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ros64 · 10 days ago

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OK, here's the excerpt I mentioned yesterday. (For those who may not have read GO TELL THE BEES or don't remember, "Wounded Lady" is the name of a blue spring, high in the mountain above the Frasers' New House. We left everyone at the wedding festivities for Bobby Higgins and Silvia Hardman at the end of BEES, and this is the morning after.

[Spoiler Alert - well, frankly, any excerpts you read from this book will contain spoilers, but there are always a few people who don't realize that and become disgruntled (isn't that a neat word? <g>) - anyway, at the end of GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, William arrives suddenly at Fraser's Ridge, and tells Jamie, "Sir, I need your help." Indeed he does...]

Jamie made it as far as Wounded Lady, where he called to the dog and sat down on the big stone, more abruptly than he’d intended.

“_A Màthair Dhè_.” He sat still and breathed for a bit, his knee throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He’d escaped the house before Claire discovered that he was walking about unencumbered by splints or bandages—and without a stick, forbye. He should have brought a stick, and wished he had, but he’d been feeling feisty, impatient with infirmity.

“Aye, well, I admit it’s no as bad as bein’ crucified,” he said apologetically, addressing the Mother of God whom he’d just invoked. “Besides, it’ll be horseback for the most part, it’ll be fine,” he muttered unconvincingly to himself, and grasping the paper-white trunk of the big aspen, hauled himself to his feet, whistled to the dog, clenched his teeth, and set off up the mountain, wondering why the devil he hadn’t given Young Ian land closer to the Big House.

Occupied with the pain in his knee, he hadn’t been looking out for the lad, and was surprised to come in hail of the cabin and find Rachel alone. She _had_ been looking out for Young Ian, and for some time; that much was clear from the anxious look of her, which increased when she saw Jamie and Skennen.

“Down, beast,” she said to the puppy, who paid no attention. “Has thee met Ian on the trail?” she asked.

Jamie shook his head, slightly disquieted.

“I didna see hide nor hair of him, anywhere between New House and here, lass. Nor yet the lads,” he added, forestalling her next question. “_Sàmhchair, a cù_,” he added to Skennen, who considered whether to heed this command for half a second, and then subsided meekly, lying down at Rachel’s feet.

“Why does he not do that when I tell him to?” she demanded of Jamie. “I speak to him in what I am sure is the Gaelic, and he merely laughs at me.” Skennen widened his doggy grin, tongue lolling out as though in appreciation of the joke.

“He doesna think ye mean it,” Jamie said, giving the dog a firm look. “And he kens I do. Don’t ye, _a cù_? ” He toed the dog gently in the ribs, whereupon Skennen rolled onto his back, barked and pawed the air, tail madly wagging.

Rachel cleared her throat.

“Will thee have some buttermilk, Jamie? Or perhaps some garlic pickles?”

He was beginning to be hungry from the climb, but declined the kind offer in favor of a cup of cold water, and likewise declined Rachel’s offer of her rocking chair, lowering himself carefully onto the edge of the porch.

“Sit, lass,” he said, noticing the rush basket. “I’ll finish the peas for ye.”

She laughed, sat down, and pushed the yellow bowl toward him with her bare foot.

“How does one say, ‘like father, like son’ in the Gaelic?”

“Ye don’t, usually, but ye might say, “_coltach ri dà phòna ann am pod_”. ‘Like as twa peas in a pod.’ Have ye seen William, then?” He didn’t look up at her, but pressed the seam of the pod with his thumbnail, and scooped the peas out with a practiced flick.

“I have. He told me something of his situation—and that of...John Grey...” He caught the momentary hesitation in her voice and looked at her sharply. She raised one dark brow. “I suppose thee has come to tell me more?”

Jamie told her. Everything, after a moment’s hesitation. Rachel was well aware of William’s paternity already, and as the rest of the Ridge would shortly be similarly informed, there was nothing to hide. As to the shape of Lord John Grey’s personal circumstances…

“D’ye ken that his lordship is—” he began hesitantly.

“What is commonly known as a sodomite?” she interrupted. She’d brought out a stool and sat down upon it, by him. “Yes, or at least I supposed so. Denny told me he thought it was the case.”

“And how would your brother ken a thing like that?” Jamie asked, surprised. Granted, Denzell Hunter was a physician, but…

Rachel lifted a shoulder.

“For a time when we lived in Philadelphia, Denny had a…it sounds quite wrong to call it a friendship, because it was…well, it wasn’t.” She smiled at him. “He had an acquaintance, though, who was in the habit of visiting a nearby molly house; I imagine thee knows what that is? Of course thee does. Well, on one such occasion, the man was involved in a fight and was seriously injured—he was drunk, and lost his balance while attempting to strike another man, and fell face-first into a marble mantelpiece, breaking his nose, three toes—he’d attempted to kick his opponent, but missed and kicked a rather solid oak table, which accident is what propelled him toward the mantelpiece—and his left arm, which was broken and also rather singed and blistered, as there happened to be a fire going when he knocked himself insensible on the mantelpiece and fell into the hearth.”

“Oh. Aye?”

“Aye, indeed,” she assured him. “His…I suppose you would call them friends?”

“Aye, well, common interests…” Jamie muttered. His face felt warm.

“Indeed. His friends, then, sent for Denny, who came and re-assembled his acquaintance’s nose, set his arm and taped his toes. This so impressed all the onlookers—which included the house’s proprietor—that Denny became the _de facto_ physician for them all.”

Jamie was—against his will—fascinated.

“Did…you…?” He began, then broke off.

“I never accompanied Denny to the house,” she assured him. “But a number of the…patrons?...would call upon us, in time of need. I have met several slightly damaged sodomites. They are, on the whole, much like other men.”

“Aside from—”

“Well, yes. Hence, I gather, the danger to his lordship. I take it thee means that the man holding him is not merely physically restraining him, but also threatens his…”

“His life,” Jamie finished. His voice was gruff and he cleared his throat. “In all respects.”

She nodded, her face troubled.

“What will thee do?”

Jamie sat up and stretched his back, cautiously straightening his legs as he did so.

“Aye, that’s the question we’ve been wrestling wi’, as soon as we heard what William had to say. The first thing, o’course, is to find John Grey and get him free.”

“I fear that getting him free may be the easier part.”

“So do I, lass.”

His knee had stopped feeling as though it was being repeatedly stabbed with a pen-knife, but it was still throbbing, in time with his heartbeat. He didn’t touch it, but gave it a surreptitious glance, along with its fellow. The bad one had turned a sort of purplish-red, like a ripe plum None so bad.

“We’ve the two things, to start with,” he said. “Shipping ports and a man named Denys Randall.”

Rachel’s dark brows lifted.

“I—we, that is—know a man named Denys Randall,” she said. “Does thee think there could be two of them?”

“I don’t, ” Jamie said, startled. “but just to be sure—is the one you and Denny ken a soldier? And is he known sometimes as Denys Randall-Isaacs?"

She stared at him for a moment, her hand resting gently on her belly.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “and yes. He is and he is.”

She might have said more, but a shout from the path brought her at once to her feet.

“_Mama! Mama!_”

Jamie stood up at once, gesturing her back.

“Sit, lass, I’ll see to it.”

She gave him a quick glance and a raised brow that suggested he surely knew better.

“That’s Totis,” she said, her foot already on the top step. “Something’s wrong.

[Spoiler Alert - beh, francamente, ogni estratto di questo libro conterrà spoiler, ma ci sono sempre alcune persone che non se ne rendono conto e si lamentano (non è una parola interessante? ) - comunque, alla fine di GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, William arriva improvvisamente a Fraser’s Ridge e dice a Jamie: “Signore, ho bisogno del suo aiuto.” E in effetti ne ha bisogno…]

Jamie arrivò fino a Wounded Lady, dove chiamò il cane e si sedette sulla grande pietra, più bruscamente di quanto avesse inteso.

“A Màthair Dhè.” Rimase seduto immobile e respirò un po’, il ginocchio che pulsava al ritmo del suo battito cardiaco. Era uscito di casa prima che Claire si accorgesse che stava camminando senza stecche, fasciature o anche solo un bastone. Avrebbe dovuto portare un bastone, e avrebbe voluto averlo, ma si sentiva combattivo, impaziente di guarire.

“Beh, ammetto che non è grave come essere crocifisso,” disse con tono di scusa, rivolgendosi alla Madre di Dio che aveva appena invocato. “E poi, starò a cavallo per la maggior parte del tempo, andrà bene,” borbottò poco convinto tra sé, e afferrando il tronco bianco dell’aspen, si tirò in piedi, fischiò al cane, serrò i denti e si avviò su per la montagna, chiedendosi perché mai non avesse dato a Young Ian un appezzamento di terra più vicino alla Casa Grande.

Concentrato sul dolore al ginocchio, non aveva notato il ragazzo, e rimase sorpreso di arrivare in vista della capanna e trovare Rachel da sola. Lei stava aspettando da un po’ l’arrivo di Ian; era chiaro dall’espressione preoccupata che si fece più intensa quando vide Jamie e Skennen.

“Giù, bestia,” disse al cucciolo, che non le diede ascolto. “Hai incontrato Ian lungo il sentiero?” gli chiese.

Jamie scosse la testa, leggermente inquieto.

“Non l’ho visto, né lui né i ragazzi, tra la casa nuova e qui, ragazza.” Fece una pausa per anticipare la sua prossima domanda. “Sàmhchair, a cù,” aggiunse rivolto a Skennen, che valutò per un istante se obbedire, poi si sdraiò docilmente ai piedi di Rachel.

“Perché non fa lo stesso con me quando glielo dico?” chiese a Jamie. “Gli parlo in quella che sono sicura sia la lingua gaelica, e lui ride di me.”

Skennen allargò il suo sorriso da cane, la lingua che sporgeva come per apprezzare la battuta.

“Non pensa che tu faccia sul serio,” rispose Jamie, dando al cane uno sguardo fermo. “E sa che io lo faccio. Vero, a cù?” Lo toccò delicatamente con il piede nei fianchi, e Skennen si rotolò sulla schiena, abbaiando e scalciando l’aria con entusiasmo, la coda che batteva furiosamente.

Rachel schiarì la voce.

“Vuoi un po’ di latticello, Jamie? O forse dei cetrioli sottaceto?”

Jamie rifiutò gentilmente, preferendo un bicchiere d’acqua fresca, e declinò anche l’offerta della sedia a dondolo, sedendosi invece con cautela sul bordo del portico.

“Sediti, ragazza,” disse, notando il cesto di vimini. “Finirò io i piselli per te.”

Rachel rise, si sedette e spinse la ciotola gialla verso di lui con il piede nudo.

“Come si dice ‘tale padre, tale figlio’ in gaelico?”

“Non lo si dice spesso, ma potresti dire coltach ri dà phòna ann am pod, ‘simili a due piselli in un baccello.’ Hai visto William, allora?” Non la guardò, ma premette la cucitura del baccello con l’unghia del pollice, facendo uscire i piselli con un movimento abile.

“L’ho visto. Mi ha raccontato qualcosa della sua situazione—e di quella di…John Grey…” Colse l’esitazione momentanea nella sua voce e la guardò con attenzione. Lei sollevò un sopracciglio scuro. “Suppongo che tu sia venuto a dirmi di più?”

Jamie le raccontò tutto. Dopo un momento di esitazione. Rachel era già consapevole della paternità di William, e dato che presto tutto il resto di Fraser’s Ridge lo avrebbe saputo, non c’era nulla da nascondere. Quanto alla situazione personale di Lord John Grey…

“Sai che sua signoria è—” iniziò esitante.

“Quello che comunemente si definisce un sodomita?” lo interruppe. Aveva tirato fuori uno sgabello e vi si era seduta accanto a lui. “Sì, o almeno lo supponevo. Denny mi aveva detto che lo pensava.”

“E come farebbe tuo fratello a sapere una cosa del genere?” chiese Jamie, sorpreso. Certo, Denzell Hunter era un medico, ma…

Rachel sollevò una spalla.

“Per un periodo, quando vivevamo a Filadelfia, Denny aveva una…sembra sbagliato chiamarla un’amicizia, perché era…beh, non lo era.” Gli sorrise. “Aveva una conoscenza, però, che era solita frequentare una casa di molly; immagino che tu sappia cos’è? Certo che lo sai. Beh, in una di queste occasioni, l’uomo fu coinvolto in una rissa e rimase gravemente ferito—era ubriaco e perse l’equilibrio mentre tentava di colpire un altro uomo, cadendo con la faccia contro un camino di marmo, rompendosi il naso, tre dita dei piedi—aveva cercato di scalciare il suo avversario, ma aveva mancato il bersaglio e colpito un robusto tavolo di quercia, e quell’incidente lo aveva spinto verso il camino—e il braccio sinistro, che si era rotto ed era anche piuttosto bruciato e pieno di vesciche, dato che c’era un fuoco acceso quando perse i sensi e cadde nel focolare.”

“Oh. Aye?”

“Aye, davvero,” gli assicurò. “I suoi…suppongo li chiameresti amici?”

“Beh, interessi comuni…” Jamie mormorò. Sentiva il viso caldo.

“Esattamente. I suoi amici, dunque, mandarono a chiamare Denny, che venne e gli rimise a posto il naso, gli sistemò il braccio e gli fasciò le dita dei piedi. Questo impressionò così tanto tutti i presenti—incluso il proprietario della casa—che Denny divenne il medico de facto per tutti loro.”

Jamie era—suo malgrado—affascinato.

“E…tu…?” Cominciò, poi si fermò.

“Non ho mai accompagnato Denny nella casa,” lo rassicurò. “Ma diversi…clienti?…venivano da noi, in caso di bisogno. Ho conosciuto diversi sodomiti leggermente danneggiati. Sono, nel complesso, molto simili agli altri uomini.”

“A parte—”

“Beh, sì. Da qui, immagino, il pericolo per sua signoria. Suppongo che tu intenda dire che l’uomo che lo tiene prigioniero non si limita a trattenerlo fisicamente, ma minaccia anche…”

“La sua vita,” completò Jamie. La sua voce era roca e si schiarì la gola. “In ogni senso.”

Lei annuì, con il viso turbato.

“Che cosa pensi di fare?”

Jamie si raddrizzò e si stirò la schiena, raddrizzando cautamente le gambe.

“Già, è questa la domanda con cui ci stiamo battendo da quando abbiamo sentito quello che William aveva da dire. La prima cosa, ovviamente, è trovare John Grey e liberarlo.”

“Temo che liberarlo possa essere la parte più semplice.”

“Anche io, ragazza.”

Il ginocchio aveva smesso di sembrargli pugnalato ripetutamente con un coltellino, ma pulsava ancora, seguendo il ritmo del suo battito cardiaco. Non lo toccò, ma gli diede uno sguardo furtivo, insieme all’altro ginocchio. Quello malandato era diventato una sorta di rosso violaceo, come una prugna matura. Niente di grave.

“Abbiamo due cose, per cominciare,” disse. “I porti di mare e un uomo chiamato Denys Randall.”

Le sopracciglia scure di Rachel si alzarono.

“Io—noi, cioè—conosciamo un uomo chiamato Denys Randall,” disse. “Pensi che possano essercene due?”

“Non lo penso,” rispose Jamie, sorpreso. “Ma, giusto per essere sicuri—quello che conosci tu e Denny è un soldato? Ed è noto a volte come Denys Randall-Isaacs?”

Lo fissò per un momento, con una mano posata delicatamente sul ventre.

“Sì,” disse lentamente, “e sì. È lui.”

Avrebbe forse detto di più, ma un grido proveniente dal sentiero la fece alzare in piedi di scatto.

“Mama! Mama!”

Jamie si alzò immediatamente, facendole cenno di fermarsi.

“Resta seduta, ragazza, ci penso io.”

Lei gli lanciò uno sguardo rapido e un sopracciglio alzato che suggerivano che lui sicuramente sapeva meglio.

“È Totis,” disse, già con un piede sul gradino più alto. “Qualcosa non va.”

#sam heughan #outlander #jamie fraser #outlanderedit #diana gabaldon #official #outlander books #outlander starz #outlander series #outlanderseason8 #Spotify

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captainsophiestark · 1 year ago

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Each Others' Constants

Annabeth Chase x Platonic!Reader

Gif is originally from this really cool Happy Birthday Annabeth post! Go check it out and give the creator some love!

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2022! Requested by Anon :)

Fandom: Percy Jackson

Prompt: “I’m not alone and neither are you”

Summary: Y/N first came to Camp with Annabeth, Thalia, Luke, and Grover. Their lives have all taken very different, winding paths, with many ups and downs, and after the betrayal of Luke, Y/N’s first boyfriend, they decided to go far, far away from Camp Half-Blood for college. They come back regularly, but when they return for the winter break of their senior year, after the Battle of New York, they realize they might need to make a point of coming home a little more often.

Word Count: 2,464

Category: Angst, Fluff

A/N: Major spoilers for Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, if you haven’t read it, and spoilers for the beginning of HoO! If you haven’t read either, check them out, they’re great!

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I came to a stop at the top of Half-Blood Hill and put my hands on my hips as I looked down into the valley below, a smile on my face. I looked over my shoulder to find the cab driver still staring at me, a curious look on his face, so I gave him a cheery wave. He scowled back at me and then drove off, like a typical New Yorker.

I’d missed it here.

Camp Half-Blood had been like a home to me for years. I’d first arrived eight years ago with a group of other Half-Bloods and our Satyr, and over that time, a lot had changed.

Thalia, one of my best friends, had died and come back to life. Grover, my other best friend, became a member of the Council of Cloven Elders. Luke, my former friend and first boyfriend, had turned traitor only to give his life defeating Kronos. And Annabeth, my baby sister in everything but blood, had grown up into an incredible, beautiful, strong young woman.

I couldn’t have been more proud of her.

As for me, I’d left Camp Half-Blood just before Luke had turned traitor, about four years ago now. Instead of staying around the Camp I’d basically grown up in, I’d left for college, deciding to go abroad and see the world after so many years in the same place, happy but afraid of the outside world. I’d come back last summer, to help fight the Battle of New York, only to leave again once the dust had settled for my senior year of college.

Now, I’d just gotten back for winter break. Camp Half-Blood had been my only family for a while now, so of course, I’d come back to spend it with them. Our normal protective bubble had let just the lightest dusting of snow in, and in the wake of the changes Percy, Annabeth’s boyfriend, had called for after the Battle of New York, the Camp was livelier than I’d ever seen it in the middle of the winter.

I took one last beat to survey the scene in front of me, then started heading down the snow-covered hill to say hello to everyone. They’d known I was coming back for the holidays, but so far, no one had noticed my arrival.

As I got closer and closer to the Big House and the familiar (but newly expanded) ring of cabins, I started to get a little worried about why that might be. I could feel a tension in the air that had only ever meant something bad in my experience here, and as I got closer the tone of voices coming from the people rushing about sounded more urgent than excited.

“Hey!” I called, stopping the first camper I came across. I didn’t recognize her, which felt a little strange, since I used to know everyone at Camp, especially those who stayed over the winter holidays. I pushed the thought out of my mind however as I noticed her worriedly looking behind her, like she had somewhere to be. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know…” she started, giving me a bit of a suspicious look. I stared right back, and after a second, she apparently decided I probably wouldn’t have been able to get into Camp if I’d been a threat. “I woke up and everyone was freaking out about something. One of my friends said they heard somebody’s missing, but I don’t know who.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. We’d just survived a war. We did NOT need some new danger, especially not so soon.

“Where’s Annabeth?” I demanded. “Or Grover, or Chiron?”

“I don’t know… you could always check the Athena Cabin?”

I grit my teeth, incredibly frustrated but trying not to take it out on some kid who’d done her best.

“Alright, thanks,” I said, then took off without another word. If Annabeth had gone missing, especially while I’d been away, traveling the world instead of here, with her…

“Y/N!”

I turned around at the sound of my name to see Malcolm Pace, one of the Athena kids around the same age as Annabeth, speedwalking towards me. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or more concerned.

“Malcolm! What’s happening? I found a camper who said someone was missing-”

“Percy. Percy went missing sometime last night.”

I put a hand to my forehead, trying to process the news. My gut reaction was incredible relief that it wasn’t Annabeth, but that quickly faded back into a horrible, sick feeling. I loved Percy like a little brother too, and he and Annabeth had finally gotten to their happy ending. This was not good, in any way.

“Annabeth’s in the Athena Cabin,” he said, taking a step towards me and Cabin 6. “I think you should probably come see her.”

I nodded, dropping my hand from my forehead and letting the urgency of the situation clear my mind. I could sort through the worry and fear later. Right now, there were things that needed doing.

First and foremost, checking on Annabeth.

I marched through Camp with Malcolm, laser-focused on my goal. I passed a few other campers I knew and we exchanged curt nods, but neither of us tried to stop and chat. We all knew there were more important things going on now. Hopefully, we’d have the time for small talk later.

We reached the Athena Cabin, and I found a few younger, worried-looking campers hovering outside. I headed for the door and Malcolm made to follow me, but I paused and put a hand up.

“Malc, I think it might be a good idea if I go in and talk to her alone, for a second,” I said. Malcolm nodded and took a step back.

“Of course,” he said, then turned to the campers still hovering around the door. “C'mon guys, let’s go check in with Chiron and see if there’s something productive we can do to help.”

I nodded my thanks to him as he rounded up the stragglers and got them to leave, then turned back to the door. I took a deep breath, then opened it and stepped inside.

I found Annabeth in the middle of the room, papers and notes spread out all around her. She wore one of Percy’s favorite hoodies, and my heart broke a little at the sight.

“Annabeth?” I said, my voice quiet as I slowly approached her. She whirled around as soon as she saw me, and even though I’d seen her just a few months ago, I couldn’t help being struck with the realization of just how grown up she was now. It felt like yesterday she was a little seven year old wielding a ball peen hammer, ready to brain Luke, Thalia, and I when we’d first found her. Now, she was a junior in high school and almost as tall as me.

And she looked absolutely heartbroken.

“Y/N,” she breathed, staring through me as much as she was staring at me. Her blonde hair was a mess in its pony tail, and she had mascara smeared around her eyes like she’d been rubbing at them. I took a few more steps across the room, and she didn’t move an inch the whole time. Finally, I got close enough to pull her into a hug. As soon as I wrapped my arms around her, she collapsed into me, and I could feel her sobbing even though the tears were silent.

“Oh, Beth…” I breathed as I held her tighter. I wanted to take the pain away, but I knew from plenty of experience that there was nothing I could do except be there for her.

We stayed like that for a few long minutes, not speaking, and I could tell this was an emotion dump that Annabeth had been fighting off for a long, long time. Finally, though, she shifted a little bit, resting her head on my shoulder as the tears slowly calmed.

“We were supposed to be done with this,” she finally muttered. I rubbed calm, slow circles on her back as she continued. “When we beat Kronos in New York, it was supposed to be over. Some terrible prophecy from Rachel for the next generation of demigods. Not us.”

“It’s not fair,” I echoed, squeezing her as tight as I could. “It’s total bullshit that after everything you’ve been through, you have to deal with something else, Annabeth.”

She took a few more shaky breaths, but didn’t pull away from me. She breathed in like she was getting ready to say something, but then paused. I stayed silent, waiting, letting her take her time. Finally she breathed, barely above a whisper, “I’m just sick of feeling so alone. With Percy, I finally stopped being alone.”

My heart shattered in my chest, and I had to fight back a few tears of my own at her words. I could deal with my own emotions later, but right now, Annabeth needed me.

“Why did you feel alone before Percy?” I asked, being careful to keep any kind of judgment or opinion out of my tone. She shuddered, and I held her closer, trying to give her all the love and support I could without saying words. She didn’t pull away to look at me as she responded, her words half-mumbled like thoughts she was still working through.

“When I was a kid, we had such a clear, close group, you know?” she started. “It was you, me, Luke, Thals, and Grover against the world. And then… and then Thalia died. And Grover started working on other assignments and his own quests and goals. And… and you and Luke… got together, and you always included me, but… it wasn’t the same. And after Luke’s quest, he started getting more distant anyway, and then you left for school and Luke turned on all of us, and I’ve made other friends here, but… for most of my life, I’ve had to rely on myself. Take care of myself, be enough for myself. And I am enough for myself. But with Percy… it finally felt like I had a partner to go through everything with. And now, after we survived a war together, he’s gone. And I’m alone again.”

I waited as Annabeth finished her statement, gathering my thoughts and just in case she had something else to say. When she didn’t continue, I held her a little tighter, then spoke.

“Annabeth… I’ve felt that. A while ago and even this past semester away from Camp. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but… I remember when Luke started pulling away, after his failed quest. He was my partner in things, we told each other everything. But after that, he stopped talking to me. A little wall went up, and no matter what I did to try to tear it down, it was always there. It only got worse as time went on, and then as you know, we both basically lost him for good when he joined Kronos.”

Annabeth took a shaky breath, and I held her a little tighter, as much for my own comfort as hers. I’d worked through a lot of the trauma that had come from everything to do with Luke for the past few years, but not all of it. Still, I shook it off as well as I could and continued.

“Even in college, it’s been the same thing,” I said. “I’ve gone to all kinds of new places and met so many interesting people, but there’s a big part of who I am that I just… can’t share with them. I’m independent, and I’m glad I’m independent, but… I understand feeling like you’re not really connecting with anyone as deeply as you want to. And it sucks.

"But you will always have me, Annabeth. Just like I’ll always have you. And we will find Percy, and then you’ll have him too. No matter how much it feels like it sometimes Annabeth, I’m not alone and neither are you.”

Now it was Annabeth’s turn to squeeze me tight, so hard it almost hurt. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. After a few long moments, where plenty of things passed between us even without speaking, we finally pulled apart enough to look at each other. Annabeth still didn’t look happy, but she seemed more determined and settled in herself. That shattered look I’d seen when I’d first come through the door was gone.

“Thank you, Y/N,” she said. I gave her a light squeeze.

“Always. And hey, I promise I’m going to make more of a point of staying in touch while I’m gone, alright? This semester especially, I think I was running from… well, almost everything associated with Camp Half-Blood and all the history and pain that comes with it. But I don’t ever want to run from you. So letters, more frequent visits, an illegal cellphone, whatever. Whatever it takes to stay more in touch, yeah?”

Annabeth nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Now let’s see what your notes are looking like on the Percy situation, huh? We’ve got a son of Poseidon to track down.”

Annabeth nodded and we finally broke completely apart as she turned to start taking me through all the notes, clues, and evidence she’d gathered so far. I stood by her side as she walked me through it all, and whenever it looked like she might be overwhelmed again, I put a hand on her shoulder and did what I could to keep her calm.

Annabeth deserved nothing but happiness, especially after everything she’d already been through. But if problems and trouble were going to keep popping up and getting in her way, then I was going to be right by her side, through all of it. No matter what.

We’d find Percy, and Annabeth would get her partner back. But I made a vow as we stood in that room, pouring over information and trying to reason out where Percy might be, that I was never disappearing on my little sister again. No matter what directions our lives took us in, or how separate our paths became, I would always be there for her. We’d been the only real constants in each others’ lives for about a decade now, and we were going to stay that way for many more decades to come.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989

Percy Jackson Taglist: @valkyriepirate

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blueikeproductions · 1 year ago

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The EarthSpark Expedition game came out, and since no one is really talking about it, I’ll toss around my two cents. Spoilers naturally.

So first things first, the game’s placement in the story. I think most of us were going to write it off as an adventure in a micro-continuity that didn’t fit with the show. Well that is thrown out the window. The game takes place after S1, with a small recap in the form of a charming RP game by the kids and Terrans.

The story feels like an epilogue, documenting the aftermath of what happened to Mandroid after his Doomsday Project went kaput. Well, he seemingly survived, though we don’t see him in person until the end of the game, and he’s giving the Doomsday Project another crack with the Energon Activator. This time he requires three relics to power the contraption, so naturally Bee is sent on a mission by Optimus to collect them, with Alex as Bee’s wingman.

The twist however is Mandroid has upgraded his mind control chips, having reprogrammed Skullcruncher, Skywarp, Nova Storm and Grimlock again, but also Optimus Prime, meaning Mandroid was playing 4D Chess to get Bee to essentially do his dirty work for him. It is kind of interesting Manny had to reprogram the jets since they willingly served him before, but then again after trying to obliterate (TERMINATE!) all Cybertronic life it makes sense the femjets wouldn’t want to anymore lol. Poor Grim can’t catch a break, but this time he seems to shrug off the experience, mostly calling it unpleasant. To my surprise, Skullcruncher can talk here. I wonder why he’s largely mute in the show (besides what I assume is budget).

Optimus being mind controlled is interesting. I know EarthSpark sorta dabbled previously, but it’s been fairly rare for Prime to be “charged with Evil” ala Attack of the Autobots. The Last Knight did it too, but well we all know how that went down financially. The point being after years of Prime being sort of rigid and untouchable, in what feels like heavy mandates from Hasbro, it’s refreshing to see some experimental stuff with Optimus again. EarthSpark’s strength with Optimus was returning to the well meaning, dorky sweater vest father figure from G1, and going farther with a AotAutobots/Dark Awakening vibe with Expedition is especially fun. Especially since it was a big defining moment for Bumblebee and Rodimus, so it’s fun to see it homaged here.

I also like the designs of the various henchbots Bee fights in the game. They appear to be generic Transformers, but I forget what their context was in game, but could we get toys of them, Hasbro.

As for Mandroid, when he finally appears in person, the truth is revealed. The Mandroid we’ve been following is an AI backup of his personality made before Doomsday MK1. The original officially died. His current body is a giant misshapen Arachnimech with tv screens bolted to its body to show off his original human face. Inevitably, Mandroid looses and finishing him off, Bumblebee blows a hole in his body with a MegaMan style charged shot. Hashtag says Mandroid likely can’t revive again as the ruins of GHOST HQ, now overgrown with plant life curiously and looking like ancient ruins in a shot amount of time, has really cruddy Wi-Fi, so the AI couldn’t escape into another body. Bee nevertheless seems determined in case Manny DOES return, implying we COULD see him again in S2 in some capacity. That being said, the vibe I get also feels like Bertram from Family Guy. How he died in show following a botched attempt at killing Stewie via time manipulation, only to return in a Family Guy video game as the main villain picking up where he left off, only to die again with a nonchalant joke about how we’ll never see Bertram again after this. So 50/50 at Mandroid’s return methinks. For all we know, as of typing, the villains of S2 are COBRA as part of Energon Universe synergy.

Still the story was fun. Definitely very Furman, and kinda nostalgic as a result. The Terrans are all perfectly in character of course. The only thing kinda holding it back is the voice acting, as none of the actors from the show are reprising their roles. Though the actor who played Bee in Netflix WFC reprised the role here, and he’s definitely one of the better actors, when otherwise the acting is a little… subpar. Way better than WFC and Prime Wars, but having that amateurish feeling from Cyberverse… They give it their all though and they still feel like their characters so that’s good.

As said it feels like an epilogue, though while fun to see Mandroid back at it, it DOES feel a tad repetitive using the same Doomsday weapon but slightly different, and using mostly the same Transformers being “Robo-Smashed”. I feel like you could’ve gotten some cool gameplay using Shockwave, Soundwave (& the Cassettes), Bombshell, Starscream and Hardtop. Personally I’d have liked including some new Transformers, like how the TFP game was built around the Decepticons rebuilding the Unicronian Thunderwing, with him as the final boss. Something like that maybe, only Mandroid has unearthed a Combiner, a friend recommended the Masterforce versions of the Seacons, with the final boss being a Mandroid controlled King Poseidon. Ah well maybe for the sequel then.

#blueike productions #blueike #transformers #autobots #decepticons #terrans #earthspark #transformers earthspark

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rosehipandroots · 5 months ago

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OaG???? 👀👀 also...... OVER ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND WORDS???????? ROSE????? ROSE?????

OaG.... my love & my nemesis XD obsidian and gold! that's my hardest wip right now. i'm not used to incorporating plot into my stories lmaoo even tho i have shit planned out i need to work on balancing my character stuff while Things are actually happening. also it'd be nice if legend could stop being so damn complicated i think. honestly bee teach me!! cursebreaker is like my muse you do that so well <3 ( i will finish it. i will)

yeahhh uh XD i've been writing in that doc since last january! i have so many wips in there ugh i need to pan through it and find what's actually good lol (...operation: make lawn eat her bedframe...). i Will eventually write something on sky bc i've started so many times & he is my baby

thanks for the ask, bee!!

clip of next obsidian and gold chapter under the cut! small for minimal spoilers :P

“Don’t act like you didn’t do anything,” Wind scoffs. The shadows of the trees alongside them elongate his face strangely, eyes big and unblinking as he looks up at Twilight. “You were going to kill him, weren’t you? I’ve never liked him anyway. He always yells at me like he’s just so much better than me— but we’re all in the same fucking boat, just because of the stupid fairy boy, aren’t we?” The wind picks up behind Twilight, scattering dried leaves around his feet. It sounds altogether too much like the scraping of bone. “Excuse me?” Twilight breathes.

#lu fanfiction #linked universe fanfic #linked universe #lu twilight #lu wind #obsidian and gold #brilliant bee #rosehip answers #rosewrites

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rwbyfan1999 · 1 year ago

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Justice league X RWBY pt 2 thoughts

I know I’m late to the party but I’ve finally got around to watching the second JL X RWBY movie and man did I love it, I loved it so much that after watching it I watched them both back to back and I’m not gonna do a review this time I’m just gonna give you my impressions on what part 2 brought to the table.

There will be spoilers so you’ve been warned in case you didn’t see it.

So time on remnant work’s differently then earth 3 days on earth equals 3 weeks on remnant so the time gap on remnant makes sense especially to get some V8 and V9 stuff thrown in

Great to see Black Canary thrown in I just wish Green Arrow would have appeared he’s mentioned but I would’ve loved seeing these married dorks together again

It was awesome to get a taste of Vacuo even if it’s super brief

Ruby is confident again which is awesome but she was also being insanely reckless while Yang’s protective instincts are not making her fully trusting of her leadership, given everything that happened in the ever after it makes sense for Yang’s character

Dc villains helping the league against a common enemy is pretty awesome

Man I feel sad for Weiss losing Atlas in this movie

Cute seeing Jessica ask about Jaune really wish JNR could’ve gone to earth

Man team RWBY’s super hero costumes look awesome, still weird seeing Blake without her cat ears but i quickly got used to it

Weiss not having powers is interesting and makes her little arc with Batman interesting sense now the roles are reversed

So Watts helped Kilg%re super surprised to see that

Blake gets 5 points for the reference to Dr Merlot and giving us some Grimm Eclipse representation (still love that game)

Love Ruby and Clark’s talk in the training room telling her that it’s ok to honor your family just don’t be in a rush to join them

Weiss and Bruce will alway’s be fun to watch and he helps Weiss realize where her true home was by the end, in his own way of course

Flash’s PTSD from being controlled by Kilg%re in part 1 plays a big part in this movie and Yang steps in to tell him her struggles, without directly talking about Adam or Raven, just to tell him to not let kilg%re consume his thoughts

The idea of the league using the digital world against Kilg%re and Watts was an interesting twist

Ruby and Yangs heart to heart moment is sweet, Ruby just telling Yang that she can’t protect her from everything and that she’s not gonna leave her

Having the end be at the Schnee manor felt full circle for both Weiss’s arc in the movie and the Atlas trilogy in general

Kilg%ore controlled Yang was crazy and Blake new like instantly, god she knows her girlfriend crazy well which is super cute

Trapping Kilg%re and Watts in the digital realm for good was an excellent way to cap the dualogy up

Another bee kiss need I say more?

All in all I’m very satisfied with this one and can see the development done for Ruby, Weiss, and Yang carry over into V10 especially Weiss

Stay awesome

#rwby #justice league x rwby #greenlight volume 10 #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake bellodona #yang xiao long #bumbleby

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kitkatopinions · 10 months ago

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Sorry to come into your ask box to vent after your post...

But I gotta say, you certainly managed to really sum up everything I dislike about the mentality of "subverting expectations = good storytelling" folks.

Like, it had been such a thing for people to say "X is so good because it subverts audience expectations!" And it's been driving me up a wall because that's just such a backward mentality about it: subverting audience expectations is a completely neutral thing, and one can just as easily ruin a story by going against audience expectations as tell a good story by playing out what the audience might be expecting.

Which, not to necessarily be mean about RW//BY, but yeah... that so many passionate defenders of it are also of the "a story is good cuz it subverts expectations" crowd is... not unexpected.

No, but for real! The way that people and seemingly a lot of writers think that surprise = good is frustrating!:This is one reason why spoilers are such a big deal to people, is that their viewing experience seems to bank on surprise and shock about who might die, who ends up together, who wins what victory in the end. I should be able to know all the plot points and plot twists going in and still enjoy the finished product just as much. If something isn't well set up (Adam's switcheroo in motives, the existence of the gods, Penny being a flesh person, the Ever After, Blake's personality change, arguably Ruby's depression in V9,) or not well done (Ironwood's fall to villainy, Ozpin's gray morality, the bees, Neo's eventual suicide, Ruby's journey as a SEW, the whole morals of the whole show) then whether or not it 'subverts expectations' is entirely irrelevant.

People are fully allowed to complain that they thought a piece of media would do something they wanted and instead did something they personally don't like that much, also, because that IS a bummer. But when I complain about RWBY, most of the time it's not just because I'm salty that it isn't doing what I think I'd personally like more. Like, I like the game Octopath Traveler, but I wish it wasn't that 8-bit looking early video game design, but at the end of the day I don't care because just because it doesn't fit my personal preference doesn't mean it isn't good. I wish Zuko had joined the Gaang earlier in ATLA or had more time with the Gaang than he did, but I still think Zuko's story is as close to perfect as it probably could've been. I just write or read fanfiction for the personal preference stuff. But the complaints I typically have for RWBY aren't like that. Like YEAH I actually DO prefer stories without heroes falling to villainy and with lots of redemption arcs, but I'm not about to hate RWBY just for not following my own personal preferences. No, I criticize RWBY for the bad execution, the lack of emotional pay-off in their story beats, the inconsistent morality they splash here and there whenever it sounds good and then forget about. RWBY is a confused show packed with ideas that never seem to be able to come together and writers that seem more interested in making giffable moments than a well done story. It's just generally not a well written well executed show.

I think that 'it subverts your expectations' is just one of many excuses that people use to wave away criticism with as little thought or effort or need to actually engage in discourse as possible. Just like complaints that the writers weren't interested in good world building and lore and therefore the transition from the moster school drama Beacon Era into magical world traversing quest wasn't well done are waved away with 'you're just mad the writers aren't following your headcanons' or 'you just want cute girls to go brr and hate substance' without actually addressing the true meat of the complaint or offering any substantial counterargument.

BTW, complain any time! I don’t mind hearing it at all. XD

#rwde

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dragon-snoots-a-boopin · 2 years ago

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Alright, I think it’s been enough time that I now am going to give my thoughts on Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS SO BE WARNED!

What I Liked:

The 90s hip hop soundtrack is pretty good and that’s saying something coming from me, a person who primarily listens to metal. The movies score is also really good too.

All of the Autobot, Maximal and Terrorcons and even Unicron looked really great in the movie.

Scourge’s introduction scene was chilling and badass!

The Terrorcons are a constant and persistant threat throughout the whole movie and that’s something for a Transformers movie. The Autobots and Maximals encounter them several times before even the final battle and they get their butts handed to them by the Terrorcons each encounter too.

Bumblebee does take the backseat in the movie because Scourge does kill him at one point. But, don’t worry, he does come back in time to help in the final battle.

Airazor’s death scene was very well done and has some actual weight to it. People say they saw it coming because she never transforms and as much as I would have liked to see her robot mode, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

I liked both of the human characters and am glad they didn’t have too many in there.

Mirage is a great character and seeing his bond with the main character was really nice and it was nice to see a different Autobot have a connection to the main human that isn’t Bumblebee.

I personally liked the take on Optimus Prime in the movie. Sure, he is a bit bloodthirsty but he also acts like a more inexperienced leader and I like seeing that in someone like Prime. It kind of makes him relatable in a way.

What Could Have Been Better:

The Maximals are very under used in the movie. They are the focus of the opening of the movie, sure, but then we don’t see them until like halfway through the movie. It’s not as bad as the Dinobots in both Age of Extinction and The Last Knight but I do wish they were in the movie more.

Bumblebee’s resurrection felt too much like a convenience. Like, when they arrive in this village where the Maximals live, they just lay his corpse in a puddle of inert Energon (because they don’t have the power to make it work) but then something happens in the final battle that makes it work and bring Bee back to life...but apparently not enough to fix his voice box. I wish it had though, they did that in Transformers Prime and they could have had a nod to that in this movie but oh well.

There are several character that don’t really do or say much of anything before the final battle and are really only there to be in the final battle. Wheeljack does like one thing for the Autobots, Rhinox doesn’t have any speaking lines, Cheetor says like one like and Stratoshpere is really only there to transport the Autobots from place to place.

I’m just going to say that with the big reveal at the end of the movie of some sort of G.I. Joe connection going forward that I personally do not want that. I think that, like the Transformers movies before Bumblebee, all three of the current live action G.I. Joe movies didn’t do very well. Why couldn’t it have been something already established like Sector 7? That would have made more sense if you ask me. The Transformers movies currently have something good going for themselves and I think that adding G.I. Joe to that is just going to drag the movie down and I don’t want that. Also, before anyone asks, I also don’t want to see a bunch of movies that build up to some kind of Hasbro cinematic universe that has Transformers, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K, Micronauts, Action Man, Visionaries and Rom The Space Knight. I don’t want that and I will elaborate more on that in another post.

Overall, I really did enjoy watching Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and I look forward to buying it as soon as it releases on DVD and Blu-Ray, whenever that will be. It isn’t some perfect movie, but it is pretty damn good and I’d definitely give it a recommend.

#movies #transformers #transformers rise of the beasts #autobots #terrorcons #maximals #hasbro #g.i. joe

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the-derpy-duck · 2 years ago

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I adore ROTB

Sort of spoilers. I do my best not to.

I haven’t had much time to reflect on it but ahhhhhh it was so goood! This was the first time I’ve seen a transformers film in theaters and I was losing my mind but trying to be quiet.

But I just LOVE the way the maximals (idk if that’s how you spell it- I have a strictly casual relationship with the English language) move. Like Airrazor talking looked amazing to me and I loved how Primal’s nose would move sometimes. Cheetor’s run cycle! I eat that shit upppppp!! Cheetor in general was really well designed to me. I hope I can get a good toy of him (I already picked up the SS Airrazor). Cheetahs are my favorite animals even if they constantly shoot themselves in the foot, evolutionary wise. The maximals look very good IMO and I’m happy they finally got decent 3D renders. I love how big they all are as well. Like these things could destroy just about anything on earth. I also like the voices for the Maximals.

The humans were also really good. I love Noah’s relationship with his little brother and the conflict with him felt realistic and very grounded in the alien car movie. His friendship with Mirage did feel a little rushed but honestly that worked with the way he was characterized I think. Like Mirage seemed so desperate for a non auto bot friendship and he seemed to have a general affinity for humans not dissimilar to Bumblebee’s.

Also the part where Bee put on his battle mask caused me and the person who was sitting next to me to lose out collective minds. I don’t care if it’s cheesy, pull that stick out of your ass and enjoy the action! Enjoy the drama!

Also I love Mirage’s face. I wish he looked less like Jazz in his alt mode but honestly his bot mode is so cool so I don’t care that much. I also like OP’s face. It’s sort of modeled after Peter Collin’s face so it’s marvelous. I think they should have changed Wheeljacks name to Perceptor, especially sense BB movie design for Wheeljack was just so perfect but also Pablo is my son and he’s so fantastic and I love him and I’m not gonna be person 1,983 hating on this design.

Scourge was alright. I didn’t see the face reveal as too much of an issue or even note it that much in my mind. I think the fact that he collects insignia’s is really cool in a fucked up sort of way. Like it isn’t enough to just kill someone and destroy there home he also needs to disgrace their bodies. It’s also a weird way of keeping track of his victories. I thought it was kind of neat. He’s not that deep and it’s a little bit underwhelming when I think about it. Like I wish the movie had more time to do things. Because to me it didn’t feel that long, I think some extra time would have done it good.

There is a character who died who I think, realistically, should have been able to be revived and I wish that they were. Also a character gets killed and I think the maximals should have been the ones to kill them. I wish the maximals got more screen time. The movie was fairly fast paced. The movie is only 2 hours and 7 minutes long. Which is still 2 hours but I think having it go a little longer would have helped a lot of characters.

The reveal at the end almost made me scream like holy shit. I was expecting something but not THAT. I really hope we can see more decepticons next movie. Like Skywarp as a main antagonist would be so cool. Think of the fight scenes. Think of the teleportation. Think of another purple movie robot. Please. Pleassseeee.

I though that the CGI was fine. Nothing looked off to me in a way that would pull me out of the movie. The Flash looked a lot worse and I think that movie had a higher budget.

Optimus wanting to get home and his conflict is compelling to me. Like he doesn’t have a reason to like or trust humans. He’s been stranded on this shithole of a planet with no contact with his army or friends or home for seven years I understand why he hates it. He also has another reason to really get the hell out but spoilers. But also he comes to a general understanding with the humans and learns that they are sort of worth working with. He just wants to get home and help his friend get better and save his own world and brutally murder his enemy. He’s still very brutal but it feels different to Bayverse. That’s probably because I don’t like Michael Bay or his transformers films but you chose to read to this point so you get to deal with my weird biases.

*minor spoilers sort of*

The part where Unicron tells OP not to destroy the key and that he give him anything and OP says “then die” got me way too hyped up. Like wow. Murder dad robot is SO cool!

I love Arcee fighting with Wheeljack and standing on Rhinox, idk if it was a call back and or reference to that one beats wars scene but I love it either way

#transformers #maccadam #rotb spoilers #rotb #rotb mirage #rotb optimus #rotb cheetor #Duck screams about things

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fumiku · 2 years ago

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Chlonath wips

I have so many Chlonath art and fic wips… I am such a slow writer and I’ve had most of these written down for like 2 years, so I wanna share most of their premises now in case I never get around to them! For joy and prosperity and whatnot, if someone wants to write one of these just ask me first! Someone needs to feed the chlonath masses. My next fic is going to be the camping one I think~

My fave picks:

Your majesty: Despite his bright fiery hair, he was all too easy to erase, to fade into the background. Garish, but unmemorable. Talented, but lame. Chloe decides to change that, takes him on as a pet project as fashion coordinator. "Come on, look at yourself! That hair, those eyes. You were *made* to pop! Everyone’s eyes would turn to you when you’re in the room!" He flushes, was that how she saw him? "But I don’t *want* to be the center of attention..." She smirks confidently/slyly. "Well too bad! Chloe Bourgeois will make a peacock out of this ugly little duckling!". Much later there’s a much quieter, sweeter scene of him voicing not wanting to be that different or flashy and she takes out some accessories that suit and enhance his style, comfy and like him. Eventually oop! She rlly needs a date and it’d go with her pet project, "besides you could use this for networking". "Hm? Oh yeah, a half up half down ponytail would look cute on you, in a street kind of way. But bangs in your face can go for cool and mysterious too. It can give you some personality that goes with or contrasts with your outfit, I guess. But this *is* still a fancy event, so a simple well-groomed swept aside style would keep it prim and formal, and it *is* your first entry into high society... But I *suppose* if you do your big debut with the aesthetic you’ll keep with, it’ll probably help your brand long term, attract the right kind of contract for you right away-" "Wow, where was all this perspective when you were doing the analysis on the blue curtains?" She smirks, "I have more experience in keeping up appearances —and everything it entails— than you think, apparently"

Everything else under spoiler bc I have tons of prompts haha

Chloe becomes designer & coordinator, director, for marc & Nath’s comics! She loves outfit coordinating, set designing, composition etc. Marc handles the writing and Nath the drawing, Chloe helps with the visual design. It starts with Chloe suggesting lil things to Nath when she sees his drawings, like add a common accessory to all the team. And since she was queen bee she can fact check some things. He loses his sketchbook while walking and she picks it up, not in her usual mood, n she sees his sketches and starts rattling off about details and fashion. Nath: "oh I- I’m not very knowledgeable in fashion designing..." she looks him up and down, taking his garish outfit in. "That I could have guessed." He huffs, sarcastic "Well, *thank you*, Chloe. That’s not a half bad idea, I could ask Marinette for some designing help, actually!" He lights up at that idea. She grits her teeth, angry and snatches his sketchbook back. She starts drawing on another page and her drawing isn’t really good but the ideas? Wow, they work. Chloe knows her aesthetics. "Stupid Marinette would *not* know how to arrange queen wasp’s hair, thank you very much. Ugh, this is outrageous! Utterly outrageous! You can keep the changes, and keep your god awful awfully thought out designs out of my sight, next time!" With his open sketchbook shoved back into his hands, he stares down at it n truly appreciate it. Wow, this is some serious good job. He thinks about it, kinda smug, oh I can *definitely* play her. He starts leaving his sketchbook behind on purpose n she starts giving him more and more notes when sabrina isn’t around. At some point she comes to the art room and everyone is silent but she’s shy and makes an effort not to be mean. The art dude takes her a bit under his wing and she starts channeling her time n energy into art, peeps of the art room start tolerating her. She takes Marc under her wing confidence wise, and sabrina tags along and rediscovers a love for scrapbooking. Omll marc & sabrina besties qpr cuties?

Pas de deux: they have a random ballet class in PE and they get paired up for the project and chloe 1) wants a good grade for her dad’s rep 2) is goal-oriented 3) has much less barb when teaching. Also prob a sad side note about impressing her mother with ballet classes as a kid.

But Are the Curtains Blue or Just Your Tear-stained Veil: Nathaniel tended to notice things, notice people. To dissect them, as if they were a comicbook character. What was surprising about Chloe is that while her attitude was bolsterous and always seemed so heated, her eyes were like ice, distant. A deep blue, and curtained off, like she could not let anyone else see what they hid. But Chloe was mean and cruel, and sometimes, Nathaniel dug too deep at wasn’t there. Maybe, they were just blue. He always came back at the mystery of her, though, and was pushed and pulled in a one-sided dance with her like the come and go of waves. //Maybe they just weren’t any curtains, whatever that meant. Maybe he was making everything up. Tags: kinda like The Girl Of the Train tbh

Name ideas:

Buzz off

Sweet as honey: What chloe turns out to love in a man is how sweet he can be

Renaitre

Esquisse

Preen my feathers (peacock holder Nath + motif with Chloe & appearances)

Quick ideas:

"I’ve spent so long hoping to be saved, that it feels weird to save people."

Chloe realizes her mother will never love her, or even respect her. Everything changes. //She lets herself be and experience pain and failure

By fake dating chlonath can make adrienette jealous! A scene: chloe tightens her grip on his arm with a crestfallen gaze at adrienette, nath is like ...? and realize Chloe hated Marinette bc abandonment issues

Sabrina chews chloe out and is done with her when they were on an outing, chloe runs into the nearest building, a museum, to hide and cry her eyes out. She bumps into Nath, and a friendship goes from there.

Ever since nath learned chloe is queen bee, he calls her stuff like yes your stinginess.

Nath brings chloe to a emo concert to throw her off, all hell breaks loose. (She likes it)

Two works linked together, one from chloe pov about nath n the other vice versa. "It’s wicked how sweet you are" and "it’s sweet how wicked you are"

Impression, soleil levant: they have a run in in the museum. Chloe genuinely likes fine art. Nath likes popping color, lineart, contrast and stylistic appeal, more contemporary stuff. Chloe really like impressionism, it calms her down, she could spend a lot of time just watching a painting. When she was a kid her dad would bring her when talking business at the louvre so she ran off with Jean and she knows the museum very well.

Chloe’s dad keeps bothering her about rules and standards and finding a partner, so Chloe resolves to find the lamest lousiest boyfriend. To make a statement, of course, she tells herself so when her eyes keep flicking to the redhead sitting at the back of the class.

What better way to learn to be vulnerable with each other than ice skating, when you’re both awful at it? A date <3

She points out a panel with queen bee when he’s doodling it, she has no context she just chilling "why is her hair down?" Nath answers without missing a beat "It’s a metaphor for vulnerability".

Nath starts disappearing quietly to places more and more, now that he has a miraculous. Chloe susses him out. W-what?? How did you notice it? Nobody ever pays attention to me- Ugh, you’re *impossible* to miss with that fluorescent hair of yours. Well you’re the only person who pays attention to it, apparently. Hah, blame my superior eyes if you must. Well if *I’m* what your superior eyes choose to watch then- U-um, we’re getting sidetracked! W-what are you doing here! Reverse universe where she’s still denied being queen bee so she’s Nath’s sidekick? He doesn’t really have any friends besides Marc which not in this universe bc it comes before, so he wouldn’t have anyone else so lowkey he’s grateful. He notices her really truly changing for the better as they hang out more.

I dig my hole, you build a wall: As Chloe Bourgeois doubles down on being an irredeemable bully, Queen Bee continues to rise on a pedestral of adoration. It doesn’t help, nothing ever does, and it’s getting harder to make herself ignore how miserable she is. Chloe drowns herself in her superhero job, squeezes every drop of appreciation from her fans she can. Nath happens to be one of them, hardcore. She just needs someone to lean on.

26/11/‘22 Chloe gets akumatized into a dollhouse lover like with her teddybear mr cuddles, and she wants to kidnap some ppl and keep them like dolls to play with her and listen to her every want and choice of activities. Sabrina is mad at her so elle la boude. She picks Nath and they have a tea party isolated at Le grand paris etc etc. Maybe after Adrien cuts it off with Chloe so she freaks out amd wants friends, even if toxic controlling, but she’s not shooting for Adrien bc she’s upset at him and ignores him.

Outlined:

He forgets some comic pages behind, vs queen wasp, and goes back to get them and finds chloe reading them intensely, seeming genuinely invested. She’s lowkey having a panic attack n shoos off an akuma?? He’s shocked, but that requires introspection so in the moment he’s doubtful and bitter. She’s panicced and embarrassed about having been found out. He’s like, wtf was so upsetting about my comic?? Jealous of my art? Mad that something isn’t about you? Angry that I have talent and dreams, unlike you? she flinches. She upsetti "you wouldn’t understand." "Oh, try me. I have experience in being put down, after all." He bites coldly. She explains half-heartedly "Oh, here comes the self-pity." Her lips quiver, she looks down. "You’re right. It is self-pity. I’m miserable." The "and I have no one else to pity me but me" is muttered so quietly. Her fists clench, chin tucked in her torso. Then her gaze hardens and she snaps her head up. "Whatever." He blocks her way out. She grits dangerously "*Out*. Of. The way." Her eyes prickle with tears. He doesn’t even flinch "That won’t work today." She’s so close to snapping violently but instead just cries. Blabla "Yeah well, when you’ve dug a hole as deeply as I have, you can’t get out. Not without a miracle, anyways." She says, you could do one about queen bee next, please. N leaves quietly and he’s never seen her so... non-agressive.

Entracte/solo act: Picking on Nathaniel Kurtzberg when alone with him, Chloe found, was a much different experience than humiliating him in public. It turns out, he only unleashes his fury on the most deserving of private audiences. Notes: I headcanon Nath, bc of the reflekto ep, would stand up for himself more if he wasn’t being bullied in public. I feel like having all the eyes on him motivates him to shut up and try to make the ordeal as brief as possible & leave the situation, so when he’s alone and getting sass he has less qualms about snapping and ripping into ppl lol. Chloe goes to the art room and Nath is alone in it. He asks where Sabrina is, she rolls her eyes "She had *something important* to attend to." She goes to see what he’s working on and makes her snide remarks as usual but unlike usual he snaps and rips into her, she loses her haughty attitude real quick. The next time they make eye contact in class, she grimaces and looks away. He wins. But then she gets a fire and glares at him head on. Let the war truly begin.

To Nathaniel’s and Choe’s horror, the class goes on a mandatory camping trip. It does not go well for either of them. "Um, I’m sorry mme Bustier but I won’t be able to come. I’m sick, yes, cough cough, how unfortunate." Bustier is not amused. She groans when it’s announced they’ll have a camping trip. Nath keeps his in, but for once they agree on something. Ugh. Nath just wants to draw in his tent, that’s too much to ask??!

Royalties: nath finds out chloe is queen bee and threatens to tell it to everyone so that ladybug will take her miraculous away. In exchange for his secret, Chloe must praise him and his art on her social media, throw his name in at fancy soirées, become his "fan". To Nath’s surprise and Chloe’s horror, it backfires. Royally. Her "Nath is so cool" post was half advertizing half for public humiliation. Being the daughter of the mayor of one of the most famous cities in the world meant she has a lot of followers, quite a few in the elite sphere of Paris. The post’s a bit rebellious on her end because he doesn’t like her calling him Nath. Since Chloe *never* praises anyone and the tone was overeager/affectious, people start theorizing they’re actually dating. He takes the logical leap to be invited by her at an event, but as a plus one because it’s not her party to invite people at. Normally he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with a fancy party, but he begrudgingly has to admit networking is very important as an artist, plus he’d do it to piss off Chloe alone.

Vampire au!! Summary: Beyond her humanity, which Chloe had never truly cared about anyway, becoming a vampire hadn’t really, concretely, taken away anything from her. She was still rich, loved by all of Paris, and beautiful. And yet, she realized then that she had lost herself without knowing when. //Chloe has been a vampire for a lil while, very upset. Mr cuddly is also a reminder of her past life. She longs to see herself again, she has had to keep out of the spotlight because she has no reflection and can’t be taken a picture of, she asks Nath to draw her like in Mirror, Mirror the awesome fic which I recommend! Nath finds out her new identity so he becomes tied up in it all, he’s the only one who knows so he becomes who she feeds on. "I can pay you. What do you want? A thousand euros per night? The latest drawing tablets? A gallery showing? Publishing deal? Just help me." Right from the start she feeds off from his neck despite his hesitance. She goes "a wrist? Are you kidding me? I settle for nothing but the best." But the reality is she just wants to feel close to someone, one time the bite turns into a hug crying session. -"... Does that mean my blood is the tastiest?" She’s shaken at that, "That- was *not* what I was implying. It’s not like I would know, anyways." She huffs n looks away. "Your blood is... satisfactory." He smirks, from her, that’s a huge compliment. He can just hear it in his mind "My taste buds are only the most refined!! I can tolerate only but the best!!" She does tell him he’s sweaty n stinks the first time tho. He has to hide his neck bite, ppl tease him about hickeys. At some point a classmate figures out it’s chloe that gives him his hickeys and Nath has to damage control and people start sussing they’re a couple.

No lullaby: No one liked her, but she could dream, couldn’t she? The delusions she lulled herself to had never really been dreams, but maybe to reborn anew she could find a lullaby in someone new, too. // based on the song No Lullaby by Siamés. Also La la la by Jason Chen Akuma that calls itself Lullaby, it was made because they have to move away from their parents or smth like that, so it lashes out and makes all kinds of kiddy & wholesome parenthood stuff. It turns people into happy kids/babies by tapping into childhood memories of parents(something like that), but doesn’t affect Chloe. Because Chloe never had her parents be around much, or them being much like parents at all. Chloe is fighting as Queen Bee, of course, in an AU where people know who she is but Ladybug still trusts her to want not to smear her family name by being a bad superhero. "I could be a superhero and my mother still wouldn’t blink my way... Oh, sorry, that actually happened, not much for an hypothetical." Everyone stares at her in shock. "What? I can have a smart vocabulary!" People look at her with pity and sympathy. "T-that’s not it..." Chat says. Anyways they’re fighting it and a lot of other miraculous holders get hit and she does too but is immune bc it taps into their happy parents childhood memories, meanwhile it’s only able to conjure up her plushie for her. Anyways so she gets swinged up to a rooftop where Nathaniel is sitting and drawing Queen Bee, he jolts and goes "Q-quee-Chloe?" but they don’t have much time since the akuma comes swinging in too and gets Nath under its spell. She carries around baby!Nath around because for some reason she feels a sort of duty to people she knows irl. She goes to the building the other holders are in or something but still ends up alone with Nath since everyone got affected, she panics as her miraculous beeps and she’s alone to fix everything, but Nathaniel draws with his fine art colored pencils like kids use crayons and does tons of kiddy imaginative drawings, and starts humming, bringing her out of her torpor. As the tune calms her, she does a “what would Ladybug do?”, "Ugh, I could have used Evillustrator right about now." She strategizes on how to break the spell over Ladybug for purification, and goes in to break the akuma item holder. When Nathaniel comes to, he’s mad to have ruined his pencils, now with blunt deformed tips, but then he looks at his sketchbook in utter confusion he sees pages and pages of kid’s drawings, recognizing his own infantile style, but the most curious are that some drawings include Queen Bee. His feelings are conflicted and he wants to know what happened, but dreads asking her, but he laughs at a drawing of him pulling her ponytail, and stills at the one of her hugging him. End notes: Next time Queen Bee gets swung onto his rooftops by an akuma, Nath jolts but responds to that adrenaline by crossing his leg over his other knee and raising an eyebrow over half-lidded eyes: "Somehow, I’m not surprised." You know, like sometimes when people flirt as fight or flight response lmao.

22/2/‘23 Chloe was trying really hard to be kind like a true superhero now, and with the birthday of her classmate Nathaniel coming up she would have to, painstakingly, do everything in her power to give him the best gift ever. One problem is, she doesn’t really know him, like, at all. She asks him what he likes. She thinks of supherhero stuff and art stuff. She doesn’t know about drawing tablets so she’s like, what about this professional drawing desk I’ll have my bodyguard carry? As if everyone has the privilege to have the space for a new furniture on a whim. She asks Sabrina for help like this close to a meltdown, maybe even Marinette: "The fool was in love with you, don’t you know anything about him that could help??" And then at the end shes like "omg. I can get him an interview with Queen Bee!" Ooh does she get akumatized with some gifter gimmick? Would be neat but naaah. Maybe two parts, idk what the end should be! Copic markers maybe

#chlonath #fanfic WIP #chloe bourgeois #nathaniel kurtzberg #Angst & fluff and the whole shabang

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feraltuxedo · 1 year ago

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WIP Wednesday: On The Side

For WIP Wednesday, here's a snippet from the final chapter of On The Side.

Spoilers!

‘What about Gabriel?’ ‘What about him? I never want to see the bastard again.’ Aziraphale looked so very uncomfortable, squirming on the sofa beside Crowley. He wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer, in a gesture that felt so familiar already. ‘You broke it off with him?’ ‘Of course I did. Called him almost immediately after you left. I don’t know what I was thinking before. I have standards. I just… forgot them, I suppose. How exceedingly silly of me.’ ‘People are so shortsighted when faced with a tall bloke with nice teeth and a big dick,’ Crowley quoted, not without resentment. ‘Indeed… wait. How do you know about his—’ Aziraphale’s eyes widened. ‘I mean,’ he added quickly, ‘it’s not that big. Very average, actually.’ Bee’s cackle wafted over, and Crowley wanted them gone, wanted them out of the bookshop so he could return to catching up on thirty years’ worth of snogging. But Aziraphale had suddenly gone serious, clasping a hand over Crowley’s thigh. ‘I’m so sorry for how I’ve treated you, my dear. You’ve been trying to tell me about Gabriel all along, and I ignored you, didn’t take you seriously. I thought…’ He swallowed and turned, and the next words were spoken into the curve of Crowley’s shoulder, hot and muffled. ‘Well, I thought you were being jealous.’ Crowley stared up at the ceiling while a fast but intense war of conscience was being fought in his head. In the end, good triumphed over selfish, and he sighed. ‘I was being jealous. I’ve been nothing but jealous. As much as I’d like to claim that I saw through Gabriel from the start… truth was, I just couldn’t bear the thought of you and him. Not with me feeling like I do. And it’s my fault. I never said anything to you. Never told you… you know…’ He tried to shrug, but the weight of Aziraphale’s head on his shoulder made it impossible. Just as impossible as it was for him to actually say the word. ‘Never told you how much I care for you. And it’s not fair, me putting all this on you, all my own hang-ups.’ Aziraphale let out a quiet laugh, which tickled the sensitive skin of Crowley’s neck. ‘I appreciate you trying to take the blame, my dear, but in truth… I did know. Or felt it, rather. Suspected. I never allowed myself to process these feelings, to think about them in a rational manner. I’m much too cowardly.’ ‘Cowardly?’ ‘Have you ever held an antique book so fragile, you’re too scared to open the pages in case they crumble?’ ‘Er… no.’ ‘I think I approached us much in the same way. I thought, why mess with something that’s been so good for so long? Our Mondays at mine. Saturdays at the pub. The trips and holidays and breakfasts. I knew you wanted more. I just didn’t realise I wanted more until… well, until this morning, I suppose.’ ‘Bloody hell, angel. I know I’m a good kisser, but you couldn’t you have had that lightbulb moment a bit sooner?’ ‘It doesn’t help that you never said a word. Never gave me an indication—’ Crowley huffed, ready to contradict, but Aziraphale continued, louder. ‘Never gave me any verbal indication. Not before this morning.’ ‘Yeah, well, neither did you.’

#WIP Wednesday #good omens au #my writing

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piglii · 2 years ago

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btw I have not finished Umineko (I’m literally on the last leg of Episode 8, shortly after an important jump happens) but I’m so gushing with things to say about that I feel like I need to type this all out now (will start with impressions that are non-spoilery and go into impressions that are big spoilers. there will be a dividing line which I earnestly recommend you do not cross if you have any interest reading it yourself.)

anyways

Non-Spoiler Section

Absolutely 10/10 for me. Can feel like a climb at times but that feeling increasingly goes away as you get used to the pacing. Any fumbles Umineko has for me personally are so small in the grander scope of what it’s doing that it doesn’t even feel worth acknowledging them. Literally a story that is going to affect my view on life. I really fell for the charm of Ryukishi’s goofy ass old sprites too after a while, it’s really compelling to me that Ryukishi was able to make such a good, earnest story while having kind of limited drawing ability. I’m dead ass serious, it’s really inspirational. The quality of the writing and voice acting especially is so good that after a short while you kind of don’t even process that the sprites look kind of silly-goofy at all. I highly recommend playing with the original sprites and voice acting if you can.

And the music! holy shit I can’t imagine getting through this story without the music! The fucking 1800′s pipe organ songs one minute, intense trance the next, distorted choir singing, a mellow beat that’s sampling that fucking ambulance siren! Probably my top faves are Infant Queen Bee, Golden Nocturne, far, Rain, Daydream’s End, Fall, Miragecoordinator, Melting Away, Dead Angle, Hope and probably like 15 more I’m forgetting. Absolute banger of a soundtrack. Virtually no misses and the ones that hit, HIT. I think I have spent nearly as much time listening to the soundtrack in between sessions as I have just playing the game itself.

I won’t go into detail about what the central messages of Umineko are because they could ostensibly be spoilers but they are pretty fucking hard to miss. If you have two eyeballs and a brain you will probably figure them out as you go because Ryukishi is NOT subtle about what he wants to say. He will smash you with a hammer making sure you get it. But it’s less of a giant metal warhammer and more of a little wooden mallet that he’s just hitting on your knee every 20 minutes to make sure you’re awake and following along.

The writing honestly can be very... it straddles the line between very straightforward descriptions and waxing very poetic about a particular topic. I won’t even say it’s particularly the best prose ever or anything - I think Ryukishi’s biggest talent is simply in how he’s able to convey the characters by always having a really solid understanding of how they react to things. Maybe his worst flaw is that sometimes he includes a scene or concept where I’m like “oh Ryukishi just thought this would be super fucking cool” but I can’t even hate because most of the time it is super fucking cool actually. Umineko is so dripping with earnest cheesiness in a lot of its delivery and character interactions that I can’t help but like it most of the time. Granted I am biased because I do enjoy stuff that is earnestly cheesy like 90% of the time. The goofy ass anime interactions characters sometimes have are used just sparingly enough and contrasted with the serious scenes that I found pretty much all of it enjoyable for what it was.

Be warned it is 150+ hours (faster if you are just reading but seriously those voice actors are top tier, big recommend) but it really needs... at least most of that time. I struggle to find a single exact point that I would shorten any part of Umineko because so much of it really is required to understand what the story’s going for but at the same time sometimes Ryukishi does love to sit you down and talk about the process of liquidating gold into cash money for 30 minutes. A lot of the worst of that is in the first episode to be honest so if you can get past that you’re probably golden. It’s got a hell of a hook by the end of episode 1. Go in as blind as possible and enjoy yourself.

And now, for the spoilers.

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Spoiler Section

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Don’t Go Beyond This Point If You Haven’t Read It, Seriously Holy Fuck!!!

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Seriously, The Author Wants You To Go In Blind!

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Alright.

All the losers are gone let’s partay.

Heads up I’m a little blasted so this might be a bit scrambled and all around the place so sorry, just writing stuff as I think about it.

I really adore the way that Beatrice is in literally every layer of this story. Like the concept of the masses being in such a rush to figure out what the truth of the Rokkenjima Massacre is that they end up literally trampling over the deeply embedded and sad story of Beatrice really gets to me. Like, the people who are looking at the Massacre from the angle that she even “exists” at all literally only see Beatrice as a piece in their own constructed games, an explanation that’s just one step to figuring out what was really important. But of course, Beatrice IS the heart of the story. The whole family is arranged around her like a web and she’s right at the center. She’s in every possible layer of this story that she can be, she’s the connecting fabric of everything important.

Also I really adored Battler and Ange as characters. It’s rare that a main character feels so relatable but I ended up really enjoying his personality by around episode 2 or 3. He’s just so stupid but also earnest and flustered. Try to give him a slight pass on episode 1 because he is supposed to be kind of dumb and immature on purpose... even if it probably could’ve been toned down maybe just a bit. He gets better, I promise.

(btw literally been here. so relatable.)

anyways moving on. Ange. absolutely enjoyed the hell out of her story in episode 4 and was so glad to see that she’s basically the conclusion to the whole Ushiromiya family story in the final episode as well. also, her being the focus of this really inspirational message of what it means to move forward with your life was really well done. it’s insane to me that people are still out there trying to “figure out” the mystery when Umineko tells you as bluntly as it possibly can that it doesn’t really matter - finding out what “really” happened can’t bring closure no matter what and holding and walking this tenuous tightrope between belief and non-belief is a better way to live. her goodbye with the family and battler was about where it got me pretty good I could not fucking hold back crying at that.

and speaking of the family at large, I really like pretty much all of them! even the stinkers are fun to make fun of. also, Eva in particular is the milf of all time for me, personally. in fact thinking on it the only character I can really think that still rubs me badly (even though it is of course entirely intentional that the reader feels this way) is Rosa. good fucking lord the moments of episode 4 with Maria and Rosa’s relationship being explored (or rather, the complete lack of it except for the spouts of child abuse) really hit me. that... is probably the most I’ve ever been emotionally effected by a piece of media in a long ass time, it was a rough chapter to get through. that said ryukishi’s understanding of domestic abuse is fucking incredible, does not surprise me that he was a social worker before working on VNs. beyond even just that dynamic he clearly has an understanding of the kind of broken adults that come out of highly abusive households. the final game of episode 8 with ange getting to see this world that could theoretically have been real had kinzo chosen love in the future versus love in the past was so sincerely sweet to me. sorry I am a sucker for sappy shit, it got me.

anyways let’s talk about the illusions. loved them all too. feels obvious to say but Beatrice is one of the characters of all time. also really liked Ronove, his and battler’s occasional moments of being bros out of nowhere were really enjoyable to me. also sorry gamers Virgilia is another milf of all time. loved her tender and sweet personality. but as for beatrice and co as a whole - I do enjoy what Ryukishi has to say about fiction. Indulging too much of your life in fiction is ultimately harmful but it can be a valuable crutch to people who are dealing with life or even just people who could stand to learn and grow more. it’s also such a loving letter to mystery as a genre, you can really tell Ryukishi was going hog for mystery at the time. and it does work as a completely conventional mystery too - figuring out stuff as you go and putting the pieces slowly together is a huge blast! I loved the scenes where he’s clearly celebrating that with the readers who tried their best to understand the story.

I managed to avoid most spoilers - the ones I saw beforehand were really minor and didn’t really help me in putting the mystery together - that said, I really only figured out that Shannon and Kanon were being performed by the same person not terribly long before the game revealed it pretty directly - I think only a few hours ahead of time. that said, I really did give it my all, I’m just not super good at mysteries. I did pick up on some hints early on, like being able to figure out some of the early closed rooms but I didn’t have enough context to join them all together and realize the Truth before the game spelled it out for me. and tbh, that’s fine! I loved how the game congratulated people who simply try to figure it out for themselves, regardless of if they’re successful.

btw it also took me so fucking long to read because I was reading it side by side with a friend (who had read the manga but not the VN) and we basically set it up to auto play (with japanese voice acting + the original sprites of course.) we’d play intermittently roughly every few months in leaps and progress little by little. I can’t fucking believe I wasn’t spoiled on any of the major elements playing like that, it’s a fucking miracle. we started reading it on and off like that nearly two years ago now but honestly it was worth.

god I have so many thing I could spend rambling on about this manga but it genuinely is up there with, like, War and Peace and Crime and Punishment and I’m not even joking. there’s some of what I would call “Goofy Anime Bullshit” that happens (and it’s especially coated in that layer of stuff you only really got in the late aughts anime communities) but even that I found pretty enjoyably silly after a short period of time and just ended up rolling with it. if you know someone who can see past that layer of Goofy Anime Bullshit and enjoys reading 150+ hour long visual novels, this is the thing for them.

and speaking of the length boy fucking howdy. it’s worth it. the amount of time dedicated to fleshing out every character and making me understand what kind of person they are underneath everything else really makes me appreciate everybody in this fucked up family unit. it’s not something you could replicate in a movie or any reasonably lengthy manga. the magic of getting to know the whole family, flaws and all, really sells you on what a tragedy it is regardless of what happened. there are so many early scenes where I was like, “okay what’s the point of this” that I look back in hindsight and I’m either like "oh that was actually super fucking important and I just didn’t realize it” or “oh this was giving me time to become familiar with this character.” fuck man, I even liked Hideyoshi and he almost didn’t do shit!

btw I got the culprits in bernkastel’s game figured out in one try (with the help of my friend bouncing ideas off of eachother)

feels good, feels organic, thank you, etc

anyways... I think that about wraps it up for me... honestly just a stellar game. It feels like one of those things where I’m going to catch myself thinking about the themes and what it was trying to say, just like Disco Elysium or a lot of Wildbow’s works or EEAAO. It almost makes me wish this story was in a more conventional book form because I think you could tell the core of what’s there but at the same time I don’t think it’d be worth losing all the other aspects that make it so memorable. It’s going to have probably 1/100th the readers it could have just for being a long VN rather than a long book series but I’d honestly rather have it this way. It’s such a weirdly specific gem of that era of internet-anime culture that I think the time has already passed that anything quite like it could come out. What a special little piece of media. If I have more to say after finishing out the ending proper I‘ll probably just edit my impressions on to this post and reblog again at a later date.

EDIT: It is now two days later and I have finished everything, including the last “????” segment. My thoughts on the ending - I liked it. It’s very sweet and depending on how you want to interpret certain facets of what you see, it can be read several different ways. Of course the way the narrative is set up, it very much wants you to pick the most optimistic interpretation but I like that there’s always room to explore just a bit. The point of whether Beatrice as a witch is real or not is entirely beside the point almost - there was a woman named Beatrice who brought happiness to her family (at least, in one world) as well as she could given her fucked up circumstances. That’s honestly all there really is to say on it. I can very much vibe with that message.

I was also earnestly expecting the last scene of Umineko to be even more bittersweet than it ended up being - I was really waiting for the very last scene to be Ange literally throwing away the key to Eva’s diary into the ocean. That is kind of what happens in a way, and the scenes in which they do explore Ange opening the diary and reading it are left deliberately obscure (as they should be) but I was really expecting it to be even more poignant than that. I was thinking Ange would literally never see the diary in any part of the story the reader saw at any point. It would’ve been very Titanic-esque in a way - Ange throwing away the only way for her to even possibly know what happened on Rokkenjima. The story does effectively do this, kind of, anyways, it’s just a lot more roundabout.

But yeah. Supremely sweet story. I will probably be thinking about it for much of my life.

#my posts #umineko #umineko spoilers #spoilers: I liked it #I'm thinking I'll have the last little bit finished literally sometime this week or maybe the weekend

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teabookgremlin · 2 years ago

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hello little gay people who live in my phone, here are my thoughts on yellowjackets 02x03. spoilers below cut

first of all! lets talk taivan bc i feel like we got some good stuff from them this week so i’m starting there bc i love them

- i felt so bad for tai when she had the realization of what happened. like she had no idea and it’s so upsetting like she had to process that not only did she do that but everyone else did it willingly! also how van just immediately tells her that she ate the face, van, baby, i love you but maybe don’t immediately tell your gf that she ate someone’s face in her sleep. also interesting to me that she went for the face given that in 02x01 she tries to eat van’s face in her sleep

- van following tai when she sleepwalked, she’s so so so worried for her and i feel like in this episode she really fully sees how bad it is. finding out about the man w/ no eyes, sleepwalking tai not being tai, it’s all super wild and i want to learn more i wanna know what her connection to the supernatural is and being drawn to the rune was interesting

- during the bird scene when van was collecting them like lottie said, the way tai was looking at her made me sad. like we know the cult shit is causing issues between them but i don’t like seeing it. i do think i read somewhere that tai ends up getting more into it to stay closer to van so that’ll be interesting to see

- ok now onto the big moment for the taivan girlies: THE FUCKING MIRROR SCENE i’m obsessed mirror tai mouthing “go to her” and forming the doomcoming mask with her hands oh my god i can’t. and then her immediately running out at taking her assistant’s (or advisor or whoever that lady is) and calling jessica roberts (rip). i wanna know how she ends up finding van cause we know jessica can’t help anymore but yeah just the desperation to go find her in that moment was a lot for me and i cannot wait to get adult van next week

alright now onto some more general thoughts that aren’t taivan

- once again feeling terrible for our doomed king, ben. the scenes where he was remembering paul and imagining having gone to him instead of getting on the plane… my poor guy :( also him hallucinating rabid gen was great and honestly valid. at this point i honestly feel like ben’s gonna end up killing himself, whether he just like stops eating or like full on commits suicide i honestly think he’s just gonna die then get eaten rather than being killed for food

- i loved the scene of nat just staring at jackie’s body. her guilt and shame was so clear and just demonstrated well between that scene and what she said to the bones after dropping them off at the plane

- i don’t trust walter. the way he instantly jumped to flattering misty in exactly the way that works on her makes me suspicious and i wanna know what he’s up to. other than that mostly didn’t care about him and misty’s shenanigans except that its leading them to lottie and therefore our mistynat reunion

- lottie telling shauna that jackie would’ve wanted shauna to eat her and shauna saying she wanted to eat her… the homoeroticism of cannibalism my beloved

- loved loved loved the bits with akilah this episode, her and tai talking, her talking about her nephew, it was just SO sweet and so wonderful and i love her

- misty and crystal agreeing that jackie was tasty, crystal telling misty about absorbing her twin in the womb, these two are enabling each other’s weirdness and i’m obsessed with their loser girl friendship

- nat hallucinating the moose was interesting bc she’s one of the few main girls that hadn’t hallucinated yet so wonder what that means

- listen. shauna threatening the dude was incredible, i love my unhinged milf, but like the car theft thing took up too much time and also we got too much jeff this episode

- misty’s gift at the baby shower killed me. loved nat, tai, and van talking shit about it that was great but like what the fuck misty why are you like this

- adult lottie seeing the hives bleeding and bees dead was really interested and i wanna know what it means

overall a pretty strong episode. i’m glad that in the wilderness they had a fairly chill time given everything, like we don’t need a big shocking scene each episode and this one was more about dealing with shit and i liked that. my biggest issue this week is, as many people are saying, too much men (ben is the exception bc he’s the only man on this show i really care about)

#yellowjackets s2 #yellowjackets spoilers #lila’s yellowjackets recap

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bloomood · 1 year ago

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Finished final fantasy 16 last night and had some (many) thoughts, spoilers below!

so, clive’s massive honkers…..

First off I just want to say this game was AMAZING. The if the sound track doesn’t win every award it’s nominated for then it should literally be a crime. I’m serious, every main characters theme got me so hype and especially the soundtracks in the Ultima fight… oh my god… when Clive’s theme kicked in at the end I wanted to cry it was so good.

To also mention my gripes with the game: I didn’t really like how the gear and loot in the game really didn’t matter. The buffs you got from accessories weren’t cool to acquire, and honestly you could probably play through the game on the normal action difficulty mode without any accessories and not feel a difference.

(Exception being the berserker ring which gave you empowered attacks on a perfect dodge. I wish every or more accessories could be as impactful as this one.)

I do also think this would’ve tied naturally in with having more overworld enemy diversity. Having status ailments, resistances, etc., coming from gear or just knowing that enemies would be varied in certain areas and hurt you in different ways would’ve added a much needed layer of depth.

I also had a big issue with the game’s pacing. It has such INSANELY epic highs, and then some very boring low segments. The world and meeting new characters in these low segments was still nice I just wish it was handled a bit better instead of being so jarring. Hand in hand, the side quests. Oh my god. The pay off in the end if you follow the side quests chains all the way through was so amazing, but the way they’re littered out with fucking CLUMPS inbetween main story (looking at the 12 side quests now available right before the finale) drove me crazy.

One last slight negative was the handling of Jill, but I don’t think I’m as angry or disappointed as a lot of others. I think her story was fantastic, herself as a character is lovely, I just wish she had more dialogue in general whenever she was traveling along with the party. Just more things to say in cutscenes and overworld questing would’ve done a lot.

Now onto the positives. Combat, amazing, felt so satisfying and really made you feel badass throughout the game even when you’re just fighting some bees. Music. Amazing. Titan’s battle and soundtrack coming in will be an unforgettable moment for me.

The BOSS FIGHTS. Like what can you even say about them that hasn’t already been said. These are the most insane setpieces I’ve experienced in a videogame. The music and the cinematics made me CRAZY, a game hasn’t made me audibly scream and stand up mid combat in forever like this game repeatedly has done. I’m also a big fan of QTEs in general so I may be a bit biased there, but the addition of them made me feel super cool in these cinematic moments.

The characters are standout as well. I am REALLY surprised with how amazing Gav was as a side character. He really grows right alongside Clive to the very end. Uncle Byron doesn’t get as much love as he should with how beautiful of a man he is. Mid as well brings such a needed dynamic and personality into the hideout in an otherwise bleak setting of the blight ravaging the world. The entire side character and quest cast just gives them so much personality as you’re running around the hideout, Otto and Charon especially grew on me very quickly.

Cid, Cid, Cid. It’s crazy how he wasn’t in the game even for the entirety of it but he left such an impact on the player, the characters, and the world. Him and really everyone in the game had such stellar voice acting that they’re unforgettable. Torgal is the best boy, and his side quest chain into the final one really tugged in the heart strings and I’m glad they gave him so many moments including big, and little interactions with the world.

Dion, Joshua, Jote, Jill, all just kept hitting. Dion especially of the batch is iconic and I’m really glad he was so well received from the general player base both for how insane he and Bahamut is, and how nicely written of a character he is. Joshua and Jill both grew up alongside Clive, and little things from the brief childhood history kept showing up repeatedly in the story in their personalities and it made the ending even more gut wrenching. I love them all.

To talk about the Antagonists, I thought they all were interesting and served their purpose well. I wish Barnabas had more time to naturally share things about himself, motive, etc. I feel like his arc along with Clive was a bit rushed character wise, but maybe that’s just because he didn’t have much else to show given how he was all about being Clive’s foil, already having surrendered his will and human drive to Ultima. But he was definitely the most badass of the antagonists strength wise, legit terrifying.

Hugo and Clive’s rivalry was my favorite though. Mainly because how it wasn’t anything heroic between them, it was just rage. Vengeance, just a desire to wipe the other off the face of the planet. It was so cool to see, especially in a Final Fantasy game, and both their dialogues and voice acting were amazing. I didn’t have a problem with ultima as an antagonist, they had a cool design and played the role of detached god-thing perfectly to me. The final battle with the eikon’s all showing up and the multiple stages gave me CHILLS.

The ending seems to be the most divisive aspect of the game. I can see both arguments. It can be seen as really too open ended; almost like the writers themselves didn’t want to conclude the story so they left as much vague symbolism and hints as possible in the last 10 minutes.

But I also don’t mind it, it leaves so much for interpretation and discussion up to the player and fan that it can be, and mean, anything you want it to be. That was the point of Vivian’s final quest wasn’t it? That truth was just belief, the strength of a people’s belief.

Until CBU3 release some DLC or canonize any ending of course. Heh.

Beautiful game I will think about forever. Thank you for this final fantasy. These are all my opinions of course and I’m not stating anything I think as fact. Happy to discuss the game ^_^

#final fantasy #final fantasy xvi #ffxvi #I’m gonna think about the main cast for awhile #so good #the soundtrack was perfection #Agghhhhhhhhhhh #I just loved it so much #can’t believe it’s over

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