stuffed animal out of his hand. “She’ll be okay,” he said. “Why don’t you spend some time with me, hm? Like adults?”

Ienzo nodded, reddening a little. “I can do that.”

---

“Daddy?”

Demyx stirred weakly. He turned on the lamp at bedside. There she was, at his bedside, thumb in mouth, bedraggled, half-rotting Moosie in one hand. “What is it, baby?”

Chiara hiccupped. “I had a bad dream.”

He picked her up. She was getting so big , so heavy. He settled her between them.

“What happened, love?” Ienzo asked, smoothing a strand of hair from her face.

“Dream about ghosts.” She sobbed a little. “They go boo.”

Ienzo and Demyx exchanged a glance. “What kind of ghosts?” Ienzo asked.

“Dark. Like.” She lifted her hands above her head and hissed. “Grandpa telling me about them?”

Something like anger flickered across Ienzo’s face before he was able to control it. “What did he say?”

“I was… playing,” she said, sniffling. “I goed… downstairs. He said I can’t goed down there because—people are sleeping.” She held a finger to her lips. “Shh. But I…” She tapped her head. “I seed them.”

“Do you see them still?” Demyx asked gently.

Chiara shook her head. “No. That’s why I’m sad. They were my friends. They play with me when I sleep. They say… hello. And manners.”

Ienzo blinked. “You mean “thank you”?”

She nodded. “They said tell daddy thank you. They say we sleep now. Shh.” She started to cry.

“Shh,” Demyx said gently. “It’s okay. You have to say goodbye sometimes. It’s okay that it hurts.”

---

Chiara got along well with Aerith’s daughter; they were both feisty, adventurous. More than once she slipped away, to explore the castle, much to Demyx and Ienzo’s horror. Even seemed to find this endlessly amusing.

“Now you’re getting a taste of your own medicine,” he said, once they had found the bedraggled child. “Not so fun that you’re on the other side, is it?” For a moment they watched her sleep, wan and exhausted, before returning to their bedroom. There was an odd look on Ienzo’s face. Very slowly, he took off his glasses and lay back. “That’s right, isn’t it?” “What is?” He laughed a little to himself. “She’s the same age I was when I first came here.” “It’s all going so quick. They said it would, but--” “I know.” He groaned a little. “She’s too much like us.” “I don’t know what you were expecting.” He took Ienzo’s hand, ran his finger over the smooth metal of his wedding ring. “But she’s… getting a more normal childhood than we ever did.”

“There’s certainly no shortage of love,” Ienzo admitted. “For that, I’m eternally grateful.” Aeleus and Dilan both, in their own ways, also doted on her. “Would you ever… want another?”

Demyx considered it. “I’m not sure,” he said. “When you look at it logistically…”

“Aside from that.”

“If there’s a chance, then maybe,” he said, with a shrug. “But I’m happy with just her.”

“I am too.”

---

Chiara was bright, much like Ienzo; but people came easily to her, like Demyx. After much debate, they sent her to public school, much to the chagrin of everyone else; but they could teach her whatever else she may want to learn. She couldn't grow up isolated. To let her go and get something like their lives back was difficult. They were able to find one another again. They were closer to middle aged, now, rather than young. He knew it would happen. It still felt strange. He was shaving one morning when he saw it. “Ienzo,” Demyx said. “Come here.” “Something the matter?” He could barely contain the laughter. “Look.” He lifted the part of his hair gently, revealing the strands of gray. Ienzo touched it. “It must be starting early, for you. After all the stress you’ve gone through in your life, it’s not surprising.”

“We really aren’t young anymore, are we?” “As though these things last forever? We’ve still got more than half our lives left.” “...Huh.” He brushed his hair back into place. The style was less radical and more functional than it had been in the past; gone were the days of the shorn scalp, the gel. His younger self would probably find him infinitely boring, he realized.

He was okay with that. Ienzo kissed him softly. “I rather like the idea of you being a silver fox.”

---

So that’s really it, then.

In his rare moments of alone time, he composes. His style has changed considerably, away from the technically difficult and more towards lightness, subtlety, expression of emotion rather than skill. He writes a sort of memoir, with these compositions; more for his daughter, and maybe her eventual children, than himself. It’s a sort of project that takes years, years of stolen minutes and endless editing. He leaves a copy of it, quietly, in the archives, on the internet. She’s almost grown up when she finds it. “...Dad?” He’s at work, up to his elbows in medicine. “What’s up, sweetie?” She has his coloring, but she looks so like Ienzo; small, delicate. She moves like him, too, using her hands when she speaks.

“You busy?” She nods her head towards the door. “I’ll get lunch. You keep forgetting yours at home. It makes Father so mad.” She chose how to refer to them herself.

They walk for a while, get lunch at some cafe. “I was studying for my entrance exams,” she begins. College around the corner at the fledgling university (how?). She still isn’t sure if she wants to pursue the arts or the sciences. “Researching folk ballads for this essay I want to write. You… left something in the library. For me.”

“...Yeah.” “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” “Because…” Any number of reasons. “Well, for a long time it wasn’t done. You know your dad and I… went through a lot. I didn’t want you to find it until you were ready. Old enough to understand.”

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” she says, so earnestly it makes him laugh. “I… I want to know how I came to be. Not just the Aunt Yuffie story, the… rest of it. The history of my existence.”

Demyx can hear both his husband and himself in her words. He takes her hand, gives it a squeeze. “Let’s play it through together.”

And they do.

She has so many questions, not just for them but for Even and Ansem, Aeleus and Dilan. Hearing about the way they suffered, the way they made suffering, makes her cry, but she doesn’t see them as at fault, not in a way that makes her love them less. The knowledge changes her. She says it gives her a deeper insight on how to help people. She goes off to college--lives with friends in an apartment. She grows up. And they move on. For some reason only then does it feel right for them to move from the castle, to a small home in town. They bring with them their memories, the great-great-grandson of the cat Beans. They have over their friends, their family; one day their daughter brings along a young woman who will become her wife.

When the time comes--and it does, it’s inevitable--they pass away gently, quietly, and against all odds, together. Demyx knows it will hurt her, her children, but he also knows this is the way things must be. They’ve both left their legacies behind, full of healing, of progress, of goodness.

So their story ends, and they sleep peacefully. She visits their memorials, teaches her children about her namesake, about what her family did and how they then atoned. The city government reopens the castle to the public, restores it to something resembling its former glory. Again, it becomes a place of learning, but they never do forget the ills they are capable of.

For the last time, Chiara stands in the rooms where she was raised, where one of her fathers played endless songs for her, the other reading to her infinite stories, both teaching her all she needs to know, stories she hopes to hand down. Rooms now empty, rooms now for someone else. Her wife takes her gently by the elbow, leads her away.

And they begin their life anew.

#beyond this existence: new life #demyx #ienzo #zemyx #even (kingdom hearts)#yuffie #aerith (kingdom hearts)#beyond this existence

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spaceorphan18 · 5 years

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TDB Rewatch: The New York Arc

I was originally going to do a post for each episode - but you know what? I think I’ve talked about this particular part of the series more than any other part - and even though it’s been seven weeks since I’ve even seen an episode of Glee (!!) - I’m not entirely sure I have anything new to say about these episodes, so here we go with one big post for you.

New New York

Is this still the best episode of the series? Yes - I think it is. The entire episode is completely watchable, the music is great, the Klaine stuff is great, everyone gets something interesting to do, Rachel is interesting again, Mercedes re-joins the cast, and even Artie has some funny lines. This episode almost feels like a pilot of a spin-off series, and I’m a little sad we didn’t get to see more than this arc, because these characters still seem fresh and interesting - and this episode is clearly all setting up the status quo for living in New York.

I’ve seen the episode so many times now that this one flew by, and while I’m always here for the amazing Klaine stuff - the nice thing is that watching the episode as a whole, I’m not bored with any of it. I have no new meta to add to the piles of things I’ve already written and said on the podcast, but I’m glad this episode remains enjoyable even after a million rewatches.

Btw - I still say they should have asked Adam Lambert to be a regular - he adds so much and I’m sad that this is his last appearance on the show.

Also - I can tell it’s been a while since I’ve watched the show - Chris and Darren are really pretty. Just thought I should remind you ;)

///

Bash

So, while Opening Night might be my least favorite of the bunch, but I think as an episode Bash might be the weakest? And actually - I think it might have been better if the Kurt being bashed story line was a) more prominently in the episode or b) not in it at all. It feels like it’s almost an after thought to Rachel’s (absurd) story - and there’s such a rich story with Kurt (and Blaine) that feels wholly untapped because it’s more about Rachel Berry and her feelings. :P I do like the little bits of it that we did get, Kurt and Blaine are superb as they are in all of these episodes. And I mean - it’s nice that Rachel gets yelled at twice for being a moron - even if the whole thing doesn’t hold together very well.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure how much I have to say about Sam and Mercedes - I enjoy them as a couple, though I can’t say that I’m riveted by their story line. It is nice, though that Amber Riley gets a chance to shine since she’s been away from the show for so long. I think the awkwardest thing about this episode, (besides Sam’s impressions) is the fact that that the two story lines don’t mesh well, and it feels like the episode starts off as one thing then pivots and does something else entirely in the second half.

That said - the music is great, as always, everyone sounds really beautiful on all the Soundheim things. And while I didn’t need two Mercedes solos - she is lovely as always.

///

Tested

Who knew Artie having an STD would be such a fun episode. Honestly, I think this is the best episode the show does about sex. Yes, even over The First Time (even if I like TFT just a smidge more). Each of the characters are in a unique situation, and come at sex in a different way - and it’s actually pretty cool the way the show handles it. They’re not usually great with these kind of topics, but I really have no complaints about how they handled anything in this episode. I especially like the fact that a) Mercedes gets to choose how she wants to deal with sex and b) they let Mercedes and Rachel be actual girl friends when it comes to a topic - again something the show doesn’t always handle the best. Yes, for all the sex positive conversations in this episode.

Also, the ‘I’m slut shaming you’ scene might be one of the funniest things the show ever did.

The only one weighing this one down, and why it isn’t passing NNY by on my favorites list - is that the music just isn’t good. I mean, all the songs fit the episode fine, and the performances are great, I just don’t like any of the songs.

Also - Kurt is super extra in this episode - which really reinforces my headcanon that Kurt not getting regular sexy times is super grumpy.

Anyway, I give kudos to the show for doing an episode that has some actual layers to it in all of its plot lines. Usually, Glee’s pretty anivilish about everything, but there’s some actual nuance in this story - good job show. It’s nice to be not spoon fed everything all the time.

///

Opening Night

Well... This remains the worst of the NYC Arc - and really, only because the stupid and a bit convoluted Sue plot. Rachel’s arc is a bit silly too (really - I roll my eyes at the whole ‘oh no NYT reporter’ bit, especially when the dude just waxes praise on her like everyone else on the show) - but are some legitimately entertaining things going on during the Rachel side of things. And I dare say the episode is a little underrated? There are some good jokes and nice music, and it is exactly what you’d expect from Rachel’s first night (even if I still think Funny Girl should have been placed at the end of the show) and Rachel has been rather held back and used well during the NYC Arc so I don’t mind her spot light here.

But man, the Sue stuff is tedious. I kind of forget Will is apart of it (and did logic take some time off again? Because the Emma having a baby thing is... let’s not get into it). Sue actually has already arrived at her season 6 self - and even some of the early sequences with her kids aren’t bad, but there are really two scenes that drag this entire episode way, way down -- the date with Mario the restaurant guy, and the last five minutes with Mario the restaurant guy. Oh my god - why is this the only thing they could think of to do with Sue? I mean - everything about this plot line screams contractual obligation - needing to give Jane Lynch one episode during this 7. But could they really not think of anything more interesting for her to do?? DId she really need a date so she and Rachel could sing that song together?? Ug - it is really frustrating that this takes up a third of the episode. What a waste.

But, I mean, as a whole, it’s not terrible in the way the worst of Glee is - and really, everything on the Rachel side (mostly) works for me. It’s a good thing all that Sue/Mario stuff is pretty easily skipped.

///

The Back-Up Plan

Hey! Another solid episode! It’s weird - the focusing only three story line lets the episode breathe - a lot - to the point it seems strange, lol. But anyway...

First there’s Rachel’s story - which I know people were annoyed that Rachel bails a month into Funny Girl, but idk - this seems like Rachel. And this is the one and really only time she faces serious consequences for her actions. It’s refreshing really. Also - Jim Rash is a delight, and that audition scene is priceless.

Meanwhile - Mercedes and Santana have a great story that I kind of wish there was more of. Santana’s been gone for most of the arc so far, but I don’t mind her coming back - she’s rather civil and low key during these last few episodes, and it’s a bit refreshing, honestly. Anyway - I like that pop business is treated with a little more realism than Broadway, as D’Shawn (Mercedes’s producer) seems to tell it like is. But more so, I feel like there’s a genuine friendship between Mercedes and Santana and that’s pretty refreshing, too.

And then there’s the June story line. You know what? I really do not like June. Sorry. And I find it a little creepy she wants to mold Blaine into something of her own making. I’m also... not sure what the purpose of this entire story was? Ah well... At least we get some really lovely Klaine moments out of the whole thing.

Bonus - the music in this episode is all pretty solid.

///

Old Dog, New Tricks

You guys ever notice Artie’s eating dog biscuits in this? Weird things you notice when you watch the whole episode. Anyway...

Hey - it’s that episode that Chris wrote. And yeah, it’s a little awkward - in a - you can tell this is a new writer for TV kinda way not in a - this sucks kind of way. I really wish Chris had stuck with TV writing, I think he showed some real promise, and writing for other shows would have been great experience. Ah well. It all just makes me miss Chris actually doing things that are not related to middle school fantasy novels.

So, for the record, if you guys ever wonder who Chris is, seemingly, frustrated with? Watch this episode - and how he writes Rachel. She’s been almost acting human in the rest of this arc, and in this episode, she really is back to being really awful. At least multiple people get to tell her off again - it’s, again, refreshing. How many times as she been told off during this arc? Not enough, but it’s been kind of nice when you string them all together.

Anyway - this episode, as you’ve probably heard me say before, works pretty well. Santana as a publicity is brilliant (and perhaps the best aspect of Chris’s writing), Sam and Mercedes relationship issues are handled rather maturely, Chris as Peter Pan is incredibly inspired, and the music is pretty solid (even if it’s not my personal favorite). There’s even a sweet Klaine scene (though - I still maintain it was wise not to have Chris write too much Blaine). The only thing that really doesn’t work to for me, and maybe we’re far enough away that I can say this honestly without feeling like there will be too much repercussion - I don’t think June Squibb is very good. I mean, yeah - part of it is the awkwardness of the story itself. But - Maggie just doesn’t work for me. Sorry :(

///

The Untitled Rachel Berry Project

I know a lot of people say that this episode feels like a finale for them. And I kind of get that, I do. But, honestly, it feels more like a chapter break. This episode is incredibly bittersweet - as if it knows (and it does) what’s coming in season 6. But, also, it’s the ending of a show I kind of wish we had much longer, and I guess it feels a little sad to get to the end.

The episode itself is solid - there are only really three plot lines here, and they all work pretty well. The music might be the weakest element (I only like about half the songs in this one) but it’s got comedy and drama and warmth and sadness, and does make for a great season finale. (It’s the best season finale the show did -- really, it is.) And I guess - everyone ends up where they’re supposed to end up, and it works for me.

I don’t really have a lot to say about it, or at least anything new to say. It’s good, it’s solid, and while I’m super tired of watching TV all day, it’s a great ending to a really good chunk of TV.

///

Final Thoughts:

I am a little saddened that we didn’t get those two episodes that were taken from the season. I feel like another couple of beats in the story lines would have worked wonders, and of course, selfishly, we’d have a little more of my favorite part of the story.

Interestingly, though, I don’t know if this makes any sense - but I got the feeling the writers were always more comfortable writing stuff back at McKinley. Like - they did this because they had the time, but they wouldn’t have been able to sustain an entire season writing it. I know we could all come up with great stories, but I think it’s better that they were wrapping things up at this point, because the show feels like it’s headed towards an ending.

I thought I’d get more insight about things watching them all in one sitting - but I’m not sure I did. I think the show almost works better as a week to week so you can sit with each episode. I think when strung together the arcs don’t seem as fluid as we have them in our heads now that we’ve spent years talking about each episode individually.

Weirdly - the music of this arc is really hit and miss for me. It’s interesting, to me, that a lot of times when the story is stronger, the music isn’t always as good. A lot of other times, it’s vice versa. The really, really good episodes can balance the two.

I feel bad for Kevin McHale - who really had nothing to do other than be a giant STD.

That said - one of the most refreshing things about this arc was the lack of toxic masculinity crap, as well as some of the best writing for the women ever on the show.

I enjoyed the little bit of Santana and Brittany that we got - this was, like, the prefect amount of them.

One of the downsides of everyone being paired off is that we didn’t get to see interesting mixed-up pairs - one of the draw backs of the show having such little time in New York.

One thing that stood out to me, and god I hope I don’t get too much hate for this, is that Mercedes and Sam don’t really work... at least at this point. Seeing the entire arc all together, it’s very apparent that while I don’t doubt how much they care for each other, they’re definitely in two different places in their lives. And while I applaud the maturity that the relationship was handled with, it’s clear that they’re not ready to be in a long term relationship (yet).

Rachel! Was bearable for most of the arc. Yeah - there are still a lot of special snowflake Rachel moments. But Lea Michele can do comedy well, and they let her do that.

I didn’t find anything wrong or unusual about Chris’s acting choices. **shrug**

Kurt’s mildly unhappy through a lot of these episodes - but much of that is at Rachel. And really at his own place in life. And the one episode where he’s super sexually frustrated.

The Klaine stuff is delicious - and of course, discussed many other places that you don’t really need me to rehash it.

It’s also unfinished.

They should have made Adam Lambert a regular.

Alright - bring it Season 6.

#tdb rewatch #anyone miss my caps?#eh probably not #but they're back!

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2018 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 6 years

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Michael After Midnight: The Legend of Korra

Avatar: The Last Airbender is, without a single doubt in my mind, one of, if not the, greatest cartoons of all time; it’s up there with Batman: The Animated Series, The Simpsons, and all those other time-tested classics. But even as it ended, there was always this feeling like the magnificent world created for the show could be explored ever further, expanded upon, and just in general be given a whole lot of new perspectives.

Enter The Legend of Korra.

The show is set several decades after Aang saved the world (as Katara always believed he could, according to the opening narration). Aang eventually died and a new avatar was born, the titular Korra; the show is all about how she comes into her own as the Avatar.

Now, just from that brief summary, it seems like this show would be an awesome thing right off the bat, right? Everything is there for this to be an epic continuation of an incredible animated work… and yet, it took this show two Books to truly find itself, and even then there were some truly questionable storytelling decisions that leave this show far behind Avatar in terms of quality. And look, I like this show. I really do. I enjoy it, I enjoy seeing the callbacks to the earlier series, I like most of the villains a great deal, I love the mythos they created about the Avatar as a concept by showing us its origin, there is a lot of genuinely great stuff that’s on par with the original series here. But while the original show had weak episodes here and there, Korra had entire weak Books; where the original show had some occasional bad writing, Korra had some truly bad plot points; and where the original show had a dragged-out romantic arc that, while a bit tedious, never really overstayed its welcome, Korra had one of the absolute worst romantic arcs in modern fiction with the most terrible, stupid, pandering, and nonsensical ending imaginable, one that insults me on so many levels.

But I’m getting far ahead of myself there. I’m going to briefly go over each Book and what works about each, and what doesn’t. The best place to start is from the beginning, so… let’s start there.

Book 1 has a sort of reputation as being a Book that was too rushed to really live up to its full potential. And you know what? I’ll agree to that. Nickelodeon really screwed this show over big time throughout its run, but the tiny amount of episodes they allowed the first Book was a big problem. The plot that doesn’t really get going until halfway through, the inane twists, the rushed conclusion… with more episodes things could have been fleshed out a lot better. Here’s the thing, though: even with more time, if they kept a lot of this Book the same… it would still suck a whole lot of ass.

Book 1 is pretty much a trainwreck, evident from the first scene, which shows a toddler Korra bursting through a wall, showing off every kind of bending save air, and saying “I’M THE AVATAR AND YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH IT!” This is our introduction to our main character. This is the first time we see her, our first impression. And they decide to introduce her in the least likable, most obnoxious, and dare I say most Mary Sue-ish way possible.

Now I have gone on record before saying I absolutely loathe the term Mary Sue; I find it to be a term that lacks any real substance to it and is really just shorthand for someone to dismiss a character. But the most common definition - a character who has so much going for them, rarely suffers any consequences, and is just well liked by everyone while getting the world handed to them - actually, sadly, fits Korra in the early episodes. She’s good at all forms of bending save air from when she’s a toddler, she almost instantly becomes a pro playing sports, she gets two cute boys fawning over her, she gets the greatest possible airbending teacher anyone could ask for… One could argue she gets built up so much like this to make her being torn down halfway through the Book more powerful, but it just really comes off as grating and obnoxious to watch.

It’s not like the other characters are written much better. Mako in particular is written to be one of the biggest morons on Earth, and Bolin, while charming, is something of a Diet Sokka. Tenzin is easily the best character of the Book, what with being voiced by J.K. Simmons and all, but his children… yuck. All of them are annoying and just feel superfluous, with Meelo in particular existing for seemingly no reason other than fart jokes. It’s not like Avatar was above using those kinds of jokes, but they didn’t have an entire character dedicated to them. Lin Beifong is pretty cool, a worthy successor to Toph, though be warned: she takes a lot of stupid pills between this Book and the next. Asami is pretty and badass, and she’s also one of the better characters of the Book, but sadly she gets tangled up in the worst aspect of the entire first Book: the love triangle.

The love triangle involves Korra, who is loved by Bolin and Mako, though Mako was in a relationship with Asami after they met, and Korra is with Bolin, but secretly likes Mako and… who cares? This is not what anyone wants out of a show based on Avatar. Just because they’re teenagers doesn’t mean they need to get up in all of this sub-par soap opera bullshit. This here honestly ruins the Book; while some would say Book 2 was the weaker Book due to its incredibly stupid plot and lackluster villain, at least Book 2 had Varrick and the Avatar Wan episodes. This Book really doesn’t have any big plus it can count in its favor. No, not even Amon.

Amon is the villain of Book 1, and early on he is just indescribably cool. His menacing voice provided by the always excellent Steve Blum, his creepy mask that evokes the titular V of V for Vendetta, his ability to remove bending, the fact he manages to scare Korra shitless… it’s all amazing. And then comes the reveal that he’s actually a bender. A waterbender, even. He has been using bloodbending this whole time to remove people’s bending. All of the shit from the big reveal really just leads to defang Amon from a nightmarish force to be reckoned with to a miserable bundle of angst. Noatak, who he is revealed to truly be, feels like an entirely different character. Still, even with his derailment, his final scene is one of the most effective in the entire series: as he and his brother escape on a flying ship, his brother, despite his brother’s words indicating that he wants to start over a new life with him and have things be good between them again, takes an electrical gauntlet and fires into the ship’s fuel tank, causing an explosion which kills them both. This is a murder-suicide that was shown on Nickelodeon. It is emotional, powerful, and truly shocking in a good way. It’s easily the standout scene of the Book, and almost makes it worth it.

Then comes the asspull.

You see, Korra had her bending taken by Amon. This could have led to so many incredible storylines as she worked to gain it back, utilizing only the airbending she was stuck with, the one kind of bending she wasn’t instantly good at. Sure, it may have ended up retreading a bit of Aang’s struggles, but that was good stuff! But instead… Aang’s spirit comes out of nowhere and the past Avatars all combine their powers and POOF! Korra gets her bending back. This is a dreadful resolution; I get they were unsure if they’d get to follow up on this or not, but leaving the door open with uncertainty is so much better than closing a bunch of doors. Why not have her just get a talk from Aang, telling her she can get her power back with enough training? End it on a dark but still hopeful note, with her having to work back up to how she was before. That would have been a hell of a lot better than this deus ex machina crap.

Overall, Book 1 is just a hot mess. It has isolated elements that are pretty good, but overall it’s kind of a complete mess story wise and character wise. It’s frankly amazing this show got a second Book… but it did. And oh lord is this Book something.

Book 2’s biggest crime is that it is utterly forgettable. I hardly remember anything from the first half of this Book because it is just so bland and uninteresting, and while it’s nowhere near as bad as Book 1’s love triangle, it doesn’t even stick in the mind. The shining gem of this first half - and the Book as a whole, mind you, if not the SERIES - is Varrick, the eccentric inventor, and his beleaguered assistant Zhu Li, who is frequently asked by Varrick to “do the thing.” These two make all the difference; without them this Book would easily be more unwatchable than the first, but with them… well, it still sucks but they manage to carry things.

Unalaq, the villain of the Book, is an utter bore. He’s obviously bad from the get-go and he is easily overshadowed later by the far more intriguing Vaatu, who ties deep into the mythos of the series by being one of the reasons the Avatar came to be at all. Unalaq also has two kids who are just as boring as he is and who spend the series not doing much anything noteworthy.

The real draws of this Book are basically everything to do with the spirits and their realm, as well as the origin story of the Avatar. Avatar Wan’s big two parter is the first part of the series to feel as fresh and epic as the original series, and it shows us just how the Avatar came to be in the first place. The other scenes in the spirit world are pretty great, featuring appearances from Uncle Iroh, Wan Shi Ton, and Admiral Zhao of all people. Then there’s the big shakeup at the end: Korra is now cut off from her past lives, and spirits and humans can now live together. These are some huge changes to the status quo of the series to the point where it feels like an apology for how bad and pointless Book 1 feels in the grand scheme of things. And you know what? Apology accepted. Book 2 is a mess, but it manages to find itself in the end and help steer the show into being the great work it ended up as.

Now on to Book 3.Book 3 is where the show really was able to show off how great it could be, to the point my only issues with the Book are minor. Most of my problems stem from the fact that Korra had very small Book, with about 12 or so episodes per book as opposed to Avatar’s 20. This is kind of a problem, because it gives some characters less of a time to develop, a fate that unfortunately befalls the members of the Red Lotus who aren’t Zaheer. Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the Red Lotus and think they’re all fascinating villains, and Zaheer is one of the most interesting villains in the series as an evil airbender, but Ming-Hua, Ghazan, and P’Li sadly get very little in terms of backstory. You DO get something, but they end up feeling more like the Cobra Unit from Snake Eater than fully fleshed-out bad guys… which is to say, they’re fun and effective, just don’t expect them to show great complexity. I wholeheartedly believe that they could have been expanded on if Book 3 had those extra seven episodes in it, and it’s a real shame we didn’t get to truly explore these fascinating characters.

My other problems, again, are pretty minor. I didn’t much care for Bumi becoming an airbender, and felt like it sort of cheapened his and Tenzin’s character a bit. Kai, a pubescent airbender scamp, was not a very likable character here, and it was pretty annoying having to put up with him, not to mention his ship tease with Jinora. Zuko also shows up, but it’s in a very minor role and he’s not really focused on at all. There’s a few more nitpicks here and there but these things are really my main issues.

The story is a lot darker and more mature here, especially in its repercussions for the rest of the series. Korra’s near-death experience here leaves her broken and haunted by PTSD, which becomes a major focus in Book 4. This Book is also where they really stopped giving a shit, and there are several particularly shocking and gruesome deaths for the show. We have Zaheer answer that age-old fan question “Could an airbender suck the air out of somene’s lungs?” with a demonstration on the Earth Queen, P’Li’s laser eye backfires and blows her head up, Ming-Hua is painfully electrocuted to death, and Ghazan takes a page from Gollum’s book and dies immersed in lava (and rubble for good measure).

This Book truly delivers the experience this series promised us in the beginning; it truly feels like an evolution of the Avatar series in the best way possible. While there are a few bumps here and there, there’s nothing really brutally bad that could derail the overall quality of the season. It has a great villain, and that villain has a great villain posse; there’s a lot of great cameos and character appearances, including some surprising ones; we learn more about Lin’s past; we get a whole lot more airbenders and an interesting plot going on with them that even in the end makes Kai more likable; and most importantly we have a solid plot with real consequences on the characters.

Oh, and there’s that little Zelda Williams character who appears near the end… wonder what her significance is…

She’s Book 4’s bad guy.

Book 4 is the final season of Korra, and while I don’t think many would say it surpasses Book 3 (which is quite the task, considering), I definitely think it’s a really great final season that wraps up just about everything that needs to be wrapped up. It also does a really good job with character development, like, REALLY good.

This season is where Korra really becomes a character I love, because her struggles are very personal and interesting. She’s constantly haunted by what happened to her in Book 3, and is stalked by a shadowy version of herself wherever she goes. Long gone is the obnoxious borderline Mary Sue character that she felt like in the first season; here, Korra truly feels human and relatable. More impressive than even that may be the transformation of the character Prince Wu, who starts the season as one of the single most unlikable characters in the whole series but ends up as an amusing and even somewhat heroic figure. Frankly I find it hard to hate a character who utilizes his terrible singing to help evacuate a city.

As I mentioned before, Kuvira is the villain, and she’s very much a visionary sort who thinks ruling the world under her iron fist is what’s best for everyone. Zelda Williams really gives her a real air of importance and even a bit of sympathy; she’s definitely a great example of an anti-villain of the quality of Zaheer, though I wouldn’t go as far as to say she’s as good as him exactly. Still, one can’t help but appreciate a woman who creates a massive robot that fires death lasers made out of entirely unbendable platinum. I know a lot of people find this thing to be utterly ridiculous and stupid, with little foreshadowing of its existence and just in general how ludicrously impossible and impractical it could be… but come on, it’s a GIANT ROBOT. I guess it just appeals to my inner Metal Gear fan, even if I do realize and accept it’s the most ridiculous thing in any of the two series.

I think what’s really great about this book is how it really just makes things that shouldn’t work, work really well. Case in point: there was an annoying, executive mandated clip show that, if they didn’t do, would have caused a lot of staff to be laid off. So what does the team do? They use the episode to take the piss out of everything in the show that didn’t work, from the shitty romance subplots to a hilarious scene where Zaheer, Amon, and Vaatu are all on the phone and trying to keep not just Unalaq, but Varrick’s movie version of Unalaq, out of the loop. In fact, the entire thing basically being Varrick doing an abridged series of the show is golden, because everything Varrick does is golden. Speaking of Varrick, his “Do the thing” catchphrase is used interestingly three times: one time it is a legitimately heartbreaking tearjerker, and the other two are just the sweetest, most heartwarming things you will ever hear. This sounds absurd, but again: this Book is all about making the most implausible things end up pretty good.

There’s so much about this Book that really makes it stand out - from Hiroshi Sato managing to reconcile with his daughter and sacrifice himself to the return of so many characters to just about everyone getting a happy ending… it’s a shame that it all got overshadowed by the most shallow, stupid moment of the entire series. Hell, BOTH series. You know what I’m talking about, you know what it is, it’s the thing that made me want to write this review in the first place:

Asami and Korra end up an official couple.

Now, generally speaking I wouldn’t have a problem with this. I like both characters, I myself am bisexual so it’s nice to see characters represent me in media, and hey, I’ve always championed Dumbledore as a great LGBT character when he was never explicitly shown to be so, so why do I hate this so much? Well, in regards to the latter, here’s the thing: Dumbledore is not the main character of the series, and his homosexuality is foreshadowed. We are not privy to Dumbledore’s private thoughts, we are not even given an in-depth look at his character until he dies in the penultimate book, and romance was never really a focus of the character. In contrast, Korra is in fact the main character of the show and who we follow the most, romance has unfortunately been a major factor in her development since the first Book, and the biggest problem: her being bi for Asami comes right the fuck out of nowhere.

There is like one line earlier in the book where Korra, while wandering, only really wrote to Asami. That’s it. These two barely interact or show any signs of romantic interest in each other until that final moment when they walk into the portal together. It feels like the ultimate ass pull, just a really lame third option to resolve all the love triangle garbage while simultaneously winning brownie points for being such a bold, daring move for a cartoon… but it doesn’t even show them kiss. They stare longingly at each other. THAT’S IT. Contrast Steven Universe, which is wholly and unabashedly filled with LGBT romance, particularly Garnet, who is literally the physical embodiment of a lesbian relationship, or even Adventure Time, who built up PB and Marceline’s past romance before having them get together and even kiss onscreen in the finale of that show. Korra is ultimately nothing`special, and that final moment was not a big step forward for representation or an important moment in TV history. It was a poorly built up shocking swerve that ended a series that had finally risen to the quality of the series it spun off from with the same bullshit that hampered this show’s original seasons to begin with.

Despite this, Book 4 is definitely a good finale to a show that, while it didn’t start out as such, ended up great. Really, the fact the final book was good despite having a lot of stupid elements and bad romantic resolutions is sort of a microcosm of the show as a whole, and showed despite those things the show could still tell an interesting story and be as grand as the original show was.

I don’t think this is one of the greatest cartoons of all time, but as a sort of follow up to the original series, I think it’s pretty solid. It was at its best when it was trying to tell mature stories and deal with darker subject matter than one would expect from a modern cartoon, and fumbled when it tried to shoehorn in the sort of romantic gunk one expects from teenagers. It worked best with its characters when their flaws felt natural and their issues were personal, and its villains worked better when they had simple yet fully fleshed out goals rather than overly complicated backstories or evil for the sake of evil. Korra is most definitely a mixed bag, but it’s a mixed bag I definitely recommend opening up sometime. If you liked the original show or just like story-driven or action oriented shows in general, this is one of the best ones of recent years. You have to slog through some crummy stuff to get to the gems, but boy oh boy are those gems shiny.

Also, I should have mentioned this earlier, but I am just so happy Toph is just a cranky old bad bitch even after all that time. Even while the Avatar world changed so much, it’s nice to know that some things will never change,

#Michael After Midnight #Review #TV show review #legend of korra #The legend of Korra #Korra #avatar #Avatar: the last airbender

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elane-in-the-shadows · 6 years

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Red Queen Fan Fiction - Blood Curse Chapter 27

Find this on wattpad and on AO3

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

chapter 18

chapter 19

chapter 20

chapter 21

chapter 22

chapter 23

chapter 24

chapter 25

chapter 26

chapter 27

chapter 28

chapter 29

Final chapter

Mare POV

After all, the choke still reeks of ash, smoke, and death. Not because I’m caught with others in a trench, nor because we’re marching over it. Actually, we’re even a few kilometers beyond the former battlefield. But these scents have left impressions you can never escape in nights of fighting, no matter how tight I try to close my eyes, mouth, and ears. Because the gasmasks are for solders in zones with real danger of chemical weapons while I’m standing off enough to be safe from the bombs I can’t stop from falling. That’s my task here, to take the Lakelander airjets off the sky before they shoot their missiles, so all explosives going off happen only because I let them.

On my first day in the fights, General Akkadi personally showed me what she wants electricons like me to do. She pointed to the sky and told me to impair the enemy planes flying over the choke. “They don’t have a large air force, and it’s less advanced than Norta’s too,” she said. “That makes them easier targets, and it’s more likely we’ll stop their aerials attacks soon.” Then she lifted her binoculars to the twilight sky and began to warn me off the enemies above us seconds before they became visible, using her Newblood seer ability.

It took me a few tries to find the right timing and reach to hit them, and thus, I was left to wonder what they’d do, who’d suffer because of them. It was a very sobering, very frightening thought. One that continues to keep me going.

Akkadi was patient. Calmly, she reported the next jet, one after another, and every time, I tried harder until the first jet exploded in a flash of fire and purple lightning. Akkadi patted my shoulder and asked me to watch out for the next, and the next, and the next. She told our gunners when they’d make a better hit and reminded me to think of that myself. “You aren’t supposed to be able to take every plane own,” she said.

But we still shouldn’t allow any bombs to fall.

“The seer I’m assigning to you knows this as well, and he’ll point out who’ll be best,” she added.

I startled, and she shook her head. “Unfortunately, we don’t have as many seers, nor electricons, as I’d like, so occasionally, I do this duty as well,” she answered my unasked question. “But most of all,” she looked at me and over to the gunners in my team, “it is your duty, soldiers.”

So, this is what I’ve been doing in most days and nights in the weeks hence.

I came to share Tiberias’s fascination for the different types of planes as to know them helps immensely to decide how to impair them. And often, I feel pride to perform these acts to protect our army and the rest of the country. Yet, the task itself is either tedious or a surge of adrenaline. I, the gunners and the scouts securing the slope of our outpost, are supposed to look out for Lakelander soldiers sneaking in, but honestly, I doubt I’d notice them before the scouts do or our seer, Roman Eagrie, despite his eyes being fixed to the sky. They know what they’re doing.

Tonight, there aren’t much enemies coming for us. It’s always both relieving and unsettling as although I don’t have to kill anyone this way, it might just mean the Lakelanders have found a new tactic to surprise us, or that they’re aware of the Lightning Girl taking down their air force.

Eagrie said the same thing once. “Your lightning is pretty much a sign to them by now, Operative Barrow. So I have hopes you’re all ready for the time they come for us,” he said cynically.

I shrugged. “What else can I do?”

For once, Eagrie turned away from the sky to look at me. “I’ve heard the Lightning Girl is a very skilled opponent in every confrontation,” he said, and grinned. “Since we’re already trusting you with our lives.”

I blushed and told him to focus back on his task and not a minute later, I had a reason to use my lightning again.

Yet, I haven’t forgotten of change of tactics on either side could anytime.

At first, before I arrived, the Nortan and Guard forces drove the Lakelanders back over the border, into the choke, then into their own lands. But the charge stopped there and now, the only difference to last year and the 100 years before is that we’ve finally manged to enter the Lakelander territory with its swampy meadows as our battlefields.

More and more, it feels like a trap, a new strategy on the Lakelanders’ part. As the choke provided no victory, probably was never supposed to, the Lakelander generals could’ve chosen to fight on familiar grounds to defeat the “Nortan” army that became such a compound of different factions. And I dread the snapping of that trap.

The sunrise is preceded by a rainbow of colours, promising a sunny day in May after a cold night. The grey world of the twilight is only partly taking on colours as Tyton approaches our outpost. “You’re half an hour early,” I say to him.

He shrugs. “I’m ready to take over,” he replies, as serious as ever.

Eagrie lights a cigarette and earns himself a scornful glare from Tyton. “But you aren’t off-shift yet,” he reprimands Eagrie.

Eagrie takes a long draw. I turn away. “And why didn’t you wait for my aunt Moira to come with you?” he asks Tyton. Moira Eagrie, his young aunt, is the only other member of his house who came here to support us and a seer assigned to Tyton. “Are you showing off how dutiful you are?” Eagrie adds snidely.

“Well, maybe the Lakelanders intend to exploit the shift change?” replies Tyton.

I swallow and take Tyton’s arm to stop him from worsening the quarrel. I’m about to chastise Eagrie as well when he says, “I’m still paying attention, thank you very much. As I’m supposed to. And with two electricons here now?” He shrugs. “Even assuming the enemy found out about our schedule, it’s unlikely that a plane will escape both of you.” He turns for a second to smirk at me.

Tyton scoffs and concentrates on the sky as well. He’s incredibly tense and focused. I’ve only known him as a no-nonsense person but since Ella died, his demeanour changed from aloof and endearingly annoying to deadly serious.

Moira Eagrie arrives 15 minutes later, running and still fighting her red hair, the gunners in their team in tow. She shares a brief hug with her nephew before I call the shift change finished and allow my unit to leave for our beds. I hesitate to go as well, though. I glance to Tyton. “Till later,” I say to him, offering him a slight smile. He nods, a corner of his mouth twitches.

“Stay alive, Purple,” he says.

I pass the tent of Kilorn and Rafe along my way to the mess. I intend to wake them but they’re already up, sharing a good morning kiss on the green.

“Be careful,” I call to them, “I’m not so sure that General Akkadi approves of couples in a unit.”

Rafe laughs and Kilorn shakes his head, blushing pink. “Mare, don’t you know?” he asks. “Battle couples are the most effective.”

“Hmm,” I groan, then smile again. They’re scheduled to work the “electricon shift” in the evening into the next night, as I’m allowed a little break after 12 hours on the outpost. I’m accordingly tired but I cherish the chances to eat breakfast together with my friends. I could fall asleep over my bread, while still listening to Rafe and Kilorn’s banter.

The mess was rather empty when we came in, as many soldiers were already off to their assignments. Yet, in the last minutes, the hall’s been starting to fill again, in a trickling manner. A commotion gathers around the small screen under the ceiling, so far emitting only white noise. I look at the screen, expecting some more or less interesting news, as usual. But as the picture clears, Tiberias becomes visible.

I stiffen. “Citizens of Archeon and the whole of Norta,” I hear him croak from the speakers. “I, Tiberias Calore, am here to announce my abdication and further refrain … “

I stop listening. I’ve become good at it. Actually, as the conversations in the mess become more excited, it’d demand too much of my attention to understand his words. He said the most important thing, as he promised. Now I can focus on his surroundings, avoid the part of the screen he occupies. I find Farley standing right behind him. She seems smug, unusually amused.

“Today, May 15th 322…” Tiberias continues, and I flinch at the date. When you work in alternating shifts, including the nights, it becomes difficult to keep track of the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’ve forgotten which date it is now, and I’m hit with a slight shock.

Is this why Farley looks so satisfied? May 15th is Clara’s birthday and now, it’s becoming a historical date. Did she even orchestrate this timing? No, I guess she would’ve rather spend the day –

Or she did it for me, replacing what Tiberias and I did one year ago with an entirely new and more important event.

I take one last bite of my bread before I get up. Kilorn looks at me with worry. I shake my head. “I’m too tired for this,” I say, and search my way out and to my own tent.

My tent is empty, as most times. The woman I’m sharing it with, Nadine Scobel, usually has other shifts and duties, so our sleeping times overlap seldom. I fall onto my sleeping bag, only kicking my boots off and loosening my belt. I’m terribly exhausted, yet I try my best to think of other things than Tiberias and the resent he still causes me. And the memory of how different it was one year ago. I don’t want to spend my thoughts on him. But he infiltrates them again and again until I fall asleep.

Much too early, I’m woken by sirens. I’ve hardly readjusted my pants when Nadine opens the tent flap and shouts, “Code R, Mare! Grab a bag and then run!” Wet black hair clings to her brown skin, more wet streaks show on her shirt. I get up to follow her, glad I haven’t fully undressed before. “R” means immediate flight and despite my lack of sleep, I run after Nadine. I’m grateful for the bloody running training I’ve done for a year, so my stamina chases off the fatigue along with the surges of adrenaline. As I follow the other soldiers coming together to be led to a certain direction, I look over my shoulder in an attempt to figure out the cause of the evacuation. I don’t really expect to see anything, trusting our scouts to warn us in time, but my instinct demands it. Indeed, the first thing I notice aren’t bombs in the sky, nor a marching army. I hear a low sound, getting louder and louder until it – literally – floods the camp: The waters, only puddles and creeks the days before, are rising and taking what was our camp in a torrential wave. It breaks only a few dozen meters behind me and already, Lakelander nymphs are surfing on the following waves, chasing us.

“Bloody fucking shit,” I curse under my breath and search for familiar faces. Kilorn, next to Rafe with his green braids, is relievingly easy to find. So are the other members of my team. I look further around as good as I can and notice the slope of our outpost. “Tyton!” I hiss, calculating the slope must now be behind the enemy lines.

Once more I’m glad that at least my brothers are safe from this battlefield. I stop a nymph coming for me with web lightning, then send up three quick flashes in the pattern we chose as a signal. Rafe answers, and closer than I feared, I see Tyton’s white lightning as well.

Oh, good.

Still fighting off the Lakelander Silvers behind us, we’re guided to an off-route where our own nymphs work in concentration. They draw the water away from us and the Lakelanders to create a temporary river that’s soon frozen over by our Newblood and Gliacon shivers.

“Hardly the right shoes for this,” Nadine pants. Inevitably, our escape slows on the ice but the soldiers staying back to fight the enemy protect our backs. “What about them?” I murmur and ponder on turning around, too. Nadine shakes her head, yet I’m already throwing lightning in the opponents’ direction.

I see four go down but suddenly, the ground beneath my feet becomes even more slippery. A Lakelander nymph grins just five meters behind me. The water she bends over our ice road melts the “ground” and while try to outrun the melting, my foot steps into nothing and I fall down.

The puddle I’m in pulls at me and I slide further away, even as Nadine calls. “Run!” I scream, turning slightly to release another lightning. Whether it hits, I can’t see, the water holds me too tight for that. Soon, I can feel it lifting me in the air.

Shit, shit, shit –

If I get closer, I can target the nymph with electricity although she has to know that and thus holds me away from her. But I won’t go down like this, without resistance. I let my whole body pulse and buzz with electricity, sparks fly around. Who comes will get electrocuted, even if it remains a helpless resistance so far.

Consequently, the nymph and her arriving comrades don’t give up either, and what use has lightning if you’re drowning three meters above the ground? My kicking and paddling don’t inhibit my foes and yet, I lurch suddenly as a bright light crosses my sight.

The water falls off me and so do I. I crash and cough and see the nymphs who captured me dead on the sodden earth. Someone rushes to me, and I scramble up, despite my hard landing. Behind me are more Lakelanders who would love to get at me. But in front of me is Tyton, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. “Come!” he shouts, and another bright flash surges from his hand.

“Was that brain lightning?” I wonder as he heaves me back onto the ice road, with Nadine’s help. He winces and nods. “Told you I needed someone to try on.”

And while we run again in the direction of wished-for safety, Premier Davidson finally arrives at the rearguard to wield off our attackers with his shield.

In the end, we electricons and other Newbloods and called again to fight off the Lakelanders to secure our retreat as good as possible. After only two hours of sleep and five hours of running and fighting, I can hardly stand when Arezzo the teleporter finally picks me up to bring me to safety. The battle isn’t over yet, only those at the front are switched, the injured taken away – while leaving the dead.

Once I can allow myself to lie down in the crowded, makeshift and hopefully secure camp on a meadow, I sleep for 16 hours.

When I wake, the camp is eerily quiet and filled with queasiness and whispered rumours. Akkadi and Davidson are back to rouse us, lightening spirits and sending us back to marching.

“General Akkadi had a contingency plan for something like this,” Nadine remarks. “But I guess she didn’t consider the queen of the Lakelands herself setting up this snare.”

“The Lakelander queen?” I ask. The queen who’s said to stay in her capital has something of a mythical being.

Nadine nods. “As if the she wasn’t content with the way the war progresses. Only she’s skilled enough to have done this, gather the waters around our camp so we wouldn’t notice for days, then release it in one torrent.”

“Well shit,” Kilorn says, kicking a stone. “But she failed, right?”

“The retreat was a success;” I say. “I think, she might not try this again, after this result.” Although both parties seem to have suffered equal losses.

“Hmm. Yet General Akkadi had only this one escape route,” Nadine objects.

In the evening, we arrive at a village. It’s mostly empty of people, likely Akkadi sent forces ahead to claim it for us. It makes me uneasy, but what can I say – war has its ugly side. Still, a few inhabitants remain, watching us with resent, suspicion and feigned submissiveness. Most of them avoid us, but of course, both parties have to interact in some ways, as awkward as it is.

At night, I’m back to watch out with Eagrie once more. He’s freer with his cigarettes tonight, considering aerial assault unlikely.

“I still expect you to do your best, Eagrie,” I remind him.

He takes a long draw, careful to exhale the fumes away from me. “I’ve been here before,” he says, “in this village. It has been a border town for the whole time, being taken and re-taken again and again.” He inhales again. “Some villagers would run, but the rest has been staying, no matter what happens. They’re … used to it and defending their home in their own ways.”

“Damn,” I reply. That doesn’t make me feel better. Nor should it. What does home even mean to me? I haven’t seen the stilts in ages, and I don’t really miss it, not in the way I miss my family or those I’ve lost. In the end, I assume, if it wasn’t for the war and bloodshed, I’d like the journeys I’ve done.

I clear my throat. “Eagrie? Don’t dissemble and watch keep.”

He scoffs, and both of us turn our eyes to the night sky.

The next morning, we walk into the village tavern for an uncomfortable breakfast. The glances of the locals continue to feel sinister but Davison decided to make use of the tavern kitchen to cook and distribute our food reserves. At least we have those, and don’t have to rely on foraging so far. Yet I want to take my meal and leave the building as soon as possible.

But Eagrie stops at the threshold and stares while I can’t get past him. “Gracious queen, how come you’re here…!” he utters and walks to another man in the room. He wears a Scarlet Guard captain uniform and seems vaguely familiar. A hooded person sits next to him and looks down.

Eagrie hugs the captain enthusiastically. I’m not surprised, he rejoiced on an equal scale when he met his cousin Lacey Ventos again after a long separation.

I shake my head and am about to say goodbye when the hooded person turns their – her – head. It’s another familiar profile and as I walk the village streets to find Kilorn, my mind works on making a connection. Only when I can already see him in the distance, I realize and gasp, stunned by the presence of the missing princess, the ex-queen Iris Cygnet, inside a secret Scarlet Guard camp.

@clarafarleybarrow @mareshmallow @redqueenfandom @inopinion @lilyharvord @runexandra @wrenskonos @hannaharies @samanthaslytherin @marecalrandomstuff @kihlorn @redqueenforever @mareenattitanos @selenbean-beany

#red queen #red queen fanfiction #war storm #war storm fan fiction #mare barrow #kilorn warren #tyton the electricon #rafe the electricon #original character #roman eagrie #blood curse #blood curse ch 27

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