#I wanted to animate her properly but I need to relearn everything again.. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

amycessaz · 5 years ago

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On the blog name...

Present, Loving, Playful: my current mantra! Not quite in the sense of a core belief, but more of a personal reminder of the qualities I think are needed to be happy. Many theories and equations of happiness have drifted in and out of my head, but this is the one I have landed on and it has stuck with me for the longest so far – though not only am I willing to accept an evolution of this mantra, I think in all likelihood it will change as I grow and learn. However, for now, it’s the best I’ve got so I’ll have a go at explaining my three ingredients.

Present: I came across this component through meditation a few years ago. I went through a stage of scouring the app store for lifestyle apps, which looking back now I realise was my way of coping as a teenager in need of guidance and answers in a scary new world of growing independence. In the seemingly unlimited potential of mobile apps and reddit communities to answer all my problems I did in fact come across some gems. Included in this is the now very popular headspace app which gave me a brilliant introduction to mindfulness. I went through the ten day beginners course, and at one point a eureka moment hit me: I am almost never present in the moment. I would go through each day walking, eating, working, watching tv, scrolling on my phone and basically spend all of that time mentally elsewhere. The eureka moment was so strong because I was suddenly very aware of where I was, my surroundings, and how my body felt. I felt this euphoria that brought me back to childhood and I even began to cry.

Playful: This compenent grew from the realisation that children have an abundance of pure happiness that seems to be so effortless to them. And that was it: happiness has to be much more effortless and much less serious. I thought about how in my euphoric moments I almost felt like I’d been transported back to childhood. Although I knew that being present was a part of the distinction between then and now, I felt that there was something else to it (especially since I know I didn’t spend my childhood sat still meditating). As life becomes more convoluted in adulthood, so too do our emotions and social expectations. Adulthood is defined by a kind of seriousness and restraint which is often necessary in a busy and rationalised world. However I believe we shouldn’t shun parts of ourselves for the sole reason that they are ‘immature’. I look to children as inspiration for living happily and their light-hearted, curious, and exciteable interaction with day to day life is the other aspect of childhood that rose tints those glasses. This isn’t to say that childhood is a constant joyous frolic, but that there is a form of pure happiness that many adults feel is lost to them, that I believe can be reached again if we relearn how to play! I want to add this idea was also partly inspired by the youtuber and sexologist Dr Lindsey Doe, who has a gorgeous way of enthusiastically and playfully framing sex and sex education – her mantra is ‘stay curious’!

Loving: my last beautiful ingredient is Love <3. Very recently my mum passed away, and what carried me (and carries me) through is a powerful and enduring love that is mine and my mum’s bond. As she left me, she was in a way replaced in my heart by a legacy of her motherly love for me. For a short while I almost felt overwhelmed as she wasn’t there to receive love back from me and I was teeming with it. It didn’t take long before I realised that I instead could give my love to others, be them friends, family, strangers, animals, down to plants and objects. Something had shifted in me and suddenly inspirational quotes and religious teachings on boundless love starting making sense to me. This is especially the case in terms of the reading I had done on Buddhist teachings which I believe allowed me to quickly understand I could externalise that love. Although I had always loved certain family and friends, something I am still not quite able to explain changed and I felt a sort of celebratory untainted love that flowed easily back and forth exponentially between myself and everything outside of myself. With this came a still growing love for myself which I had never felt before. Now I have felt the glow, I know without a doubt that this is a vital part of being alive and well.

I still need to remind myself of these goals every day – I suppose that’s why it is my mantra, – I by no means have perfected them. In the future I would like to write more about these three things as concepts and how to go about manifesting them. I also would like to show my love to those who have lost family members but were not left with a secure sense that they were loved; some people never learn to love properly. What I am sure of is that every person deserves to receive unadulterated love and I hope it will be found in other places.

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nautilusopus · 7 years ago

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I’m feeling angry today so here are all the entries of the Compilation listed from least terrible to “Nojima and Nomura are incompetent hacks and should be fired”.

8. The Case of Denzel OVA is the most bearable entry in the Compilation, because it does what a sequel is supposed to do: expand upon the lore of the established setting while showing us more about the characters in it. It's a shame, because I think this also might be the least acknowledged entry in it, apart from maybe Before Crisis, perhaps partially because it has no official English dub. In this case, we get to see Denzel finally fleshed out beyond "the littlest geostigma patient that Cloud needs to win the big game for!" He joins up with a group of salvagers, and we see everyone trying to piece the world back together following the complete collapse of the government, the economy, their primary energy source, and the deaths of millions, where they're immediately set upon by disease and societal tensions between what used to be the "upper class" and the slum dwellers that have always had it this way, more or less.

What the fuck, this is what Advent Children should have been entirely. Except with Cloud and his friends, and not Denzel, because screw Denzel, I wanna see what Avalanche has been up to. (We never get to see what Avalanche has been up to, and we never will.)

That being said, even Case of Denzel didn't manage to not fuck up royally, and it has a giant huge plothole in the form of forgetting to account for an entire goddamn year because it forgot Advent Children was set two years after the OG and not one. Whoops.

7. Advent Children Complete, which I'm treating as a separate entry from Advent Children -- Advent Children is a fucking mess with a nonsensical plot and wonky character motivations that, word of god, were literally just there because they figured it's how the fans wanted to be pandered to the best and not because they thought the motivations would be good or interesting (nothing like a content creator that openly states he thinks his target audience are morons!). It's slightly lower on the list than Advent Children vanilla because A) it looks slightly less ugly due to the Bluray release, B) Denzel's and Marlene's child actors got too old and they had to find younger ones for the redub, and these newer actors are actually better and significantly less obnoxious, and C) it has My Chemical Romance doing the theme song.

These are all very shallow reasons, admittedly. You'd think it'd be lower because the added scenes help fill in some plot holes, but they were badly added scenes that meshed very poorly with the story at large, and because of that they actually created about as many new plot holes as they filled in. Shite movie.

6. Advent Children vanilla. This is a good place to discuss why they're both on the bottom of the list, since they're pretty much the same movie. Shitty plot, characters are a sad shadow of what they used to be, and they did some weird thing with Cloud where he unlearns everything from the original game for the sake of cheap conflict and the fans try and defend it like it's actually deep and coherent. Not to mention some more bad decisions: Renu and Rude are good guys now and friends with Cloud and Tifa despite murdering their friends along with everyone else in Sector 7, Marlene is no longer Barret's daughter because ewwww, black people, and Tseng and Rufus are retconned back to life for literally no damn reason at all (they contribute nothing to the movie. Nothing. They even waste the dramatic reveal with the sheet by having him say "yeah it's me Rufus but I'm gonna wear this sheet for no reason and rip it off dramatically revealing ME, RUFUS SHINRA"). As far as I'm concerned they both just died again right after this movie.

Basically, Advent Children was bad and stupid, but it was pointless as well, which in this case works to its advantage: we relearn the exact same lessons but in a shittier, more juvenile way, wind up at the exact same point we started at by the movie's conclusion, and get confirmation that there were, in fact, zero fucking stakes. At least it didn't take a scalpel to the franchise lore at large, like everything else on this list.

5. The Last Order OVA is basically Square Enix frantically trying to save face after they've realised that, "Oh shit, our complete inability to proofread the first drafts of the scrips we've been running with have resulted in every single bit of VII lore introduced in these things wildly contradicting one another!" Basically, Last Order is a very pretty fight scene with Zack in it animated by Madhouse that occasionally tries to have a plot. This is the entry that began the handwave of "oh, all the entries in the Compilation are different because they're all told from a difrerent point of view! It's up to you do decide what really happened!" Lazy, bad, the beginning of the end. It looked nice, but I can't even enjoy the fight scene in the reactor properly because Zack doesn't immediately get bodied like he should've, which wouldn't have been very much fun to watch but at least would've made more sense; as well as the weird bit where they tried to imply Cloud was always infected with Jenova and mako-enhanced from birth? Somehow?

Also, the "Last Order" in question seems to be Zack telling Cloud to run. Cloud, who is in a vegetative state, and even if he weren't, can't even walk. Sure, he'll get right on that.

4. Case of Novels. These things suck and are terrible and look like they were written by a third grader. That's not just a "lol these are terrible" jab, either. I mean they literally read like they were written by a child with a very basic grasp of how to put sentences together. All of them are structured like so:

Tifa was very sad, because Cloud wasn't talking to her. Tifa thought that maybe Cloud felt sad because his friends were dead. Then Tifa thought about her adventures with her friends from Avalanche, the friends that she was best friends with two years ago. Cloud and Tifa had lots of adventures with them, but they were sad by the end of it because Aeris died, and then Tifa thought that Cloud was probably thinking about that too. Tifa felt bad about that.

They are bad to look at, just objectively, regardless of the content in them. Case of Barret's is by far the worst in that regard, to the point where I'm not entirely certain I didn't read a bootleg fake version of it, because there is no way Square Enix would charge actual money for a product that was meant to be released to the masses and presented as canon to Final Fantasy VII. Except that they did. (I can also believe it because it further works towards the goal of erasing Barret from the story entirely, more on this later.)

As far as the actual story content, I'd probably have to say Case of Lifestream White/Black are the worst, due to some weird nonsense where Aeris just hangs out in the Lifestream and watches people like it's a spectral break room, and Sephiroth grumbles and pines over Cloud like a jilted ex-boyfriend because Nojima forgot there was anything else to his character. These, like Advent Children, are pointless, but they’re pointless to the extent that it’s absurd they even exist -- there's apparently an entire third Shinra bastard running around out there, and he has zero bearing on anything ever, and never will again. What Shinra bastard? Who? Kadaj murdered a whole town offscreen or something, but I guess it wasn’t relevant, don’t know why we brought it up.

3. Before Crisis. Japan-exclusive mobile game where Square stops even bothering trying to hide their contempt for anyone not in the "marketable niche" (i.e: all the white male characters ages 16-27) and begins writing them out of the story. It's not enough that they take his goddamn daughter away from him on the basis that he's prospecting oil, which is fucking stupid in and of itself -- this is the story that decides Avalanche, the group Barret founded in response to Shinra murdering everyone in his hometown because they didn't want any competition in the form of coal, wasn't actually even Barret's. It was some other guy's, and grrrr he was a terrorist even more terroristier than OG Avalanche was because moral ambiguity is gonna go over our audience’s heads so let’s just make it nice and cleanly black and white for them. I've ranted about this before, but it's even worse that the fans seem to have no problem incorporating these changes into everything, because who gives a rat's ass about Barret, right? There was some dumb thing about Nanaki finding a girl catdog to have those babies he has in the epilogue, and the Ravens, but it's all just more of the same introducing samefaced teeny boppers that the fans love so much at the expense of everything else.

2. SPEAKING OF WHICH, Crisis Core, the king of samefaced teeny boppers consuming the franchise. I flipflop a lot on whether this one is the worst or not, but in addition to having the same problem as Before Crisis times fifty, I consider it as bad as it was because you could tell it could have been really good, and that's honestly heartbreaking. The first hour or so kicks things off with a really good start, introducing Zack as this cocksure jackass trying to make a name for himself, and his mentor Catchphrase Man. Then around the point where Banora gets firebombed it all sort of goes downhill, and you realise a lot of the credit you were giving it wasn't actually due. Zack being a gloryhound for Shinra and believing Soldier to be a bastion of good wasn't supposed to be a character flaw like it should've. Genesis almost singlehandedly ruins the entire thing by eating all the screentime in the word with his obnoxious motivations that made zero sense, and in a flashback we see he was always a fucking tool so there's no reason to feel sorry for him in the first place. He's actually secretly responsible for the iconic Nibelheim scene, of all fucking things (GENESIS DID NIBELHEIM would make a good bumper sticker). Tifa gets thirty seconds of screentime. Cloud doesn't fare much better, which is a seriously huge problem considering he's the goddamn protagonist of the entire franchise. He gets a single 49 second cutscene of them establishing "okay he's best friends with Zack" and then nothing else, ever, unless you want to count the three emails he sends him that you could tell were supposed to lead to more bonding cutscenes that were ultimately cut for more GENESIS, YOU LOVE HIM SO MUCH RIGHT GUYS??? Aeris fares even worse than Cloud and Tifa combined, being barely in it, and Square having decided that Zack actually made all her life decisions for her. That's right -- literally everything about her character? Zack did it. Fuck you.

It's also this high up for what it represents, I suppose -- in the fanbase, you see a whole lot of "Well, Cloud lost Zack and Aeris so now he has no friends and nothing else to live for in this world because he didn't really care about anyone else besides them". It seems everyone forgot that not only was there more to Cloud’s character than "his friends are dead so he’s sad” and his friends being dead was only a small part of it, but that there were seven other people we spent about sixty hours establishing in no uncertain terms that they loved him unconditionally and that he felt the same way. Crisis Core is what finally got people to start disregarding the rest of the main fucking cast from the OG, and it was very, very deliberate. An old unwashed man in his late thirties jaded about his future in spaceflight, a catdog with daddy issues, a black man with a character arc revolving around fatherhood, a triple agent paper-pusher that had a furry phase right in the middle of his midlife crisis, two women that are both alive and have agency of their own, and hell, even a young man with severe psychological issues that had a very strong bond with all of these people even though most of them aren't young and attractive white people and realises he can count on them all for support, are not as marketable as the cast of Crisis Core. Square knows this. You can't wring any sex appeal out of "happy supportive environment" or "female characters", since most of the fanbase tends to be straight women in their late teens and early twenties. So, everyone in both those categories gets shafted. And, as mentioned, the fans seem all to happy to run with this, given the overwhelming amount of material that seems to disregard everyone else in Cloud's life that wasn't Zack (and sometimes Aeris gets acknowledged because all she's good for anymore is a corpse to motivate Cloud) as unimportant, and not really his friends.

The fact that the entire game seems to undermine the original's tone very badly almost seems like a nitpick at this point next to very intentional racism and sexism and pandering, but I'm gonna bring that up too. The new version of Zack's death scene flies directly in the face with how they were handled in the original game, and is more in line with Cait Sith's than anything else's -- that death isn't heroic, or glorious, or profound. It's just sad and fucking hurts, and it's something that happens. They made that pretty clear the first time around when he just gets gunned down on a cliff in complete silence. You can practically hear the "so it goes" in the background. Naturally, this time around they gave him an entire speech about dreams an honour and then when he dies he goes to heaven (on a planet with no heaven) and he's successfully become a hero. Fucking bravo. Or the bit where, as has been pointed out, you have a wacky scene where Zack meets a young Yuffie, and she skips off amongst the corpses of her people that Zack himself just finished making in the name of glory and imperialism (not a character flaw, though! He’s a good guy!). There's an astounding lack of self-awareness in everything the game does.

AND IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD, and that's why I still debate whether or not it belongs in the Worst spot or not. It could have been great to see a non 49-second version of the friendship that eventually motivated Zack to die for Cloud, but then they forgot to write it, because why write that when you could have these four cutscenes with Genesis? It would've been great to see Aeris and her relationship with running from Shinra that caused her to grow up street smart and how that caused Zack to maybe question Shinra's motivations, but them they forgot to write it because HEY LOOK HERE'S SOME MORE WING SYMBOLISM WITH ANGEAL DO YOU GET IT THERE'S ONLY ONE OF THEM AND HIS NAME IS SPELLED ALMOST LIKE ANGEL, I'M WORKING WITH GENESIS NOW HIS NAME MEANS BEGINNING LOL. It could have been great to see Tifa getting her start with Avalanche, but after her obligatory cameo in Nibelheim she's swallowed into the void again because they forgot she was ever anything besides Cloud's love interest, and fuck you we gotta show you this Genesis scene in Modeoheim. It could have been great to meet a younger Barret, and wonder how at odds he would've been with Zack, a man who's been drinking the Soldier kool-aid for years, but instead we got Genesis reciting poetry. It could have been great to see the workings of Soldier before it all went to shit, but instead we got fucking goddamn Genesis. Genesis Genesis Genesis. 90% of the screentime in this game that should've gone to developing Zack's character for one fucking second, let alone other things, just gets eaten up by Genesis. God I hate Genesis.

1. Dirge of Cerberus.

I'll try and keep this brief because I can go on about Dirge of Cerberus all fucking day if you let me.

If Crisis Core is terrible because it had the shadows of great ideas that were terribly mishandled in the name of turning a profit, Dirge is sort of its opposite, in that at no point did anything even remotely resembling a good idea come anywhere near the building this was being written in during the entirety of its production. It's bad. Thoroughly bad. There are no redeeming qualities. It's ugly, it plays badly, 90% of it is cutscenes* and the remaining 10% is invisible walls, the plot is a fucking mess by anyone's standards whether you're familiar with the franchise or not, it is the reigning fucking king of tone issues, the design choices are the worst of what Nomura has to offer by a country mile, and the characters are the worst Square has ever made in the Final Fantasy series.

Vincent is the protagonist, and since he just wants a nap and is too cool to care that means you don't really give a rat's ass about what's going on either, which you wouldn't have anyway, because Dirge's plot isn't so much rife with plot holes as it is a giant, gaping hole, where bits of plot occasionally drift by, mangled beyond recognition by the plane crash in 1976 that claimed their lives. Did you know there was an even more secreter army living under Midgar that somehow survived the entire city being demolished with cosmic hellfire, a pandemic with no cure, and a giant sword battle dropping more debris on them? Did you know Hojo actually didn't die, he invented the internet in 30 seconds in his death throes and then invented the technology to upload minds to computers, AKA created a fucking goddamn technological singularity, and then uploaded himself in a .zip file until he could blow up the world for shits and giggles completely unrelated to anything even remotely having to do with Jenova? Did you know Lucrecia wasn't actually a terrible person that willingly carried Hojo's child and injected it with science juice for the sake of their careers, but was actually a really nice lady and is really sorry you guys, and was just an unwilling womb for Sephiroth to be birthed from, and was pretty much the Madonna? Did you know that apparently the Actual Goddamn Apocalypse wasn't enough to convince the Planet it was dying, but someone stabbing a few thousand people was? Did you know Reeve decided to call the events of the main game the "Jenova Wars" because he doesn't actually know what a war is? Did you know mako actually makes you live forever instead of giving you brain damage and killing you? Did you know the Lifestream is pretty much the same thing as the internet? Did you know Vincent was a paedophile? Did you know someone decided Genesis still needed to be fucking alive?

Oh yeah, and also there are such stellar characters such as Red the Red, Blue the Blue, White the Clean, Black the I-Have-A-Jockstrap-Taped-Over-My-Mouth-Because-Fuck-You-Why-Not, and Orange the Clear, who is physically 9 years old but mentally 19 so it's totally not paedophilia if we have a weird romance between her and Vincent (never mind that if we're going by that logic, you now have a 19 year-old dating a 61 year-old, which is... not a whole lot better.)

And hey, remember that one scene where Shalua completely unnecessarily died by holding a door she could've easily ducked through, and then she pissed herself upon death, and the game took the time to show the piss puddle, and Yuffie was super upset about it despite the fact that they never interacted even once but the writers forgot about that, and then after all that shit she didn't even die in her own melodramatic death scene, and then she did die anyway at the end of the game and all you can think about is the piss and god Shalua is so fucking pointless and looks so fucking stupid. Look at this hot mess:

She’s a scientist! Or something.

Even by Final Fantasy standards these designs are fucking ridiculous.

There is nothing redeeming about this game. It's like a gift that keeps on giving -- every time I look back at it, I discover a new plothole that I didn't catch the first time before. It's easier to hate than Crisis Core, though, which just makes me sad. At least Dirge never had anything going for it in the first place. I paid two bucks for my copy and I still feel ripped off.

* Okay, that’s an exaggeration -- 50% of it is cutscenes. Four hours out of an eight hour game is cutscenes. Do you realise how fucking many cutscenes that is? It’s a lot. (And yet not one of them has any plot in them HEYOOOO)

#forfdorfsorf #Squid Alienates VII Fans #man fuck dirge

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sonderrow-moved · 5 years ago

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Confession of just one man. 06/??.

I would have done everything for her. Even if the whole world would fight against her, even if she wanted the whole world destroyed, I would have done it. Or at least, I would have died trying, give it my best shot.

Love isn’t something you can imagine, it is not something you can make up or picture if you’ve never experienced it. Men and women from all around try to express it, communicate it, even animals. It is too intricate, too unique, and too destructive to be given a form, or else it would decimate everything. Or so I believe. I cannot talk for everyone, even if I would like to to give my feelings more power. But I loved her. I truly did. And I think I always will.

I was always destined to be married. It was decided even before I was born, and just like everything I didn’t mind. Every practical and even impractical advantages were lined up for us to meet. Unlike what fiction gives, arranged marriage are not as bad as one might think. I learned quickly from my parents how versatile humans are, even in matters as pure as love. That you could learn to love someone, and they could love you back. Respect and communication were key, and so with those tools in mind since I was only a boy was I on the lookout for a partner. Thankfully, I still had a last say. I knew myself, or, at the time, I thought I knew. I had every bits of my routine down to a peg, and I needed someone who could match my own pace, and give me my own space. I met a lot of suitors, yet none of them gave me the spark I needed, the tiny fickle of infatuation which would lead me in only a matter of a few weeks to become engaged. If I took too much time, I resolved myself to pick the one who fitted the profile I needed most.

I met Oriana in a wide Chinese garden, I don’t even remember if it was in a hotel or at her own place. I don’t especially like the place, as much as my roots come from my mother. Too much ego, not enough pure air. I was born in America, and will remain an American to heart. Still, my rougher ways didn’t seem to bother her. She was both so polite, but what I liked most about her was her honesty. Not a brutal, impolite one, but I could tell how genuine her character was. A hard worker, although she was so human. The garden was the most cliche place to be, the traditional building had room for our parents to discuss arrangement, and a place for us to walk around. I held her umbrella so her skin wouldn’t be hurt by the sunlight while she was feeding the fishes in a pond. We soon realized near half of them were dead, but we didn’t bother.

I didn’t want to kick around the bush and opened up to her, see if like so many sensitive noble ladies she would back away from someone people liked to picture as cruel, when really I just disliked numerous matters. She told me I was refreshing, like some, but also replied to me. Shared her own thoughts, which were so ambiguous, both in a bit of a naive hint, but spoken like an intellectual. One who happened to become one through nurturing their intellect, and not by a sense of vanity. To this day I never spoke so openly to someone again, and I don’t think I ever will.

She was an artist. Though I enjoyed the modern art, its brutality and impracticality, she was a romantic, finding her passion in neoclassicism and impressionism. She didn’t discriminate, and loved every bit of those even painted by the most misogynist of man. Her family was so traditionalist, they always looked ashamed whenever she would speak of Caucasian artists instead of her local ones, even if her own half of the family was English, but she didn’t bother. It was the first time I thanked my mother to be of the East, if not I would have probably never met Oriana. It just made me fall more in love with her. Less than a year of engagement later, we were married.

I made love to her for the first time at the end of our marriage and not the wedding. We both didn’t like it. The wedding, I mean. The grandiose ceremony. It was not of our taste, yet mandatory, like a business event, that is how we decided to digest it. However, we both shared the thought that, if this was a matter so personal as a life partner, we didn’t want it to be mixed with whatever professionalism brought. For one month, we were actually married without anyone knowing, as we exchanged rings and signed the papers at the city hall.

She made me regret I threw away my first time, I didn’t even know real shame until now. It was so simple, laying down in a hotel room we shared afterwards, called it our real honeymoon. She laid down on her back and I took her hands, intertwined her fingers with mine as I undressed before I helped her out of her long skirt and blouse. I took her in my arms and pressed my forehead against her as I traced her pale skin with my fingertips, whispering softly, asking her how it felt here, stopping whenever I felt she was becoming a bit tense.

At some point I thought she was too stressed and pulled the blanket above us, and I embraced her. Skin to skin, each centimetre of our body against another, and I didn’t mind if it would have stopped at that, but Oriana, she wanted to keep going. She rarely ever touched herself, not like I minded so much. It took at least a good hour, given how inexperienced she was and a few cramps of the wrist, but I wanted her to reach her limit before I did. With only my touch. So she would both get to know herself and me before becoming one. She held onto me so tightly when we did, I think I melted. It was the only time we slept together, I don’t think we needed more than that.

A few months later, we found out she was pregnant. We didn’t even have to talk about it and we secretly went to an abortion clinic the same day.

She understood my love for the little things, which were to me everything that mattered. We never made anything grandiose, but sometimes I would notice how she liked to change the flowers in our house depending of her mood. As neutral as the place we lived in was, it was those flowers which made home feel new every once in a while. I’d feel like I was in Europe one day and in Australia the next one. She knew I liked lotus flowers, and so she’d put fresh ones at the middle of the dinner table.

I don’t think anyone can say they have ever lived real love if they didn’t share the same home and amazement for one person for time and time again.

I found out she was sort of a show off. We didn’t mind if we were accosted by someone during public events, we trusted one another, but I saw the spark in her eyes when she would play along with a man, and then hop back at my side, wrapping her arms and going to her tiptoes as she held me by the neck. I always smiled from the inside. So much. Not because I was boasting about my wife, but because of how this cocky side of her, I was the only one who knew it.

I don’t remember how much time we spent like this, I didn’t count it, I couldn’t, or I didn’t want to. I don’t want to remember.

Oriana was always an odd one, behind her smiles and her kindness. Her own cynicism, but also her innocence. It was something I appreciated, but not more than that. It made her unique, who she was… only it became worst with time. The flowers would be kept unkept, or she would change them too often, not even wait for them to be a bit wilted. She would get lost when coming home from the grocery store, accidentally and constantly forget how to dress herself properly, when she normally was almost impeccable. Little things which didn’t matter, like me asking for one of those small details, as her being the one adding milk to my coffee, would cause her to tremble and, subsequently, hours later, cry when she would randomly remember it. I would find her by the window, staring not even outside but at the wall, looking grim in the morning. I would come back home and find her in the same state. Bruises and scratches started to appear on her body, even on weekends we didn’t leave the house. She stopped reading novels too. When I asked her why, she told me she couldn’t read anymore. I took it as her losing interest in them.

Whenever she was in bad shape, I put my forehead against hers and held her chest against mine. I liked to put my face towards her collarbone, the depth of the embrace she said reminded her of a warmth long lost. I knew her family. I knew how they were and I… never wanted her to come back to that.

One day, she asked me if I could meet her on a bridge, the green metal one made for pedestrians, just above the lake. I was in the middle of work, but as she sounded like it was urgent, I cancelled my schedule and met her right away. Then I watched in horror as she looked at me, smiled and then jumped above the fence to the waters below.

Dementia is an illness that mostly develops as someone ages. However, in rare cases, it happens before. It comes with a variety of symptoms, ones I just do not prefer to think about, including depression. It didn’t matter the hormones, or whatever the doctor said, what mattered is that my wife was unwell. Doctors said it was a miracle she survived, and I held her hand the whole way through her recovery. I fed her even when she didn’t want to eat, held her when she was about to fall while relearning how to walk.

I don’t remember how much time we spent like this, I didn’t count it, I couldn’t, or I didn’t want to. I don’t want to remember.

She didn’t talk to me about it. There was only something between us, not exactly a wall. But the connection between us which I felt made me keep going, even as she kept silent. Then the official story started, after her recovery when I found her with another woman in our hotel room. I thought it would do her good to go on this business trip with me, like a bit of a vacation. See the Mediterranean coast, where Renoir spent his last years. I packed her medication and checked to have a doctor readily available if needed.

She broke down after this, fell to the ground in this room which felt smaller and smaller the second we were left alone. Tears fell down her cheeks and her round face contorted in sorrows and anguish. She screamed and held onto me so tightly, like she was falling. She told me how much she wanted to die, how much she hated this, everything. From her face to her feet, to how she breathed and whoever else. I could feel her nails digging in my back, like when I held her so intimately, only with more blood going down my skin. It was like she wanted to rip the flesh off my skeleton.

She told me how she never loved me. How she dreaded being forced into a life not chosen by her and how she couldn’t keep up with this act anymore. I knew. I knew. How it was possible that she may have not felt the same way I felt about her. She told me how horrible I was, with a clarity in her eyes I never saw before, one full of truth, and not just the demons in her head talking, I didn’t question a word she said. She was too smart, and I couldn’t start to even think about what she knew about me I never told her about. She told me how disgusting I was, how my willingness to give on everything and not twitch a bit, how I processed it, how inhuman this could be. And yet she cried so much. Because she was crying for the both of us.

She muttered how much she hated her life, over and over again before she buried her face on my chest, her nails still clawing at the meat of my corpse. I held her as tightly as I could.

I don’t remember how much time we spent like this, I didn’t count it, I couldn’t, or I didn’t want to. I don’t want to remember.

The official story is that I was too much of a neglectful husband, that I didn’t take care of a devoted wife who needed love, and that she was still the best of party when she would remarry, that a dozen times should my honour be tainted before hers, and that I would not known to be such an unsuitable candidate for espousal. The story I tell some is that I caught my wife cheating on me, because of my own neglect. The real story is that we were just meant to be a tragedy.

Mr. Kessler

I would like to thank you personally for the generous donation you gave to our institution. As always, we pride ourselves in giving our people a safe environment when they can flourish. We will make sure to use the funds wisely.

It is with pleasure that I tell you that your friend, Ms. Liu, has been improving greatly in our facility as her condition has been stabilizing over the past few weeks. Just like you asked, she was given the right the use safe gardening tools to tend to the courtyard and she has been lovely to both our stuff and pairs.

I am, however, sorry to tell you that Ms. Liu still doesn’t allow any visitor or gifts and it is important for us to respect our patients’ wishes. However, if the situation were to change, we would contact you as soon as possible.

Although, I do not only write for you as a formality. I wanted to inquire you about Ms. Liu’s situation. We recently had visitors from the Liu family, which is asking to take Ms. Liu into their custody. She is, of course, a legal adult and has to make the decision. We have greatly advised Ms. Liu to remain with us as I do believe she needs constant medical attention. However, this will be the last of message I can send you as the papers of your divorce will be completed as of next week, making you not related to Ms. Liu and unable to access the rights to be informed of her condition since Ms. Liu asked expressly for her information to not be shared and our institution only disclaims those to legal family.

With gratitude and sincere thanks, I wish you good luck,

Dr. Auguste Lupien, of the Vance Mental Institute

Less than a month after I heard she had moved back in China with her family. And I never saw her again.

I don’t remember how much time we spent like this, I didn’t count it, I couldn’t, or I didn’t want to. I don’t want to remember.

#. Kessler was ( past ic )#. There's a human behind Archer... maybe ( headcanon )#. Archer's confession ( drabble )

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ninaahelvar · 7 years ago

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The Gladiators of New Earth - Prologue

Summary: When the Crash occurred, Earth became a wasteland of what it once was, the environment changing; people changed to - they became worse. Across the Galaxy, they’re hearing of the Gladiator, Logan Hunter, from earth - her battles a sight to behold. When the galaxy decides to fight, Logan discovers that her dying planet may be used for someone else’s gain.

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A/N: So, this story came from a bunch of different inspirational sources, but I desperately wanted to finish the prologue for you all! This is a rough first draft! I hope it is as interesting as I think it is. It should be an enjoyable ride from what I've experienced with it. Anyway, enjoy little ones! xx

The clock tower loomed, the hollow clunks of its gears echoing over the decayed York City New. Jacob and his young brother, Layton, climbed over the side of the mountain, the old floors of the apartment buildings were swaying; never properly built into the mountain’s face. One wrong step, and you’re a goner. That’s what their father said. But they had to get to the stadium. They couldn’t miss the battle.

Since the Crash took over everything, the land became untouchable and life drifted from the physics humans once knew, existence became something to relearn. Until everything stabilised into a flux of different environment and rules, people lived in the side of mountains to stop the crumbling ground from taking them, buried homes under roads as to not float away by the misinformed gravity, live in floating houses with strings tying them to remnants of scaffolding. Animals turned over in their environment; birds needed to swim in the depths of the ocean, dogs had to float and fly, sea creatures either lived in the deserts - whales bounding upwards like they once did, but now in waves of sand - or stayed in their waters as the salt bonded to hills, circling the grassy knolls like they owned their own gravity.

And the human race? Well, they had to learn to be human all over again, didn’t they? Jacob’s mother reminded them of that as they grew.

Creatures from hundreds of other planets all across the galaxy came to earth - the-little-planet-that-could - marvelling at its people and slowly tearing apart the planet’s structure and physics with every passing visit. Eventually, the sea rose into the sky before crashing back down after one ship departed. It was the first spark of the global crisis - no ships in, no ships out. The Crash. Earth was no longer the-planet-that-could, but rather, the planet of low dwellers, living on a rock in a solar system that should have died out already.

The stadium was close to the clocktower the family maintained, the only way people of York City New could tell when to race up the rope ladders. It was hung there since the First Balance came, gravity finally coming to a stop and fixing its point throughout the global - some places gravity was high, some where it was low; the remnants of New York City leveling into low and high. The land brought up mountains and caused buildings to fall to nature's wake, crushing down the structures and letting nature take over - the gravity in spurts of unbelievable pressure and none at all. The Stadium was in the low gravity zone, the rope ladder hammered down to the strongest ground there was and nets placed just below; even though society and life had gone to hell, safety was still wanted to some degree.

The Huntress was all people wanted, that’s why everyone came out. When human decided to learn to be human again, they unfortunately stuck with the Greeks and their messed up ways of entertainment. Gladiators. Specifically, one. Logan Hunter. She was small when they started, no older than nineteen. You could see it on her face that she had been tainted by the Crash in some way - but no one ever knew what. All anyone knew was her name was Logan Hunter and she was downright dangerous. She trained in swords, archery, close combat - everything in order to be better. By twenty-four, she was the champion of the Gladiator stadium and everyone around the world knew her name. Now, at twenty-five, she was going to be broadcast across the galaxy; other planets finally hearing word of her feats and they wanted a glimpse of her. Earth was no different. Everyone wanted to see the woman that finally brought balance to an unstable planet.

Jacob and Layton had never missed a game, not since they started. Logan was always the underdog, smaller than most of the men fighting, but she was quicker than they were. When she started fighting, everyone saw, watched her with every passing hour just to see this girl move. She was terrifying and she knew it. Even if the world was fighting to stay alive, Logan Hunter was plastered across the global, her face the rage of a dying world striving to survive.

The drumming from the stadium above was the marching orders, Layton climbing the rope ladder ahead of Jacob. Layton was racing up the ladder, the whole thing shaking as he tried to get up faster. “Don’t fall or we might lose each other,” Jacob warned. Layton laughed. His ten year old spirit was far more excited than he probably should have been - Jacob knew that the excitement was for the poor young boy’s crush. But it was pretty hard for someone not to be in love with Logan just a little bit.

The stadium, constructed in 2430 out of old buildings, lost its gravity in 2432 in the fifth crash. With the four preceding crashes, many building had contingency plans to keep things levelled and secure - with the rise of the gladiator battles in everyone’s minds, the stadium got its contingency. Reaching the top, the stadium that looked more like the colosseum that once stood strong, the two brothers watched the people pour in. It was filling in number that were hard to fathom, but not uncommon. Jacob pushed Layton to the hidden spot in between two stands, a better view and fully able to see the new TVs hanging by the engines that were far too old for themselves.

When the stadium was nearly full, the brightly coloured and over-accessorised Billy Ames strutted out into the stadium’s floor, cameras on him and the crew around him; they were preparing for the show of a lifetime. Billy Ames was the first man to ever suggest the games, acting out his part as ringmaster. Jacob and Layton had seen him once in the market, a chubby man with missing teeth and filled in with golden replacements. Now, he was donned in a red coat filled with bottle cap pins to make him shinier than ever and a top hat that was made from several other black hats of different shades. He was being flashy, he wanted to stand out, and that really wasn’t a problem for him.

When he was all wired up, he raised his hands up, the entire crowd rising as well and cheers started to boom all over. The crew dispersed, leaving Billy and a single cameraman along for the journey. The screens lit up. Jacob watched as Layton hitched himself up to view things more clearly. Layton was beaming with delight, the idea of the gladiator coming into view was too much to deal with.

“This is the first official broadcast from Earth’s Gladiator battles,” Billy exclaimed with that same nasally voice as always. No matter how irritating it was, the entire stadium ignited whenever they heard it. “You’ve all heard of us. What kind of bloodshed has occurred here. But now? You get to experience all the blood and guts yourself!” he roared.

There was a hush that befell the ground, waiting “Now, now everyone! You’ve heard of her before, even snuck an illegal look at the battles. We see your satellites trying to pick us up,” he winked at the camera, laughing and the crowd joining too. “But here and now, you will witness her all for the very first time in high definition,” he said with a big grin, gesturing wildly before the gates behind him started to rise. Billy smirked, bringing the camera into his face “Coming to you all across the galaxy, from the planet without equal. Give it up for….The Huntress!” he proclaimed, the gates hitting their stopping mark and the slow rumble of stamping feet echoed afterwards.

The screens switched, a dark corridor with the small glow of a young woman walked towards the light. Her blade clanging against her metal shield, sparking when she hit it hard enough. She started slow, the camera keeping its gaze strictly on her. Then, she started to run, the beating of feet against the stadium’s floor her charging song. When the light of the day hit her, the sight of her in her gladiator armour sent the entire stadium into cheers.

The tan leather was only slightly darker than her skin, keeping everything covered but revealing enough to tantalise a crowd. Her pleated skirt swayed as the breeze kicked in. She stayed steady, her boots with metal plating to keep her legs safe, kept her grounded. Upon her head was a golden helmet with the red brush swaying as the breeze came back in, decorating her as the fiercest warrior.

Piercing the ground with her sword and placing her shield at her side, she removed her helmet, tossing it across the dusty stadium ground. The cameras were on her every move, highlighting her beauty and her scars, training the galaxy to marvel at her wonder and ferocity. Her hazel eyes and short dark brown hair flowing as the winds came in and finally to a stop; she was irresistible to the eye, no one could stop looking at her.

Logan Hunter, the Huntress of Earth, young with tanned and weathered skin; she was who they were here for. The entire galaxy was tuning in to see her kill or die.

#this has been a post #cor and her novel #Original story #my writing #have funnnnn #OC: Logan Hunter #OC: Cian O'Halligan #The Gladiators of New Earth

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colonel-crapshot · 6 years ago

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Island Episode Three

You were all not waiting for it, because lets face it, who really likes looking at the trash? BUT BEHOLD MORE SHIT TALKING ABOUT ISLAND

It's been more than a week and I've entirely forgotten the little not-vampire's name

Well at least it explains why you're the one cleaning it

I was about to give your employers shit for sending you out on what should be the duty of the Island's administration

Then again I suppose Mona the Vampire IS technically part of one of the three Ruling Families as was

DROP KICK OUTTA NOWHERE

RKO

WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM POOFY?!

Where did you even come from?!

You just appeared as though summoned by the need to make a shitty relationship joke

I do not trust any discussion that ends with "Let's discuss the plan"

Oh. The plan was to bunk off work and go for a dip? I presume our lady who dost lack Vitamin D gave her blessing for this?

So she DIDN'T, her name is RINNE and this is BAIT! GOT IT

Aight poofy. But we aren't trying to lure out Amano-Iwato. We're trying to lure out someone with a severe lack of Vitamin D since she hasn't been terribly on board with accepting injections if you catch my drift

Granted I suppose this has SOME merit. Since these are probably among the few friends she has and I don't think many people really gallivant about on her family's PRIVATE BEACH to make her feel jealous of such

I just hope this doesn't wind up with her docking your wages

Because FUTURE MAN or not, you're going to need fiscal resources of the present for the time being boyo

Part of me wonders why Poofy has a card with "Kya kya Fufufu" on it. Part of me thinks I don't care and just want to see how badly this ends up

I WANT TO PURGE THAT IMAGE OF POOFY IN THAT SWIMSUIT FROM EXISTENCE

DEAR FUCKING GOD IT'S TERRIBLE

MY EYES! MY DELICATE EYES

You have weird dreams. You know that, Rinne?

Yep. We usually call such things dreams. ALTHOUGH THAT WAS A NIGHTMARE

Seriously though, I don't even like that kind of Bikini on women built more like future Poofy. LET ALONE ON PRESENT POOFY

Oh, they're scripts

YOUR ACTING IS TERRIBLE KAREN

Your Seiyuu's acting however is fucking fantastic, it takes good shit to be able to act a character acting badly

OH BOY. BACK TO RINNE NIGHTMARE LAND

Also her curtains aren't drawn, door is open and light flooding in over an unblanketed Rinne

Nice reinforcement without secondary iteration that she DOESN'T have Vampirism... or the Soot Blight

I've even forgotten what the sodding Not-Vampirism disease is, that I called Setsuna wouldn't be able to read properly when he first encountered it

... I WILL BURN THE ISLAND TO THE GROUND. FOR EVEN GENERATING A SHITTY DREAM THAT RESULTED IN SOME STRING BIKINI POOFY GETTING ANIME FALLEN INTO

DEUS VULT ISLANDERS

WHY IS THAT IN THE SCRIPT?! IS THIS INFLUENCING RINNE'S DREAM? POOFY'S NAME IS SARA?!

Y'all are terrible

JUST FUCKING PLAY ON THE BEACH! ACTUALLY DO SOME VOLLEY BALL! SWIM! MAKE A FUCK ASS SAND CASTLE! DO SOMETHING!

snrk This is good too

Rinne is awake, and after nightmare fuel like that why wouldn't she be?

YES! RUB THE OIL ON HER SETSUNA

REALLY KNEAD IT IN

It sounds actually well acted up by Rinne

Which I'm not sure how terrified I should be

RINNE MARCHES INTO BATTLE. SHE CHOOSES THE CORRECT BATTLE GARMENT

YOU NEED ONE THAT IS CONSERVATIVE YET MAXIMIZES YOUR APPEAL POINTS. I suggest the blue one of the options currently before me. Modest, yet accentuates your finer aspects without seeming like a blatant attempt to do so

THEN DO SOMETHING SARA

ACTUALLY GET SOME SUN TAN OIL GOING?

PLAY SOME ACTUAL VOLLEY BALL

SAND CASTLE

BURY SETSUNA

MELON SPLIT

Bury a melon and split Setsuna! ... wait

I applaud your dedication to pretending you have not-vampirism Rinne, I really do

Was the space suit REALLY necessary? Where did you even HAVE that?... okay YES the space suit was probably necessary since even a glance of sunlight on a victim of Sootperism could fuck their day up

But still, goddamnit Rinne

And then she fucking died. The end

That's good. Try it next time WITHOUT THE SPACE SUIT

I'M RELEARNING SO MANY THINGS

GOOD TIMES

I'm actually kinda into this seriesI'm just terrible at keeping up

D'aw this is kinda sweet. I like Rinne

Abandoned shack, this only spells good things

I mean heck, when have abandoned shacks been ANYTHING but signs of good will, friendship and the undying spirit of familial love in the world?

I love Sara's and Karen's dedication to their game. Creepy abandoned shack? Stick to the RP and investigate

Actual bonus points that their immediate reaction wasn't to scream, summon Setsuna and run off after telling him that they wanted to know what was inside

Naturally Setsuna would be needed to prise open the door

Granted, why ARE we so set on waltzing in? What happens if somebody is actually in? Or this is like Rinne's old forgotten store house of beach shit?

Oh good, Setsuna quickballs the idea that this is probably owned by the Ohara family

RINNE IS HAVING A VIETNAM FLASHBACK

RINNE HAS EXPERIENCED AN UNKNOWN ERROR

FORCE SHUT DOWN HAS OCCURRED

QUICK! Unplug her for a bit then plug her back in and turn her on

Well Nam flashbacks don't tend to happen to people who've lead wonderful fairy tale lives of excellence and splendour Karen. So yeah, I suspect some shit went down in or around there

Setsuna, Karen's already seen it and Sara is waiting to honey trap murder you. This is not the time

Oh. A diary of strange shit that's happened whilst he's been on the Island

Sensible thing to have in all fairness, especially for an amnesiac

I'd give them some MAJOR bonus points if the connections aren't apparent when we start finding things out but then a last piece of the puzzle falls in and all the points connect

Granted I don't think that'll happen

Rinne, honey. I'm not done in the open bath yet! The sign is set and everything!

Ah, of course they're rich enough to have two outdoor baths

Because it isn't suspicious at all to have met a boy named Setsuna in a shed at night

Oooh? Montage time?

It's probably for the best in some ways to allow some time to pass and to put Setsuna on even footing with everyone. Since he has an inherrant bonus with Rinne

Even montaging past a FESTIVAL? Interesting, that's usually a crucial flag raising moment

It even has the hand hold moment, which is again, another usually critical moment

What IS your game plan, Island?

Setsuna, get of your high horse. Remember her daddy issues?

Wow. Sounds like she's got some interesting familial relationships just generally, not limited to Daddykins

Christ dude, Let what little hair you have down a moment

I don't see the problem with her working part time for the Ohara family

This could be a quirk of Japanese culture, it could be the more likely thing of this guy being a dickwaffle so dickish he was banned from waffle house for fear of tainting the waffles in his vicinity

Staring at the machine will reap no benefits Young Sara

No. She just wants to make a lot of money, piss her Dad off and then bow and scrape to him for the rest of eternity. HAVE YOU MET KAREN? OF COURSE SHE WANTS OFF THIS BUMBLEFUCK ISLAND

... On one hand, you have a point. On the other, I think there is a bit more to it than that

Perhaps the realisation hit that she would need currency once she blew this Popsicle stand and vied to get some before setting sail?

Those girls will always tilt me when they go off in perfect sync

Manly ass slippers Setsuna

Not that I don't approve. They look great

THAT WAS QUITE THE TUMBLE

... I HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS

Link: Island Episode 3

#Island #Island episode 3 #Episode 3 #anime #reaction #Colonel-Crapshot

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