#He really wants to be a part of society. Every 'revenge story' he has is because the other person fucking started it

[guns-n-robins]

Tumblr isn't letting me tag you for some reason @astroboxuniverse but I wanted to highlight your correct tags

Just two literary dorks having a bonding moment.

[autistichalsin]

So here's a hot take.

I see a lot of people saying that it would be fun to have a way to make Halsin worse. And I agree that it would totally be cool to be able to corrupt Halsin!

However, I don't think his canon arc would make the most sense leading to the Shadow Druids. Those are the tiny hints Larian dropped, yeah- the Shadow Druids being sent by Ketheric to corrupt the Grove to make them less of a threat against him, the Shadow Druids noting they are going to Baldur's Gate next, Halsin's brief moment of doubt that they were right. And a lot of other media love playing the ecoterrorist angle. So I can see why it's where a lot of people's minds go.

But from a characterization standpoint, I can't see it. Halsin dealt with the Shadow Curse for over 100 years. It cursed his home, and his childhood best friend who was the physical embodiment of nature. If he survived literally 100 years of darkness without being particularly moved to join the Shadow Druids, I just don't see how the sufferings of Baldur's Gate would push him into it. Those are much less personal stakes.

So, if we were to get a darker Halsin route, I would propose one of two things;

1. Introduce a failure state for act 2 that doesn't result in Halsin staying behind in the Shadowlands.

The easiest thought is that maybe doing part of the quest but not finishing it would result in him staying behind, seeing that there is hope to break it now, while doing nothing makes him think he's no closer to solving it than he was before, so things are unlikely to deteriorate while he goes with the player to solve the Absolute crisis.

Or if we wanted to make it REALLY awful, make it possible for Thaniel and/or Oliver to actually die, breaking Halsin's heart completely in the process. With his friend gone for good, his last hope gone, and with the Dead Three to blame directly, Halsin could become clouded by grief. Maybe it makes his story mirror Ketheric's in a sad way; Ketheric lost Isobel and became a monster, Halsin loses Thaniel and, while not becoming a monster per se, takes a darker, extremist path to avenging him, vowing to let nature reclaim Baldur's Gate in his memory.

Basically, what I'm getting at here is that there's nothing personal enough in Baldur's Gate proper to inspire such a radical shift. Canon, as it is, lets us see his momentary temptation and go "yeah makes sense" but there needed to be far more if I was going to buy his transformation to a Shadow Druid. This would provide that deep pain that cults are so good at preying on.

2. Similar to the above, but pushing it back to act 1. Make it so that the Grove raid, instead of being triggered by the player directly, can also be triggered by inaction; maybe once the player speaks to Minthara/frees Sazza, a timer starts for long rests, and at the conclusion, if the leaders aren't killed, the goblin leaders show up at the Grove. Halsin being freed already lets him fight on your side to stop them, while Halsin still being a captive lets the raid complete.

Similar to the above, Halsin's rage and grief at the defilement of nature then drives him into it. At first he just seeks out revenge, but later, after seeing the Shadow Curse and having those particular wounds opened back up (this one could proceed the same as canon) he gets pushed into something more methodical.

Shadow Druid Halsin could be a lot of fun IMO, but we would need something more than we have to establish a motive. Seeing sadness in a city for the first time wouldn't be enough to cause Halsin to drop every principle he has about nature being a balancing act between good and evil, darkness and light, order and chaos. For him to be pushed so firmly to an anti-society view, he would need to witness something far worse. So those are the two scenarios I can think of that would give just the little push, the sense of personal, direct harm, that would cause Halsin's morals to shift so drastically.

[kimberlyannharts]

LAST TIME ON MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE RETURN: Depressed milf Kim just got finished traumadumping onto Trini's relative Selena about all the shit that happened on the Moon 22 years ago, just to find out that this wasn't Trini's relative at all, but some mysterious white-haired witch out for revenge???? I guess it makes sense it would never be the simpler option. MMPR: The Return #3!

= So here's the reveal of the dialogue that was blacked out in the previews! Selena Repulsa, the daughter of Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd, is official! There's something very funny about the fact that she didn't even use a fake name for her Kwan family disguise. She heard Sylvia had an S name and was like sweet, I can just play the alliteration card

= I mentioned before in the first issue that this series was already discussing the topic of secret identities in a more nuanced way than the main series' "Zordon is a tyrant for having rules" strategy so I'm happy that's being continued here. YES public use of the powers can be used for good in society but ALSO it can make it really, really, REALLY easy for your enemies to pick you off the street

= also UNCLE HOWARD SPOTTED

= YEAH BABY

= Selena is hilarious btw. YOU BUILT A BOMB AND ARE SURPRISED IT KILLED PEOPLE?

= this is Dungeon Meshi

= I already made the Paul Dano does he know?.png joke but I can't help it. It's too perfect. Alternatively: Kimberly Hart Dreamworks Face

= Zedd is noticeably less involved in this story than Rita is (as per the usual with BOOM books, admittedly) but I do like how this plan still uses him in some way. Part of me is still curious as to what Dad Zedd would have been like, though

= she's meditating, guys she's died

= he was literally born to be a girl dad and the fact that his "main universe" child is a son makes me fucking sick

= also off-subject but I see the occasional comment about how the civilian forms for these flashbacks look too young and it's like.....guys. They're only 22. If anything, drawing them like how they looked on the show is ACCURATE to their age, considering how old the actors themselves were when they were on the show kjdkfjdkfjd and anyway Dino Thunder lied to you. Tommy would absolutely be wearing tank tops as an adult. Those long sleeves were the devil's work

= I still say I don't want to get attached to any theory about Tommy and whether or not he'll end up alive but Rita seeming to be aware that he saved her daughter and getting his attention before doing the spell...........that's probably going to be important

= You guys don't understand how much I need the scene where Tommy and Kim discovered she was pregnant and the conversations they had afterwards. Every "ranger kid" story has been so bad about "what does the parent think about their kids one day inheriting their ranger powers" and The Return is the one closest to understanding this is a very logical and rational conversation to have!!!!!!!

= also Olivia was 100% unplanned this i just the vibe i get. And props to my gender-inclusive king Tommy Oliver

= "no more Power Rangers.......except my daughter who's COOL as FUCK"

[adhdo5]

ok i'm curious, what is this TGCFlike house divorce we've been hearing about?

-Terra

OK so play with me in this space: MDZS and TGCF are in many ways about the same things but their conclusions are almost opposite. Super briefly: Xiyao are doomed as hell in MDZS because MDZS is a story about among other things when decency is not enough to overcome the ways in which society is built, and how it fails. But TGCF is about the ways in which it can be. Xiyao cannot be happy together until the revolution and the revolution doesn't happen in MDZS's thematic paradigm but the end of TGCF it does – they deny the artificial divisions and calls to revenge that Jun Wu's heaven is built on and that gives them the power to win; gods and ghosts and beggars come together to build something new and start to forgive each other. The laundry of class disparity is resolved even

So my thesis is as follows: postcanon MDZS fixit straightforwardly doable by letting the world gently transmute into something like TGCF. This is not really a crossover as much as it is "this AU works on TGCF rules" but we DID recently mess around with letting Lan Xichen and the Shi siblings interact so maybe it is a crossover or maybe that isn't canon I don't know I haven't decided

But let us not forget that this AU is called house divorce and I'm constantly whining and also, crucially, TGCF has four books covering eight hundred years of abject misery. SO

Zewu-jun spent some years in meditative seclusion before finally emerging to take up his responsibilities again, wiser and more reserved than before; he led his sect, he cultivated, he was part of the effort to take down Nie Huaisang when the Nie cancellation hit, and in the slow twilight of the power of the jianghu his measured grace and surety and wisdom allowed him to pass his Heavenly Calamity and ascend to the status of the martial god possessed of all the virtues he once allowed his reprobate brothers to take credit for that many know and love to this day. If LQQ is here he's supplanted by Zewu-jun as the Martial God of the East or maybe they're different Easts idk if he's even here point is Gusu is obviously his place of power etc etc

(Lan Xichen spent years in what amounted to devastating clinical depression before, with a monumental effort and the support he did have and a lack of any other option and a desperate desire to not be Qingheng-jun 2, managing to let the snarl of love and care and responsibilityobligation drag him out of his room and slowly back into his duties as sect leader. His reputation recovers like how Jin Guangyao predicted years ago. He takes up the practice of folding his grief inside himself like he takes up Shuoyue again, with an almost physical pain, and he pretends very dutifully that being dutiful to this is something he believes he can do and tolerate, because of course it is, because what else is possibly there, because as harrowed as he is and as much as he has broken pretty much every rule on that wall he cares about them, cares about what they're meant to protect, this matters to him and if he's to have any say in where that bright paved road leads he must walk it; there's no third path)

He's very much on the martial god side of things rather than civil god; he's not a stranger to non-cultivator societal concerns obv and he has non-cultivator worshippers esp as the power of the great sects really declines but he is very much a cultivator god/of that society and worshipped as a cultivator warrior-noble etc etc. He's quite well-liked in the heavens and on earth; he's not really the top of the hierarchy but he's in the leaderboard, doesn't want for merits or lanterns or spiritual power and is generally possessed of a decent reputation if the subject of some envy even if Zewu-jun is a little bit withdrawn; they say he has been since he emerged from seclusion and he's pretty much always perfectly polite and functional. The picture of coping.

Anyway one day 200+ years postcanon he gets sent down to deal with something on the ground; this is possibly whatever NMJ has going on RN for plot economy but I'm still trying to figure out what NMJ's final role in this all is anyway. What I do know is LXC ends up in ghostly territory; once he realizes he is he's like Ah I'll just be surreptitious but he's yet quite quickly met with a clone that, with stiff movements like it's used to moving through debilitating pain but impeccable propriety and an unwavering smile, says that as the lord of this place he doesn't wish for any trouble with Heaven, and invites LXC to negotiate with the local official

Official?

The Ghostly Civil Palace is in fact styled after the heavenly palaces of civil gods. It's slightly more luxurious, but still tasteful and practical enough that it isn't ostentatious; it's large but ordered enough it's not sprawling; it's completely, desertedly empty, even the footsteps of the clone disappearing the second LXC takes his eyes off it once it leads him to the pavilion and dismisses itself

LXC has an impeccably polite and extremely reasonable and productive discussion with the disembodied voice of the Ghostly Civil Official, who is by all appearances pretty genuinely invested in ensuring the wellbeing of his domain and the dead in it and is also concerned about the thing LXC has been sent down to deal with, in this nice understated pavilion. There is a koi pond. There is a single tea setting.

It is against all advised practice to take food from ghosts but LXC is not inclined to be rude as hell to someone who has been nothing but genteel and helpful, even if that someone is a disembodied voice coming from everywhere and nowhere in an ethereal palace, and does in fact accept and praise the tea setting. It's nice tea

The Ghostly Official feels no ways about this unexpected courtesy and will be answering no questions at this time.

He doesn't know if he remembers something like it from when he was alive but spending 100 years as a fierce corpse will do that. It's very nice, and mostly he remembers his life as Jin Guangyao in the ways of raised undead – outlines of despair and rage and unfinished business. It was easier once, but having regained enough spiritual cognition to miss it makes it very much an inconvenience. Troublesome to only remember your own name, your mother, your death in agony. Perhaps remembering more people than the one man whose death haunted you the most would make the search for his mother's probably-desecrated remains more effective, but the outlines of resentment are certainly enough for him to sharply know that he's always been good at working from positions of few advantages

He's doing well enough for himself and has picked up further tasks along the way. The Ghost Realm has AWFUL infrastructure. He's implementing reforms. Well. Forms he's implementing forms. Just because one is dead doesn't mean that having no social safety net is a tenable state of affairs. There's ghost public transportation in his sphere of influence

Anyway as they recognize each other more and more they go more and more Wait. Hey. What the fuck. HEY

JGY recognizes Shuoyue before he recognizes LXC himself. Y'know how it is. They have to lose all hope and divorce 43 times. Return the favor wrt the homoerotic stabbing. LXC gripping the sink looking into the mirror like I'm NOT gay anymore I feel NO ways about how that clone smiles and I am NOT going to fuck that house

Other characters around:

NMJ has also recovered spiritual cognition though he's still very saberbrained and he's currently on a mission from his Nie ancestors to find and thrash some sense into his terrible AWOL little brother who drove their bloodline into the ground

COMPLETELY UNRELATEDLY JGY's social programs include awkward-encounters-with-people-from-your-past insurance and he's got a particular charge from there, a sect leader from ages past who's dodging the spirits of his ancestors, and he's a bit of a mess but he's fun enough company and JGY privately regards him as something like a friend. It's nice. He thinks vaguely he might've known someone like that in life

Wangxian are still around! They cultivated to immortality not in the god way just in the normal way and are Sanrening it up. Every day means every day! Not every day for a normal human lifespan! There's a lot of days in forever!

They are still in some contact with LXC! This is possibly the most genuine interpersonal relationship he has

I don't have roles for Song Lan & co. but I think they're also still around. Waiting in the wings as it were

Idk who the fuck is the heavenly emperor. Is it Jun Wu? Fuck if I know

Lmk if you want to see the LXC+Shiblings thoughts which may or may not be canon

[jeepersjpeg]

could u tell me some stuff about ur ocs ? /nf

you didn't specify Who so i am picking ones i don't talk about often, *ahem*

in a world much like ours, sometime in the 2010's, magic became (or maybe always was) real. whatever mystique veil had hid these properties from humanity before had worn too thin. suddenly things like mermaids, unicorns, dragons, gryphons, vampires, you name it-- are spurring up, and their existence is slowly tearing society apart.

the history gets blurry between the beginning of the Magic Apocalypse and the year the story takes place, and it isn't really important until later- but here's what is important :

every creature tends to stick to a specific biome or region that they are from or thrive best in, with some exceptions. the one creature that is found practically everywhere and is the Most Pressing Threat to all life :

The Fae.

the fae are territorial, expanding, mysterious, and their realm bends reality itself. the main thing they are known for doing is setting up Trap Circles (of plants or various items). the consequence for crossing into "their" territory is that they must take something important to you. they'll normally let you choose, but if you try to trick them (ie: pretend something you have is important when it isn't) they will decide for you. in fact, most material items aren't Enough for them. the main thing they take from humans is body parts. but they will "generously" offer to trade you - they will take your human appendage, and replace it with an animal/creature's! (most of the time, they still cut off the limb beforehand, because the process of magically transforming a person's atoms into a different structure is so psychologically horrific and physically painful that Amputating Is Considered Merciful In Comparison..)

Now, In Roughly The 2040's, In A "Post-Apocalypse" Setting :

ELTON KYROGUE and his best friend GATOR have been playing in a two-man band named Grand Tour for the last few years. Elton sings and plays guitar (+ other stringed instruments), Gator drums and has a sickass keyboard.

Elton (he/him, 20--22 over the course of the story) is a young man with a seemingly unbreakable spirit. he believes in humanity, sometimes to a fault, but is not by any means naive. he knows that some people only want trouble- but he'd prefer to use clever tricks and schemes to make his way out of a fight.

Gator (any prns, 17--19 over the course of the story) is a crafty little guy, not much for conversation but loves people just as much as Elton does (albeit a bit more wary of them).. she likes making murals on abandoned structures as they travel, as a sort of landmark of where they've been.

the story begins with them a few months on a traveling tour, just the two of them (i call this story Grand Tour's Grand Tour.. very funny i know)

they encounter many interesting characters and places. people are attempting to rebuild society, around or alongside their magical neighbors, so there are lots of makeshift communities that range from small villages to entire functioning towns- each with their own rules, kinds of people, and ways of managing the new world. plenty of these places are delighted to have a traveling band show up, so Elton and Gator find many places to crash while bringing music to the world.

there are quite a few characters they run into (remind me later to talk about the unicorns, the cyborg-cowboy sector, dragons, and skvader, if you want..) but the two i get most excited about are..

Cowboy Dan and Domino(/Dominic).

Cowboy Dan (44, he/him) is a sphinx-like lion man who wanders the desert by himself. a bitter man whose insecurities have plagued his way of thinking, who thinks people are either evil and untrustworthy, or just plain stupid. he's also probably the world's last remaining Catholic (joking, but religion is scarce nowadays). he destroys every opportunity and relationship that comes to him with the belief that this is how people "survive". he's on the hunt to enact revenge against Dominic, but no one can ever seem to get the full story..? (note: Dan normally stands on two legs and covers up his lion body almost entirely, these are just the sketches i had on-hand haha. it's difficult for him to walk bipedal but he is Incredibly Stubborn and Clings To His Humanity For Dear Life.)

Dominic (around the same age as Cowboy Dan, he/him, referred to as "Domino" by everyone but Dan) is a donkey man (entirely donkey) who is the leader of a settlement inside an abandoned amusement park. or, atleast, everyone there insists that "Domino" is like their mayor. if you ask him, he's just "someone who likes to help out". they live an oddly comfortable life away from danger, and Elton (with some manipulation from Dan) grows to find this setup suspicious.

there's a lot more to these guys-- to all of this story, but i'll leave it at that for now ;-) im not quite done writing GTsGT, but it will be turned into a comic at some point. my plan is to first make Curtain Call, and if im done coming up with GTsGT by then- it'll be up next! if not, i have a ton of other completely finished projects on the backburner that im waiting for a good time window to create.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Breaking down the comics: Not your fault

Moon Knight, Issue 17: Master Sniper's Legacy! 

This is a Marc Spector rage story. 

So the comic opens at Grant mansion and we see Marc training Marlene in a sparring match. 

And I say Marc, because Steven doesn't strike me as the type. Marc was more about combat styles. 

We see him take her down easily and then tease her a little. 

Samuels, the butler, interrupts saying that someone is there to see Marc and is claiming he's an old friend. 

Cheeky Marlene grabs his leg and takes him down easily and teases him right back. It's cute. It's fun. 

The man walks in, "Excuse me--you're calling yourself Steven Grant these days, aren't you?" 

"Among other things, Benjamin--How on earth did you track me down here?" 

Benjamin is a member of Mossad Israeli Secret service. An agency that once hired Marc Spector (among many). They are responsible for intelligence, counter-terrorism, and covert operations. 

He tells Marc about a new secret society "The Followers of Nimrod Strange" who has an arm of "Third World Slayers". They work the extreme leftist and rightist terrorists groups, put everyone against one another and bring down countries. 

He shows them a picture of Nimrod Strange, a man that has worked with the hand, hydra, and various other terrorist organizations. 

"He is surrounded at all times by 3 beautiful women [...] always high trained in the lethal trade of terror." 

He also has a right hand man "Master Sniper". 

He tells Marc that the followers are about to strike, but the CIA is playing dumb and refusing to recognize them as a real threat. 

He asks Marc to deliver a sensitive message to someone in Switzerland. 

Marc refuses, "I've tried to put the Marc Spector days behind me." 

He hardly gets out the refusal when suddenly Benjamin is shot in the back! 

Benjamin is dead and Moon Knight runs out to try and catch the sniper. 

Moon Knight tussles with him and gets shot. Just before he's finished off, Marlene runs out and the sniper takes off. 

Moon Knight has been shot and Frenchie runs to him. He looks pretty traumatized and frozen in place. 

In fact, Marlene has to snap him out of it. 

We have to remember that Frenchie has been a part of a lot of wars and was there when Marc was originally killed. I really do wish we got to see more of Frenchie dealing with his own trauma. Of him talking to Marc about it and perhaps them helping one another. 

Cut to the hospital and we see Detective Flint asking Steven about the shooting. 

'Steven' denies knowing anything other than that Benjamin was his friend and someone killed him. 

Flint dismisses it as a Millionaire being boastful. 

Cut to the leader, Commander Strange, watching his bodyguard girls fight. One of them has performed poorly and he decides to replace her. (this comes back in the next issue) 

Back at the hospital, Frenchie and Marlene go to pick up 'Steven'. 

"I'm concerned, Frenchie--Steven's spent his entire hospital stay stewing in obsession, talking about nothing but vengeance." 

They find 'Steven' inside, still in a terrible mood and talking about revenge. He wants every window in his mansion replaced with bullet proof glass and to ensure his staff is safe. 

He also demands a ticket on the next flight to Switzerland to track down the person Benjamin wanted Marc to find. 

"Steven, the doctor told you to rest..." 

"I made a vow and I'm going to keep it! I'll rest on the stinking plane!" 

No one in this image is happy. But especially look at Marlene as she realizes that she’s full on dealing with Marc Spector right now. She has never been a Marc fan and it shows the most right here. 

"Steven Grant has just checked out of the hospital--and Marlene knows, Marc Spector has just checked into his skull. Welcome back." 

Welcome back indeed. What’s interesting is that when Marc gets like this (guilt driven and full of rage), he runs the show. He’s in full charge and Jake and Steven can only step back fully and let him drive. 

Marc is in a 'controlled fury' back at the mansion, pissed that his friend died right in front of him while asking for his help. 

Marlene reveals that while they were trying to help Benjamin, they found a secret hidden message on him that's in code. 

They've been trying to decipher it for three weeks. 

Marc takes the team to Switzerland. 

"Marc Spector must go a hunting tonight." 

“No guilt engraved on my face…” 

Trying not to raise suspicions, but also… how often do you think Marc fears that people will see how guilty he is? Does he think that people look at him and only see a killer all the time? 

He heads to the morgue and breaks into the file room. Mostly this is us taking a peak at how easily Marc is able to blend into places and collect what he needs. 

He finds the info he needs and manages to contact the guy Benjamin was sending him to meet. 

They arrange to meet up at the ski lodge. 

Marc heads out to meet him and leaves the secret message with Marlene and Frenchie, warning them to watch out for the sniper, who may be after them. 

While out, Marc is taken into a car at gunpoint. 

"We are concerned men, Mr. Spector. [...] Your past, Mr. Spector, precedes you. Mercenary without a soul, soldier of fortune motivated only by greed... You are a perfect candidate for recruitment by the third world slayers." 

Wrong thing to say to Marc. 

He kicks their asses. 

"Now Freeze! I'm on your side, Strelgov! Benjamin Abramov was one of my best friends! I watched him die!"

Marc has never taken loss well. 

They tell Marc that the organization is set out to strike all over the world soon and cause major war. They also say they cannot trust him, he could be working for Commander Strange. 

And then the Sniper strikes, taking out one of them. 

Marc has them seek shelter and tosses them the gun. He's going after Sniper himself. 

Moon Knight tackles the Sniper and nearly has him, but then a series of unfortunate events befalls him. 

Face down on the ground again. I should have started a counter. 

He falls off a chasm but manages to save himself with his cape. Sniper now goes after Marlene and Frechie. 

Marlene and Frenchie just barely manage to escape while Moon Knight at last captures Sniper. 

Marc delivers the message to the other man and asks where Marc is heading next. 

"Jerusalem.." 

"Where Abramov lived." 

"And where his widow still grieves."

Cut to Jerusalem where Marc is comforting the widow in a cemetery. 

She begs Marc for vengeance. To do it for Benjamin and for her. 

Marc promises. 

A CLIFF HANGER?! 

So this story really drills home how angry Marc is. How he's easy to rage and hurt an violence and swearing for revenge. 

Mostly, it shows how he takes everything so personal. How he views things as his fault so he has to seek revenge to make up for his failures. 

It's not that Marc is blood thirsty or happy to be violent, though he would have you think that he craves it. 

It's just that it's Marc's go to form of self defense from complicated feelings and pain and loss. 

You have to wonder how many people and friends Marc has lost in the military and as a mercenary. 

How many times he watched someone die that he felt he should have saved.

One other thing to mention, Moon Knight is the only comic I’ve read that shows the main character being injured and put in the hospital for a considerable amount of time. 

3 weeks after being shot. In a later comic, we even see Moon Knight be put in a wheelchair and have to go through rehab/PT. 

I enjoy seeing our man not be invulnerable. It’s already a comic about a character that comes to us injured in many ways. Seeing him be vulnerable and face injuries and other issues really does bring it all together. Maybe he can’t die, but he’s always at risk for falling apart one way or another. 

This particular comic does hurt a bit when you look past a lot of things and see a man in pain at the loss of his friend, terrified to lose his other friends, and feeling as if he was the one that killed him. 

I wish his support system actually supported HIM. Steven and Jake have support, but when Marc shows up, no one wants him around. 

Marc is the one that is a pain to be around. The only one that is happy to work with him and see him is Frenchie and Frenchie doesn’t talk to him about their past. They both hold their pain and pretend it doesn’t exist util it comes back and crashes into them. 

Marc shouldn’t have to be forced to pretend that he doesn’t exist. He shouldn’t have to be quiet about the loss of his friend. He shouldn’t have to go let a widow cry on his shoulder and tell him that she’s sorry he lost his friend. 

He should have been embraced from the start. Is it any wonder that the man is filled with anger? He has no idea how to direct his emotions. He just funnels it all into anger and pain. 

He apologizes. Not the “I’m sorry for your loss”. She finishes it for him but we all know that wasn’t what he was apologizing for. 

[verdemoun]

I would love to hear your analysis of the themes present in RDR1+2. Ive given my analysis of Kieran (society held back by outlaws yap), but theres a lot to think about and I would love to hear your thoughts on the whole series.

been thinking about this ask a lot esp since i started playing rdr1 (while playing rdr2 as a coping mechanism for the amount of screaming and crying i've been doing at rdr1, which is not the BEST coping mechanism because i end up in tears regardless) but rdr as a whole definitely has a lot of themes going on in it. i think one of the fun parts about playing rdr is different themes and arcs stick with you at different points.

right now i'm really stuck on the redemption part of red dead redemption. who would've thunk a game called red dead redemption makes you think about redemption. because one of the messages that is really ham-fisted to us as the audience is 'nothing gets forgiven'. there's no escaping the past. the tragedy is that for our cast, the lives they live seem forced upon them.

john was never going to be a rancher. the minute he said he had two lives and he was trying to end one of them so that the other could survive, he was doomed - because as much as he tried to distance himself from person he was, it had always been him. despite everything, it's still you. he still made the choices of who to shoot and when, who to follow, who to leave behind. hosea said it: there's never really any getting out. even if they made that choice to leave, they're still the sum of the choices they've made. nothing gets forgiven, all you can do is seek redemption before your time is up.

and this is where i want to scream and cry and throw up because you know how they get redemption? through altruism. arthur was never going to find redemption for himself, he was never going to get his vacation - but he was redeemed in trying to give john a chance at redemption. abandoning gunslinging or buying beecher's hope wasn't what redeemed john - it was doing it for abigail, and to give jack a chance at a life not doomed to the same cycle he'd been in. arthur was redeemed by telling john to run, john was redeemed by making sure jack and abigail escaped.

it was so important edith downes didn't forgive arthur. redemption is not forgiveness, because acts that require redemption are not always acts that can be forgiven. you know what arthur's last ride is about? making amends with himself. not even forgiving himself for the life he'd lived, but acknowledging it and being at peace with what he was. he didn't live two lives. he didn't try escape what he was, and what he'd been. he accepted the person he was in all facets of himself and - he tried, in the end. he did.

and redemption isn't found in revenge. no matter the motives, revenge is a fool's game. arthur didn't want revenge, john did - and in seeking it, put himself on edgar ross's radar leading to his inevitable death. how many times can you scream 'no' at a screen while still thinking you're sane. 'but moss they're doomed by the narrative' i don't care. killing micah, killing edgar ross - the game is designed to make you want it: to crave revenge and be delighted that you get the chance to kill the antagonist and feel satisfied. but christ it's trying to find peace through revenge that dooms our boys. everytime i get up to the final epilogue mission i just feel sick. micah's still alive and well in my second playthrough because the credits man: the fucking brutality of seeing how neatly micah's death was the breadcrumb that lead ross straight to john's door. and jack, who had been told by every person who had ever cared about him to not become them, only realise after he's pulled the trigger and edgar ross is finally dead that he had become exactly what they didn't want him to be.

you know why we're not getting a red dead redemption 3 as jack marston? because his story is over. revenge is a fool's game, and nothing is forgiven, and there's no getting out. the only choice he has left to make in his life is to find redemption within himself before that one stupid fucking act of vengeance comes back for him.

would john kill micah if given a second chance? absolutely he fucking would, because he can justify it to himself a million times over. in every life he hears abigail sobbing for him not to go and leaves anyway. but do you think abigail could forgive john for killing micah, knowing that it would be the decision that meant she had to bury him? do you think jack could?

idk man. don't forgive, don't forget, but don't seek revenge because motives don't matter. your life is the sum of the consequences of your actions, and the reasoning behind them only matter to you when your life is over and you try to decide if you tried, in the end.

whatever trying means

[mejomonster]

I’m relieved to find out when i finish case 3 in silent reading the translation still has a part 4 AND extras ToT

like god i admire priest SO much. i think in many ways the writing choices in silent reading are SO ballsy. especially now that i know what publishers push toward regarding standard/norms look like all other novels don't deviate dont be brave or unique. like i know priest self published online THEN gets a print deal but like. to decide you as a public commented on author with a HUGE following where ppl buy your chapters? is gonna write THIS? 

its brave i think. its brave to trust an audience to read 77 chapters of truly fucked up crime story thats main point IS TO critique the world and justice and human nature. before you get into the romance danmei readers most wanted. to make readers both feel bad for and terrified of a little girl. to remind readers every poor immigrant with a bad life who dies is a TRAGEDY and a horrible loss that society has too much allowed. to remind readers that the justice system fails to bring many people closure or help. 

(babes below the cut turned into a MEGA meta on zhoudu and their completely different views on the world)

and THEN of course the LEADS priest decides to write arcs for in this. its ballsy to write a lead the other lead thinks might be capable of being a killer. to write a man objectively with as many red flags as. fei du as THE lead. like? think of 2ha and the people who hate mo ran too much to try it even just hearing of mo ran lol. fei du objectively in some ways is HARDER to empathize with and view as 'an ordinary relatable man'. mo ran when you take that hes been abused is mainly just a kid who wanted to help people typical xianxia hero style and gain power for revenge on REALLY cruel people in a really cruel Fucked up world he lives in thats painted as so much worse than our real earth world. 

fei du? well he outwardly is pretty so i guess like the strangers he meets people tolerate that. but the little we get of our past lets us know he killed animals with his hands (and again its as BRAVE a writing choice as the lead in kdrama Flower of Evil who’s raised by a serial killer and trained to be like him and unable to empathize with others and he fights so HARD to be a good person but he’s no one’s definition of a safe guy to trust - but somehow he met his wife and had a daughter and loves them so dearly and he IS and has always been a good man and good kid who went through awful stuff because people were afraid of his inability to emotionally connect and his abused background). Fei du is like HIM. Fei Du self harms to an intense degree, trying to curb impulses trained in him from a young age and a natural propensity mixed with a raising teaching him and Hammering into him that death is the only absolute to feel comfort in. He could’ve become a murderer, an abuser, in the sense of his father pushing him toward it and so many things could’ve affected it - like luo wenzhou simply being not there. Fei du is fighting before anything else, himself and his own fears about himself and who he is and who he even wants to be ultimately. Mo Ran gets cursed and becomes an evil emperor, and without that was a brute revenge okay-with man (and a black lotus trope so honestly more tolerable as a violent rage fest reading-norm wise). But fei du? is just an ordinary modern man working in an office who thinks it would be nice to choke someone and watch them break down hopeless. Who’s probably felt and thought everything su luozhan did (now i’m losing track... there’s things to be said for mo ran and his abuse making him cruel and lash out like fei du and su luozhan too...but moving on for now). fei du is a realistic ‘monster.’ or an almost one. he’s a man who if taken for all he is, much of society would want removed and taken away, or see as an inevitable evil of a rich man who can’t be stopped by most. he’s like Flower of Evil’s lead and the bad rich kid who lashed out and killed people, combined into one. 

priest makes him understandable, because priest is amazing at writing very good characters and depicting them and showing their nuances and evolution. and also because luo wenzhou loves him unconditionally. luo wenzhou chooses to love the hurting child, and in doing so comes to see fei du for all the multitudes of value he has as a person, for the treasure he is in ALL of himself with the bad and the good as a whole. (sort of like Flower of Evil main characters sister always loved him and saw him as her little brother needlessly hurt by the world, or the wife who eventually realized the man she loved was part of it and is real its just hes more than she knew before - luo wenzhou is both in one). and because luo wenzhou can see him, all of him, and love and appreciate all of it even EVEN when it horrifies him? even when he thinks and knows its beyond the scope of acceptable or normal, even when he’s hearing fei du lose himself in a viewpoint of the world that is so FAR from luo wenzhous ability to understand or view it. luo wenzhou STILL thinks - how do i reach out so we connect and meet halfway, even if i have to wade into that dark and try to understand, even if i have to explain the regular world like its fantastically rare and incomprehensible to him until he gets how other people like me feel. luo wenzhou thinks: no matter who he is, in fact with ALL of who he is, i’m going to go up to fei du and connect to him, we are going to eat and be okay, we are going to carve out a life together and feel whole and safe and connected there. and so for all fei du is, when we are given luo wenzhou’s fathomless endless care for him it’s impossible not to also open our hearts to fei du. to assume no matter how different he is from us or feels things, or how inhuman or whatever, he’s a an amazing individual and worthy of being understood and accepted into our care too. because luo wenzhou’s viewpoint is hard to fight. even if we think luo wenzhou were wrong, if we didn’t get sucked in, we can’t fight the fact luo wenzhou unconditionally feels this and it won’t change, it will drive the story. 

there’s the choice priest made, to make an ‘ordinary’ enough hero of a story (a policeman - legal official solving crimes - who is almost superhero like in his original desire to help people and bring justice, who still ignores wounds and tries to be Larger than Life and do More than the average man, trying to save even with his very real human faults of a nepotism parentage and a short temper in his youth and a naivety he had to lose). he’s old but not jaded, he’s realistic and skilled now but still driven to give out justice, still hurts in his heart when he can’t help someone enough. and it all kicks off with a kid named fei du, and luo wenzhou wanting to heroically bring him justice and closure and save him like Superhero savior of the Cosmos young luo wenzhou did... and failing. failing. failing and having the realization he WILL fail people, legal justice is sometimes impossible or has dead ends and horrible things happen with no resolution and no one saved, and still wanting to care about fei du, wanting to do his best to help him even when it will Never ever be enough. Fei du will NEVER be saved. can not be saved. the damage has already been done (and after the basement scene, luo wenzhou realizes even into adulthood, even once fei du’s dad was in a coma, luo wenzhou still couldn’t even protect fei du from Himself, yet another way luo wenzhou can never be that Cosmic Superhero, not even that local guardian to one single boy, he loves fei du unconditionally and that does NOT mean he’ll ever be enough to protect him or undo the damage). 

but luo wenzhou tries anyway. and its in that trying, that is so worth it. it’s not the outcome, its the act of trying, the ‘ceremony’ and how it means he cares. how it means he views fei du as worthy of it (and he really views by extension so MANY worthy of it who he also can or can’t help to varying degrees, and it rubbed off on fei du, because now hes the kind of man who also finds it awful a poor young man named He zhongyi dies and is willing to go to any lengths to try and get justice for him, for any particular person). Anyway, the point is luo wenzhou is an understandable hero typical of his story type. His heroics are the super-detectives who want to save everyone, his failings are the cops like Lee Dong Sik in Beyond Evil who take their small tasks seriously and are aware they may never save their world or Do Enough and justice can fail but they’re still making Their Choices every day, their baggage and damage and aged lessons coming along. He is an ordinary enough choice for a lead. His most remarkable trait in my mind, that makes him stand out, is his decision once upon a time to care about fei du unconditionally. its a choice a parent makes when they adopt, a bodyguard makes in a fantasy tale when they decide to dedicate their life to their ruler, in a realism grounded story like Silent Reading real life red flags just usually keep such a decision from being made.

Take Flower of Evil - its normal for the wife to be suspicious her husband is a killer and investigate it before ultimately picking his side. Take Beyond Evil - Juwon is younger and has fucked up, but Lee Dong Sik makes fucked decisions he doesn’t expect of the younger, makes the choice to cross lines he feels the younger shouldn’t and maybe no one should but he’s too far gone to quit his path now. Luo Wenzhou sees fei du, the teenager, making death threats and you can’t abandon your own kid. But it’s not his kid, its a stranger like su luozhan who’s killed something, lashing out and feeling unlike other humans and without any real parent who gave them unconditional love (maybe fei du had his mom once a week when she was alive but with health issues and spousal issues and dad’s nonstop threat of a presence on them, fei du was not getting that secure unconditional love environment). its a stranger completely, and luo wenzhou just decides to love him anyway. 

So why’s he a brave writing choice? to use a character like luo wenzhou who does decide to love someone like that unconditionally. before the romance even starts. he’s not fei du’s family, he’s not fei du’s mentor until he Chooses to be, he’s not fei du’s lover when he makes the decision or long time spouse (like in Flower of Evil), he’s not a man who’s got enough shared experiences to understand fei du’s perspective (in fact it terrifies luo wenzhou the gulf there is between each other’s experience and view of the world). but luo wenzhou, the man that he is, chooses to love fei du unconditionally. 

it makes sense for his character of course, because priest is good at writing characters. while luo wenzhou fits the relative norm for his genre, it also makes sense his particular life leads him to a choice i rarely see in these stories. He’s an idealistic naive rash ‘hero’ rookie cop. He sees a child cope with the death of his mom and his world shatter, look at him with an intense resolve that BEGS Luo Wenzhou to BE the hero that can give fei du justice. Luo Wenzhou, the rookie who think himself Hero of the Galaxy, has been dealing with petty crime and this is one of (or possibly the FIRST) time anyone has given him the responsibility and Ability to attempt to serve justice on this scale. This is his first opportunity to SOLVE a possible murder, GIVE someone closure, and truly change their life on such a scale. Of course heroic-dreaming Luo Wenzhou, thinking himself important and inhumanly capable of anything to help someone, takes up that look fei du gives him and decides “then I will give you the justice you need. I will resolve this for you.” A character like him? what other choice would he make.

And fei du is both the first time the world gives him the chance to be the Big Hero Savior he wanted to be, and the reality check that he can NOT be that Hero. That such a heroic feat is impossible, is unreasonable, is not something anyone will be able to live up to forever without fail - especially him, who turns out is lacking much of what he needs to succeed. But even if he had ALL the tools to succeed: even if Luo Wenzhou had ALREADY been a Captain, with rich influential and politically powerful allies, and had been able to legally adopt fei du and take actual political action against fei du’s dad? Even if he HAD all that, luo wenzhou would not have been able to save fei du - from the pain of his childhood, from the loss of his mom, the mystery was too hard to be solved at the time (or luo wenzhou of stubbornness i believe would’ve found a way to solve it), or from fei du’s own self hatred and self harm (just given how privately fei du keeps part of himself - he kept so much from luo wenzhou and probably always would’ve). 

So even with everything, Luo Wenzhou would’ve failed. And at least failing then, as a rookie, he learned he WASN’T superman, he wasn’t infailable and Enough to save people inherently, and took the experience that he’d have to WORK and struggle and fight every single TIME to truly try and save people with him as he was promoted and gained power. That failure made him a better savior for future victims he’d help: because he’d be self aware that failure was possible, and helping others was going to be a struggle and require All his dedication every time, and is never a guarantee. 

Luo Wenzhou picking fei du changed their lives. He failed fei du (and always would have) and in doing so it made him a better person to help people moving forward. and in the moment he chose to try and save fei du, an impossible thing with no Real Guarantee (as Luo Wenzhou would learn later and not ever promise so freely with certainty again), fei du DID see him as a savior. As a hope. As the first guardian angel in his life, the first belief that ANYONE outside of himself could help him. Could fix anything in his life - could explain why his mom who loved him would choose to leave him, could explain if it was his own fault for not loving her ‘enough’ or being too monstrous or if it was someone else’s fault, who could take his father to justice for the awful things he’d done when to fei du his father was the god of his world able to kill and do anything and make fei du do Anything no matter how awful. For the first time, fei du truly had a hope in something able to HELP him. And Luo Wenzhou failed. And fei du experienced both a temporary believe in the kind of “justice is served to the evil, help is provided to the innocent” that children usually simplistically learn at first but he never did (because his father didn’t teach him that but that the predators do what they want). and then experienced a cold harsh horrible shock that it WAS a lie, that the person telling him to believe it - luo wenzhou - was wrong. that fei du’s view of the world was “correct” and the false hero he’d believed in, luo wenzhou, was a fool who believed falsehoods and couldn’t do anything real. that no one Could help fei du. 

and yet. despite all that. despite that failure shaping them both. it also tied them together. for all luo wenzhou failed, he still decided Inexplicably to be responsible for it. Instead of taking the loss, he went on to keep helping fei du. Caring. With Tao Ran as a contrast, its clear how excessive those actions were compared to the norm. Luo Wenzhou dragged Tao Ran into helping him take Fei Du after school, so fei du was rarely left alone in an empty house, into taking him out for food so he’d eat when the help at his house didn’t cook, these are all the acts of a godfather or a makeshift caretaker. They’re more than a responsible police officer should’ve ever gotten involved in a victim’s life - the most luo wenzhou should’ve appropriately done, was maybe call child services and insist and fight that no matter ‘how rich older master fei was’ the child still was in an enviornment that needs either an after school program for some socialization and social support, or a caretaker to move in, or if at all possible to get to live with a different guardian. But Luo wenzhou, knowing what’s appropriate, couldn’t abandon that ‘idealic heroic’ persona he learned failed and was unrealistic, still trying adamantly to be it for fei du. Even failure after failure. He would’ve adopted fei du probably, possibly, if the person he’d been fighting for custody against hadn’t been so filthy rich he’d have never had a chance. (never mind the legal issues im sure would keep him from getting custody, but the intent was there). He took fei du in as much as possible for their circumstances, then expanded that to full on parenting. To checking fei du’s report cards, to making sure he ate right, to checking on his healthcare, to commenting on his dating life as he grew up into a playboy partier, to insisting he pick a career, to worrying how he adjusted when his dad died and he had to take the business, to giving him gifts for birthdays and just cause (both secretly and also full on remembering his birthday when others didn’t), to the simpleness of scolding fei du like a regular teen caught cursing when he’d threaten violent, the simpleness of taking the Extreme-ness of fei du’s worse personality moments and simply saying ‘well whatever fucked up stuff you did or want to do, come sit down and have dinner, come on and join me.’ i care about you. lets eat. i accept you into our little family of two no matter what, and every meal is a ceremony reminding you this is permanent and secure and always here for you. 

luo wenzhou can’t save fei du as a child, can’t save him as an adult from himsel, can’t save him throughout of a great many deal awful things. but he can give him a safe stable eternal home in the both of them, that is always ALWAYS there. always opening it’s doors, always mobile and coming to fei du when he feels isolated and abandoned and like he doesn’t even belong to the same world, it exists everywhere. it’s his. its a thing he never had before luo wenzhou. but it exists now. and it is THAT which luo wenzhou can provide. 

He can’t save fei du from the many horrors of the world, from the monsters within himself. But he can give fei du a home that exists no matter what horrors exist or happen, a home that fei du will always belong IN no matter how monstrous he is, no matter what he’s done or what happens. 

Maybe once upon a time the end of the week with his mom, had been the closest fei du had to that kind of ‘home.’ Some safe place where he was loved even with everything different about him, with the fucked up views his dad pressed on him, with the way he felt different from others and uncomprehending of the world. His mom, fleetingly, would be there with the house made ready for him, would be happy to see him and simply be with him. 

Luo Wenzhou carved out a home for him after that, when he lost that, and made it permanent. It exists nonstop, always, whenever fei du is with luo wenzhou. waiting for fei du when they’re apart, always open for him to return. 

wow i got distracted in zhoudu dynamic stuff lol. back to whatever the point was... priest writing brave. so. while i love all of zhoudu’s very grey area roles filled up and overlapping dynamic. i think the above portion explains well WHY it makes sense for them. Why their dynamic makes sense it would happen, from luo wenzhou’s perspective. why luo wenzhou would choose to do it, and how it would end with him and fei du connecting deeply. 

Because that’s the kind of man luo wenzhou is and that’s where he was in his life, in the perfect place to make 1 single heroic Ideal decision and fail, but still feel too attached to actually quit and cut his losses. He could never cut the loss that was ‘failing fei du.’ he had to keep providing the only consolation he could, a home for fei du, even if he could provide nothing more. To Luo Wenzhou he will always be Fei Du’s very mortal and flawed Guardian Angel who couldn’t move heaven to save him or help him, but still took the job as his life’s work. And to Fei Du he will always be that very mortal Guardian Angel who lied that he was Strong enough when he wasn’t, when angels don’t exist and he was just a man, when justice doesn’t exist only this lying flawed incapable Luo Wenzhou trying to act like there is still justice. But to Fei Du, flaws and all, it’s still his Guardian Angel despite it all. In his world there are no angels, no true heroes. But this person is trying to be one, in Fei Du’s fucked up world where none exist, anyway. Luo Wenzhou is still trying to be one for him. And that’s worth something because it has MEANING, the choice to try to be an angel in a world with NONE means something, its the effort that counts. It’s the ceremony of doing it, the act, that means everything. (As luo wenzhou’s final lines in i think chapter ~79 hammer home).

Their dynamic makes sense, for them. Of course it’s where they’d end up, how they’d develop. How they’d get so enmeshed and close and Bigger Than People to each other (both symbolic Roles to each other while being gravely aware their symbol is actually just a flawed human who will never live up to it). To Fei Du, Luo Wenzhou will always be a Guardian Angel and that IS just a weak human who will fail the job. To Luo Wenzhou, Fei Du will always be his charge to Save, even though saving him is impossible, even though he’s failed for 7 years, even though fei du will never let him and both of them are More Than Aware this mission is impossible. Luo Wenzhou knows fei du is not a charge, was never one - or only one for the first time until Luo Wenzhou first failed. 

Fei Du is a grown man who has done bad things, horrible things to himself, who views the world so differently from Luo Wenzhou his morality might not even be able to compare with his, who is a man he can’t fully understand but tries to reach out any try to anyway. Every single time. What a brave choice. To be commited to unconditionally loving someone and trying to understand them, even painfully knowing you never will. We may truly never be able to understand another person completely. But in these two’s case, they truly have such different internal worlds, it is a painful point for them both that they really never will exist in the other’s world and grasp it fully. 

Fei Du is brave too. He knows Luo Wenzhou is an ordinary man, who belongs to the world most people understand and accept as reality. He knows he’ll never understand Luo Wenzhou, will always see some of Luo Wenzhou’s beliefs as lies or falsehoods most people seem to believe or assume or operate based on that Fei Du will never ever understand or connect to or operate under unless he tries very hard to force himself to act unnaturally. In a way, it is like an Angel loving a Demon. In reality they both realize they’re not an angel and devil - Luo Wenzhou realizes he’s painfully human and incapable, Fei Du doesn’t see himself as a demon he just thinks all humans are truly this way or walking-corpses unaware of it and Luo Wenzhou is another deluded soul lying to himself or simply way too uncomprehending to ever see the ‘truth’ of the world the way Fei Du is Only capable of seeing it. But Fei Du sees his own awareness as monstrous, in that it makes him a monster to those ordinary people and their entire world framework. And yet to Luo Wenzhou, he’s not a monster for it, just another flawed imperfect person like Luo Wenzhou is. They put themselves into the Roles of Angel and Demon, while knowing its partly untrue but unable to stop living that way when it comes to each other. Fei Du can’t help seeing Luo Wenzhou as an angel, in the warped way he’d view one in his world - a deluded hero who’s incapable, but still the closest thing to any angel in Fei Du’s world could exist. Fei Du can’t help seeing himself as a Demon, even though it’s normal to him he can’t shake the awareness its how he’d be in Luo Wenzhou (ordinary people’s) framework of the world. And then they meet in the middle somehow. And somehow even existing in different realities cause they perceive the world SO differently, Fei Du somehow catches a glimpse of himself in Luo Wenzhou’s worldviews: an innocent. An ordinary man. Not a demon, not even different from others. But someone who could and DOES exist in Luo Wenzhou’s world where people who are hurt deserve justice and people attempt to give them it, where cruelty is not the norm and not comprehensible to the masses. Fei Du isn’t compatible with that world - he’s not comprehensible to them. But somehow Luo Wenzhou can look at him, and place fei du into that world. And for the moment they’re together Fei Du EXISTS in both worlds. Is brought into the world outside his, that he can’t be part of or relate to or understand, and see as if he’s like Luo Wenzhou almost. And he wants to be one of the people providing justice to those who are harmed, one of the people who views cruelty outside of the norm and combats it. Could he do this, view things this way, if Luo Wenzhou didn’t connect their worlds by being connected to Fei Du?

And in contrast, in Fei Du’s world the cruelty is the norm, there is no one innocent only those harmed and those self aware enough they also cause it. There is no justice, only an attempt of power and control until the inevitable death. People like Luo Wenzhou cannot exist. In Fei Du’s mind, people like Luo Wenzhou can at most only be struggling helplessly against nature, hurting themselves by prodding other violent people, giving no justice because there’s no way to give it, just struggling to fight for an outcome that is impossible to provide. But because its Luo Wenzhou, Fei Du’s worldview shifts to accomodate him: Luo Wenzhou is a pathetic man fighting for an outcome that can never occur... but he keeps trying anyway. And because he’s Fei Du’s personal angel, even though angels can’t exist here in fei du’s view of the world? Fei Du almost wants to believe maybe there’s worthiness in someone trying anyway. To be like an angel. To do what nothing in his world does, want what can’t be achieved in his view of the world. And that’s where their worlds connect. Where Fei Du’s world connects to Luo Wenzhou’s and lets a sliver of Luo Wenzhou into his as something Possible. And is that why Fei Du wades into the water of doing work like Luo Wenzhou? Is that why he cares when a son dies and leaves a mom behind. In his world to care is illogical and pointless and has no use. But Luo Wenzhou IS in Fei Du’s world, and he cares. So Fei Du feels like... maybe he’ll care too, even if it is useless. He’ll let himself care still, like Luo Wenzhou cares. 

There is use in the ACT of caring. Even if it changes nothing. There is worth in the act of caring, even if it fails to save anyone or stop harm. Is that one of the themes of Silent Reading I wonder... its certainly a theme of these two’s relationship.

It’s the point of Luo Wenzhou trying to explain to Fei Du what their connection is. It’s the connection of their worlds - Luo Wenzhou in our usually normally accepted one, and Fei Du in his hopeless one. It’s also the connecting point of their personalities - through knowing each other they’ve both developed a level of caring. Caring despite finding it cannot save, cannot stop the awful things that have happened and will later. 

And so we get to a point where Fei Du cares about Luo Wenzhou, even though Wenzhou failed him and still does. Even though Luo Wenzhou will never fully understand him or the world he exists in. 

I never realized just how wholly separate their concepts of the worlds they exist in were till I wrote this damn. 

>>I keep losing the point in zhoudu meta lmao. Anyway back to priest. What I am impressed by (among many things), is priest writes that kind of dynamic as mentioned above. The ‘normal ordinary hero’ type Luo Wenzhou who can never connect to the kind of person/world Fei Du exists in, and vice versa. But somehow they meet halfway and see through the keyhole of the other person’s world anyway. Take one step in, while still being unable to enter the other’s world and abandon their own. It’s impossible. But it is. Because they choose to do it, no matter how impossible it is. 

And its this relationship that outside on paper on some novel summary is the tags idk older/younger, rich/gruff, cruel/heroic whatever. When I walked in once upon a time, with the impression from a tagged summary it was going to be a cold genuis with a fascination for analysing cruelty, and a heroic gruff type combatting him and helping him ‘grow a heart’ I did not expect this kind of deep relationship dynamic i actually got. I didn’t expect a relationship that’s part caretaker/child, part opponents striving to fight yet it’s to connect their irreconcilable worlds, part lovers who were already closer than usual lovers before the romance even enters the picture. I didn’t expect 7 years of failing each other, but still being unconditional care there. Fei Du is not just a ‘cold genius’ he’s given the traits of a man from a world where he sees himself as the ordinary monster of it, and he will never ‘grow a heart’ and come to see the world like Luo Wenzhou (I’m 70% through the novel but i don’t think he will). And Luo Wenzhou for all his physical actions is not a gruff man with a ‘warm heart’ a la some sweetie pie emotional warm hero. He was an idealistic idiot who got a reality shock he wasn’t Superman, who grew into a realist. He is a guardian angel who is not actually an angel and KNOWS he isn’t but can’t stop himself from trying to be for Fei Du, the first and only time he tried to be one, refusing to quit this mission even though it’s been lost a million times and it’s painful for both of them for him to keep pretending he’s an angel instead of a man. Luo Wenzhou’s warm emotional ‘hopes and ideals’ don’t touch Fei Du and ‘change him’ (although Fei Du trying to understand Luo Wenzhou’s pov at least does open him up to witnessing Tao Ran’s idealism and kindness even though he finds it naive). 

While their failures with each other certainly change them, they don’t actually change the core of each other - they are permanently too distinctly different people who see the world in an incompatibly different way. Growing up with Luo Wenzhou certainly influenced Fei Du’s behaviors, and gave him a peek into seeing the world differently, but he still ultimately exists mainly in his own world. Even with shared experiences together now, working together, it’s not shifting Luo Wenzhou into a person who sees the world as inherently cruel and monstrous like Fei Du, and its not shifting Fei Du into seeing justice as natural and possible. In some couple stories the worldviews would gradually mesh as the shared experiences grew - but no, not with these two. 

The beauty of their relationship is they Will exist in their separate worlds, their incompatible worldviews and interpretations of it. But they still connect. They still carved out this space of a home together, that exists in both worlds. That has a window to each other’s worlds where they ask the other to explain what that unimaginable window’s view means, how the hell the other person is interpreting it because they don’t see it the same way. This shared home, that lets them concieve of a world where the other person can and DOES exist in their world. Fei Du sees himself as a monster in a world where it’s natural, and where angels don’t exist let alone just heroes - but Luo Wenzhou is in his world. Impossibly. He’s there, he’s part of it, he’s relentless, and he always will be. In Luo Wenzhou’s world, Fei Du exists and is just as inevitably part of it as Luo Wenzhou is. Even though Fei Du can’t conceive of existing in Luo Wenzhou’s kind of world - luo wenzhou sees Fei Du WITH him there, dragging him in by refusing to accept that Fei Du couldn’t be there. 

Fei Du’s heart (in my prediction anyway lol) is not going to grow 3 sizes and decide justice is possible, is expected, and he’s an ordinary person who thinks like the others and feels wronged when he’s not given help and doesn’t instinctively think cold things. But Fei Du’s heart, despite himself and knowing Luo Wenzhou lied about being an angel in Fei Du’s world where none exists and failing him, holds a permanent space for Luo Wenzhou. A permanent part of him lets itself open the window to what Luo Wenzhou sees, and even though Fei Du simply can’t understand it, he lets the wind come in. Lets the idea drift through his own world: that for all justice is impossible, try to fight to do justice anyway. Try to conceive that people deserve it anyway, even if there is no way they do. Just humor the idea. Try anyway. It’s okay to try, even if the result will fail. Luo Wenzhou tries anyway, so you Fei Du can indulge in trying too despite it all. Fei Du’s heart has Luo Wenzhou in it, broken through the window and bringing the breeze, residing warmly in it and bringing all the ‘idealistic-fictional’ warmth from the world ‘other ordinary society thinks’ and decorates. Brings warm cooked noodles, shrimp, sweet candy so sweet its better than Fei Du’s world but here IT IS. Brings hope and determination and belief that doesn’t exist in Fei Du’s world, but here it is, in residence in his heart, with good smells that make him hungry, that taste like nothing that’s supposed to exist. And Fei Du thinks: its a lie, it can’t exist, it can’t be this good, it can’t be permanent... it must be an illusion or something that will crumble later. But its Luo Wenzhou... so Fei Du tries indulging the temporary goodness anyway, even if it WILL crumble. Like how Luo Wenzhou will still fail. Even so, even though this is nicer than any dinner in his world with his mom and dad had been, so much nicer he believes it impossible and a lie and just as hard to rely on as trying to grab the wind. He’ll still sit down and accept it for the experience it is. Because Luo Wenzhou brought it and said it was their home. And even if it makes no sense, somehow in their shared point of connection - this place where their worlds can almost overlap? It’s worth it to try. It’s the act of trying that’s important, not the outcome later. Not what’s possible or impossible. But that here, they can coexist somehow. That they tried very hard to carve out this home right here. They can be brave enough to believe the other sometimes about their other worlds, even if they can never move into the other’s. Try to go on faith on the other person, and try out the other person’s way of living in their very different world, even though it makes no sense. 

It’s a love story about yes, being seen as all of who you are and still loved unconditionally (something often appealing in fiction romance). But also like. Its this heavy reality of No, actually, you will NOT ever be seen completely and understood completely by another person. We are not Fei Du and we are not usually seeing the world and it’s ‘laws’ as so drastically different as him. But like him, when we meet people even as close as we may become, as much as we share, another person will truly never see and feel exactly as we do. Words are imperfect, people’s past experiences and personalities are all different, people can’t read your mind and see your history and feel your emotions. There is no perfect fullproof way to get someone to truly understand you completely. And that’s okay. You can be loved, you can connect, even when that’s true. There is worth in making connections, even if we will ever only be understood imperfectly, only partly be able to view the world or something the same way. Even if someone can’t understand why X is that way about you or why you can’t believe Y the same way they do (even when you try your best to). There is space in all of us to find a way to still love whole heartedly, to choose to Try to understand. There is power in choosing to try, and keep choosing to, even though it’s an impossible endeavor to ever fully accomplish. Like Luo Wenzhou, we choose anyway. Like Fei Du, we realize there’s worth in just the act of trying. Even if we are never fully seen, can never fully grasp the other, there’s care there. The care builds a space for us to connect. A space for us to feel close enough, safe and loved. 

[whoredmode]

If no one's sent it yet, let's see 10 for the Boss ask meme.

⚜ Saints Row Bosses Ask Meme ⚜

10. How has your Boss changed throughout the games/years?

ohhh i feel like this will get. long. i’m assuming this question is more focused on an in-character perspective and less so on how he changed as player character in a game? so i’m gonna be talking about how he changes in his canon.

anteros was someone who felt neglected by society at large; with both of his parents arrested and him stuck being passed around from home to home at a young age, he grew cynical of the world around him. but he latched onto this idea that being rich and famous would be the thing to save him. that becoming Someone in this world was the ultimate goal. and in that way, he was kind of a loner. he’d been on his own for so long, he just assumed he’d reach the top that way too. he loved attention, and he loved using it for his own means.

so fast forward to the summer of 2006. anteros is a very popular stripper, but he’s still largely living out of his car. then one night, he just so happened to be walking by when he has an actual near-death experience, then out of the chaos comes julius and troy. he joins the saints because, despite having dozens of eyes on him every night, when julius looked at him, it was like someone saw him for the first time. whether he wanted to admit it or not (and he would not), anteros at this point was fairly gullible if you said the right things. there was a part of him that considered himself smarter than everyone, even though he really wasn’t. nothing worse than a guy who thinks he’s several steps ahead when he actually hasn’t moved at all.

but it’s during this era that one of the most crucial things about anteros comes out: he’s made genuine connections. these are people in similar situations to him, and he’s so happy to have known them. dex in particular; he’s fallen so, so deeply in love with him. he’s practical and honest and keeps him grounded in a way he’s never had anyone do before. he’s such a perfect complement to him that anteros really does finally feel a sense of purpose.

then. well. it all blows up in face. literally. five years pass while he’s in a coma and everything changes. suddenly stilwater is so different, so unfamiliar that he briefly wonders if he’s even in the same place at all. but despite the physical changes to stilwater (and himself), surely this must mean his friends are still okay, right? RIGHT? which brings forth one of the central internal conflicts he has at this point: he’s can’t accept this drastic of a change. anteros was someone who, at his core, lived for pleasure. and when there’s this large of a shift in that……he doesn’t exactly handle it well. but this is why people like johnny and aisha and troy are really important to him at this point: they symbolize that, in his mind, he can go back to how things were. even better for him, he can get more money and be more showy about it. but again this brings up another issue of, well, you can’t go back to the way things used to be. the past is the past.

i’ll save you the trouble of having to read a play-by-play of my canon, so i’ll just fast-forward and say: dex betrays anteros and escapes while anteros vows to get revenge.

then several years pass and the saints are celebrities. by this point, anteros is in his early-to-mid 30s and, in comparison to his old self, has mellowed out a ton. but regardless, he’s finally made it, right? he’s finally rich and famous, just like he always dreamed of being. everyone knows his name. but why does it feel this way? why are his issues not fixed? did he not just achieve his life goal?

anteros is faced with the possibility that maybe…he was wrong about what he wanted. that no amount of money in the world can bring back the people he cared about. the people that actually gave him a sense of purpose. no amount of cash or clout can heal the wounds of being betrayed by dex. but then, as his story progresses (again sparing you my long rewritten canon), he learns he can finally see dex again and finish things. because that’s what he always wanted, right? (spoilers: no).

there’s a lot to him and i feel like i’ve rambled long enough, but basically anteros was happiest when he’d actually let himself make genuine human connections to the original saints back in 2006, and he clings to the past way more than he’d like to admit. he loves his friends, what can he say? and a large part of his personal journey is just reckoning with and accepting the fact that you cannot change the past, no matter how haunted you are by it, and that sometimes you will just never get closure.

this isn’t even getting into the larger themes of the series itself (which, to be clear, anteros is 100% affected by); this is just a part of his overall character. honestly one day i would love to write a much longer essay/retrospective on the themes of the series and how it affects the cast, as well as the environmental storytelling of the first two games, but all that is for another time.

also by SRTT anteros got pinkish-purple contacts he wears sometimes so. that’s a change right.

[cononeillbreastingboobily]

I posted 26,410 times in 2022

That's 20,819 more posts than 2021!

562 posts created (2%)

25,848 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@one-trash-alek

@treesofgreen

@/emi1y

@/dingdongyouarewrong

@/officialgoogle

I tagged 13,132 of my posts in 2022

Only 50% of my posts had no tags

#our flag means death - 2,725 posts

#ofmd - 2,522 posts

#izzy hands - 958 posts

#lmaooo - 911 posts

#<3 - 747 posts

#blackstede - 635 posts

#wwdits - 502 posts

#stede bonnet - 457 posts

#stedward - 397 posts

#art - 377 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#lock her up oh my god 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I think that Our Flag Means Death's Stede Bonnet is the perfect character for our times actually. In an age when it's so easy to give in to nihilism and bitterness in the face of everything awful that's happening ALL THE TIME, he remains gentle, kind, and constantly authentic in his caring attitude towards those he holds dear. He is by far the most "lover, not a fighter" character I've seen in a very long time.

I mean, he reads his crew bedtime stories! And they like it! He wears nice, colourful clothes, drinks tea, has an entire library onboard for god's sake, and you never have this feeling that the narrative itself wants you to think that he's being "too much". He's Stede. And he's great just the way he is.

And he finds people who appreciate him for it, too! I mean, Blackbeard is completely enamoured and fascinated from the very start, not just by Stede himself, but his way of being, too. And you'd think that this rough, legendary pirate would clash horribly with this gentle, slightly pathetic soul.

AND YET

They invite each other into their lives. Edward teaches Stede how to swordfight, Stede treats Edwards to the nice things he treats himself to as well, like good tea, wines, even comes along with him so he can experience the life of high society for an evening! And they both hate it in the end!

I love that, among many other things, OFMD is a story about how you shouldn't lose touch with the part of your soul that genuinely loves life, the world, and the people around you. It proves that, if you have a gentle part to you, it pays off to cultivate it. And the right people will come around and appreciate it endlessly.

1,488 notes - Posted March 19, 2022

#4

Seeing how Con has been reacting to fans and fanmade content ever since OFMD exploded is making me nothing if not emotional. The last two conventions he attended too, he seems to be really enjoying himself, and I love that so much.

Given how youth-obsessed we as a society are these days, seeing this man who's well into his fifties be confident in himself, being fawned over no matter what he does, being sexy and having fun, soaking up people's reactions like a cat laying in a sunspot, it's just. Idk. It makes me lose my goddamn mind.

1,513 notes - Posted August 21, 2022

#3

Do you think that at some point after Stede and Edward decide to become co-captains some members of the crew of the Revenge get stuck in an endless loop of "ask your other captain"?

1,901 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

#2

One of the (many) things I absolutely adore that happened due to the release of Our Flag Means Death, is this huge, sudden, loud, wonderful shift in what body types we find attractive.

Those little gifsets of Ed asking Stede to stab him? People saw Taika's tummy peeking out of his little crop top and lost their minds.

That one scene where Izzy cuts up Stede's shirt? Gifsets of the aftermath of that have people raving about Rhys's tits!

Every more or less shirtless moment on the show has people perked up, gushing about chests and tummies. And don't even get me started on ARMS.

And I just love how, through the introduction of an array of actors with diverse bodies, OFMD didn't just normalize seeing people not shaped like supermodels on TV. This show genuinely portrays them as attractive and desirable.

And whether it's characters desiring each other, or it's fans voicing how hot they think they are, it's just, it's beautiful. I love that this show, among other things, proves that no matter your age or your looks, you can be desirable. And that alone brings me so much joy.

1,955 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Whenever I think about Oluwande something really weird happens to me. Suddenly I'm giggling and kicking my feet and saying "Olu, Olu, Olu 🥰🥰🥰" while thinking about his handsome face. I want him to hold me in his arms. What the fuck.

3,655 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[adleryoung]

"Here you go," you say, as you hand the Guest Narrator a reheated mug of seasonal beverage. "One warm and most definitely vegan drink."

"Please, drink deeply. It was made with you in mind. You deserve something special."

"You're doing such a good job."

Thanks, man. Mmmm, this is like totes delish. Do I detect a note of nutmeg? Clove? Bitter almond? Why are you all staring at me like that? If you're thirsty, I'll wait while you get a drink too. No? Okay, then. Now that I'm mondo refreshed, like fo' shizzle and whatnot, let's continue with the story.

Next, Adler says:

. . .

"Since Rebecca has already told you every conceivable thing about me," I grumbled, "you probably know that I'm trying to start a loose organization of followers. You can think of it as a cult, but let me make it clear that you should worship Fuma, not me."

"My Lord," Rebecca asked meekly. "Did I do something wrong?"

I let out a weary sigh. Seeing the crestfallen expression on the rabbit femme's face troubled me more than it should. I suddenly realized that after spending so much time time convincing Rebecca of the virtues of seelieness, I couldn't be seen chiding my first official follower in front of her friends for being too honest. I needed to try a different approach.

"Technically no, you did nothing wrong," I admitted. "But technical and elfly are rarely ever the same! Subtlety and intuition are important! However, there's no way you could have known that. Let's just call this a learning experience and add it to the next lesson. I need to remember that not everyone is a mind-reader."

"Ooooh!" the vixen squealed. "Are we really going to learn how to read minds?"

I gritted my teeth and tried to remain calm. Rebecca told all of these lowfolk that I was a benevolent and infinitely patient entity. Now I was obligated to play the part, and that meant not getting so easily frustrated. I would have to exude confidence and control while maintaining an even-tempered composure. I tried to imagine how I would conduct this meeting if Vernier was one of the witches.

"Save your questions til the end," I said, calmly raising my finger for emphasis. "Now then, to continue: This so-called 'cult' is in its beginning stages, and that presents all of you with a unique opportunity. You could earn the prestige of becoming my first, original group of apostles, going out into the world and spreading tales of my deeds and doing good works in my name."

"Like the Blessed Baby Bunny?" Mother Didelphis coughed. "We came here to get away from that, dearie."

"I give out better prizes," I bluffed, based on the little that Rebecca had told me of their absurd lowfolk religion. "My most dedicated followers can earn fabulous rewards, and you don't have to wait til the afterlife to get them. I am offering wealth, beauty, long life, ancient knowledge, wish fulfillment (within reason), and magick, (REAL magick!) as well as a greater purpose in life. I don't yet know any of you as well as I know Rebecca, but I can see that like her, you are all outcasts and outsiders in society. You wanted to pursue witchcraft as a means of getting revenge against that society for one reason or another. But think about all the stories of wicked witches; how do they usually end? It never goes well for the witch. That's the consequence of being Unseelie, or as you call it, evil. In my service, you will have the opportunity to take all that negative energy and turn it into something positive. Instead of being hated for your differences, you will be celebrated, perhaps even loved for them! Doesn't that sound grand?"

. . .

Man, it must be a lot later than I thought. Despite the thrilling action of the story, I'm getting so drowsy I can hardly keep my eyes open. I think I -

The guest narrator suddenly slumps unconscious in his chair.

"Quickly!" you exclaim. "Get him into the pook-proof sack!"

"Are we sure this is Adler?" another of your shameless conspirators asks. "He passed out awfully fast. Maybe just check under his hood to be sure."

"No time. It has to be Adler. Who else could it be? Let's get him to the meeting place. If we hurry we can just make the deadline."

And so the craven, ungrateful, backstabbing listeners carry their load out into the night.

[gingernut1314]

Cold

Summary: Dio has been defeated and Speedwagon is left alone with a wounded Jonathan. He should tend to Jonathan's wounds immediately, but a phantom from the past comes walking towards him.

Content: Oc x Speedwagon, Speedwagon's pov, this is a part of a slowly growing larger series, takes place during JJBA part 1 (ep. 3 - slightly into 4, spoilers about Stone Mask and Dio), mention of death and light descriptions of it, fear of death, blood, unrequited love, "who did this to you" trope, unhealthy relationship (dio x oc), suggested to read after Companion and main series but doesn't really happen until later in oc's story

Word Count: 2.9K

Setlist: Speedwagon x Elise

Tag list: @cinnbar-bun

A/N: They have been on my mind too much recently and I really reallyyy wanted to write this angsty scene cause I love angst too much ugh. I forgot how much I love Elise and Speedwagon so I hope to maybe get some more out with them. I hope you all enjoy!

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Speedwagon thought some sort of phantom was walking their way over the grassy field just beside the burning Joestar manor. 

No, not a phantom. It was a reaper come to take the souls of all those that had perished in the slaughter that had occurred here tonight. Come to guide them afterlife awaits them. 

The reaper was awash in white from its skin, to its long curtain of hair which cascaded down its back, even to the dress it wore. 

Maybe it was a phantom. Some lady in white. The phantom's eyes were as hallow as a spirits might be. Looked as lost as a phantom would.

The front of its nightdress dress, he noticed the closer the phantom grew, was covered in a deep, red stain. It was a shocking color against the snow-white paleness of the rest of it. A color that not only covered its dress, but its hands and feet and face. A color that had even stained the ends of its hair. 

It was a color he had seen so much of tonight. A color he had seen too much of in his life.

Blood. 

This was no reaper come to claim souls. It was no sorrowful phantom. 

This was a revengeful specter. 

A bloodthirsty creature he recognized instantly as Elise Pendleton. 

He hadn’t seen her in years. Hadn’t seen her in over eight years. Not since her father sent for her to come back home here in Liverpool. 

He had written to her every week. He had even gone to her aunt for help in perfecting his handwriting and spelling just so he could keep talking to her. He had missed her the moment she had left and needed to hear from her.

But she had stopped responding to him about a month or two after that. Had gone utterly quiet. 

The few letters before that had been short and curt. Vague. Not full of the love and care they had usually held. 

The handwriting had been sloppy and rushed like she had better things to be doing. 

And when she stopped writing back it had hurt. More than hurt. It had broken his heart which he had let grow too fragile when it came to her. A heart he found, despite his better judgment, had grown to only beat for her.

But he understood. 

She was a lady of high society, even when she tried to deny it. A lady who would marry some lord and live in luxury. She would mother a rug rat or two. Would knit and sew and attend lavish balls. 

And Speedwagon…he was just a common thug. Nothing more than street trash who would more likely than not die before he ever reached the age of thirty.

She was better than him and had wasted more time on him than she should have. 

It had hurt but he had understood. 

But now--now he was seeing her again and she looked--horrifying. Like some goddess of death. 

And yet Speedwagon saw her still shining in her eyes. Saw the wounded animal that she hid so well from the world, but could never hide from him. The same wounded animal he had seen during their first meeting. Someone who, despite her sharp tongue and well-placed masks, was terrified. Terrified of life and death and the very world itself. 

He still saw that even when she looked like a demon came straight from hell. 

“Elise,” He called as her bare feet padded soundlessly over the wet stone that made up part of the front lawn. 

She didn’t look at him. Didn’t even seem to hear him as her blank, green eyes stuck onto the fire still engulfing the Joestar’s manor. 

Speedwagon grit his teeth as he turned his gaze back onto his friend, who was bleeding out all over the stone. Whose skin was blistered and scorched from the fight he had just won. 

Jonathan needed help. He needed a doctor instantly but--

“Hold on a bit longer,” Speedwagon spoke to his unconscious friend, pushing himself to his feet. He held his broken arm, which throbbed painfully from such sudden movements. He swallowed down his pain and pushed on. 

It was secondary at this point. 

Not as important as Jonathan. 

Not as important as her.

Rain continued to fall, though now just a drizzle of its former self. He could tell Elise hadn’t been out in it for too long, her hair only damp from where it was stained red. 

“Elise.” He called again, finding she had come to a stop all too close to the burning manor. “What are you doing out here? You’re going to catch your death.” The dress she wore was too thin, near transparent in the firelight. It was met for warm nights. For sleep not rainy nighttime walks.

But that wasn’t what Speedwagon was truly concerned about. Not when he, now only an arm's width away from her, could tell just how much blood she was covered in. 

It had to be gallons.

“Are you hurt? Tell me if you’re hurt.” He tried again only to still receive no response. He tried to find where she might be bleeding from. It would explain the paleness of her skin. Skin which had once flushed with such life but now looked as cold as marble. 

But no matter how many times he scanned her over, he could not find even a single paper cut. 

“Whose blood is that? Elise?” He reached his uninjured hand out to grab hold of her shoulder. To make her face him, but as soon as his skin brushed over the exposed skin of her shoulder, his breath was stolen from him.

Cold. Too cold. 

Cold like ice.

Cold like death. 

He’d only ever felt this kind of cold on those who had died. 

It made him think of his mother. 

He hadn’t thought of his mother in ages. Could hardly even remember her but what he did remember was that utter cold. The cold of her skin as he had curled into her side without knowing she was gone.

A horrible horrible thought crossed his mind then. One he didn’t want to acknowledge. Didn’t want to face the utter truth of it. 

Panic ceased Speedwagon’s heart. Ceased it and squeezed it so tight he thought he might kneel over and die right there.

He frantically grabbed up her blood-covered cheeks in his palms, turning her away from the fire so that all she could look at was him. He didn’t even feel the pain in his arm screaming at him as he moved it--he didn’t care. Couldn’t care. He held her face and caressed her skin as if he could transfer his living warmth into her. 

“Elise--Elise, what happened?” He stressed, leaning down so he could peer more closely into her eyes, which seemed to be looking at nothing. Eye which were just so devoid of everything that had been good and--and human about her.

“I don’t know.” Her voice was just as hollow as her eyes.

“Well think, Elise. Please. How--how--who did this to you? Whose blood is this?” Speedwagon pet over the side of her face, brushing bits of hair from it as he did. Tried to comfort her. To let her know it was okay to tell him. That she could tell him anything. 

“Father came home. Everyone was so quiet. I can’t--I was so starved.” Speedwagon knew for certain then what had happened and it made the blood in his veins run cold. 

He knew then her father must have come home to find his staff torn apart and drained of every last drop of blood they possessed like some animal had broken in. That her father had come home and had met an unseemly end just as they had. Just as the commissioner and his officers had here. 

He could only hope her younger sister and Jonathan’s sweetheart had escaped, though in his despair he knew to not hold such hope.

He held his breath as he moved his thumb over her lips. Held his breath and resorted to prayer in hopes he was completely wrong. 

He pulled at her bottom lip and felt his frozen heart plummet into her stomach at what he found.

“He--he used that mask on you.” Speedwagon’s voice came out broken as he gazed at the delicate fangs that had replaced her upper and lower canines. A voice that came out strangled thanks to the tightness growing in his throat--thanks to the further breaking of his heart.

Fear shot past the blankness of her eyes. Such guttural fear he had never seen her show him. 

“Death, death, death--” Her voice was strained as she spoke, cold fingers crawling at his own. Grabbing onto them like he could save her from this fate. He held her tight, eyes burning with tears he had not shed in years. Hadn’t shed since he was a child--had refused to shed since then. “Death was there. Death--it came for me. Oh god, it came for me. It had me.” She spiraled, voice breaking further until it bubbled in a sob. “It had me, it had me.” 

“I know--I know, Elise. I--” 

What could he do? What could he do? 

He could do--nothing.

Elise was gone. 

She was no longer human. Death had come for her. Death had taken her. And now--now she was this creature suspended between life and death.

He had done this. That Dio. He had done this to her. 

He didn’t know why he had. Hadn’t even known Elise had known him, but--no he knew that to be untrue. 

She had written about him. About a boy that the Joestars adopted. One she told him her sister believed to be the devil himself. 

One he was starting to believe in his heart, no matter how much it hurt, she had sought out. One that had caused her letters to him to stop. 

Speedwagon should have tried harder to reach her. Should have made the trip to visit her because maybe--maybe she would still be breathing if he had. Maybe he could have kept that devil away from her. 

The groan of wood and the crashing of walls falling in on themselves sounded, ceasing Elise’s sobs and turning her gaze from him. 

“Where is he?” 

“Gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.” He tried to ease, but Elise gave a soul-stilling cry. 

“No-no! Where is he?” Speedwagon--he didn’t quite understand. Dio had done this horrible, awful thing to her. Had killed her and yet--yet she was searching for him. Was crying for him. 

Maybe he was--maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was finally wrong about someone's character. About how they truly were feeling. 

Yes, yes he had to be. He was just tired and his arm was killing him. 

He was wrong about what he was seeing in front of him.

“Elise, he is gone. Burning to ash as we speak. His soul will be dragged to hell for what he has done.” Speedwagon seethed, trying to grab for Elise once more. To try and keep her mind away from Dio and all his evil. To try and shield her from it all.

Elise gave yet another mournful cry, shoving him away. It was a strength Speedwagon was surprised she possessed. A strength that had him stumbling back, too stunned to think of anything past his confusion. Past his slowly shattering heart.

“No! No, no, no!” She screamed at the fire. “He cannot die. He will not die. It was not in his future--the cards do not lie. It is not true.” She clawed at her chest like the pain she was feeling was physical. Clawed at her skin to the point she drew blood. 

He vaguely remembered her interest in the occult past her shouting and crying. Vaguely thought of the deck of tarot cards her aunt had gifted her long before he had first met her. Cards Speedwagon had always been leery of whenever she handled them.

“He is a god. He cannot die. He--he is my savior, he is my protector, he is my lord. He gifted me eternal life. He promised death would not find me any longer. He--he is not dead.” Tears streamed down her face like some sort of waterfall. Fast tears that seemed to have no end in sight. 

Speedwagon could only stand and watch her in utter shock. Stand and watch the insanity she was spewing. Insanity he hadn’t seen. Insanity… insanity had had chosen not to see.

Savior. 

Dio wasn’t her savior. Speedwagon was her savior. He had been her savior when they first met and would always be her savior. He had vowed to keep her safe from all harm that would wish to come for her.

And yet--yet he had failed in doing so. Had failed so completely he had lost her. Lost the girl he loved. 

“E-Elise?” He tried, voice just as completely broken as his heart, but she was too far gone. She could no longer hear him. Could no longer see him. All that her mind and soul would think of was that bastard Dio. 

Silence befell her. Silence as another bit of the manor fell in on itself with a wicked scream. 

Calm feel over her. Such an eery calm compared to the bout of hysteria she had expressed.

And before he could even blink, she was rushing into the flames. 

Speedwagon gave a strangled cry, feet finally moving as he made to rush after her but a small hand grabbed a fistful of his jacket, yanking him back. 

If it hadn’t been the broken arm the hand had grabbed hold of, he knew he would have been able to fight against the weak grip. But it was as if the master of that hand knew just where to grab to get him to stop. 

“Do not be a fool.” A gentle, yet firm voice shouted to him.

“She--she’ll burn if I do not--”

“Let her burn.” Those words, which were full of nothing but ire, had Speedwagon turning to face the voice. He found a petite woman there, her kind face something that did not match the loathing in her voice for Elise. She looked a bit like Elise--she had the same shade of green eyes. The same nose and jaw, but the resemblance ended there. 

Speedwagon noted she was injured. Noted the deep cut on her forehead, the bruising along her arms, and the bandages wrapped around her neck, which red had just begun to seep through. 

“My sister has always been a foul creature. She hid it well and tricked many poor fools just like she did you. Dio only made her worse and used that mask to finally bring that monster fully to the surface.” This was Erina. This was Elise’s younger sister. A girl she said meek and shy and hardly ever talked of to him. Speedwagon should have been relieved to see she survived, but all he could think of was Elise burning alive. 

Erina seemed to see his thoughts and gave his injured arm another yank. 

“She was a demon. It was only natural for her to find the devil and go hand in hand to his burning domain with him.” 

“You’re--you’re wrong.” Erina shook her head in pity at him. 

“Believe what you will. I wish your faith in her had been strong enough to change her.” Erina's voice deepened to something mournful. “I loved her too. We are blood…but Cain murdered Abel despite that same fact, just as she has killed our father. God is the only one who can judge her soul.” 

Speedwagon did not trust God. He never had, not when he had seen all he had seen in his life. Not when he had lost so much. And he found he wanted the God Erina spoke of far away from Elise. 

He turned his gaze from Erina to look back at the fire. To search desperately for Elise’s form. 

“Let me set your shoulder back and then you will help me bring Jonathan to the hospital.” Erina’s voice turned sweet. Speedwagon could tell she didn’t like being so hateful. Could tell she wanted her sister to have changed. He could tell she was only trying to help ease his hurting soul. “Come now. If we do not get Jonathan to a hospital I fear the worst.” 

He sat down, eyes turning back to the fire as he allowed her to set his shoulder as she had requested. 

Speedwagon had always prided himself on being able to see people's true selves. On being able to sniff out the good from the bad. It was a skill he had been born with and one he had perfected. And yet--

Yet he had been wrong about Elise. 

He had seen it burning in her eyes when they first might. Seen that will to survive. Saw that she would do anything to do so and yet he had ignored it because he saw everything else that was good about her. 

And he wanted to be wrong. He wanted to be so wrong because she was beautiful and the longer he hung around her the more he fell for her. 

He had thought maybe--maybe she had loved him too. 

Had he been wrong about that too?

As he dragged Jonathan’s body away from his burning home, he knew he would never know the answer.

[catofadifferentcolor]

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

"To say that Nothing is True, is to realize that foundations of society are fragile and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that Everything is Permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our own actions and we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic."

As I’ve been reading a lot about the Crusades recently, it seemed a natural progression to try playing Assassin’s Creed for the first time since the franchise began a decade and a half ago.

And I honestly can't think of anything to say other than I am in love.

Don't get me wrong - I adored AC2 with an immediate, earnest passion that I've only felt a handful of other times in my life. I loved ACB as well - not in the same way, perhaps, but in the way someone might love what in retrospect felt a little like an extended AC2 DLC. But from the moment Assassin's Creed: Revelations started to the bitter end, I was in love.

Part of this was the opening, which hit hard on all the right emotional notes, and the first memory sequence, which was just enough tutorial to suit without twisting itself into knots to explain why the Master Assassin and Mentor of the Brotherhood needs a refresher. And when Ezio does have to learn new skills, it was handled pitch-perfectly with Yusuf acting like the beloved nephew teaching his favorite uncle how to use some newfangled bit of tech. (Ultimately, it was this addition of new skills which sets ACR above ACB rather than the leap forward in graphics, making everything new and exciting. Everything about ACR was new and exciting and fresh in a way most fourth installments of a series lack, and there was no end of squee during my play through.)

It has its faults - the Den Defense was something I never figured out, as somehow nothing I ever did seemed to work no matter how far ahead I was when the Templars started rolling siege equipment through the streets of Constantinople, which stretches credulity. Yusuf's death hurt and had an air of pointlessness to it that really twisted the knife when Ezio just addressed his replacement as Assassin instead of so much as a name. The switch of Eagle Vision from Y to LS on Xbox tripped me up for a good third of the game, and while I liked the upgraded Eagle Vision in general, it did take me longer than I'd like to realize you had to hover over each target with the cursor rather than automatically find the gold one.

And yet, I loved it. I loved it so much that I played the last few memory sequences at a crawl, for as desperate as I was to know what happened next, I didn't want it to be over. I didn't want my time with Ezio to end. His story arc was practically perfect in every way, as was the addition of Altair's later memories to reinforce everything Ezio was feeling and thinking, and the idea of giving him up hurt. It still hurts. There's a part of me that wants to go back and replay all the Ezio trilogy even as the rest of me wants to know what happens in AC3.

Hell, I've even dragged my heels writing this review because it felt too much like closure.

Ezio is one of those video game characters that comes around so rarely I honestly can't think of an adequate comparison. It's rare you get a character that accomplishes so much while still seeming human - trying, failing, making mistakes, trying again. On the face of it he should be a ridiculous stereotype, and yet he's anything but. His whole story arc of setting aside revenge, of realizing he will never have all the answers he seeks... it is beautiful and poignant and I'm more than a little in love with him. (And, no, it's not fair he somehow managed to get hotter for ACR, and there are things I didn't need to know about myself, thank you very much.)

Hell, I fell a little bit in love with all the characters we got more than five seconds with. Yusuf was bright and brilliant and deserved better. Clay was - well, I don't have words beyond wishing to have seen more of him. Sophia was someone I could honestly see Ezio retiring to be with. Altair was a delightful treat to see again. And Desmond... well, I really wish his memories were actually playable, as I got so nauseated trying to fall correctly at the end of the second one that I had to lay down in the dark for about an hour after.

That may honestly be my biggest complaint - Desmond's memories were something you could skip over. (Something you had to skip over if you wanted to keep your lunch.) I think if they had found a way to incorporate that into conversations with Clay on Animus Island instead of monologues in confusing first person settings without clear goals I would have had to give this game an 11 out of 10.

ACR is a game I came out of with a lot of feels, nearly all of them positive. It was a fun game that was just challenging enough to feel like completing parts of it was an accomplishment without the utter frustration that came from Leonardo's flying machine in AC2 and ACB. As sad as I am to give up Ezio, it was a worthwhile conclusion to his story, and now that I've had nearly a week to mourn I'm ready to move on to AC3. But I'll definitely be coming back to replay this one. 5 out of 5 stars, cannot recommend enough.

[brutus-the-skulldog]

So I had a durge.

And so here I am now. Explaining my silly little fantasy world.

I have been working my ass off writing this thing and I'm really proud of it:3 imma explain/summarize every book/story for the people that will listen:D

Here's a little backstory because it's very important (I'll make a character post separately)

This entire story line thing was inspired by a school I went to and it kinda started the entire thing. It was a religious school that fucked me up frfr so I decided to cope by making a silly thing out of it:3 The world is in the year 3000 and is ruled by one family of rich people (eat the rich) who had a son who was said to inherit the rule. But they found out that he was gay so, being rich people, They made an entire school for people like him So that they can fix him and the other people. (This kids name is Maxwell btw)

1st book

(Gothic horror/magic/murder mystery/twisted romance??)

The story starts out with the mc Canine by explaining how he was going down the wrong path (addiction n shit like that) after his younger sister canceled her subscription to life. During this time his father who was a minister at the local church sent him and his brother off to a boarding school full of people like them. This is where the found family dynamic starts to come in but soon, people start to go missing and ominous letters from the outside start to come in. It's up to the people remaining to find out what's going on before no one is left to find out.

2nd book

(anarchy/gay/dystopian/magic)

Canine and Maxwell but they are all grown up and Maxwell has the throne now. Canine is Maxwell's right hand man and closest friend. But, Canine is living a double life as he is a part of a anti-dictater organization under the wing of Maxwell's sister, Maxine. This organization is regarded as terrorists to the public due to their attempts to assassinate Maxwell. Canine is also dealing with not remembering his past due to a chip implanted in his brain by Maxwell's family. The organization has a goal to dismantle the society that they reside in, so, they hatch a plan that takes months to perform. One thing after another, it's all in ruin. Canine is left with deathly wounds and nowhere to go but the forest miles and miles away.

3rd book

(mystery/gay/run away/suspense/supernatural/magic)

Canine wakes up in a medical tent with a familiar face treating his wounds. He can't exactly explain to himself where the face is from. But the face helps him to heal and get back into society step by step. But this person has a dark life, living with their abusive partner. Canine wants to help them get away so after a brutal fight they run away together. But their partner runs the city and wants them to come back, so they send out hitmen and PIs to track them down. Bla bla bla the chip from 2nd book is removed and he remembers who the face is, and omg, it's his lover from 1st book (his name is Lyrus). Canine uses his past to aid in the take down of Lyrus's partner.

4th book

(gay/recovery/supernatural/magic/tbd)

After the take down of Lyrus's partner, Canine and him start recovering from their previous trauma with therapy and whatnot. At the same time, they start dating and making friends. One of these friends (she's from 3rd book and she has a pet raccoon:D) is a journalist that is struggling to find stories so she reached out to Canine and Lyrus to help. They become amateur detectives and they start busting crime rings. But this reminds Canine of his past, which permits him to visit the ruins of his old home. Lyrus follows him and finds out what he did. Soon after this, the people left in the ruins want revenge and raid the new place.

Now, a good writer never spoils the ending;3 But I will tell you that there is two endings:D!!

I got lazy

[space-blue]

Funny post, but I'd like to dive in a little.

I think Paul is a good man, and Feyd would be too, if he were raised by the Atreides.

I think the issue for both Paul and an Atreides-raised Feyd is inherent to both their system and their place in time, within the high pressure of a secret cultist breeding program, locally spearheaded by the family's MOM.

Paul suffers from a typical case of manifest destiny. He's the son of a Duke, meant to inherit a Great House of the Imperium. He's part of a strict and extremely rigid social caste called the Faufreluche, which states "A place for every man and every man in his place."

It's a feudal world in which he's meant to inherit everything, including the darker side of power : responsability for millions of lives, pressure to keep his house alive and in the balance of a mortal game of interest, etc.

The point of Dune is to show Leto and go, here, a decent man. He loves his son, who is also a decent man. Paul is a good friend, loyal, dedicated, hard working. CHARISMATIC. Raised to be so.

And then the narrative gives him/them a strong following of people who love and trust them, and others who simply don't have a choice or can't conceive of another choice because their society straight up doesn't offer it.

Suddenly, Paul (or Feyd's) smallest action carries a crazy momentum that ripples out. The point is you don't want such men to gather such followings. You don't want organized groups of plotters who can take over humanity as a whole. Because the smallest act of selfishness then turns into something far worse, and then the movement picks up steam, multiplies, and goes on without the initial leader (cue: the jihad going on without Paul, who only started that path for revenge).

I think it's also interesting to look at Paul as a typical Hero. Because his drives and desires are qualities we casually revere in our own hero stories.

Man loses his entire family, his village burned to the ground : he goes on an epic quest of training and revenge, but will he save himself?

How dull and common is this? Aren't we hyping up people who do that all the time in fiction? The kill bills, the luke skywalkers, the blue eyed samurais of the fictional world?

Worse, think of Avatar's Jake Sully. The "it's good actually" version of Paul Atreides. He also infiltrates a native culture not his own, also co-opts local symbols of power, also works with local religious beliefs, also marries a local woman, also has a "second awakening" scene…

And because he fights alongside the locals against the evil bad colonialists, the entire narrative BEGS you to believe Jake Sully is a good guy. That he's not a white saviour. Or that he's the good kind of white saviour.

Meanwhile Paul does all that and the narrative tells us it's wrong and fucked up, and he is doing it for personal revenge that just so happens to line up with the native people's own desires.

One of the main differences is Paul's sense of entitlement. he never really doubts that he should be in charge of Big and Important things. The BG's breeding program also made him a certain way, and funnels him down a fated path. While Jake Sully is a one-man rebellion and convert to a tangible god.

So, yes, I do think Feyd raised by the Atreides would be a decent guy. It would not prevent him from committing atrocities though, because the entire point of Dune is that charismatic decent guys DO lead movements that become bigger than them and easily go on to commit The Atrocities.

"Oh, if Feyd had only been raised by the Atreides household and not the Baron, then he would've been a decent guy"

My good bitch, not even the official heir and son of the Atreides duke himself turned out to be a decent guy

[notinterestedinyourstuff]

THESE ARE JUST ABOUT FEELINGS

1. since i listened to troye sivan strawberries and cigarettes, my feeling goes to taynew. while, thei have their own songs, jason mraz 'lucky' what can i say 'bout this song? the lyrics are all about them.

yep, nulis tentang mereka dulu lah baru real life. seeing them like watching alternate universe in real life. once, i wrote about romance feeling that i felt, which actually i watched them at that time.

watched them, on their real stories, not a series or fanfiction. been so long i lost interest for romantic things. the happiness, sadness, sacrifices, love languages, their ways to keep it personal but me as part of netizen keep digging our curiosity 'bout their life.

back then, before i fell this deep into them, i was like promised to myself to not gonna spend any penny for them. then, this year i spent around 6000 thb to see them again in bangkok.

so, the romance feeling i wanted to share was like...they gonna have series together again. one of the actor congratulated them, he is theearth, nuwi's ex partner in old serie. exact partner in work coz eventho earth was his couple (at that time) tawan wouldn't leave them alone. damnit tay tawan, you possesive bastard. like, earth knew that he couldnt be together with nuwi lah, walau company support them and they have fans tho, but universe like only blessed nuwi for tawan. the love songs i collect in spotify are mostly got from tawan's playlist for nuwi, well fans also have play list for theearth and nuwi which all of them are the broken heart songs.

cuma pengen nulis soal betapa mengirinya diri ini melihat dua insan yg kayaknya lagi kasmaran banget. well berdasarkan lurking di sosial media, diketahui bahwa mereka tampak sudah kasmaran sejak 2013. waktu itu usia mereka masih muda, masih mencari validasi, setidaknya itu POV gw. then reality came through their life, like salah satu masi khawatir tentangg society judgment. while the other one mungkin juga mau ikutan move on, tapi apa daya hatinya udah mentok dgn si satu nya.

2. next is about the chines' drama i watched. so nowadays i back to watch gongjun's series i've been waiting since last year. the legend of anle. not the gayes series, the straight one, but the feeling still the same. how i always feel toward chinese colossal drama, they do really act like a drama. but the feeling they gave to me as damaged as casual series.

just look at wenkexing's eyes..i got the feeling of the scenes caused of those eyes. i ain't an expert of art, but i can give plus one for this kind of drama. the aesthetic they brought to the audience with their culture is beautiful. i dunno how were they back then in real life. but the way they express the emotion, how they doin war with power and revenge, the blood, how they not afraid of the death as long as the sacrifice is worthy.

not forget to mention their costumes and design, i believe every country is beautiful. somehow, so far...i didn't get it from my own culture..i mean in the right way. 5555. it's just how they serve the audience.

well, i might be bias coz i only watched those which played by my faves. other than that, i might only know other actors from some variety shows.

3. recently, i read this book.

well, i wouldn't say this book is the best 5555, but it's something. maybe boring, but i try to keep following coz i got the point on each parts. i can feel her, thank god there's someone who has feeling, thought and somehow maybe personality like me. i mean, there are many type of people, and those who look like with the writer well we're in the same thought. so i'm not the only one. (of course fika, you not that special tho hahahaha). like, when everyone thanked to themselves for staying and struggling, the logic mind of mine said 'emang harus gimana lagi? kan emang kudu bertahan dan dijalani, ga ada jalan pintas, kalo kabur pun masalah lain pasti akan kunjung datang lagi. wong namanya juga hidup. kalo gada masalah ya baru namanya bukan kehidupan lagi. kita punya siapa lagi kalo bukan diri sendiri dan...Tuhan? yang membawa kita ke dunia ini. that's the logic mind loh ya yg bilang. kadang kalo lagi kalut ya emang susah juga mikir kesana.

kek si mba penulis buku itu. obrolan mba nya dgn si psikiater semacam validasi orang lain tentang kondisi mbanya-which is lil'bit similar sm gw. jadi gw cukup tau dan paham aja gimana menurut psikiater itu. sedikit banyak kek konsultasi via buku. iya gw tau ini ga dibenarkan, tapi kek tadi gw bilang cuma biar tau dan dikit paham aja, jadi gw kelamaan menghakimi diri sendiri.