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saedii-gilwraeth-simp · 4 years ago

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Arsinoe&Billy 4 🤗🤗

This one was fun. Also the child of forced Heterosexuality™ was fun to write!

Teacher/Single Parent AU

Arsinoe has to say, that of all the students she teaches, the one who is simultaneously her favourite and also her least favourite was Mary Chatworth. The young blonde girl was bright and as sharp as a whip but also seemed to be the most pissed at the world and questioned every single thing any authority figure said to her. Which was fine with Arsinoe (she remembers being seventeen and traumatised) but made it extraordinarily difficult for her to teach the course content on time.

But, she wasn’t going to call Mary’s parents. Getting a young women in trouble for wanting knowledge wasn’t her style.

Which was why she was surprised when she got a phone call from Mary’s father. He had simply requested a meeting with her and that was that.

He was waiting by the office building and turned to her when she approached. She was almost thrown off balance for a second as he watched her approach with his deep hazel eyes. Still, she remained professional and reached a hander out.

“Hi, you must be William. I’m Arsinoe, Mary’s legal studies teacher,” she says as he takes her hand a shakes. His hand is warm and smooth and he flashes her a blinding white smile.

“Just Billy is fine. Only my mother calls me William. Shall we?” He says with a warm voice and gestures for them to go. She nods and lets him fall into step with her.

“So, I was surprised to hear from you. I saw no reason to contact you regarding Mary so I have to ask why you wished to speak to me?” She asks, turning into her classroom and taking a seat at on of the desks. Billy sits across from her with a sigh.

“I got a call from a Mr. Arron saying her behaviour was unacceptable and I should ask any of Mary’s other teachers and they would say the same thing. You’re her favourite teacher so I was hoping you could enlighten me to her behaviour. I’m really worried about her lately…,” he trails off and she shoots him a confused look. He catches it and sighs again, running a hand through his clean cut blonde hair, “her mum and I split up amicably when she was younger but lately she’s not reacting well to Christine’s partner. I really am hoping Mr. Arron is wrong,” he says nervously and Arsinoe laughs.

“Don’t tell him I said this, because I have to see him at family lunch on Saturdays, but Arron is wrong most of the time. Mary is fine, she wants knowledge and asks a lot of questions, which can make it hard to move onto the next topic, but one should never fault a student, especially a young woman, for wanting to learn more. Arron’s just a tool,” she says with a smile. Billy laughs quietly.

“And you’re related to Arron? Who you just called a tool?”

“He and my sister drunkenly eloped years ago, I still haven’t forgiven him for not inviting me,” she shrugs. He laughs again, gentle lines forming around his eyes. “Oh and feel free to tell him you talked to me when you go see him. I have the power of making him sleep on the couch whenever I want so…,” they laughed again.

“Well, I might go see him now,” Billy says standing. Arsinoe stands with him and shakes his hand. “I’ll make sure to pass on your information to him. Thank you for being so gracious with Mary, she really does enjoy your classes,” he goes to walk away and she is almost sad to see him go until he turns back to her and seems to pause as if considering what to say. Finally, he seems to work it out. “Feel free to say no, but would you like to go to dinner with me sometime? As a date?”

Arsinoe doesn’t let her happy surprise show on her face and instead moves to her desk at the back of the room, grabbing a pen and a slip of paper.

“I would like that. Here’s my number,” she scrawls it quickly and hands it off to him. “Have fun telling Pietyr he’s wrong.”

It seems that no-one in her family realised that Mary Chatworth noticed everything, even with her head in a book. She knew that her mum liked women before her new step-mother came into the picture, she knew her grandmother became less of a bigot after her grandfather died.

And she knew her dad was seeing someone new, and it was going well, considering he had been going on dates with obviously the same person for the last 6 months. Which led her to her current predicament. She was spying.

She had been steadily following her dad in traffic, staying two cars back so he didn’t notice she was following. Eventually he dropped his car off with a valet at a fancy restaurant - too fancy for her to have ever been taken to. Still, she gets lucky when her dad is seated in front of the window. He orders something with the server and waits, so she waits.

Her phone dings and she looks over at it.

Message from Mum: How’s the stakeout going? Also, will you be home in time for dinner?

She texts back, Boring, Dad’s still waiting, and probably not but could you put a plate in the microwave in case?

Message from Mum: Will do. Also, tell me if she looks interesting so I can tease Billy about it later. Love you

She snorts and throws her phone down on the passenger seat, watching her dad in the restaurant again. Finally, she sees him smile and stand, kissing a woman who approaches him. She is as tall as him with dark hair chopped around her chin and when they pull away Mary is stunned.

“Holy fucking shit,” she whispers to the empty car before lifting her phone and snapping a photo, sending it off to her Instagram group chat.

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: Are y’all seeing what I’m seeing?

Evil Twin Uno to Mary is the only Responsible One™: is that your dad on a date with ms. queen? holy shit bro

Evil Twin Dos to Mary is the only Responsible One™: crap dude are you okay?

Self-proclaimed Dingus to Mary is the only Responsible One™: that’s somewhere between oof and yikes

Viv with no nickname to Mary is the only Responsible One™: babe if you wanna come get high with me to forget that image, feel free to come over.

Mary scoffed at that. If there was one thing she would not be doing tonight, it was getting high. Her step-mother had the nose of a drug-sniffing dog.

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe tomorrow night when I’m staying at dad’s

Everyone’s debatable favourite to Mary is the only Responsible One™: yeah, get out of the house so your dad can spend spend quality time with you legal teacher *wink emoji*

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: I hate you

Everyone’s debatable favourite to Mary is the only Responsible One™: wait, you’re not at your dad’s tonight. Stick around and see if they leave together

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: ew ew ew ew ew ew fuck you fuck everyone.

She threw her phone back onto the seat and continued to watch. She had to admit, it was kind of nice to see her dad smile like he was now. She was so used to see him stressed or disciplining her that even though he laughed, he didn’t smile as much as he was on this date.

She threw her head back and groaned. If it came down to her opinions about it and her dad being happy, she had to let her dad being happy, even with a woman who she saw everyday in class.

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Viv with no nickname: If they leave together I’m coming to get high. I need an excuse to be at dad’s house tomorrow morning.

Viv with no nickname to Somehow the HBIC (MChat): I’ll save you a joint

She wasn’t still high, but she still smelled undoubtedly like weed, which is why she went to her dad’s. Plus, she wanted to see whether Ms. Queen had stayed over. She let herself into the house and went straight to the kitchen. She really wanted peanut butter for some reason and she knew her dad loved that shit.

She grabs a spoon from a drawer and the peanut butter jar from the pantry and hops up on to the counter, crossing her legs and twisting the cap off.

She’s happily eating spoons of peanut butter on her kitchen bench when she hears her dad’s bedroom door swing open and footsteps that are definitely not her dad’s pad down the hall. She braces herself just as Ms. Queen comes into the kitchen and freezes. Mary looks over the teacher, wearing the dorkiest glasses, one of her dad’s sleep shirts and a pair of shorts.

They stare awkwardly at each other until the teacher rubs her nose and fixes her glasses.

“You look and smell like you spent the night getting high. Let me guess, Vivian?” Mary nods silently and Queen snorts.

“Sorry, miss,” she says and Queen shudders.

“To start, I’m wearing one of your dad’s shirts, we’re at the point where you can call me Arsinoe and to finish, I don’t care, so long as you were doing anything to endanger yourself or anyone else. I’m not trying to be your mum, you already have enough of them, right?” Arsinoe says and grabs another spoon before pushing herself onto the counter. Mary offers her the peanut butter with a smile.

“My step-mum was super overbearing when it first became evident she would be around a while, so thanks, I guess,” Mary says, resting her head against the cupboard behind her. Arsinoe passes the peanut butter back.

“Well, I don’t know how long I’ll be around, but I really like your dad so I hope it’s a while. But I was seventeen once and I remember how much it sucked ass, so you don’t have to worry about me cramping your style,” Mary interrupts her with a snort and Arsinoe laughs, “wow I really sounded old then, huh?” Mary nodded.

“It’s fine. My mum still says tubular,” Mary says, meeting Arsinoe’s eyes for a beat and suddenly both were laughing.

“Ah, good to see you two getting along. What are you doing here kid? You’re meant to be at your mum’s,” Billy says as he enters the kitchen.

“I, uh, may have gone and smoked with Viv last night and you know what Denise is like,” she shrugged and her dad pursed his lips at her.

“I don’t approve of you getting high but I am glad you were honest about it and that you came someplace you feel safe. Now go text your mum you’re alright and sleep it off, please?” He says. Mary passed Arsinoe the peanut butter and hopped off of the counter, hugging her dad.

“Arsinoe can stay, she’s chill,” she compliments. Her dad smiles happily before ruffling her hair and sending her off to her room.

Send me a number and I’ll write a fic

#three dark crowns #one dark throne #two dark reigns #five dark fates #kendare blake #queen arsinoe #billy chatworth

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vateacancameos · 4 years ago

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I Won't Let You Let Me Down So Easily

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandom: The Locked Tomb Trilogy Pairing: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus Tags: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Gideon the Ninth, Post-Harrow the Ninth, Pre-Slash, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, they're working on the lovers part, POV Gideon Nav, Gideon watches Harrow Word Count: 1804 Part 2 of the Watching series (read Part 1 here)

For all of her short years of life, Gideon Nav has never wanted anything more than to ignore the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. To pretend she doesn’t exist. Unfortunately for Gideon—and the entirety of the Ninth—Harrowhark Nonagesimus has made that impossible from day one. She’s always there, one step away from Gideon, not looking at her, but making her own presence known, making sure she’s seen. That shrill, commanding tone is there from the moment she says her first word. Bones follow her every command, and she’s a tiny tyrant in black and wearing a painted mask. Where she is, skeletons follow, and Gideon is left behind, bloodied and beaten on the floor.

She never asked for this. She’s never wanted to be the bane of everyone’s existence. In fact, she tries her hardest to get away, time and time and time and time again. But Harrow demands an audience, and with most of the House being blinded from old age, Gideon is the one forced to watch. So she watches. Mostly, she watches her back, but over time, she watches just to see. What she’s looking for, she’s not sure.

She’s never wanted this, so why does a part of her now ask for it?

***

(read the rest under the cut)

***

Somehow Gideon isn’t surprised that even in the afterlife, she’s forced to watch Harrow. The Dark Mistress of Drearburh is a necromancer after all. If Gideon couldn’t get away from her during any of her eighty-seven escape attempts in life, it’s doubtful a little something like lacking a body would stop Harrow from forcing her to stay.

The really annoying part is that this time, Gideon actually does want to watch, but she’s got less a front-row seat and more like she’s using binoculars turned backwards so the thing she’s looking at is tiny and the lenses are smudged and she’s got cotton stuffed in her ears. She’s grateful for that when Ianthe tries her hand (haha, hand) at flirting with Harrow—she’s never felt such intense second-hand embarrassment in her life—but seeing what’s happening on The Mithraeum would be rather helpful right now.

Especially considering she isn’t allowed to do her job (protecting) thanks to one pointy-faced emo chick performing an at-home lobotomy with only a sociopathic princess to watch over her. Oh yeah, pre-surgery, Gideon could watch everything just fine. Why is it always that she’s forced to watch when she doesn’t want to, and she can’t watch when she does want to? She’s more than a little ticked by that.

No one ever asks her what she wants.

***

You know what’s really fucking annoying? Dying for your best frenemy so she can become the thing she’s wanted to become since she was four, then getting not only walled up in a tiny corner of Prissy McBitchFace’s brain, not only forced to see how awkward God is during tea time, not only stuck watching Harrow fumble her training and social interaction, but ALSO, unable to make her fucking necromancer work out or learn one single thing about a sword.

IT’S A FUCKING POMMEL, HARROWHARK. You can learn all the bones of the body by age two and a half, but you can’t learn the very few parts of a fucking sword? Sigh.

She’s being willfully ignorant on purpose. Gideon knows it.

***

You know what’s really fucking sad? Watching Harrowhark unable to function. Not just in her usual disconnected with reality and living in her special world where she’s the queen and everyone bows to her way. No, Harrow is … not Harrow. She’s barely human now (not that she was ever particularly human, more like a pointy, annoying bat), she’s paranoid (granted, someone is trying to kill her on the daily), she’s not sleeping, there are more wards in her tiny room than in all of the Ninth House, and she’s trying to … make soup?

It’s embarrassing to watch, and once again, Gideon is grateful her view is fuzzy and distant. Except that since she only gets a far-off snapshot of events a few times a day, she has lots of time to think and contemplate. And the more she thinks about it, the worse she feels. It’s sad, Harrow’s life is. And not in a oh she’s such a dork, how sad way, but more in a way that hurts Gideon’s heart, if Gideon had a heart still, which she guesses she doesn’t, not properly.

But still, she aches for Harrow. She wants to do her job, to be the big bad protector, but someone decided to be a selfish jerk and not let Gideon do the one thing she literally died to do.

Some people suck.

***

Swear to John (who’d’ve thought God’s name would be John), Gideon is really fucking tired of watching. At least when she was forced to watch Harrow in the past(life), she had a sword in her hands and a cocky smile on her face. Oh, what she’d give to go back to being able to watch and do, rather than watch and … watch, but not really watch, because time moves funny for her and it sounds like everyone is talking under water and faces are distorted (oh, no, wait, Ianthe’s face is always like that, nm).

She needs to be able to do again. She needs to force her dumb necromancer to get some sleep and then some exercise and then some brain surgery, in that order (what? squats are important). And then maybe learn the parts of the sword. SERIOUSLY, HARROW, HOW HARD IS POMMEL?

She wishes she had Harrow’s dumb army of constructs to fight. Even without a body, she has excess energy to get rid of and– HOLY SHIT. A CONSTRUCT JUST BURST OUT OF THE SKINNY/BUFF LYCTOR’S abdomen.

Okay, Harrow. You win this round.

***

Sleep does not help Harrowhark’s mood. She’s less of a zombie, sure, but she’s still a bit bananas. Watching her cut off Ianthe’s arm is pretty great, though (less great is watching her climb on top of Princess Bitch to do it). And the sex thing with God and two of the saints is … well, the jury is still out on that one. She actually got quite an eyeful of that scene. Perhaps all the wine allowed Gideon more freedom to move about in her necro’s brain.

None of that shocks her like watching Harrow save the lyctor whose been out to kill her for months. Gideon would definitely save him if she were in Harrow’s shoes (except she’d never be in those shoes because, one, they’re too small for her, and two, SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE A FUCKING SWORD). But even after everything that happened at Canaan House, and all that she’s seen of the disaster that is Harrow’s current life, watching Harrow save the man she’s absolutely bloody terrified of is … staggering.

Gideon’s not sure what to do with this information. Harrow with a normal human conscious is not something she thought she’d ever see. It’s not the Harrow she knew for seventeen years. It’s not the girl she fought tooth and nail with almost all of her life. It’s not the tiny mad genius who broke into the Tomb just to say she could. It’s not the tyrant who puppeteered her dead parents’ bodies for seven years for a power trip. It’s not the necromancer who longed for nothing more than to become a lyctor, even at every other person around hers expense.

It’s not the bone magician who performed possibly deadly surgery on her own brain rather than share soul space with the woman who died for her.

And if Harrow’s actions now say she’s not those things, then what else doesn’t Gideon know about her?

***

For once, Gideon is the watchee instead of the watcher.

Leave it to Sextus to be the one to see her.

***

Gideon takes it all back. She’d rather spend a myriad watching helplessly and foggily as her necromancer bumbles through life because she refuses to accept help in becoming a real lyctor. She’d love to go back to watching her make soup and avoid kisses with Tridentarius The Lesser and grimace at tea and cut her hair every three days and fuck up Gideon’s beloved two-hander by covering it in bone glue.

Because the alternative, of Harrow just up and leaving her body, which has just come to pass, is untenable. It’s wrong. Not just Gideon’s eyes and her WTF expression on Harrow’s face, but also the pure lack of Harrow in the room. For such a tiny little witch, she takes up a lot of space. She always has. It’s why Gideon had watched her their whole lives. Harrow would enter a room, and her presence would draw Gideon like a paperclip to a magnet. It was hateful, but it was comfortable, a known entity.

But Harrow being gone is so wrong.

Luckily, there are plenty of bug-human-acid-monster things that hold her attention for a time. That, and trying to figure out how to work Harrow’s limp noodle arms so that she can use a sword that weighs about the same as she currently does. As Gideon hacks and kicks and watches Harrow’s extremities regrow (trippy), she avoids thinking about why Harrow has left her. She fights Princess Peach and avoids thinking. She bickers (and maybe falls just a tiny bit in love) with Ianthe Tridentarius and avoids thinking. She listens to confessions twenty years in coming and avoids thinking. She finds her (very fucked up) family and avoids thinking. She (maybe?) befriends the lyctor who tried for nine months to kill her necromancer (except its actually not the lyctor anymore and she’s definitely going to have to learn more about that at some point when she’s no longer fighting for her [lyctor’s] life) and avoids thinking.

She’s going to have to think again at some point, but she’ll avoid it as long as she’s able.

***

When Gideon finally escapes and gets somewhere safe, she has time to watch again, and she hates it. She watches Harrow’s face in the mirror. She wills her necromancer to come back. She begs Harrow to come back. She paints the best skull she’s ever painted on Harrow’s face. She puts on the rust-black robes. She stares at the mirror and tries to find Harrow in the frown lines and pointy chin. But she’s not there, and it looks wrong. Gideon screams and punches the mirror. The broken flesh repairs instantly. She hates that. She needs the pain the last.

She has always associated pain with Harrow. The physical pain of their fights. The emotional pain of being unloved. If the pain is no longer there, does that mean Harrow is gone for good?

Gideon Nav’s eyes sting, and she watches the paint melt off Harrow’s face.

#locked tomb trilogy #fanfic #meagan writes #griddlehark #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth

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katkonstant · 5 years ago

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Harrow the Ninth: Act 1 Analysis - Local Bone Lady Newly Single and Ready for Mental Breakdown

I am so scared! so confused! and so turned on by the sepulchered mystery of Harrow the Ninth’s Act 1! And because it’s quarantine time, it’s organizational mapping and near-obsessive theorizing time baby.

I’ll warn you: this got LONG.

Spoilers galore.

This post is to try and organize my own thoughts as well as preserve in time that I don’t know shit when HTN finally hits. All to answer the big question: What in the necro-hell is going on? Here’s what we know as fact:

Gideon the Ninth was about Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter and Badass Emo Princess, and her not hugged enough but grinning through the pain sword lesbian cavalier, Gideon Nav. A catalogue of their romp of death in Canaan House.

Harrow the Ninth is currently cataloguing two things: (1) Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter and Mentally Unstable Concussion, and her cavalier, Ortus Nigenad and their guided tour of Canaan House. AND (2) Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Baby Lyctor, aboard His Imperial and Unending Magic School Bus.

Similar to @Siadea‘s wonderful post (x), I am all aboard the Timeline Fuckery Theory (TFT). Operating under the TFT, I will refer to our cast of characters accordingly. To summarize the TFT, the major point is thus:

In the prologue of Harrow, I think the Harrowhark of Gideon the Ninth (hereby Harrow1) settled in, swan dove into the River, somehow backstroked in time to when she woke up on the Emperor’s ship, and then she resurfaced (with Ianthe’s help), stripped of all memory&detection involving Keyword:Gideon.

Gideon [ORTUS]

It appears Harrow1 has programmed Harrow2 with a find+replace formula for ‘Gideon’ and replacing it with ‘Ortus’ on a pure, sensory input level. I have NO idea how she (or something else) did this. Prologue Ianthe Tridentarius telling Harrow, “I know what you’ve done, and I know how to reverse it” makes me think Harrow did this to herself.

It scrubs the past as well as the present. Proof - (1) When Harrow2 gets the Emperor’s invitation to Canaan House, we gather from context that Ortus asks her if she’s considered someone else. Only we read it as Ortus saying, “have you considered ORTUS NIGENAD?” AND THEN THE SCENE STARTS OVER, but rewound to moments before. Like a glitch in the Matrix; (2) The Emperor’s lips distort when he says “Ortus Nigenad did not die for nothing” and is confused when Harrow2 says it back to him; (3) When the Emperor later says the name of the third Lyctor ‘Ortus’, Harrow2 starts bleeding from the ears and passes out.....We’ll get to him in a sec.

The three syllables Prologue Harrow dies on: Could be ‘Gideon’ and the mark of her successful mindflaying from recognizing the word. Could also be ‘Alecto’. Hell, could even be ‘Nigenad’. Inconclusive.

The Chilly Weirdo Harrow Has the Hots For (alternatively, who tf are you?)

The Lady of the Locked Tomb is appearing and disappearing in Harrow2′s mind, both at her recall of Canaan House and in her (current?) stay with the Emperor.

She has Griddle’s Eyes. As we’re familiar with the lyctors, we know that when their cavs are “eaten”, necromancers’ eyes change to their cavalier’s colors. OR the Lady has simply taken on Griddle’s eyes to put Harrow2 at ease.

She has the voice of who Harrow2 needs to hear. We’ve heard the Lady sound like Pelleamena (Harrow’s mommy dearest), Crux, and Aiglamene (Captain of the Ninth guard). Both of these are people who loved Harrow1.

These characteristics ^ lead me to believe that the Lady can see Harrow1′s obsession with her and is either Manipulating Harrow2 by manufacturing her voice and eyes, or is genuinely trying to love Harrow2 in return. (She may have been present for Harrow’s entire life. See my Ch.3**)

What does she want from Harrow2? --> I think, without support or proof, that the Lady wants to Rise Again (as villains entombed are wont to do). As she doesn’t have a corporeal form, she’ll likely need Harrow’s help. Underlying idea being: the Emperor dies when his Unholy Other Half returns. It would be a little contrived to have the “beautiful lady revealed to be the big bad” device be the GTN and the HTN twist but we’ll see.

Interesting point: The Lady doesn’t like His Holy Frumpyness & Co. “Lie. Lie now.” She’s either protecting herself further down the line, or the Lady thinks that Mercy would have harmed Harrow2 because of this info. It’s possible this is the same interest if she needs Harrow’s help to free her.

Now Let’s Talk about Swords

AKA the sexiest part of this dissertation.

Harrow the Concussed is carrying Griddle’s Two hander. Not just any two hander. It is in fact and distinctly, Griddle’s sword. This is supported by (1) Harrow2 was given the sword by the Emperor “as a gesture” implying he knows Griddle and the sword’s significance to Harrow1. And (2) The severe physical reactions Harrow2 has to the sword’s loathing. In GTN Harrow1 mentioned to Griddle, “I have always felt like that sword hates me”. (this in and of itself is mystifying but I’ve got bigger occult fish to fry)

Either Griddle’s Sword or Cytherea is alive. The fade to black of Harrow rekilling Cytherea is a mystery within a Christmas light tangle of other mysteries and I’m not fucking with it. BUT. There are Five lifeforms aboard the ship that traversed the River: Mercymorn, the Emperor, Ianthe, and Harrow. Harrow2 tells us that the Body/the Lady isn’t in sight. That leaves inanimate objects: Cytherea’s body, or the two hander that hates Harrow.

Harrow2, the Concussed, is not carrying a rapier. Only in the Prologue does Harrow have a rapier on her hip. Ortus the Alternate cav carries a rapier. See the next theory for why this is significant.

The Events of Canaan House Two are Not Real.

These are my weakest theories. They’re all weak, but these ones are chief weaklings. The Time Fuckery Theory’s biggest snag is ‘Canaan House: What’s Real?’, and I think only the events with Harrow2 on the ship with Ianthe are actually occurring.

I think someone is soul/spirit guiding Harrow2 on this Canaan House Round II to show her something. Proof: (1) The repeated “Is this how it happened?”/”This isn’t how it happened.” Clearly indicate that this IS a repeated experience for Harrow, and not the original. (2) Ortus glitches a bit, looks at Harrow2 and says “You never did have much of an imagination.” Someone who knows Harrow1 made him say this. I think. (3) If we count who possibly could spirit-guide Harrow2 on this quest, we have to find the denominator candidates: the only people who knew Harrow1 at Canaan House and at Drearburh are Gideon, and Harrow1 herself. And - if the Lady really has been following her around, the Lady of the Locked Tomb. (4) This theory cannot account for the strobing red egg hallucinations on paper Harrow2 is being delivered.

Second explanation: it’s all happening in Harrow’s head, and Harrow1 is the spirit guide. In support: There is a surprising amount of explanation and character depth from Ortus. I believe Harrow1 knows Ortus enough from childhood to be able to project him onto Harrow2 this way.

Third explanation: Because the people Harrow2 is interacting with are all dead, it’s microscopically possible Harrow2 is tripping some soul-shrooms in the River and having the souls of Canaan House teach her something via flashback. In support: Prologue Harrow says five pairs of eyes close to submerge into the River, but hers would not open again. Incredibly vague, but could mean she was going to be spending a significant amount of time in the River. This theory is unlikely, as Harrow is a bone adept. Souls are squishy and freaky to her. Unlikely also from what we saw of the River. Ie; the River is an inhospitable predator which ripped Cassiopea apart and scares the hell out of Mercy and the Emperor. Not an ideal destination spirit-walk vacation spot. Plus, the only clear reasoning we get from Harrow about why she’s descending into the River is because she knows she’s going to die (although she tells Ianthe she has no plans to die)

Things to Note: (1) Teacher immediately spills the Sleeper beans, lets the laboratory cat out of the bag, and unmasks the key mystery. I think who/whatever is guiding Harrow2 around makes this happen legitimately just to save time. (2) Harrow2 is learning things from Ortus, Teacher, Abigail Pent, etc that Harrow1 and Gideon didn’t know.

If the Events of Canaan House Round Two ARE Real.

If the Great Value Canaan House timeline is actually happening and are physically influential, the implications are fucking vast, because now we’re considering the multiverse of how time works. I am not about to get into that shit because I do (contrary to this post’s existence’s suggestion) have a life, and I don’t feel like rededicating it to the theory of relativity and time dilation.

The biggest question though would then become: How would events have unfolded if Ortus had gone to Canaan House and not Griddle? The only conclusion to that is: everyone would be dead and Cytherea would be alive. Which does not jive with the happenings of Emperor Frizzle’s Magic NecroBus and Harrow2 (many are alive, and Cytherea is dead). It could be that Cytherea is, in fact, alive and needs re-killing via the Act 1 end of Harrow2 stabbing her. I can’t say.

What does freak me out about Canaan2 is Harrow herself.

Not her insanity, mind you, but the fact that Harrow2 is hilarious. She’s always been acidic and funny, but Harrow2 is crude and funny. This is very, very bad. She makes a remark about the term ‘bone frenzy’ that Ortus says only someone who’d prefer ‘prurient magazines’ would think of. Can anyone guess who might be more incline than Harrow to prefer prurient magazines? Say a messy sword necrolesbian with a subscription to Frontline Titties of the Fifth?

Harrow2 is also not chasing Palamedes Sextus around the grounds of Canaan House in a near-suicidal race to Lyctorhood.

Not only is she not working herself to death, but Harrow is doing the opposite: she is socializing. With the Fourth and Fifth! She’s caustic and rude while she does it, but she’s still spending time around them for whatever reason.

All these behaviors are Griddle behaviors and they make. me. nervous.

Is Harrow2 Actually a Lyctor?

Harrow’s Dramatis Personae section lists ‘Harrowhark the First’ with a huge and glaring and delightful redacted section below her name. If someone truly had the time, I’m sure they could sleuth out the layers of the censorship and find out what it says. However, it’s plain that the underlying text does NOT say ‘Gideon Nav, her cavalier’. So we’re left with more questions - who or what died to give Harrow her power? .....As a point of interest, it looks like the original writing has been overlaid with even more text.

Ortus’ eyes were black - the same shade as Harrow’s. Harrow2 wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny that she had successfully eaten her Canaan Redux cavalier.

In the prologue, Harrow1 calls herself “half a lychtor” implying that either 1) she’s simply not trained, or 2) something went wrong in her lyctorhood creation

And then we have this weird Chapter 3** internal narration of Harrow2′s childhood without Griddle. And she’s.. absolutely bananas. She grows up a ghoulish, lonely, nut job. But she still says she had committed the indelible sin halfway. That she hadn’t been able to choke him (Ortus) down.

Her manifestations of power don’t add up. First, Ianthe (undisputedly a lyctor) shoves Babs’ knife through her hand and has no problem with it, or healing right up. Harrow2... isn’t so lucky. Prologue Harrow is also in the process of dying. Conversely, while in the River, Mercymorn dismisses the idea that Harrow2 could possibly be using theorems and freaks out when she discovers Harrow can. Conclusion being: Either Harrow2 is incredible weak, or incredibly powerful but untrained, or she is Something Else Entirely*.

Harrow2 isn’t experiencing lyctoral indigestion. Cytherea tells Ianthe right after she eats Babs, “I can see him fighting you. Mine [meaning her cav, Loveday] came willingly, and it still hurt for a century.” We know Babs still fights Ianthe in HTN, as her eyes are usually swapping shades. It’s not something Harrow1 or 2 mentions as a problem.

* My working theory is that Harrow2 is kind of lyctor-ish and being protected by the Lady, the Sword, or Griddle (who might be incarnate in either).

Side note: It might be too far into the weeds to wonder about but I want to know what pregnancy would do to a lyctor. If we follow the Die Young but Beautiful and Powerful practices of the Seventh House, Dulcinea’s family uses their crappy genes as internal combustion engines: cells dying within them allow a perpetual source of thanergy. On the opposite end of that same theory, a necromancer constantly producing thalergy (life and cell growth) should therefore be significantly weaker, right?

This^ is only relevant when considering the other theory:

Papa Gideon [ORTUS] knocked up a fellow Lyctor.

While it would explain the creepy “egg” texts Harrow2 is hallucinating, as well as why Cytherea spared Griddle multiple times at Canaan house, I doubt this theory for a few reasons:

Of the available lyctors able to carry children, there is Cassiopeia, Anastasia, Mercymorn, and Cytherea. We only know Mercy and Cytherea.

It’s strongly implied that Cytherea and her cav, Loveday, were in a relationship. Since Loveday is technically still inside of Cytherea, I doubt she wanted to date around.

The Emperor strives to present the Lyctors as siblings. This a) props himself up as the holy and imperial papa bear to guide and govern them, b) perpetuates the eternal and indestructible bond of siblings, and c) kills any idea of inter-lyctoral hooking up. Can you even imagine the destruction a Jersey Shore: Unholy Power bar fight would wreak?

I’m not fully convinced Lyctor Gideon [ORTUS] is Griddle’s father. While it would make sense in terms of stature (Lyctor G/O is a single rippling muscle and Griddle’s biceps are... noteworthy), Silas Octakiseron told Gideon that her mother had hair just the same shade as her (source: Sister Glaurica’s toiling soul). Could be that Griddle’s Mom’s soul screaming “Gideon!” was her calling for the Lyctor, her brother/other relation.

However, I DO believe Griddle is... more than. She wasn’t killed by the nerve gas, and Harrow2′s eyes are not Griddle Gold.

As a second side note, Lyctor Gideon [ORTUS]’s cav was named Pyrrha Dve. This is exciting to me because of my slutty fandom tendencies and because a name like ‘Pyrrha’ begs for Tragic Backstory, and I’m here for it. Also, I want more interaction with Augustine as he’s who Ianthe says “won’t come save” Harrow. Eye emoji.

Alecto

As far as I’m aware, there are no solid leads on who or what Alecto the Ninth is. Casting about in wildly unwarranted guesswork, I can throw a few baseless theories out;

Alecto is Griddle’s truer name (possibly birth name or even what she’s called if when she is brought back);

Alecto is the Lady of the Locked Tomb;

Alecto is the Emperor’s Cav. In Harrow’s ‘Dramatis Personae’, The Emperor is listed as well as his lyctors and their cavaliers. Except, the Emperor does not have a deceased cav. He has “A.L.”, his guardian. A.L. =Alecto, mayhaps?;

Alecto, a combination of (2) and (3). The Lady is supposedly the Emperor’s death and who he could not kill twice. If she were his ‘guardian’ she would be a) more powerful than him, and b) someone he was emotionally attached to which he couldn’t bring himself to kill again.

Things I Cannot and Refuse to Account For:

Ianthe Tridetarius became a sewn tongue as a favor for Harrow1. Wtf.

Ortus Nigenad’s self-insert cavalier epic of Matthias Nonius. Wtf.

**The entirety of Chapter 3 is either true or it’s not. Wtf was that shit.

The psychotic “You lied”/”Egg” texts Harrow2 is hallucinating. Wtf.

This is.... all probably incorrect, and I applaud you if you made it this far. I could keep going, the material of Act 1 is that dense. But in answer to The Great Big WTF that is Harrow Act 1 - my theory is simple.

TLDR; I think Harrowhark Nonagesimus is tearing down the laws of the universe to bring back Gideon the Ninth.

#honestly this is incredibly confusing and i don't super blame the dnf folks on goodreads #but im not a bitch so i guess i'm in it for the long haul #obviously #but i get that this much questioning goes past mystery and into bad plot for some #you really just have to trust tamsyn muir to make it all worth it and hope she ties it all together in a coherent way #which i trust her to do #a mistake really if we're going by what she did to us all at the end of GTN but hey #it doesnt count as bury your gays bc we never found a body right?#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #harrow act one #Tumblr ATE my formatting so sorry for the blocks of text!#SPOILERS

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ruffsficstuffplace · 6 years ago

Text

The Viridian Vanguard (Part 31)

Pyrrha’s next choice ended being a set of Dunestriders. They were a specially modified design for human hands and feet, fully enclosed without the straps and open toes and fingers they usually had, though the boots still had a reverse-joint form, achieved by having Pyrrha’s actual feet much higher than they appeared to be. It had the effect of making her even taller than she already was, which Jaune immediately noticed as she strode into the arena.

Pyrrha looked at him, visually compared the lengths of her armoured dunestriders and the companion gloves against Jaune’s arm plus sword, and frowned. “These are probably going to put you at a severe disadvantage again...”

“Yeah, it probably will...” Jaune muttered.

“Are you going to stick with your sword and shield again?”

“No, I’ve learned my lesson,” Jaune said, stepping out of the ring, heading to the weapons rack, and returning with a poleaxe.

“A suitable weapon for the conditions of the fight, Jaune,” Pyrrha said, nodding in approval.

“Thanks,” Jaune said, before held the poleaxe out, its spike just a good lunge away from meeting Pyrrha.

She went into her own fighting stance, crouching low on the ground like a sprinter, the dunestriders’ mechanisms whirring and preparing for action.

Taiyang looked at them both and smiled, before he blew the horn.

Jaune attacked first, thrusting his poleaxe at Pyrrha!

Whoosh!

Pyrrha launched herself to the side, and the spike met the cloud of dust left she left in her wake.

Jaune pulled it back and swung at Pyrrha, she leaped over the blade and shaft, landing on her hands before she put her feet back on the ground and started to circle around Jaune. He noticed and rushed to the center, swinging wide for her chest!

Pyrrha dropped to her knees!

Clang!

The top of her helmet banged against the axe-head as she slid across the ground, kicked up a huge cloud of dust in her wake. Jaune pulled his poleaxe back and tried to stab at her, she scrabbled backwards, kicking up even more dirt and hiding her from view.

Jaune quickly pulled his weapon back, squinting as he tried to any sign of Pyrrha…

Whoosh!

The cloud blew apart as Pyrrha launched herself at Jaune!

He braced his feet, and cried out as he stabbed at her…!

… He missed, Pyrrha landed behind him on her hands and a foot, cocking her other leg and looking over shoulder, before she drove her heel into the back of Jaune’s knee.

“AGH!” he cried out as he stumbled, rammed his poleaxe in the dirt to keep from falling.

Pyrrha launched herself back up on her feet, dashed towards Jaune, and kicked his legs out from under him. He collapsed on his back, his poleaxe held across his chest; he tried to raise it up until Pyrrha brought one foot down on the shaft, pinning it to his body.

He could only watch as she prepared to drive her other foot onto his neck.

“You really have a thing for going for the neck, don’t you…?” Jaune wheezed as he was back on the bench once more, his helmet off and rubbing at the fresh medical patch slapped on top of his neck.

“Well, it is one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body, and evidently the Fae folk’s also,” Pyrrha replied as she sat next to him, her helmet also off. “Should I stop? I mean, there are other parts I could target!”

“What were they again?” Jaune asked. “It’s been a long while since I went through them in Basic.”

Pyrrha put on a thoughtful expression, and muttered, “Hmm... well, our helmets and visors make the ears, eyes, nose, and such well-protected and impractical to strike; our chest armour will easily withstand a blow to the solar plexus, the ribs, and even down to the crotch; and our boots and leg-armour are incredibly sturdy and help protect against knee breakage… so there’s always going for the arms for a disable…?

“Oh, but that’s where your weapons are, especially your shield, so… on second thought, I guess there really isn’t any other weak points I can exploit except for your neck...” she mumbled, sheepishly looking down. “This is embarrassing, I apologize.”

“It’s cool,” Jaune said, waving her off. “I mean, when you think about it, this can be good practice, you know! For everything out there, outside the Bastion, ‘cause I’ll be Weiss’, ah, ‘personal server,’” he said, gesturing vaguely at the stretch of uninhabited swamp some distance away. “Those animals are probably also going to be coming straight for my neck, up close and personal, so better be prepared for it, right?”

“Right, but I think most people would prefer training with Fae firearms and other ranged weapons, than attempting to master close range-combat,” Pyrrha said, looking back at him. “Reach and range can mean everything in an encounter, especially when one party is robbed of it. Speaking of which: why are you training with your sword and shield? Has it been strengthened with echoes over the years, too?”

Jaune frowned, looked away, and muttered, “It’s stupid...”

Pyrrha put her hand on Jaune’s shoulder and smiled at him. “I won’t judge.”

Jaune looked at her, hesitated a moment, before he looked away and said, “There’s this… legend in my family about these weapons...”

Pyrrha took her hand back, placing them in her lap, before she nodded at Jaune. “Go on...”

Jaune looked at her from the corners of his eyes, before turning to his weapons on his lap. “It says that this sword and shield? They’re completely, absolutely unbreakable, made out of some special super-metal, by some special smith, in the woods, in the mountains, deep in cave in a lake—the details are really fuzzy and change a lot, but the point of it is, you can’t wreck them—ever.

“The blade gets dull, the shield gets dented, and they aren’t immune to getting bent out of shape, but they’ll never break, and whatever happens to it, it can get fixed.

“And my ancestors said that it ‘blessed’ whoever wielded them, making them just as unbreakable, too. If you can believe the stories, this shield saved Arcs from a barrage of gunpowder cannons, a historic storm, and even helped slay a legendary demon, way back when. The only their wielders could ever die was when they intentionally left them behind, or when it was finally their time to go, anyway.

“I’m pretty sure a lot of it is bullshit bedtime stories to make them seem special, make my family seem special, but since they really are pretty much indestructible, maybe, maybe there’s some truth to their ‘blessing!’ And if it is true, then I can...” he suddenly stopped.

Pyrrha waited a few moments, before she asked, “And then you can…?”

Jaune shook his head again. “Nevermind, it’s even dumber than the legend,” he said as he put his helmet back on, grabbed his weapons as he stood up. “My neck’s feeling better now, I’m ready to see you in the ring again when you’re ready.”

Pyrrha looked unconvinced, but she nodded and did the same, heading to the weapon rack to pick out her next choice.

It ultimately turned out to be a series of Stormwheels. Her first choice was a lightweight, one-hander designed for close range combat, a “Clutcher” Stormwheel. The wheel was six inches in diameter including the three curved hooks, had a lever mechanism that’d extend it away from her when activated, and a miniature, fire-powered motor that wrapped around her forearm.

“Are you sure you want to use that?” Jaune asked as they were back in the ring.

“I’m sure.” Pyrrha replied. “From what Ren has told me, it’s a very effective weapon when it comes to disarming and disabling melee attackers.”

“Okay…” Jaune said, nodding slowly.

“Do you have any issues with it, Jaune?” Pyrrha asked.

“Well, it’s just that… it looks like a giant fidget spinner!” Jaune cried. “One you wear on your arm instead of hold in your hands!”

“I’ll admit it looks a bit silly, but I’m willing to give it a shot!” Pyrrha replied, holding up the clutcher. “Who knows? It might make it among those in the final running.”

Jaune shrugged. “If you want to use it, I guess...” he muttered as he readied his weapons.

Pyrrha smiled. “Thank you, Jaune,” she said as she did the same.

Taiyang blew the horn, Jaune rushed at Pyrrha and slashed!

She raised her clutcher, squeezing hard on the trigger, the wheel roaring into action!

Reeeee—CLANG!

Jaune’s sword immediately got caught in the now spinning hooks; caught by surprise, he felt his wrist painfully twisted. “AGH!”

He immediately lost his grip on his sword, the clutcher sent it flying off into the audience!

“HOLY SHIT!” Yang cried as she, Nora, and Ren ducked for cover.

Taiyang swiftly caught it out of the air. “Got it!” he said, triumphantly holding it up by its blade.

“Maybe I shouldn’t use these...” Pyrrha said as she quickly pressed the emergency stop button, the clutcher screeched to a halt.

“Agreed...” Jaune mumbled, trembling as he cradled his wrist.

After a quick medical check to ensure that the bones there were still whole, the blood cells unruptured, and the nerves healed, Pyrrha decided to move onto another variation, a “Whirler” Stormwheel, or as it was more affectionately known, a “Whirly-wheel.” This one was smaller, about two or so inches in diameter, made of a coil of steel-silk sandwiched between two sharpened discs, the water medium inserted via magically infused beads.

“So now you’re fighting with a yo-yo…?” Jaune observed as he observed Pyrrha practicing with it, playing with it as you would the actual toy.

“It could be fun!” Pyrrha replied, trying to do a trick with them, giggling as it ended up going out of control and smacking her lightly on the chest.

Jaune shrugged, and prepared himself for combat once more.

Taiyang blew the horn, Jaune charged first, aiming for a thrust this time!

Pyrrha activated the water medium inside her stormwheel, the beads glowing bright as she threw it at Jaune’s head!

Clang!

The blow jerked Jaune’s head backwards, he staggered and stumbled as he instinctively raised his shield up to his face.

Pyrrha pulled her whirler back, spun it around to build momentum, before she launched it at him again!

At the same time, Jaune regained his balance lowered his shield enough to see—specifically, the whirly-wheel flying straight for his face again.

Thunk.

It landed on his shield and ricocheted off, but the force and the angle of the strike sent it and his hand smacking straight into his head.

Jaune fell onto his back, his limbs splayed out around him.

Pyrrha pulled her whirler back; it missed her hand and struck her in the head, leaving a shallow dent in her helmet. “Are you alright, Jaune?” she asked as her whirler fell and tumbled in the dirt.

Jaune slowly raised his shield hand and turned it outwards, making a thumbs-up, before it dropped back to the ground.

As Ren wanted to test him for potentially serious head-trauma, it gave Pyrrha time to choose and train with one of the much more exotic and flashier variants: “Screamer” Stormwheels. It was a four-piece set that could be used like wheels, circular saws, or small shields, mounted on the sides of special boots and gloves, loaded with earth medium upon Nora’s recommendation.

Like the dunestriders before it, the reverse-joint design of the boots and the screamers themselves gave Pyrrha quite the height boost, and with the incredible speed she could achieve from a standstill thanks to the motors, Jaune was given another polearm.

This time, he chose a grasping vine staff.

Pyrrha skated into the arena, playfully circling around Jaune, before she moved to her starting place. Jaune nodded at her, before he pulled out his staff, and held it at the ready.

Taiyang blew the horn, and Pyrrha was off, dashing around the arena, ripping up huge gouges in the ground as she kicked up huge clouds of dust!

Jaune rushed to the center again, standing strong and steady as he watched the dust flying up around him, looked out for the glint of metal through the clouds.

Pyrrha dashed in to strike!

Jaune smacked one arm away with his staff, blocked the slash from the other. Pyrrha tried to dash back into the clouds, Jaune swept his staff at her legs, managed to grab onto an ankle, and pulled!

“Gah!” Pyrrha cried as she was jerked backward, falling on her stomach.

Jaune started to pull her closer to him, she slammed her screamers into the dirt, gouging the ground and slowing him down, but not enough to try and get back up. It almost seemed like Jaune finally had the upper-hand, when she accidentally activated the motors in her hands, and the sudden motion jerked Jaune to the side.

Realization struck the both of them. Pyrrha smiled as she arranged her three free screamers parallel to each other, Jaune paled as he tightened his grip as he heard all three motors screeching back to life.

Whirrrr…!

Round and round Pyrrha went, gradually going faster and faster and father and farther away from Jaune. He struggled to keep the fast-slipping staff in his hands, turn around without tripping himself on his own feet, or just getting yanked to the ground, small mounds of dirt building up around him as he literally dug his heels in!

Ultimately, Pyrrha won, Jaune getting yanked face-first to the ground as his staff flew out of his hands.

Pyrrha made a long, hard turn and came to a stop, the staff smacking her in the side before she picked it up, and freed her ankle from it. Meanwhile, Jaune pushed himself up by his hands, just in time to see Pyrrha heading straight for him at full speed.

Later on the benches, Pyrrha had her helmet off and her head inside a barf bucket, while Jaune had the chaotic road map of gouges on his armour filled in. When the both of them were good for combat once more, Pyrrha choose something far away from the stormwheels:

Gaoler’s Grasps.

They covered all of her hands and almost all of her forearms, their “jaws” extending past her knuckles when activated, the armor plates clinking ominously with each step she took. Pyrrha punched them together twice, the sound rang out in the arena, then echoed faintly from the trees a few moments later.

“… Not a very subtle weapon this time, huh…?” Jaune asked.

“Precisely,” Pyrrha replied, before she raised her fists.

Taiyang blew the horn, Pyrrha charged in with a haymaker!

Clang!

Jaune blocked it with his shield, she slipped in a weaker punch to the gut, sending him staggering back. Jaune retaliated with a slash!

Ka-chunk!

Pyrrha snapped the jaws of one glove around his sword, and stopped his arm. The two began to wrestle for his sword and exchange blows, Jaune smashing his shield into Pyrrha, Pyrrha punching with her free hand, the clangs of metal on metal ringing out in the arena.

Thunk!

Pyrrha managed a blow to Jaune’s head, stunning him.

Ka-chunk!

She let go of his sword, latched onto his shield then pulled it out of the way. Jaune tried to bash her in with the pommel of his sword, but it was too late.

Thunk!

Jab to the stomach, most of the wind rushed out of Jaune’s lungs.

Thunk!

Uppercut to the chin, he went stumbling back, fell onto his back as Pyrrha let go of his shield. She didn’t hesitate to straddle his chest, raise both of her hands up high in the air for an overhead smash. Jaune closed his eyes.

THUD.

“Who are you?” Ren asked as he sat on the benches with Jaune.

“Jaune Arc.” Jaune mumbled.

“Where are you?”

“The training grounds...”

“Which is in?”

“Keeper’s Cove—I mean Grove.”

“Which in turn is in?”

“The Viridian Valley.”

“How many claws am I holding up?”

“Three.”

Ren and Jaune continued with the head trauma tests, while Pyrrha stood some distance away, watching uneasily. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone so hard that time...”

“He’ll be fine!” Nora replied. “He’s actually been doing pretty great, by human or Fae standards!”

“Really?” Pyrrha asked, surprised. “How so?”

“He’s still alive and in one piece!” Nora replied. “Most greenhorns I know couldn’t have even lasted under a quarter of the abuse Jaune’s already taken, let alone keep coming back for more! If nothing else, he’ll probably make a great meatshield.”

“… That doesn’t sound like much of a positive.”

“It is once you’re outside the walls!” Nora hummed. “Trust me, sometimes the best watcher you need in your hunting party is someone who can survive being mauled and/or chewed up for a minute or five to give everyone else room to breath.”

“Uh… huh...” Pyrrha mumbled.

Ren ultimately declared Jaune “mostly fine,” and Jaune himself was still willing to resume the duels.

“Are you really sure about that, Jaune?” Pyrrha asked. “I’m starting to feel that pain patches and black moss won’t be of much use rather soon.”

“I’m sure!” Jaune replied, nodding. “Maybe just for one more match, but that’s still going full-out!”

“And what do you know, I’ve got the perfect weapon idea for it, too!” Yang added, smiling.

Pyrrha looked at them both dubiously, before she sighed, and said, “Alright. One more match, but only one.”

She ended up donning a full Warcharger set, like the one Keren used. Though the horns mounted on her helmet and the extra armour on her chest and shoulders looked intimidating, Jaune’s real concern were the bulky boots she wore, and the force-amplifying mechanisms hidden inside it.

“Still sure you want to go through with this, Jaune?” Pyrrha asked as she crouched low to the ground, pointed her horns at him.

“I’m sure!” Jaune said, readying his weapons.

“So I take it you’re both ready?” Taiyang asked.

“Aye!” they replied.

“Then for one last time… FIGHT!” Taiyang yelled, before he blow the horn.

Pyrrha charged at Jaune, boots leaving craters in her wake, closing the distance in seconds!

Jaune’s eyes widened as he braced for impact.

Crash!

He slid backwards a few feet, his heels burying themselves into the ground before he grabbed hold of Pyrrha, smashed at her with the pommel of his sword. The blows barely seemed to have any effect on her drastically thickened armour, Jaune was slowly pushed back further and further, until he was finally lifted up into the air.

With a resounding cry, Pyrrha threw him!

Her eyes widened as she realized he was flying much farther and faster than she intended, straight into the empty benches and a lamppost opposite Taiyang and the others.

The furniture and the lamppost were fine.

Jaune was not.

Note: Fae dislike human-style, fully enclosed footwear for two reasons: one, their naturally, incredibly durable and highly adaptable hides made it unnecessary (many can step on a nail or broken glass without issue and only very superficial injury, if they even notice); and two, the sheer variety of feet, hooves, talons, claws, flippers, fins, and so on and so forth made it extremely difficult to design for them without having to resort to very expensive, oftentimes convoluted designs that was made to comfortably fit the individual folk it was made for, and no one else.

Even hand-me downs from parent to child weren’t a guarantee as they could be of entirely different species thanks to the increasing volatility of Fae genetics after the Second Great War, and even slightly larger claws on their toes could make it painful to wear a shoe at all. Thus, most designs were very minimalist or highly adaptable, with a large amount of bands of hard material, secured with fibers, coupled with flexible and malleable materials for comfort.

Clutcher Stormwheels have a close cousin called “Flailer” Stormwheels, whereby projectiles are either slung using centrifugal force, or used to amplify the force of whatever objects are attached to the cables; they are usually blunt and heavy, but not always.

Whirlers are incredibly infamous weapons of choice, especially for young, inexperienced users, as they are ASTOUNDINGLY good at causing collateral damage from even the most basic of techniques.

Screamers are so named for the sound their users make as they rush past you, more specifically from the air they displace.

Stormwheels also come in:

“Flurry” which are small, disposable sets for throwing;

“Wheeler” which are disposable sets meant to roll across the ground, or be a much heavier-duty thrown weapon;

“Dancer” which curve back to the owner, and are frequently used in performances;

“Minder” whose trajectory can be easily controlled mid-flight, generally with weaver magic;

“Slasher” which are meant for close combat unaided by motors;

“Crusher” which are very large, meant to be carried over the shoulder or around the arm, and are made to shatter bone than cut;

“Moon” similarly sized versions which can split apart into two crescent shaped-blades, and be folded for easier transport or agility;

“Eye” which are even LARGER variations meant for the user to ride in;

and many other styles and modifications.

Gaoler’s Grasps were rarely used in prisons. As you might expect, if you’re handling violent convicts, most watchers prefer to stick with ranged weapons or ones that otherwise kept them a fair distance away from you. Their infamy mostly comes from the few times they WERE brought out, and to devastating effect.

Warchargers are named after the special division of Fae soldiers that used them during the Second Great War. They were the vanguard for almost every major offensive, and were infamous for being EXTREMELY difficult to bring down while they brought down and crushed your walls, defenses, and defenders. There are few more iconic images of the Second Great War than a wave of heavily armoured Fae sweeping down from the horizon, charging through and trampling everything underfoot, barely slowing down or stopping for ANYTHING.

#white rose #rwby #fanfic #the viridian vanguard

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kyluxtrashpit · 7 years ago

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So @obsessions-and-dreams tagged me in two memes a while back before all of the failed hard drive nonsense, so I’m just gonna shove them together lmao

Goal: tag people to get to know them Relationship Status: Breaking my own personal dry spell record every day lmao

Favorite color: It changes, but today it’s red Lipstick or chapstick: I use chapstick all the time because I tend to lick my lips when I’m anxious, causing them to dry out constantly

Last song: …tbh that was a whole day ago, so I have no idea lmao Last movie: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Top 3 shows: tbh all I have been watching lately is Star Trek Discovery and cooking competitions Top 3 ships: uhhh I mean right now Kylux is the top. I still have a huge soft spot for Handers from Dragon Age. And then I have like 6 tied for third lmao Top 3 characters: You can’t make me choose lmao. It’s not happening. My current favourite suffer puppet is definitely Kylo though

And now for the second one! (cut for length)

Answer these 40 questions about yourself and tag blogs you’d like to get to know

Name: Stacey

Nickname: Stace, Revo from my main blog

Gender: *non-committal wiggly hand gesture* someone forgot to install one for me

Height: 5’5” ish

Ethnicity: Mixed. I’m a status Native, but I never go outside so my computer-bleached skin is super pale

Favorite fictional character: I love all of my suffer puppets equally

Favorite fruits: Mango. Though strawberries are a close second

Favorite season: Fall

Favorite book series: LOTR

Favorite flower: Tbh I have no idea. Roses are nice I guess?

Favorite scent: Not to be ‘that person’, but rain lmao

Favorite animal: Squids

Coffee/tea/cocoa: tbh I don’t drink a lot of warm beverages. I subsist almost entirely on iced tea and pepsi

Cat or dog person: whynotboth.gif

Star sign: Scorpio

Birthday: November 6th

Favorite bands/groups: I’ve been listening to the same music basically since 2007 or so, so most of my library is still the emo triumvirate

Favorite solo artists: I’m literally the worst a picking favourites okay, but I’ve been listening to Kesha’s new album a lot lately

Song stuck in my head: Nothing, actually

Last movie I watched: answered above

What do I post: Mostly kylux, but some other assorted Star Wars nonsense

Last thing I goggled: A firefox extension I was looking for but couldn’t remember the name of since I had to hunt them all down again. Stupid hard drive issues

Do you have any other blog: This is my side blog, so I have my main at apostaterevolutionary. If you like video games, random shit, and thinly veiled cries for help, feel free to bother me there

Do you get asks: On occasion. I think tumblr eats a lot of them though considering I’ve gotten notifications more than once for asks that never actually showed up in my inbox >:(

Why did you choose your URL: I needed something kylux related and it was the first thing that came to mind that wasn’t already taken

Following: 111

Followers: 1267, apparently. Which uh, I had not actually realized until now. Holy shit

Average hours of sleep: anywhere between 0-12 hours on a given individual night, but generally it averages out at about 7

Lucky number: 17

Instruments: I played the tuba in junior high and high school

What am I wearing: Fuzzy pyjamas

Favorite foods: Sushi, anything with cheese, chocolate, fruit, pasta

Nationality: Canadian

Favorite song: Ahahaha yeah no, not possible

Favorite color: answered above

Number of blankets: 1 blanket + a sheet. I vary the warmth of the blanket depending on the weather

Dream trip: I need to go to Iceland. I don’t know why, but I do

Last show I watched: I’ve currently got some Halloween cake competition thing on in the background

When did I create my blog: This one I think I made last March or so, but my main was made in like 2011. Holy fuck I have been on this hellsite for too long lmao

Dream job: House pet tbh. I don’t want responsibilities, pet my hair instead

I’m not gonna tag anyone specific, but if you read this far, consider yourself tagged!

#little known secret: I love to ramble #so I very much appreciate the tag lmao #text #misc #things I am tagged in #shut up nerd

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clumsychicken · 8 years ago

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Get to know the blogger meme

I was tagged by @wardenroot, thank you!! :3c

Name: Clumsy Chicken lmao

Relationship status: pringle

Lipstick or chapstick: chapstick

Last song I listened to: Muse - Knights of Cydonia

song stuck in your head: Ludwig, The Holy Blade from Blodborne....

Last movie I watched: We Need to Talk About Kevin. It was alright.

last tv show watched: Uhhh I think that was actually Stranger Things, finally? I’ve also been binging Kitchen Nightmares tbh....

Top three tv shows: Steven Universe, Brooklyn 99, and uhhhhhh

Top three characters: Anders, Cr8/Lautrec (can’t choose, lads), Eileen.

Top Three Ships: Handers, Luna/Lucatiel&Cr8, Ludwig/Laurence. These and the above 3 change like pretty regularly though, depending on how I feel that day lmfao.

Gender: woman

Nickname: Clumsy, Clums, CC

Starsign: leo

Height: 168

Hogwarts house: Slytherclaw or whatever

pokemon team: Skull

Favorite color: purple

Favorite animal: fuck dude so many.....rn I’m really feeling sharks

Average hours of sleep: 7-8 usually? Maybe? rn my brain insists on waking me early. It’s #processing things.

Time: 00:54am

what are you wearing right now: bright pink for once

Cat or dog person: mostly dog, but I honestly like both

Favorite Fictional Character: haven’t I already basically answered this?? It’s still Anders.

Number of blankets I sleep with: a duvet

Favorite singer/band: not really any lol

Dream Trip: going back to Beijing, maybe. I’d also love to visit LA or San Francisco sometime

Dream job: analysing or creating fun fiction

When was this blog created: january ‘16, after moving from my old blog of the same name

what kind of stuff do you usually post: the vidjah gams, criticizing shit, fucking uhhhhhhhh fanfic I guess?? Please read my fic I’m begging you

do you have any other blogs: since this is a sideblog, yeeees

do you get asks regularly: sure, regularly enough

why did you choose your url: c’est moi

How many blogs I follow: all of them

Current number of followers: 2½ eggs and some sugar

What made you get a tumblr: it had pretty pictures of things I liked lmao

And for this I’m tagging....... @thewindysideofcare, @sera-wasnever, @spooky-apostate, @ankford, @theknightartorias!

#ask meme #about me

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thegeminisage · 8 years ago

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since i FINALLY finished the comic page im gonna make the poor choice of playing zelda ALL NIGHT get ready for The Longest Post which is full of Big Super Spoilers

since lynel thoroughly kicked my can last night i need defense food and preferably stronger weapons

i technically already had more than enough shock arrows to proceed but i wanna kill him!!!!

LMFAO I JUST COOKED SOMETHING THAT GIVES ME 21 EXTRA HEARTS...HOLY FUCK

okay but in all seriousness i only have like 3 defense things........

i guess i'll try it fuck i dont feel like scouring the world for ironshrooms rn

ok. slept on the bed to get my stamina wheel & 3 hearts, will use my 21 hearts when those run out, got 3 defense things for about 14m of defense, I Can Do This

really i wish i had a one-handed weapon, two-handers are so slow :/

well here we go again :|||

lol why does my heartrate always go up for shit like smh.....

getting better at dodging

ooh he hates my ice arrows

HAHAHA I MOUNTED HIM

maybe i can get a snapchat pic

YES i did i didn't attack him in that perfect moment but hey some thing are more important

NOOO FUCK I DIED

I FORGOT TO REFRESH MY DEFENSE ELIXIR BC I HAD GOTTEN UP AND FORGOT IT WAS ALMOST OUT

JESUS FUCK

im so fucking annoyed lmao i was so close

oh well at least now i can use that whole mount

aaand again

oh. im out of ice arrows.

YIKES i forgot to refresh my thing again just for a sec and almost died

YES i got a perfect dodge purely on accident NICE!!!!

i can see everything from shatterback point, even naydra, but im too scared to jump while the beast is down there

no yk what fuck it. im turning this paraglider around

first tho i really wanna wait to see if i can catch another rainbow...they were so pretty and i lost the other pics i took when i died ):

oh!!! there it is!!!!! and i was just about to give up

ah it last such a short time - but it comes at the same time every day, around 4:05

i'm sure it won;t appear here anymore after the divine beasts knocks it off with the water though, haha

okay.......time to dive

/saves first

AHAHAHA I DID IT

WOW THAT THING IS SO HUGE UP CLOSE BYE

i mean it didnt even move im just Scared. ok

duuude i gave the lynel pic to the lady and got swim pants?! FUCKING SICK where do i get a helm

okay time to go free the divine beast!!

haha wait i came out here without defense stuff. i didn't cook anymore

oh well yolo

or actually this is a game so i live as many times as i want #determination

i do still have some extra hearts left, and stamina, and some healing items, and even some electricity elixirs, sowow!! okay! still huge!!!!!

ah i love sidon so much

he tries so hard and he's so ready and he loves his people so dearly

i bet he's gonna die lol

if it's like, a sage thing, maybe he has to replace mipha if she really is gone

jesus please don't die sidon PLEASE

OH MY GOD I GET TO RIDE ON HIS BACK?

JFC THIS MUSIC IS SO COOL!!!! AAAAKDSHFGKLJ

OH MY GOD HE'S TALKING!!! IN THE FIGHT!!!!! IM CRYING THIS IS SO COOL SKDFHBG

oh my gos he's talking he's talking there's voice acting im literally dying i cant handle!!!!!! this!!!!!! i lvoe him so much

omg omg

dude that was SO cool

and link got to ride on his back and then say goodbye!!! and sidon BELIEVES in him!!!!!!!!!!

god i wish i had gotten the helm before i did this haha i looked up the location but i don't think i can back out now

MIPHA?

MIPHA IS TALKING TO ME??

I CAN HEAR MIPHA'S VOICE

I'M CRYING I KNEW SHE WAS STILL ALIVE

i feel like she's about to die like the old man like Move On but

to see her again!!!!!!! im so emotional

oh my god oh my god

no okay i can leave and i need a second too im gonna go get the helm

apparently theres a quest you can do that doesnt give you the helm but tells you where to find it? but i can do that later rn i just want complete armor

alright nice full set hell yeah

HOLY fuck i was paragliding back and i tried to paraglide over the divine beast and it fucking OBLITERATED ME jesus CHRIST

dude there are these absolutely freaky eyeball things you gotta shoot to get rid of gunk and the music gets all creepy near them lsdksjfgh

oh no i found the cockpit but it's all closed up...is her corpse in there? her ghost? oh my god it says the terminals are unactivated

i'll be honest im a BIT stuck here i hate to have to use a guide, but

NO wait oh my god my runes!!! dumbass

i can lift the bars lol

oh my god the CONTROLS are on???

I CAN MOVE IT?? HOLY SHIT

this map is fucking 3D a 3D map!!!! in the other games they were flat holy shit!!!!

i can even see it moving on the minimap!!! holy FUCK

LMAO i was trying to move this crank with stasis and all along i needed to use magnesis. jesus

uh the music got freaky as fuck after i did the first terminal??? no?? thank you????

LOL YOU GOTTA RIDE THE TRUNK oh my god. oh my god.jesus christ

i am so small. it is so big. oh my god

I FEEL UNSAFE!

who is the boss of this dungeon? there's gotta be a boss

don't tell me i fight it

or the undead mipha

jesus god

i have had to ride this trunk 3 times now and i am not at all comfortable

reminds me of the big windmill in mirror's edge

okay yep i did all the terminals and now the music is downright terrifying!!! nice good Okay

HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT BLUE LIGHT

MIPHA?

NOT MIPHA!!!

"my demise 100 years ago" is she Really gone

omg no mipahs talking to me as i fight!!!

im straight up gonna look up what to do im too weak and defense-potionless to do this the hard way

ooh motherfucker doesnt like my shock arrows and lynel bow ahaha

huh that was actually like SUPER easy compared to some of the other stuff i've done

eeeewwwwww

MIPHA? ARE YOU ALIVE OR DEAD IN THERE? oh god oh god

holy fuck

i straight up just cried

she's a spirit and i thought she was gonna like, move on? which is sad enough

but no she's hanging around to pilot the divine beast from the afterlife

she even talked to it i was so sad it's been her only companion for a century of course she fucking talks to it

and i was staying strong!!! i was!!!!!

but she talked about how she wished she could see her dad again and i cried lmao why does this game give me dad feels of all things

i hope she gets to see her dad one more time too i'm so sad she's really dead and not alive like link

jesus fuck

oooh dorephan's talking about the master sword...gimme gimme gimme!!!

aww he was nice to sidon as everyone should be!!!!

holy shit he's really big?? i didn't realize it but he's like twice link's height JESUS

man. i am fucking wrecked lol

time to...explore...the rest of the province...i guess

i got a trident but i can never use it bc it will break. it was mipha's!!!!

on the other hand all three pieces of armor, my shield, weapon, AND bow are all zora themed i took a pic of myself to remember it by lol bc they will all break

i wonder where i should go after this...?

my brother went up to death mountain but i kinda want to do something different so we have something to tell each other about

but i kinda want to do the same so we don't spoil each other

i also REALLY wanna do the southeastmost province for some reason, all that water

tbh tho im getting ahead of myself i still have lots of this left to cover

it's getting harder to tell where i've already been, haha - when the things had borders and there was less visible that was easier

ooooh mipha's ability brings me back from death and she speaks briefly to me ;_; and it's active again in 23 minutes nice!

so i guess each champion gives you a different one and you can chose which to have active but tbh this one seems like it's gonna be the most helpful already

aww i did a little quest in kakariko to root out a theif and i love the way they built up dorian's past that's so cool

i think i was supposed to be able to pick up that yiga dude's sword tho and it glitched on me bc i was too fast :/

ugh i'm doing this oen shrine puzzle where you have to mount a male deer

and i finally mounted one after losing 10000 times and it was past some hills it wouldn't climb down

every time i find one thats close enough they fucking bolt im so fed up :|

and my sheikah sensor isn't picking up any more so i must have literally scared away all of them. fantastic. what a huge waste of time!! guess i will go somewhere else!

also can't solve the puzzle on how to open the shrine at veiled falls so im just batting a thousand today so much for sidequesting tbqh

FOUND A BLUE MANED LYNEL

SO MUCH NOPE

urgh and a blue hinox

exploring might not be worth my time either tbh

yeah no that's two shrines i haven't been able to open and this has stopped being fun, got one more ridge to explore before im done with this province - and some weird islands waaaay out there too but idk if i can get to them yet, and i'd just as soon wait until i unlocked the one next to them

yyyeah looking at them from here it makes much more sense to explore them when i get to that province

at least im all done with this one!! still plenty of sidequests and stuff, but those i can come back t more easily...it's harder to remember which terrain i have and haven't covered when i don't do it like this

i was thinking about how big the divine beast was when i saw it in the distance and

this sounds nuts but i bet im right - what if that flying island thing is a divine beast. WHAT IF

and that is The Day's Liveblog, more tomorrow, except probably not much bc of stream

#personal #loz liveblogging #botw spoilers #SUPER SPOILERS

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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After 5-year odyssey, Daniel Bard calls it a career

A dominant reliever, a struggling starter, and a comeback that never quite worked. Daniel Bard discusses it all with SB Nation.

When Daniel Bard took the mound for the Gulf Coast League Mets on July 2, it had been 1,527 days since his last appearance in the majors. And though he didn’t know it that day, facing the GCL Nationals with the midday sun beating down in West Palm Beach, it’d be the last time he’d ever take the mound in a game.

At 32, Bard was easily the oldest player on the field for the GCL matchup between the Mets and Nationals prospects. Three weeks after signing a minor-league deal with New York, Bard was facing a Nationals lineup that included one 16-year-old, four 17-year-olds, two 19-year-olds, a 22-year-old and a 23-year-old.

The results, as they so often had been since that last major-league appearance in April 2013, were ugly. He faced nine batters but recorded only two outs. In addition to walking four, he hit two batters. The final line: four runs in two-thirds of an inning.

For Bard, the outing represented one of the final setbacks in a six-year odyssey that has seen six different organizations try to fix the inexplicable loss of control that ended his successful stint with the Red Sox. Once one of the premier relievers in all of baseball, Bard was by the end of 2013 a poster boy for the so-called “Steve Blass disease,” in which pitchers suddenly lose the ability to throw a baseball accurately.

One major surgery, three arm-slot adjustments and five minor-league contracts later, Bard’s outing in West Palm Beach would be the last of his professional career. After some more tinkering with Mets coaches at the team’s facility in Port St. Lucie, the right-hander decided to retire in mid-August.

“Some days would be great, and some days... the results just weren’t there,” Bard recently told SB Nation. “I ran into enough of those days where I said, ‘Is this really worth me being away from my family?’ Once that answer was no, it was a really easy decision for me to decide to come home.”

The beginning of the end

Bard’s retirement came a lot quicker than many would have expected in 2010, when he was coming off a successful first big-league season in Boston. Over 74-2/3 innings that season, Bard posted a 1.93 ERA and struck out 76 batters as Boston’s setup man and was considered the heir-apparent to closer Jonathan Papelbon.

Bard, who was born in Houston and attended high school in Charlotte, was a standout at the University of North Carolina from 2004 to 2006, logging a 3.86 ERA in 47 appearances (45 starts) as the Tar Heels reached the NCAA Tournament in all three seasons and were the national runner-up in 2006. The Red Sox took Bard with the 28th overall pick in the 2006 draft, finding hope in a proven college arm that could quickly rise through the minors.

After five effective months in 2011, Bard’s struggles began at the end of that season, when he walked nine batters in 11 September innings as the Red Sox collapsed out of playoff contention. That winter, new manager Bobby Valentine and his staff decided to convert Bard to a starter, a move that many still believe to be the turning point in Bard’s career.

“I don’t think it was the move to starting alone that did it,” Bard said. “That’s just kind of the way it happened with the people who were involved, maybe. I think most of the people involved had good intentions.”

Bard attributes his initial struggles to a combination of physical and mental roadblocks, as he was suffering from a mild case of thoracic outlet syndrome despite being completely unaware of it. He didn’t suffer from the normal hand numbness that comes with TOS, leaving the condition undiagnosed for years before he underwent surgery in January 2014.

“It was kind of just a perfect storm of the physical issue and the results taking a turn for the worst quickly,” Bard said. “That affected my mental state. I stopped trusting myself and trusting what I was doing. I started getting into just figure-it-out and fix-it mode, which is never a good place for a pitcher to live.”

For Bard, who describes himself as an analytical thinker who likes to know how everything works, overthinking led to issues in all facets of his game. Even simple tasks like playing catch became hard for him. Game situations were even worse.

“I’d get in a game and start out throwing really well and then throw one pitch that goes up under a guy’s chin, which is a totally normal miss,” Bard said. “I missed there hundreds of times when I was in Boston and throwing great, and it was effective.”

“But when you have that seed planted in your mind... you think, ‘things are going great, things are going great, whoooooop. I just sailed one under his chin. Oh, crap.’ And then it’s a subconscious thing that kicks in. The next pitch from there, you just feel that freedom go away. There’s something in your body that tightens up.”

Bard became the latest well-known case of a pitcher with “Blass disease,” joining its namesake and more recent players like Rick Ankiel and Ricky Romero. The phenomenon, which is also referred to as “the yips,” causes pitchers to inexplicably use their ability to throw a baseball accurately and has affected just a handful of players throughout baseball history.

Though the onset of the issue is relatively mysterious, Bard understands it as a player’s overthinking and mechanical adjustments causing neural pathways in the brain to be burned.

“It’s a strange phenomenon, and the crazy thing is, with the more people I talk to, is how little people know about it,” Bard said. “People can explain it to you, like telling you what’s happening in your brain and why it happens to some people and doesn’t happen to other people. They can explain what’s happening, but no one has a reliable way of saying how to make things better.”

Bard intentionally avoided seeking advice from Blass and Ankiel, despite both ex-pitchers having gone through similar issues.

“I didn’t really want to talk to those two names because neither of them really ever overcame anything as far as pitching goes,” Bard said. “It basically ended both of their pitching careers. Here’s the thing: I had been through it before.”

Familiar territory

In his first professional season in 2007, Bard had more walks (93) than innings pitched (91.2). A 2006 first-round pick out of UNC, Bard had become what he describes as “the worst pitcher on his Lo-A team.”

“I didn’t want to admit it at the time but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” Bard said. “I never struggled throwing strikes and all the sudden I was walking more than a guy an inning.”

Gabe Kapler, who was recently named manager of the Phillies, was Bard’s manager with the Class-A Greenville Drive in 2007. Kapler said he was impressed with Bard’s “electric arm” and athleticism, agreeing that Bard’s control issues were not physical in nature.

“His download on it being a mental thing for him is probably the accurate one,” Kapler said. “He’s got it better than anyone else. But we certainly wanted to support the shit out of him.”

That support included Kapler and other Sox staffers asking endless questions in an effort to uncover how Bard’s mind operated. While there weren’t a ton of clear answers, changing Bard’s mental process on the mound became the organization’s focus.

Once the season was over, Bard consulted with one of his minor-league coaches, Mike Cather. Cather aimed to re-frame Bard’s identity as a pitcher, from someone who was constantly thinking on the mound to someone who simply throw the ball.

“[Cather] was like, ‘just get on the mound, be a cocky MF’er and just pick up the ball and chuck it,’” Bard said. “’See what happens. Who cares what happens?’”

A year and a half after working with Cather, Bard was in the majors with Boston. He broke into the bigs in May 2009, starting a run of success that lasted almost three full seasons. Kapler, who came out of retirement and spent the 2009 season with the Rays, wasn’t surprised by his former player’s success.

“I remember him being really gritty and grinding through some real challenges with his command,” Kapler said. “I remember him being as resourceful as he possibly could be. I would use the word ‘grit’ when it comes to Daniel Bard. He never gave up and continued to fight, fight, fight.”

Bard, on the other hand, was surprised. And he thought that his early major-league years would foreshadow a long career in the bigs.

“You look at your own performance and you’re like, ‘wow, that’s pretty good’ because I had been so bad two years before,” Bard said. “You’re just on autopilot in the best way possible. From like 2008 through 2011, I was just able to check into that autopilot mode really well on a really reliable basis. I kind of figured I was going to do that until I was about 40 and just go from there.”

The long road back

Instead, Bard’s tenure with the Red Sox ended two months before the team would win a World Series in 2013, beginning a four-year journey set mostly on the back fields of extended spring training. After being initially claimed by the Cubs in 2013, Bard would be released and signed by a new club on five different occasions, spending time with the Rangers, Cubs (again), Pirates and Cardinals before landing with the Mets.

Bard would appear in just 13 game innings over that four-year span, allowing 35 earned runs while walking 46 and hitting 16 batters. Yet he continued to motor on, trying anything and everything to get back to the big leagues.

“I truly believed I was always really close to getting back to where I needed to be,” Bard said. “Always really close. Even, believe it or not, the longer it went on... the last two years I always thought I had made a lot of strides in the offseason.”

Bard’s journey was marked by constant ups and downs, from touching 97 with the Pirates and Cardinals to having to mentally grind through a simple game of catch.

“I’d come off the field being like, ‘holy crap, that’s it. I’m back... it’s there.’”, Bard said, “and then it wouldn’t stick around for long enough.”

The frustration with his inconsistency caused Bard to consider retirement at numerous points during the process, but his wife, Adair, and various coaches encouraged him to focus on the positive and keep going. The closest he ever came to retirement before August was in mid-May of this year, when he was released by the Cardinals and told Adair that he would give it two more days for a team to call or he’d move on from baseball after 11 pro seasons.

Less than 24 hours later, Bard received an unexpected call from the Mets. Impressed with what they saw out of Bard throwing sidearm during spring training, the club offered Bard a minor-league deal and he was on his way to the team’s facility in Port St. Lucie within a week.

Mets officials suggested an even more drastic change for Bard’s delivery, converting him to a submarine pitcher. Bard was skeptical of the significant velocity drop that came with the change, and after two months, pulled the plug on the experiment.

“I said, ‘Look, I don’t really believe in this anymore. I appreciate all the time we’ve put in, but if I’m gonna do this, it needs to be from where I’ve had success,” Bard told team officials. “The fact that I’m still running into the same roadblocks from a completely different arm slot is just reinforcing what I kind of already knew. I was just still running into the same problems throwing strikes.”

Bard tried many methods to try to fix the issue, including meditation, breathing exercises and multiple mechanical changes. He worked closely with Mets mental skills coach Derek Swartout-Mosher in Port St. Lucie.

“It was mainly just listening to him and listening to his past experiences, what he’s worked on before and what has and has not had an impact on him,” Swartout-Mosher said. “It’s about trying to present new ideas based on research I’m interested in and different ways to think and approach the game. It’s a conglomerate of information that all comes together to try to help him form a new way to think.”

Swartout-Mosher’s focus was to get Bard back “in flow,” trying to help him to get his brain and body to work in unison to make him as effective of a strike-thrower as possible. Though Bard was never able to get to a point where he was able to do that on a consistent basis in games, he still takes pride in the steps he took back to his major-league goal throughout the process.

“There were some times where I’d get on a mound in a game and I could not throw a strike,” Bard said. “I couldn’t throw a ball near the plate. I hit rock-bottom, which was getting on a mound in a game and having no idea where the ball’s going.”

“If you had seen me in some of those moments where I couldn’t throw a strike, you would’ve thought I would never even do that again,” Bard said. “While that’s not where I was in Boston, for where I had been, looking back, that was a pretty big accomplishment.”

The future

With his playing career behind him, Bard is enjoying spending time with Adair and his two sons, a 2-year old and a newborn, at their home in Mississippi. He plans on going back to school in the next couple years, finishing his management and society degree in Chapel Hill as he moves on to the next phase of his life.

“I kind of thought I’d make that decision and that phone call to tell who I needed to tell that I needed to retire...and I’d have regret right away,” Bard said. “It wasn’t there. It was just relief.”

Bard’s perspective is that he was lucky to even reach the majors, considering his struggles with control in 2007.

“I was able to pitch in the big leagues for almost four years,” Bard said. “Would I have loved for it to be 15? Yeah, that would be great. But I got four years. Four years more than a lot of really good players get.”

Bard’s career will be remembered as one of the strangest in recent baseball history, an odyssey marked by extreme peaks and valleys.

But what does Bard himself want his legacy to be?

“As a player, I think there are some people who will remember me for coming in at Fenway and throwing really hard and handing the ball to [Jonathan] Papelbon,” Bard said, “but I’m equally if not more proud of the way I responded to some really difficult circumstances.”

“Everyone who was part of that journey can say,” Bard said, “‘that Daniel Bard never made it back to where he wanted to be, but to hell if he didn’t give it everything he had.’”

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flauntpage · 8 years ago

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Blue Jays Mailbag: Bullpen Depth, Gibbons' Slow-Starting Teams, and Trade Chips

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Andrew Stoeten answers your questions in our Blue Jays Mailbag, which runs weekly at VICE Sports. You can send him questions at [email protected] , and follow him on Twitter.

The Blue Jays season just keeps on going. Five more months of this! Oh joy!

But on the field they've actually started treading water enough that fans can seriously contemplate a red-hot run putting their Blue Jays back in contention at some point—meaning the club's recent roster fluctuations aren't mere rearrangements of the deck chairs on the Titanic quite yet. Even if they sometimes have felt that way.

So let's do it to it and take some questions about the bullpen! *COUGH*

And if you have a Blue Jays question you'd like me to tackle for next week, be sure to send it to [email protected]. As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers...

Hi Andrew, With the Jays injuries to their pitchers and him doing great in Buffalo and a solid ST until the horrific injury from the line drive, why hasn't TJ House gotten a shot in the show yet? Rian

Uh... I hope you're not asking this about T.J. House as though you think seeing him take the ball for the Blue Jays would be a good thing. It wouldn't. But I get why there might be a little confusion over this, because you're not wrong that House has looked good so far. He's struck out more batters in his brief spell in Buffalo so far than he has at any level for several years (25.2%, compared to 14.6% in 2016 in 72.2 Triple-A innings in the Cleveland organization), and producing a groundball rate over 50%, which has added up to a tidy 1.24 ERA on the season.

The thing is, it's not necessarily just performance that has to be considered. Especially when we're talking about Triple-A performance, which can be misleading at the best of times. (Remember when Randy Wolf sparkled for 23 starts for the Bisons in 2015, bristled about not getting a call-up, and eventually was sent to the Tigers, for whom he made seven starts, posting a 6.23 ERA, and then called it a career?) Still, maybe House had as good a case to get the call as Mat Latos or Casey Lawrence did, but the Jays said at the time that pair was first called up that they were looking for right-handers to face the right-handed-heavy Angels lineup. And House, of course, is a lefty.

There may have also been some kind of handshake deal with Latos, promising him the first available spot start in exchange for not opting out of his contract when he didn't make the club out of spring training. We have no idea if this was the case, but it's at least plausible, and a thing that teams sometimes do.

Has it really come to wanting T.J. House called up? Yes, yes, it has. Photo by Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports

The other thing is that Lawrence has minor league options remaining, while House doesn't. If the idea was to bring someone up for only a start or two, perhaps the club felt it made more sense to use the guy they wouldn't have to sneak through waivers just to keep in the organization. (Though they've since designated Lawrence for assignment in order to bring up catcher Mike Ohlman in the wake of Russell Martin's recent shoulder injury).

Because House is the kind of guy the Jays might actually like to keep. The front office knows him well from the Cleveland days, and he started 18 games for them in 2014. That stint makes up the bulk of his big league résumé, and it's not a terrible one: 89 strikeouts in 117.2 innings, a 59.7% groundball rate, and 2.6 walks per nine innings—numbers spoiled somewhat by a higher-than-average home run rate.

Serviceable is the word. And while that's maybe exactly the kind of guy you'd expect the club to turn to, I don't think it's unreasonable that they chose to not imperil their already thin depth and go with Lawrence and Latos for a couple early starts, especially given the handedness issue relating to facing the Angels.

Hey, and good news, T.J. House fans, with the way Blue Jays pitchers have been dropping like flies, he may still get his chance! Though for now all eyes are on Joe Biagini, who had an excellent first start for the club on Sunday, and someone BP Toronto noted over the winter, maybe should have been a starter all along.

Speaking of...

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Bullpen plans for Gibby w/o his only reliable reliever now (Biagini). In case it wasn't painfully obvious.

@TheRealTayls17

Call me crazy, but I'm actually pretty comfortable with Danny Barnes, Ryan Tepera, Joe Smith, and Dominic Leone bridging the gap between whoever the hell the Jays are starting and closer Roberto Osuna. (For anyone wondering where Jason Grilli's name is here, have you not been watching?)

Barnes has produced very good strikeout totals in the minors, and has limited walks and—despite having fly ball tendencies—home runs. His fastball isn't huge in terms of velocity (he sits in the low 90s), but it generates swing and miss, especially paired with a nice changeup. The ZiPS projection system has Barnes as being worth nearly 1 WAR for the rest of the season, which is based in part on his excellent minor league numbers, but a growing (if still minuscule) sample of big league success, too. So far this year he's allowed just three hits and two walks in nine innings of work. Keep riding him, I say!

Tepera has been up and down between Buffalo and Toronto a bunch over the last few years, so fans know him fairly well. He lives on his heat (94-95), throwing a four-seamer, cutter, and sinker, with little offspeed or breaking stuff mixed in. He hasn't been a dominant reliever, and has tended a little too much toward issuing walks—including 9 in 17.2 innings this season—but I don't think it kills you to give him some higher-leverage opportunities than he's seen.

Leone's results haven't been great so far with the Jays, but the peripherals look pretty good. He's another somewhat hard thrower (93-94), has a good cutter and a slider he could maybe use more of (Brooks Baseball notes that his fourseamer "is basically never swung at and missed compared to other pitchers' fourseamers, results in more flyballs compared to other pitchers' fourseamers, has essentially average velo and has some added backspin"). The 4.73 ERA doesn't look great, but 16 strikeouts in 13.1 innings is something to work with, and the 5 walks (one intentional) work, too. Again, not a dominant guy, but a guy who'll do fine enough most times to get some looks in higher-leverage situations.

Smith, the sidearmer, has been quite good so far, gives clubs a different look, has over 650 games of big league experience, and a spell closing for the Angels in 2014. He's going to look like trash if his pitches frisbee into the middle of the plate, but when he's on it's a thing of beauty.

There's also Grilli, once he finds himself (which we all, y'know, hope he will), the newly-acquired Neil Ramirez (who looks somewhat like a poor man's Grilli—the good version, that is), and whoever else might come up from Buffalo.

So the bullpen might be OK, minus Grilli? Photo by Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

So... yes. The bullpen is in flux. This, I think, was always to be expected, even if the sudden loss of Biagini to the rotation, and the less-than-sudden shittiness of Grilli, has thrown a wrench into whatever vague plans were there. John Gibbons is probably going to get heat for it whenever he makes the "wrong call" and a game ends up going sideways. And with guys who look more like middle relievers than late-inning ones being asked to pick up a lot of slack, it's definitely going to happen. But the thing is, even the best of relievers blow games, and these guys here now have a chance to really grab an opportunity and turn themselves into the next Biagini. It could work!

At the very least, it'll be OK. And if the offence ever starts not being completely useless, we might not even notice so much, anyway.

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Hello, I recently read a stat that since 2013 (the year Gibbons was rehired) the Blue Jays have the MLB's worst record in April. While I detest the 'fire Gibbons' refrain whenever the team plays poorly, I can't help but feel that it is a legitimate criticism of Gibbons and the coaching staff for not doing the right things during spring training to adequately prepare the team to start the season well.

How much responsibility should the coaching staff shoulder for slow starts? Or is it primarily a matter of the type of roster assembled?

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Josh

Holy shit. Speaking of John Gibbons taking heat!

But, to be fair, this is actually quite a reasonable way to frame a question that's hard to ask without sounding like you're unduly shitting on the manager. Which is mostly because asking it at all means unduly shitting on the manager.

What are these magical "right things during spring training to adequately prepare the team to start the season well"? And if John Gibbons doesn't know them, why isn't he being steered toward them by Ross Atkins, or Mark Shapiro, or DeMarlo Hale, or Luis Rivera, or Tim Leiper, or Alex Anthopoulos, or Tony LaCava, or Jose Bautista, or Mark Buehrle, or J.P. Ricciardi, or anyone he worked with as the bench coach for the Royals, or the Jays' new high performance department, or the '86 Mets team he played for, or any of the countless other people with vast experience in the game that he's been surrounded by over the years?

Y'know????

I'm not saying that we should just wave this stuff away and pretend it doesn't exist—you're not wrong that slow starts have been a hallmark of some of Gibbons' teams—but this idea that, in the absence of anything else to point to, the manager must be to blame simply doesn't make any sense. I'd be happy to hear some reasoning for it beyond "well he was there and he was the manager, so it's ultimately on him." But what might such reasoning even look like? Is he doing anything differently than any other manager in any other organization? If yes, sure, we should look at it. But if he was, and it seemed possible that it was impacting the team's starts so significantly, my suspicion is that one of the huge number of knowledgeable and successful people who've been in his sphere along the way would have noticed—and if they did notice and try to correct him and he wasn't receptive, then that should have been noticed.

Until you show me something concrete that he does that might explain this, the best explanation is, unfortunately, "shit happens." I know it's not very satisfying to not be able to have someone to point a finger at, but shit happens.

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How much money for real grass and drainage? Would trading JD, JB, Stroman, Sanchez and Morales for cash cover that amount? @StephenDame

I know you're being facetious, but I've seen a few people try to make this kind of a direct connection between a player's salary and the coming renovations at the Rogers Centre, and I really don't think we need to be so scared of that.

I can't claim to know exactly how it's all going to work, but the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into extending the Rogers Centre's life won't be taken directly from the Blue Jays' payroll. Some of it might be! Don't get me wrong, I don't have a whole lot of trust in the company that may have intentionally devalued their own team for years just so they could get a sweetheart deal on the building—which they bought for just $25 million in 2004. But there have been some rather major projects over the last couple of years—a massive upgrade to the roof and the installation of the dirt infield being key among them—and the payroll has been healthier than ever.

Unfortunately, the future upgrades I'm talking about very likely don't include retrofitting the building to have a full grass field—the cost of which seems like it will ultimately prove prohibitive. Hey, but at least we got to swallow that sweet false hope for a few years, eh? Thanks, Beeston!

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IF the jays do end up as sellers come trade deadline who do you think is most likely to be moved and what kind of haul could they get for them? Rian

I think you could probably figure this out on your own, to be perfectly honest, Rian. If they're out of it, they'll certainly move guys who will be free agents once the season ends, which means Bautista, Estrada, and Liriano.

Grilli and Barney will be free agents, too, but whatever the Jays might be able to get for those two as rental players isn't going to be much of a haul. They might nab some interesting depth pieces—the Blue Jays gave up shortstop Dawel Lugo for Cliff Pennington in an August 2015 deal, and Lugo has had a couple very good seasons with the bat since, and ended up the Diamondbacks' tenth best prospect this winter, per Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs—but nothing that's going to turn the franchise around any time soon.

Unfortunately, there's probably not going to be any kind of massive haul for the big three, either. More than the other two, Bautista's value will depend on his performance heading into the end of July. If he gets right and teams aren't scared off by his reputation, I still don't see him netting much more than Carlos Beltran did for the Yankees last year. That package, if you don't recall, was pretty underwhelming: a couple of arms that look like they're probably relievers, and Dillon Tate, who was the fourth overall pick in 2015, but whose stock dropped massively post-draft. Keith Law had him as the Yankees' 14th best prospect this winter at ESPN.com, calling him a future reliever as well, so...

The market could play out differently for the Jays and Bautista this summer, if that's what it comes to, but I think two months of Beltran is a pretty good baseline, and it's not going to get anybody terribly excited.

As for Estrada, the dream is something like the Jays gave up for two months of David Price in 2015. But, as much as Blue Jays fans may love their AceStrada, I don't think he has nearly the same cachet. He almost certainly isn't going to get back what the Reds did when they moved Johnny Cueto to the Royals, either, but maybe the Jays could get something of a similar shape. That package was centred around Brandon Finnegan—a still-improving young arm who was able to start 30 times for Cincinnati in 2016—and also featured a couple other pitchers (John Lamb, Cody Reed) that were ready to step into the big leagues and be bad, one as a back-end starter and the other as a reliever.

Estrada has been rock solid and has the best strikeout rate of his career. Photo by Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Liriano will be worth even less, one would imagine. And with the pitching market expected to be rather robust in terms of supply, it's not impossible that both will be worth quite a bit less.

Isn't this fun?

Hey, but there's always the chance that the Jays can package a couple of these guys and get something better than what they might bring back as individuals. At last year's deadline the A's sent rental players Josh Reddick and Rich Hill to the Dodgers for a trio of interesting arms: Jharel Cotton, who has struggled out of the gate in Oakland's rotation, but made five very good starts at the end of last season; Grant Holmes, a big, hard-throwing prototypical A's starter whom Law suggests they may have bought low on; and upper-90s throwing relief prospect Frankie Montas.

Useful pieces, in other words. Pieces that, at least in these cases, were at least able to step in and contribute the next year—which could be especially useful for the Jays. Good players, but guys with flaws—with limited ceilings or still steep learning curves—and not quite the kinds of mega-prospects we've seen moved in the last year for studs with years of control remaining, like Chris Sale, Adam Eaton, Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman, or even Drew Pomeranz.

Of course, the Jays have a guy who could net prospects from out of that higher tier, but they'd essentially be saying goodbye to both 2017 and 2018 if they were to move Josh Donaldson, and it's still a little too hard to envision them having the stomach for that.

Blue Jays Mailbag: Bullpen Depth, Gibbons' Slow-Starting Teams, and Trade Chips published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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