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singmyaubade · 2 years ago

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No Longer Yours

James Potter x Female!Reader

A/N: I am trying a new way of writing these stories, there won't be lots of dialogue in this part, but there will be more; this is just a look into where the story starts.

IB: In The Cold November Rain by @sweetsweetjellybean (Make sure to check it out, it’s amazing and one of the best I’ve ever read !)

Summary: James had disregarded you for multiple years, but when you have an epiphany in your final year, how does it feel to taste his own medicine?

Warning: It may contain swearing and soon-to-be smut.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

You never considered yourself to be a pushover when it came to things. Instead, you would use the word "understanding" and used it the most when it came to James Fleamont Potter.

He meant the absolute world to you since you were nine when you first met him. He lived next to you, both of your rooms being next to each other. You could always see him in his window, not that you were stalking, but you could never quite get your eyes off him.

Every time he would catch you staring, he would give you a wave, never felt weirded out. Then he would ring you up and ask you to come for dinner with your family. You would always accept unless your mother insisted on not intruding on them anymore.

You always caught his look of disappointment when you told him you couldn't come over, seeing him on the phone with you. It would always make your heart flutter, always having to stop the smile from forming on your face.

And then, after dinner, he would always come over, and you two would hang out (of course, with the door open). But you knew James would never try anything.

Your parents had suspicions when you both were fully formed teenagers and had hormones. Again, you knew James wasn't a perv; he respected you.

Even when he would slap your thigh in laughter when you said a joke or when his front pressed against your back when you two joked around, or his touch would linger when he ticked you.

But that was all besides the point; you loved James like no other. You loved the rest of the Marauders, too, but with James, there was no questioning if the love was different.

The only times you weren't sure about that 'love' was when Lily Evans would come around. He never truly knew how to pay attention to or regard you when she came around, but he claimed it was 'love.'

You wondered if he loved Lily the same way you loved him or if it was more complete, passionate, and extraordinary. You could never ask; James wouldn't know what to do. You couldn't blame Lily, it wasn't her fault, and she turned down his advances multiple times.

You were sure that James would move on, but then, during sixth year, Lily confessed that she was starting to have a crush on James.

You tried hiding your disappointment, but it was hard; it nearly broke your heart; you knew James would tell you all about it as soon as you saw him again.

There was no wish to be cruel, but a part of you, maybe the whole, was hoping she would joke. Perhaps she would again realize how immature James was and remember how he bullied Snape.

But that would be selfish and unfair to James; you were supposed to be his best friend, and he deserves this.

And you knew Lily was kind, beautiful, thoughtful, and honest. She deserved James more than he deserved her. You wouldn't break her happiness because it was pure; if you did, it would be evil.

So when she asked you if you were okay with that, constantly questioning your feelings towards James, you said,

"Of course, you should go out with James," You placed a hand on her shoulder, "I think you two would be amazing together." A genuine bright smile passed your face as she embraced you and thanked you for being truthful with her.

While they dated, James would always tell you every time he and Lily did something.

From every kiss, every date, and every cute moment to Lily laughing at a joke he made about crisps in Hogsmeade or the dove they saw randomly, which is a sign that they are genuinely in love.

After telling you every detail, he would embrace you in a tight hug so you could smell his scent entirely. He would thank you for being "such a good friend and say that "he loves you."

You knew he loved you but you wished he loved you in a different way. A way that his heart would scrunch when you were around or a way that made him want to compliment your hair or your smile like he did with Lily.

You wished it pissed you off enough to be mad at him, but every time he hugged you, you forgave him and knew it was just him being happy and wanting to tell a friend.

He still always joked around with you the same and bantered with you, but it was just less, you wanted more, but he could only give you so much time, and you knew that.

Only a few of your friends understood, like Remus and Dorcas. They would comfort you in every moment when you felt unsure of yourself, or you just wanted to talk.

You probably would have been misunderstood if it weren't for them, but they acknowledged and validated your feelings.

That's what got you through that time.

Nonetheless, there was no point in dwelling on past memories. James and Lily broke up at the end of that very year, it being mutual due to the realization of too many things clashing.

He was a bit of a wreck but recognized that it was for the better. It didn't stop him from sometimes crying in your arms, talking about how much he missed Lily.

Eventually, James started to move on, talking to you more, joking with you, and inviting you to sit next to him at dinner. You had missed this for so long and were grateful.

He went back to tickling you and playfighting with you. He would even make you sit with him during potions.

This was until the end of the year Quidditch match, Gryffindor had won, and excitement had raised. You went to congratulate James on the win, having a big jar of Fizzing Whizbees in your hand, his favorite.

You opened the door a crack, overhearing him but not wanting to interrupt his conversation with the rest of the Quidditch team.

"Come on, Potter, don't tell me you aren't going to snog her tonight," A boy you recognized as Matthew Collingwood teased, "She's been over you for years; why not just hit it and quit it?" Your face contorted to disgust after hearing his use of words.

"Don't tell me you are talking about Y/n," James scoffed, "There is no way I would ever think of her like that," A part of your heart broke hearing his words; he didn't even defend his last words.

"I mean, she does have a fat bum," Another boy laughed.

"Oy, she's like a sister to me, don't talk about her like that," James warned, his tone sounding half serious as the boy put his hands up jokingly.

A sister.

"Okay, but come on, Potter, you have to shag her at least once before we graduate," Matthew sneered.

"Listen, boys, I wouldn't touch Y/n if she were the last girl on earth," He belittled, "Besides, she would cling to my cock like crazy after that; I mean, look at her now, can't even take a piss without her peering over my shoulder." He gestured, pretending to take a piss and looking behind him to see if you were around.

The boys hollered, laughing at James’s visual representation of you.

Tears brimmed your eyes as you dropped the glass-made jar, shattering in the process. You let go of the door, turning your heel to run away.

The tears started running down your cheeks as you wiped each of them as they came. You went under a tree, crying your eyes out, wondering why James would be so cruel.

He was your best friend, and you thought he loved you enough to not make fun of you. James could sometimes be thoughtless, but he never was brutal to you.

Did he really think you were clingy, consistently all over him? Did he get annoyed by how much you were around him? Would he never like you even if you were the last girl on the planet?

You were humiliated, embarrassed by his words, his thoughts. Every feeling of James Potter that made you happy and wanted to fall into his arms turned into hate and resentment, his words reiterating in your mind a thousand times.

That night, you vowed never to make James Potter make you feel that way again.

So that night, you didn't join the celebration. You told your friends that your stomach was hurting and you weren't in the mood for festivities.

You didn't know if James had asked where you were during that night, and you didn't want to know after the words he had shared with others.

Since you were allowed to leave Hogwarts the day after summer began, you did. You didn't wait for James to go with you; you left without him, wishing all your friends goodbye, dismissing all questions about why you were leaving early and blaming it on your mother's wishes.

"Okay, well," Lily sighed, "Make sure to ring me over the summer and visit if you can." You embraced her and nodded your head, telling her that you will.

"And don't forget to ring me as well," Dorcas said from behind you as you went over to her and hugged her tightly, "Whatever he did," She whispered in your ear, "Give him hell."

You pulled out of the hug and gave her a smile, "I will."

As she left, you approached the Gryffindor common room to find Remus reading as usual.

"Gonna wish a good friend goodbye?" Remus questioned, looking over at you. You were glad he wasn’t questioning why you were leaving so early in the morning.

"How could I ever not?" You asked, embracing him for a minute.

"So, are you gonna tell me what he did?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"How do you and Dorcas know everything?" You said, rolling your eyes.

"How good of friends would we be if we didn't." He smirked, "I can ta-"

You cut him off, "No, this is not your responsibility; I will take care of it." You smiled, "But thank you for caring; it means the most to me."

"Of course," He said as you nodded and turned to leave, "And take care of yourself." You turned back, giving him a reassuring smile.

After saying all your goodbyes for the school year, you sat in a window seat, looking at the school you loved dearly. You never thought you could quite say this, but you were ready for home.

Once you returned home, a letter was waiting for you on your window seal stating,

Dear Y/n,

Give him hell.

Sincerely the only one you need,

Dorcas Meadows.

And what kind of friend would you be if you didn't do what was asked?

6K notes · View notes

briar-rolfes-research-oubliette · 9 months ago

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ON MONDAY, I (FINALLY) MADE IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE NEWEST ERAGON BOOK!

MURTAGH

“A Book I Read”

It took three very patient friends of mine to encourage me to finish reading this. I took notes the whole way through, and I am now sharing those in hope of finding loving community with my fellow haters.

Important context:

I loved Eragon, which came out when I was roughly eleven

Christopher Paolini was the first author to ever disappoint me

I used to love epic fantasy, until feminism, coming out, and learning about literary criticism made me just too mean to enjoy it

Since 2015, whenever I’ve had writer’s block, I’ve found inspiration by looking at this screenshot:

Christopher has managed to create a life where his mum has never stopped doing his laundry or his editing for him. He has never worked a job in his life. He has infinite time to work on his craft, and yet, with all of those advantages, he writes the way he does. I don’t hate him, but I do want to destroy him in single combat.

LET US BEGIN.

17 November 2023

I forgot how obsessed this man is with proving he knows rare words. Picking up my phone to google the word “trenchant”.

He really just didn’t want to say the dragon had a sharp sense of humour huh? Oh, no, it’s TRENCHANT. It wasn’t even for dialogue I identified as comedy but Murtagh thought it was TRENCHANT. He and Thorn have been alone in the wilderness for too long

NOT NASUADA BEING DESCRIBED AS HAVING ALMOND EYES

Of course the protagonist has grown a beard. He’s A Man Now.

I have a theory that this book is about coming to terms with marriage. Murtagh is like “our bond… our bond that lasts until death… the oldest magic… only the two of us understand each other. But, we’re also trapped with each other,” and I’m like hm. Fascinating. Say more

Instantly Murt befriends a child, to prove he is good really.

It’s so weird to read a book by a grown man with kids who is like “how did we all start out so innocent and pure…” like have you MET five year olds

This whole fork fight scene makes me feel second hand embarrassment deep in my soul. It’s SO This Guy Is The Best And Coolest

“Fencing with effortless ease” I do not care how well trained he is: you cannot kill four men with long swords by stabbing them with a little fork in “four hard impacts.” It’s just not happening.

I’m really dwelling on the idea of magic as “imposing your will” on something. It’s very.., something. Murtagh cleans his shirt by “imposing his will on the garment” like. Okay, I suppose in a way that is how all laundry is done, but it’s. Hm.

How come he��ll clean a shirt with magic but not shave with magic? Why are these books SO obsessed with beards and shaving and how to do shave and using magic for shaving etc etc, Eragon was also majorly preoccupied with this

Paolini’s got so many complexes on the page. All the “we’re half brothers and your dad killed my dad” stuff is A LOT

The naming stuff… SMH what would Ursula Le Guin say about all this

I’m obsessed with how even as (gasp) an OUTCAST!! Murtagh can’t not be the coolest guy ever for any time at all. It’s like a disease

Giving the child the enchanted killing fork was the worst decision ever made. Murtagh gives her a murder weapon and is then moping like “what’s it like… to live without killing…” literally pages later.

I’m really startled that Murt is delighted to see a tiny flying magical grass boat come down from the sky and circle him instead of being like “wtf, I’m being Watched,” which would be the true act of a man we are told is paranoid

I just got to the bit where Murtagh offhandedly says that magic users who “are the heaviest” always have the most spell reserves.

Like……… what???? Magic eats your fat?? It burns glucose??

You could be a better mage if you just, ate a bunch of raspberry frogs before each fight??????

It’s food powered??? You really want to go there, Paolini????? Wizards in the candy shop, eating sweeties like Mistborns?

GOD, if only Galbatorix had chugged a bottle of red cordial before his last big fight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I return after losing my mind about this to my partner for forty minutes)

If it was “if you’re hungry you can’t FOCUS” I’d get it. But I always assumed it was like, you know how other fantasy does it? Some kind of pool of ADDITIONAL energy that you are accessing and that can be used up (until you go too far and start using life force or whatever). Like, it’s CHANNELLING it that makes you tired, not that it’s literal food energy.

Murtagh is always running or doing his sword forms or whatever and now I’m like “DUDE, NO!!!?!? DON’T BURN YOUR WIZARD CALORIES!!?!?”

I like when magic can’t do EVERYTHING, when it’s consistent or limited in some way, but I do hate the idea that it’s this predictable. Food energy becomes raw magical power. I GUESS.

(A little later)

Screaming at the suggestion Thorn can tell when Murtagh is horny.

I don’t like the euphemisms. It makes it worse

The fact he can’t talk to his dragon whenever they’re “too far apart” (distance never specified) is making me insane. Why did I pick up the dragon riding book if it’s mostly about leaving your dragon locked up at the bike rack

I know Thorn is basically a rescue dog with anxiety, but it bothers me how much he’s left on his own. The narrative just has no idea what to use him for other than speedy transport for the first um… 200 pages, it seems? He’s meant to be his own creature with his own intelligence. He doesn’t go anywhere without Murtagh though. So what is he doing all the time

I think Paolini WANTS his world to be big and mysterious (his introduction literally just keeps saying things in the world of the story are mysterious) but he HAS to keep explaining everything

24 November 2023

I’ve figured out something that annoys me about the world of this book, in terms of just how the worldbuilding is not actually that magical. It has the D&D problem!!! Which is to say that every regular person on earth is Level One and every important character is like, level 12. And part of what makes that even worse is that all women in this world are level zero.

I’ve been watching my friend Chris play the first Alan Wake game and we realised that all the faceless enemies that are possessed by Evil in the game are… working class men. The protagonist is this literate wealthy New York writer who is constantly killing faceless workers—farmers, loggers, coal miners, builders. And that’s not an INTENTIONAL commentary by the game, but it’s very revealing. And This book is the same in that: there is no such thing as a complicated poor person. They’re all either Dirty Evil or Dirty Good. Murtagh is going around, writing poetry in his head and inventing magical computer code, and then every child is an urchin who is like Oi Guvnah, and every dad is gruff, and every woman is worried.

The language used to describe everyone who isn’t a Fighting Man is so demeaning. And even then, we only need to respect the leaders of those men. The leaders are the only ones with depth who might need to be taken seriously.

It’s like Murtagh has a tally in his head where he is going “finally, a guy who is level 6”!

Most people in this world exist to deliver information to the protagonist.

Paolini either thinks his readers are too dumb to understand that his characters exist between scenes, or he doesn’t understand himself that we don’t need to see every time Murtagh enters a city under a new name and how he does it. Or know what he ate for dinner and how he prepared it and where he slept and what he dreamed and, and, and—

It’s weird because Paolini is being self indulgent as fuck but it is NOT fun to read. This dude really just needs to go write a survival story or something… A guy in the woods depending on nothing but his wits and his axe and his beard and his libertarian values

I don’t understand the stakes at play. All the magic scenes with Mind Penetration are so sudden and hard to actually understand as action. And the way it works is about brute force, so the dragon is not going to be at risk of being taken over except by another, even bigger dragon

It would be fun to read the Murtagh city sleuth segments if Thorn was backseat driving a little. I think that their bond should not get thinner over distance. The fact that it does just defeats the point of a magical bond.

Why does the dragon have to stay so far away? Like… it’s established that there’s a spell to conceal a dragon from sight. Dude. You could just go fucking invisible

There’s so many decisions that just are so bonkers to have made. The whole fetch quest for information pissed me off so bad. “You have to join the guard” (40 pages of emotions about uniforms ensue). This guy learned about plots from video games

Paolini had kids apparently, but you can tell he doesn’t really understand kids. “How do they all start out so innocent and pure,” says a man who has never heard a seven year old describe someone being killed by farts before.

The description of Murtagh carrying a cat that doesn’t want to be carried is very funny. I don’t know if Paolini has ever carried a cat before. If you’re carrying a cat that doesn’t want to be carried close to your chest, and you tighten your grip when it squirms… say goodbye to your nipples, my man

It’s strange how much Paolini doesn’t explore the things that seem to be the point. FOR EXAMPLE, the fantasy soul bond trope loves to say “even during sex!??! 👀” because it’s about INTIMACY, and some alien presence always being there. The dragon rider trope is popular because dragons are powerful and wise but also Beasts. Magic is fun to read about because it can do things that can’t be explained.

Paolini’s world is big, but nothing in it has any real substance. Nothing in it has any real consequence, and it makes it impossible to really invest in anything that happens. None of these poor city folks have a life once they leave the scene of delivering Murtagh information… or if they are a woman, delivering him a hot meal. There’s no sense of a world that exists outside Murtagh’s point of view!

25 November 2023

The towns so far don’t feel at all distinctive to me! I was interested in the one with the massive lake, but then it having this massive fish in it was the only point of interest. It would be fun to have been like “oh the fish has ruined our summer festival! It’s ruined the nobility pleasure cruises! It’s also eating fishermen!” Or “Why do all these fishing boats have huge spikes on the prow? Well,”

Again, these guys are all level one in peasant dirt town. They have no capacity for individual thought and no ability to adapt.

It’s like Paolini doesn’t know what makes people and places in fantasy feel distinct, or have culture. It’s so evident in how much he HASN’T thought about. For example, the bonkers amount of restrictive gender norms that he doesn’t seem AT ALL CONSCIOUS OF? Everyone who died in the war was A Man. No women died in the war. But that hasn’t resulted in any social changes. There aren’t more women doing work, for example, like being fishermen

I remember being thirteen or so and reading the bit in the second book where Arya explains to Eragon that she’s better and stronger than a human woman, because she is an elf, so Eragon doesn’t have to worry about her in battle. I was this kid there like “man, that sucks. I assume he’s coming back to that assumption later,” and… he never did. He still hasn’t. And that sucks

The dragon riders were not THAT long ago, in the world of these books. It makes me wonder—were none of them human women? I always assumed that some were human women, but… did dragons only choose elf men, elf women, and human men? If they chose human women, then even being accepted into a paramilitary dragon force didn’t change gender expectations in the rest of the world. What the fuck. He’s really never thought about this.

Women keep showing up as cunning-mysterious, as humble dirtmothers, or as innocent children. Oh my god I’m just describing maiden mother crone. That’s all he’s capable of.

I just got up to where he rescues the werecat baby (innocent girl child) and settles in to hear the stories of elder werecat (cunning-mysterious)

I noticed the Arya Problem with how Nasuada is described in this book, too. Every woman has to be the best, most capable, most powerful woman ever, to be worth the attention of The Boys. Otherwise they can’t respect her. Only two literal queens can be considered worthy of just two average guys who got pet lizards. Even then, they’re not actual equals.

“She still empathised for me.” Yes, don’t worry, Murtagh, I remember that’s what women are for.

I should note that the reason Nasuada is considered so powerful and so much worthy of his love and is her strength as a person. This is proven in the Eragon books because “she still empathised” with Murtagh whilst he was medieval torturing her. He was medieval torturing her for like… most of a book and that’s how they fell in love. Because she could see in his eyes that this guy torturing her… was Complicated. He didn’t really WANT to be medieval torturing her so she actually felt worse for him than he felt about how he was (and I can’t stress this enough) medieval torturing her

I just can’t imagine that THE QUEEN OF A WHOLE CONTINENT would still prefer the guy who sadly tortured her. He’s her top preference. Out of EVERY OTHER MAN IN THE WORLD

I put the book down until the day before I was meant to have finished the book for book club:

10 March 2024: from page 274 onwards

The evil witch is called BACHEL?????!!?!??!? Fucking BACHEL. Pronounced “buh-SHELL”, the guide at the back says. You changed one letter in Rachel, don’t lie to me Paolini

I got so mad being reminded the evil king Galbatorix was defeated by “Eragon forcing empathy upon him” so that he magically exploded himself out of guilt that I had to put the book down and complain to Charlie for five straight minutes

I guess that’s why Galbatorix made Murtagh torture Nasuada for him. He knew that if he’d done it himself she would have empathised with him too hard and he would’ve exploded himself

Murtagh has never met a single person he has respected. Murtagh is the specialest boy in all the land. Eragon had to leave the country because they were both too special to share a continent

Murtagh decided on where to go and he was immediately surrounded by armed guards who took him to where the plot was

Paolini uses the fucking word “admixed” while discussing EATING A PIE. The flavours admixed in his mouth. Just because you know a word… doesn’t mean it’s a word to deploy about eating a pie

I HATE how the only people strong enough to do the strongest magic are Elves Or Human Riders. It’s fucking magic my guy! Why is it checking your goddamn DNA! Also, hey! Wasn’t it supposed to come down to the strongest wizards being the guys who ate the most for lunch?

In a world of Magic how come every wizard battle ultimately comes down to who is a better Professor X?? I came here for fireballs, not Mind Battles. I don’t care about your Mental Wards

Hahaha Murtagh!!! Get trapdoored, bitch!!!!

Dragon panic attacks: conceptually cool but a bit ?? Like ah… the plot literally comes to scoop him up and carry him away. Yet again something outside of Murtagh makes a decision for him about what to do next

Murtagh’s poetry is going to make me explode myself like Galbatorix in book 4

If there’s something I like about this book so far it’s just the bits where he and Thorn are camping. Not flying, because then Murtagh is using the time to think and that’s horrible. The bits where they make campfires or whatever feel like something is actually happening. A guy and his dragon hanging out

Man. The way this novel is plotted really reminds me that it’s not actually that hard to write a book.

Murtagh goes to the evil village (oh yeah there’s an evil village. It is where Bachel lives. She is evil because she does magic without using the magic language). The village is called:

NAL GORGOTH

But I couldn’t remember this so I kept referring to it in my head by another, more familiar, name

Murtagh is so freaked out by finding a village with architecture that he doesn’t recognise. He’s like “My god!!! Nasuada has to be warned!!!” Ok but about what??? New ways of building pillars???? The art deco movement threatens the land??

Kinda fascinated by how much this village represents a threat to CULTURE. The architecture, the people… Everything about it so far is designed to be A Foreign Threat. The inhabitants are Of All Races (except elves they are too cool too pure etc). The humans have A VARIETY OF SKIN COLOURS, which memorably never happens in Alagaesia, a continent once explicitly described in the Eragon books as only having two (2) black people on it at all (then one died) (the other is Nasuada) (the one who died was her dad)

This guy with a goatee isn’t quite human. He is maybe part urgal and he is so uncomfortable to look at! Mainly he has arms that are a bit too long!! Bachel isn’t a human and also isn’t an elf, and that’s also deeply unsettling.

Bachel also fundamentally represents a threat to THE STRUCTURING POWER OF LANGUAGE, huh??

Bachel is so far the most interesting character in the book!

Bachel has: ALMOND EYES and AMBER SKIN

Murtagh is so upset and confused when Bachel calls him “my son” like… I’m cryign. “But she’s not my mother! I know my mother!!” he thinks, in a panic.

If this was a fantasy novel written twenty to thirty years ago, then the sexual tension between Murtagh and Bachel would be absolutely insane. Alas, this is a world of abstinence, and sexuality is only ever meaningful looks between a queen and the guy who tortured her (it is weird how he keeps caressing Nasuada’s face on the gold coins)

It’s very funny that Bachel has specifically fourteen warriors. The prose keeps telling us that there’s fourteen of them. So you get Murtagh stepping forwards and then sentences like “the fourteen warriors attending Bachel shifted”

She seems like a perfectly normal cult leader to me? Why is she automatically a threat to Nasuada! How come the two of them can’t arrange a toxic political marriage that becomes… something more 😉😉😉

Nothing annoys me more in this book than Murtagh being able to identify specific vintages of wine. It keeps happening and it pisses me off

Bachel is a half elf!!! “It had never occurred to him that such a thing might be possible.” This is truly and absolutely unbelievable to me. Nobody in this world ever has sex

How did it take so long to get to such an objectively cool village!!! Like this is just a cool place!!! Sorry that Nar Nar Goon is evil but like FINALLY something has style

Three thoughts at once:

I’m so bored that Paolini’s mind can’t get more interesting than temple virgins, let alone wearing white to represent ritualistic purity. Like… nobody in this world fucks anyway, why does it matter!

Murtagh should also wear white all the time

Lesbianism doesn’t count as a violation of being temple chosen. Alín is wearing lesbianism

Paolini has never once written a woman who is Normal. He just can’t conceive of it. You can feel how he starts sweating.

Murtagh finally realised it was a cult. What sets it apart as a cult is that the followers appear to be “half-wits” to him

I’m going to detransition to break his fucking neck

Paolini has learned nothing since he had a woman deliver the exact same line in like 2008. The fact that another editor just thumbsed this up. The fact that this is in a book published in 2023. Well, now I’m REALLY embarking on an antagonistic reading: that’s right, I am reading women as capable.

Obsessed with Bachel. She is a girlboss and I’m a feminist xxx

Book is constantly weird about how much she is capable of eating and drinking at her feasts and how it makes her appear swollen and bloated etc etc. Murtagh is so weirded out by this because he feels it is unfeminine… as though she is not a witch and we weren’t told earlier that how much magic you have is directly equal to how much you eat. (Meanwhile he is only picking at his food and eating just enough of it ‘to be polite’ as though this is not making a decision to have less magic than her)

She has so much charisma compared to anyone else in the book. If my choices are her or Murtagh then sign me up boys!!!

Okay but much like how this would’ve been a VERY charged relationship 30 years ago, I’m weirdly disappointed Bachel she isn’t not described as megahot? Like the book keeps telling me about this virginal templemaiden or whatever, because Murtagh is only attracted to women he can rescue. But I’m actually just like… I think this woman is hot. Tell me more about her. It’s wild that this book is written by a guy like Paolini, who told me all about Oromis’ pubic hair in 2008, and who barely thinks women are people. Yet he doesn’t want to discuss her tiddies?

This book could, and should! have started when Murtagh landed his dragon in the evil village of Nar Nar Goon. That’s the point that stuff got actually interesting. Everything before this was literally video game fetch quest logic plotting that earned him the right to fly to Nar Nar Goon.

Boar hunt. More like BORED hunt. And then suddenly there are so many pigs, a comical number of them flying everywhere

This motherfucker using the phrase “the boar was lying athwart him” in a sentence in an action scene????

Murtagh is nearly dead and the boar is lying athwart him?

I’m going back in time and bullying the author at school

RIP Murtagh, trambled to death by 30-50 wild hogs

Oh god every time someone knocks Murtagh out he has a vision or a bad dream or a flashback or whatever and it’s so tiring

“EXISTENCE WAS A TOMB WHEREIN THE SINS OF THE PAST LAID INTERRED???” Do you ever read a sentence that sounds so much like the author is jerking it? “All had been lost, and there before him lay the instrument of their destruction” he is furiously jerking it oh my god. “Destroyer of hope, eater of light” oh, god, he’s still going

…This book is. Weird about mothers

Murtagh flies into a rage because Bachel mercy killed a guy who was dying bc of boar trampling because “I COULD HAVE HEALED HIM!!!!!” And the mercy killing is proof it is a cult. Because doing it Bachel’s way meant the guy was too relaxed and at peace when he died

Paolini’s family were in a cult, as I understand. So it’s kind of weird how much he doesn’t really understand how being in a cult works

I don’t really remember how religion works in this world, but I do remember tuning out of a long boring passage in book 2 or 3 where Eragon learned about all the gods and decided he was an atheist. It’s especially weird to be like “holy shit, an EVIL religion??!” In a book where religion has absolutely never come up before now

Oh my god, Alìn was whipped for being ‘too familiar’ with Murtagh!!! That’s because she’s so pure and a helpless victim girl in all white :’((

In my mind Bachel and Alìn COULD be in a fucked up lesbian relationship with bad BDSM etiquette. Of course Paolini can’t imagine a world where women have enough personality or agency to fall in toxic love with each other. Also even though he has people tied up and strapped down and whipped and being tortured etc in every book don’t think he knows that BDSM like. Exists. Boooooo

Murtagh: killing one guy who is dying of a punctured lung is the ultimate evil!

Also Murtagh: I know an invisibility spell, but to sneak out of my room I am going to suffocate seven men to death

Genuinely upsetting to read those men dying. He made it impossible for air to enter or exit their lungs with a word. Veins popping clawing at faces etc. God, what a way to go. So unnecessarily cruel. Yep, there goes the good guy

The main way the village is evil is that there are unsettling carvings everywhere. Paolini read some Lovecraft, but he did not understand what was up with it. Or maybe he did, because this book did get a lot more weird about Racial Purity once Murtagh arrived in Lovecraft Village

11 March 2024

There’s a bloodstain that “filled Murtagh with the apprehension of evil” and it confused me because these books are so gory. Earlier he killed four men with a fork. But like oh yeah I guess it’s because when Murtagh murders people now it’s bloodless. I guess. His murders are good you see

This chapter is called The Bad Sleep-Well you can tell Paolini thought he was a real genius for this one

Okay but why are there bats… roosting… in a cave… at night. And why is Murtagh worried that red light will risk waking them? Animals cannot see red light?? SOME FARM BOY YOU ARE, PAOLINI

Okay I have to stop nitpicking. I have to restrain myself until my Vyvanse kicks in

“Murtagh felt a sense of not just age but antiquity. Whoever had built the stairs had done so long before Alagaesia had been a settled place. What was it Bachel had said? That the cultists had lived in Nal Gorgoth since before elves were elves... He was starting to think she had told the truth.”

Sorry uhhhh, Alagaesia was settled?? When they talk about The Grey Ones, are they talking about a race PRIOR TO COLONISATION?????????

“He continued forward. Deeper into the womb of the earth. Deeper into the black unknown, seeking, seeking, always seeking a farther shore, every sense razor-sharp and razor-scraped, skin all goosefleshed, cold sweat dripping down the back of his neck and gathering around his belted waist.”

God it’s so overwrought...

He found the well!!

Oh my god. The well is a natural magic hotspot and that means it “wasn’t the sort of thing that the Draumar ought to have dominion over.” It’s a natural resource???

“Not that he would want Du Vrangr Gata to assume control over such an important location either. This was exactly what the Riders had been created for: to oversee and mediate that which could destabilize the land.”

Murtagh is going to bring democracy to the Middle East

He’s too scared to mentally contact his dragon with Bachel around. If he was a proper horse girl he would find a way

Oh Galbatorix BECAME evil because he met Bachel and she manipulated him. Haha oh dear. No, you can’t just come to the conclusion the dragon rider paramilitary force who controls the resources are bad on your own. Not just because they sent you into the mountains when they knew it was dangerous and wanted to find out if you’d be killed up there! No, a manipulation had to have happened

It’s funny to me that the evil ancient witch queen who lives in seclusion in the mountains uses the new name for the city of Uru’baen. Oh no, she knows it as Ilirea. She’s hundreds and hundreds of years old. You know what that is? Evidence of Find And Replace, to me.

Bachel’s eyes are “glowing with fevered ecstasy.” I could make her feel that way. Also. Because, I know about sex

Always with the fucking passing out at the end of the chapter for Christopher James Paolini

NOW Bachel is being described appropriately as a hottie. FINALLY. GOD! It only took Murtagh being mind controlled in his brain but I. I!!! I could see the glorious light of truth!!

“He followed, dumb and wildered.” Well, not as much as that sentence. (You can be bewildered. But can you ever just be wildered????)

The dedication to making Murtagh the most pitiful little meow meow in existence in the Galbatorix flashbacks I’m… what happened to the joys of a guy who is evil because he was convinced or was tricked, not because he was fully brain abused???

The Urgals are racially… uncomfortable. Yellow eyes and Murtagh just straight up saying “how do you speak English”

The evil guys have masks and they put them on and like channel the animals the masks are of and on one hand it’s an idea I THINK is cool but also combined with the everything it really has this “tribal stuff is threatening” vibe all over it

“What do you want, witch?”

“I want you.”

Obsessed with how he’s shackled to a table and there’s still an incredible lack of sexual energy to this scene. This is like a day at the office for both of them.

… oh, but she is wearing claws and claws DOES equal a threat of penetration. Maybe a little sexual? As a treat??

Him being tortured reminds him of torturing Nasuada. Wow, it was their first date!

It’s just like. It’s fucked up imo. She should never kiss you Murtagh!!!

Is anything more boring than a torture scene.

Also, was he not drugged right before this scene? How is he able to mentally evade her and power his wards etc?

I’m mad that when he’s brought fancy foods by Alìn he doesn’t share his food with Ubek the Urgal

Oh my god Ubek tells him a story where the moral is just him outright saying at the end, “it’s important to stay close to the people we care for, even if we don’t always fit in so easily” lmao. Subtlety of a mallet

Is anything more boring than a torture scene? How about a torture chapter!!!1!1!1!

This chapter is interminable. Oh my god.

Oh, so we did all that and he gives in I guess. I can’t believe how little agency this man has had throughout this book????

Haha oh my god, Bachel is studying his nude and compliant body in front of her court. Telling him to turn around so she can inspect his back (no mention of his ass even though it is out, tragic). Fucking love it. Now that’s bdsm. Pledging my allegiance to her instantly.

I am BORED. I liked when he was at least doing things of his own volition!

He flies his dragon off on Bachel’s orders and we get the line “Never had air smelled so… so… delicious.” Cryign

GASP he’s killed… CHILDREN!!!!!!! I hate how it only becomes horrifying for him to have done these murders once he realises they’re HUMAN children. Urgal children? The implication is that would’ve been a bit tacky but ultimately fine

Prison brothers blood pact. I feel so little about this. Ubek is 5000x more interesting than Murtagh but he’s been slotted into what is unfortunately a sort of magical indigenous person trope but where instead of being a human being, he is an orc. Which makes the whole trope much worse

Murtagh touched Alìn’s face… gasp! She’s been corrupted by the Touch Of A Man!!!!! (I do not care about this.)

(I care a little. For example she didn’t touch HIM. He just reached out and she didn’t pull away. This is the biggest decision about this character’s life, and she isn’t even allowed to be the one who makes it. He decides on her behalf, and she must be okay with it. Because she doesn’t pull away or fight him off.)

(Also Paolini doesn’t seem to be aware that ‘a woman who has been pledged not to be touched by a man’ would um. USUALLY be understood by a reader as euphemistic. Not that her purity could be forever ruined by a man literally just touching her face)

The way Paolini fills Murtagh’s brainwashed dialogue with oops all ellipses makes me want to tear the book apart with my teeth

Worst: how Grieve the guy who is part urgal is perpetually referred to as “heavy-browed.” “the heavy-browed Grieve” I’m sorry but I missed phrenology school, is that bad??

Also if he’s maybe part Urgal but Murtagh is now given a chance to making it clear that some of his best friends are urgals... Why is Grieve so distastefully described? What’s wrong with being half urgal? My suspicion: it’s the bloodlines intermingling

I suspect I can just skip every fucking dream sequence and flashback. Nothing of any value in these

This one guy, Lyreth, who trapdoored Murtagh for 2.5 seconds ages ago in the book, is TWICE referenced as holding/ touching the waists of “village” or “cultist” women in his dialogue tags. That’s the full extent of it. It’s not that there’s a giggling tavern girl sprawled in his lap while he’s speaking. These faceless women are exclusively sketched into existence by how a named male character’s hand is on their waist. We don’t know anything about how they are responding to his touch, which is extra in-your-face considering that Murtagh just obliterated a woman’s ritual purity by touching her face without asking. And it’s only ever these women’s waist. It’s not their hips or thighs or boobs. He’s not kissing their necks. I’m sure in Paolini’s mind this guy touching women’s waists is meant to read as sexual, which is supposed to reinforce that he’s a scumbag… but it doesn’t work because it’s so impersonal. These women are just… unmoving waists that he is just touching. It serves as a good illustration of how women—and sex and sexuality and bodies—are handled in these books. Men are never ruled by their strong and muscular bodies. Men have minds, and magic, and telepathy battles. Even when Murtagh is on a torture table or when he’s naked in front of a powerful woman who is actively inspecting his body, he doesn’t feel vulnerable. He doesn’t have an ass or a dick. The wind doesn’t make him shiver. He’s just a Mind. But women, well. They only have bodies when men touch them. The course of Alin’s life is defined by Murtagh’s touch, and even Nasuada, a fucking queen, only gets physical description via the coins Murtagh has in his possession and his memory of the cuts and bruises he left on her body. And women also have no minds—unless they’re werecats or elves or half elves, the only kind of woman who are remotely threatening, the only kind of women who are “as good as” the baseline of human men. Nasuada is proven as Murtagh’s equal because she was able to overcome the torture of her body. If he hadn’t tortured her, or if she had broken down, she wouldn’t have proven herself worthy of being his romantic partner.

Eragon’s romantic interest also started out being tortured. Not by him, but “girl who is tortured but is too strong to give up her secrets” was her entire characterisation for a book and a half, until he rescued her. That’s uh. That’s how you find girlfriends who are good enough for your protagonists.

THESE FUCKING BOOKS.

Bachel has put Thorn in a special wrought iron muzzle. Yet again, this is just objectively cool

We learn about who the cult worships: evil dragon underground. He makes fumes come out of the earth and they brainwash people and give them visions. He will come out of the ground and eat the sun unless every living thing worships him.

Really Bachel is not leading a cult she is leading an environmental rescue mission. Quick we gotta get everyone to worship this evil dragon STAT, or he’s going to wipe out all life on earth.

Why does an evil dragon living under the earth with the power to eat the sun (?!??!) actually want or need to be worshipped by “every living thing”. What is his motivation?? And why would that stop him eating the sun?

“The sculptures would have horrified most any artist in Alagaesia, no matter their race.” Mark this down as one of the worst sentences he has written yet!!

I realise now I’ve been misremembering multiple main characters’ names

I like Bachel telling Thorn to stay, like he’s a dog. That’s good to me

Murtagh is learning about the power of friendship to heal himself last minute, I guess

Why is Murtagh pausing to duel fucking Lyreth, the most boring man in the world. Is it because of the waists he touched??? I have never felt this man was worth any time at all

NOT Paolini specifically pointing out that Lyreth “smelled of a cloying peach scented perfume” and that he’s physically weaker than Murtagh as Murtagh overcomes him. Lyreth was too feminine to be strong, in the end

This book is obsessed with the word “youngling.” Murtagh says to Thorn “don’t kill any younglings.” He’s fighting Lyreth but he’s not worried because he himself is “no longer a youngling”. Fucking fuck off! just say youth. Child. Kid. Teenager even!! Come on!!

Murtagh going “this is taking too long” in the duel: me at the whole book thus far

“Is wrong-think to worship Bachel or Azlagur,” says Ubek. This is real dialogue in a book published in real 2023. Oh yeah btw everything he says is written like this

Oh, the urgal’s size and brute strength makes him Murtagh’s equal. I see

Grieve is legitimately yelling “kill the non-believers!!” and calling them desecrators??? Cartoon hours

To start winning the fight, all Murtagh had to do was find his magic sword! It stores all his potency and he inherited it from his father. Freud?? Don’t worry about it

The cultists are bleeding green blood???? Does this mean they’re not human or is it the lighting or what.

Groups of dragons are always being described as a Thunder Of. They’re only ever being described in visions but it’s always being described as “a thunder of dragons”, because Paolini is very proud of inventing his very own collective noun for dragons I guess

Buncha little pasty freaks showing up.

Murtagh’s ultimate challenge: he has to fight one hundred gollums

Paolini inventing new guys for his dungeon at unprecedented rates

Murtagh is legitimately busy trying to think of new names for his sword NOW?? He is just going to stop in the middle of this urgent fight to go find where the bad woman (Bachel) took the good woman (Alìn) to go “my sword has a bad name. It could have a good name.” Did he not have time while he was mouldering in the dungeon to think about this

He’s checking his compendium, like in video games.

Books have never been worse. If Murtagh/Paolini calls this sword Scar I will legitimately never know peace

Oh the sword is called Freedom now. Get it? Like America? It’s the most important value??

“Seeing the armor, Murtagh realized that the leather garb the cultists had donned for the festival of black smoke had been made to resemble Bachel's fantastic suit.”

what a sentence

This is the worst

I hate how her spear has a name and a dramatic history. Like come on

Fucking mind battles again

Alin is just… I’m sorry to her, but she’s not a real person. She’s a cardboard cutout in distress

The final boss fight should not be taking place in the magical world of the mind

Now she’s calling him “infidel?” Okay

The ultimate battle: the structuring power of masculine language versus the primeval chaos of raw women’s emotion!!! Who will win!! Hint: Christopher Paolini wrote this!

“She seemed merely a woman again.”

‘Merely’ is how Paolini always describes women (when he thinks they’re worth describing of course)

Wait… is the only reason Bachel has been intimidating REALLY just because she’s been channelling a tough evil boy dragon? Once the mask is gone and he’s not empowering her… she’s merely…

I’m going to kick Christopher Paolini’s fucking ass

Murtagh feels so emotionally close to Bachel. As he splits her skull. Normal book

For real why were ALL the Riders so afraid of Bachel??? The gas fumes? Face masks not invented?? This seems pretty easy to solve like if they’d just. Sent more than one guy?

He passes out and the chapter ends of course. Then he wakes up in the city

Ah, Alin is blonde and blue eyed. She was a pale skinned virgin who needed rescuing from an evil and also foreign almond eyed amber skinned woman who was whipping her. You know how it goes

I hate how Alìn always calls Murtagh “my lord.” She’s like one of those medieval fighting game banners of a sexy woman. She’s a cartoon.

Isn’t it a shame that when Murtagh hastily gets out of bed to bow to Nasuada he is wearing pants. So much funnier if he wasn’t

I’m so over this book holy shit

Oh, for being the apparently only sole survivor of Murtagh’s obliteration of her cult and everything she’s ever known, Alìn is being promoted to… Nasuada’s maid. That’s not what she asked for. That’s just what she’s being told she’s going to do from now on. Fucking hell.

Nasuada is Jealous of this blonde woman and I was afraid for her because Nasuada is also famously the only black woman on the continent. But of course she has nothing to fear because only the most powerful woman in the land could ever be remotely Murtagh’s equal, which she proved by being stronger at being tortured than him

She asks him to stay and she touches his hand just lightly

The END??

They don’t even kiss?!!!?!! I had to read it twice to be sure. SEXLESS BOOK.

#how do I tag this. probs not in the official tag right #Murtagh: Don’t Read It!!!#DONT READ IT #I can’t believe how much money Christopher Paolini is worth… I also can’t believe he managed to father two children #man doesn’t know what women children OR sex are. how did he manage to solve that equation twice over

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blackbloodteeth · 2 months ago

Text

Okay so last night I decided to use this week's ficwip's Word Game Wednesday post as a writing prompt ("Magic"), especially since I was casually prodded into writing a snippet by a friend. However, I was apparently possessed by my sleep debt demons, and not only did this reach 2.6k, I didn't even use the prompt word at any point. Nice.

As said, this is a little bit of a long snippet and apparently awkward dialogue takes me places, but here's somethin' for today while I see if I got the spoons to finish The WIP™️ after having actually gotten some sleep today despite accidentally staying up 23 hours previously.

Reject normality, return to italics.

————

The feeling of sand continuously clops beneath each slow step as he quietly sighs again, looking down at the pitch-black sea stretching endlessly throughout the darkness surrounding him. If it weren't for his light keeping him company he wouldn't even be able to see his legs, and he's quite grateful for it as he holds onto it as the only thing he has out here, but… feels like the more he wanders, the dimmer it's been getting.

Another sigh drags on while he wonders how long he's been wandering, how much longer he has to go, and if his family even misses him right now. Do they miss him? I mean, they'd have to, right? Even if he's not… the smartest or the most talented… or…or……

He gives his head a good shake to toss those thoughts out when the darkness starts to creep across his steps, instead trying the best he can to think about their worried faces and his poor ol' nana… Well he misses them, even if they don't notice he's gone, right where he shouldn't've ran off to……

The ache in his chest weighs him back down to his light weakening up his arms, leeching the hope of finding his way along with it. If only he could say sorry. He's always been the cracked stone of the family, but… but…… maybe if he……….Huh? What's that?

His head suddenly perks up when he spots a different light in the distance, new and- and exciting, breaking him into a gallop just to catch up with it and finding a warmth he's never felt before begin to fill his chest when he gets close, its light glowing brightly against his body. He trots in place a little, curiosity practically bounding around it at this feeling it gives him, like… being strong? Brave. It looks kinda like… a star? Weird…

Lowering his neck, it doesn't particularly smell like anything, but somehow it reminds him of all the bright, warm days of spring as they lead into summer. It makes him giddy to think that this may even be some sort of exit, like a portal, and with an eager prod of his horn to investigate this theory, the contact instantly engulfs him with the same light and makes his mind go blank.

. . .

…Huh?

Suddenly his eyes are blinking open again, and here he is, sitting in some kind of… field? Or well, less sitting and completely slumped over onto the grass as he's overwhelmed by the sensation of a world around him, and soon the voice of someone right next to him before he notices they're there.

"Hey, are you okay?"

He jolts when the… girl? Bu-But not like him, with weird colors and front legs that reach up to him with small horns at the ends- "I said are you okay? Geez, you might actually have a concussion…"

Both his mouth and his stare are just gaping at her(?) and how flat and hornless her face is, with the only thing he really recognizes being the pretty mossy eyes and the mane dangling where her ears are supposed to be while her weird, furless face keeps moving around like that- Until he scrunches back when she tries to prod him with her freaky arm horns because this just too weird-

"Okay, now you're just being a jerk," she snorts, which he thinks might be a laugh?

Like you're one to talk, you're just being weird…

"…So, you gonna say anything, or…?"

Wait, what are you on about, can't you hear me?

"…Ooookay, guess not…" His head darts wildly up and down when the weird girl gets up- on just two of her legs?!? What the h- "What? Are you going to keep staring at me like that, or are you actually having a stroke or something?"

Frantically, having no idea how to communicate at this point given apparently whatever had just happened to him weakened his horn too much, he begins flailing around like any still-sane horn-haver would until, as it just so happens to turn out, he is not in fact still sane: Completely frozen in place after seeing his arms and… an-and they're not right in the slightest! They're just like hers, with- with the color hide over him and the freaky flesh horns and- what happened to his hooves?!?!?

"Okay, so this might be a stupid question at this point, but like are you actually okay; you're really starting to worry me now."

His face whips back up towards her, lungs breathing a gallop a second while he quickly reaches his hoofless arms into his mane and- Oh. Oh no, oh starlight where is his horn- No no no no no-

"Soooo… you did hit your head?" He completely ignores that as his twisted, messed-up flesh hooves jitter and tap all around his eyes and feeling everything wrong with his freaking face being flat and furless and- and-

When she goes to talk again he's cutting her off by slapping his hooflessness in desperation on top of his hornlessness, causing her to jump down to his current eye level and thrust her arm ends into his mane. "Wait, crap; Are you bleeding-"

Just like that, another wave of light from before swallows him like a current, whirling through his mind and body until almost just as quickly he's sitting again, but differently this time, held up entirely by her hands.

Wait. Wait.

"…Um."

Hands. They're called hands?

"Y…Yes?"

Wait, you can hear me now!?

"Oh good, so you do speak." The girl… Maka? How does he know this and that she's laughing because she's nervous- "Okay; one, um, step at a time…"

He sits there as he's told, partly because he's trying not to freak out right now, and especially because he's really trying not to freak out about how he can't move while avoiding looking at his body again so that he can remember how to breathe normally.

"Okay, so… Yeah, I'm Maka. I have hands, you're… currently in my hands… and I just met you after you suddenly bumped into me out of thin air, and for some reason I have a really big feeling you weren't a human boy before this." Human… Human, that's what… Why… "One step at a time. I've got this right so far?" …I think so. "Okay… So you're a human now, I guess, and just learned about hands and that you… don't have a horn anymore? I think??"

Deep breath, deep breath- Yeah. I have… I had a horn, and now it's gone because I guess I… turned into a human after touching that light I found, and I- I'm… Wait, why can't I remember what I'm named, Maka; I know yours but I-

"Okay, don't freak out. Just… I can kind of… see? That you were somewhere dark until you saw the light, and you got flashbanged by it, so I think…" That it made me forget some things when it changed me? "Exactly. Now that we're on… the same wavelength kinda, and know we both just met and are really confused and for some reason you can talk to me through my head because I guess you don't normally speak with your mouth…"

He lets Maka take a deep breath as the dread of their conclusion slowly lifts her hands to straighten his handle up.

"…Why did you just turn into a scythe when I touched you?"

Maka, I'd reeeeally love to answer that right now.

The dread fully plummets down his nonexistent stomach when she flops her forehead against him and he finally lets himself look at his body now being a metal pole and his horn… blade curves longer than probably even her size. It's black on top, and sharp and red on the bottom, which kinda isn't that much different from what his horn was like actually except its much more… vivid. Pronounced. Clear works, actually.

"God, this is so weird… Just like all the stories my papa used to tell me when I was a little kid……" Something curious bubbles up even through his deluge of anxiety and bafflement, making him interested enough to speak up a So you… have a family too? Like a human family? "Of course I have a family," she chuckles, at least until it snuffs out. "Had."

I don't think I'm supposed to ask, but somehow I feel a lot like you're feeling just now.

"Yeah, weird how I can feel that too… Do you have a family? Not humans, or…" Yeah, but we looked a lot like each other when I wasn't here. All of us have a horn and hooves, and a mane… oh, I guess you call it hair. 'Cause normally you don't have short fur all over you. "Yeah… Wait."

Somehow he can still move his eyes (although only at the same time and just one is facing her) to watch as Maka suddenly cranes her head up, staring at him with… wonder? Intrigue? Man, he's learning way too many words today- "Are you… are you telling me you're actually a unicorn?"

Images flow through his head like sand into water, of… horses, with long seashells for horns, and… That's… pretty close to how we look, actually. Is 'unicorn' what we're called to you? I don't think we have a same word for our family…

"Holy crap you're a unicorn…" she utters as if that somehow was any less strange than whatever the hornhole is going on with him right now, and also her. "All this time you're actually a unicorn, and now you're a scythe- and oh god, I must be dreaming. Hit by a car because I finally studied too much. I'm probably in a coma right now and this is all just a dream and you're just in my head, or an angel, or-"

Maka. One step at a time.

He feels her breath shudder when he does the same thing she did just now, playing his memories for her like reflections on calmed water of his brother and him racing through the burrows, and his nana humming her tune that turns the air into waves of starlight, and his ma and da greeting each other with their horns before he inevitably can't make his horn glow as strong as his brother's- Okay, maybe not that one.

A lighthearted giggle, like the fluttering wings of a bird taking off, raises Maka up onto her feet, looking right at him again with… a smile. It's so… warm, and… pretty? I like that a lot actually, it's a lot like when the sun hits the sea when- Oh my godlight, I just said that to you.

There's a way her face is turning red that he is just now learning is blushing and is the exact feeling of embarrassment she is showing by covering her mouth with one of her hands and not being able to look away while her voice goes soft from under her palm. "I've never been called pretty before- by a unicorn…"

We-Well you've never met a unicorn before so that makes it different and it's not like horn-sparking so just- I was just saying what I saw, yeah, he deflects, much like one deflects the dirt off of their shovel while digging their own grave. And yet somehow, mysteriously, he feels like he's deep beneath the ground where he could end up finding that dark place again at how she's… laughing? Happy? Entertained? This is too many words and thoughts to have in my head anymore.

"Y'know, when I imagined actually meeting a unicorn, this definitely wasn't what I thought of." Yeah that's one way to put it. I'd probably say the same thing if I even knew about humans first, and also hadn't turned into one. And then a scythe. "Well, um…"

Her smile falters when he can feel that the particular detail on the 'becoming human' bit also made him unable to think of what he's called (like as himself, not being a unicorn) so she has no idea what to refer to him as. "…Do you want a name right now?"

…I think that would make things a little easier, yeah.

"Okay, how aboooout…" Strange reflections ripple into him again, much faster this time so he doesn't have much room to grab onto any of them until they start to slow down, memories of some… movie? What's this fast-running pictures of?

"Oh sorry, I was remembering the time I used to watch The Last Unicorn when I was a kid; just trying to think of a name that would fit, sorry if that's offensive." He laughs, No, it's… interesting. I want to see it sometime, just maybe after I figure this out. "Yeah, alright. Let me try to actually pinpoint a name for you."

Words of stars and light rain like droplets through his mind, and strange words he could not possibly understand fall like pebbles, things that tie this earth to people and ones that reach the heavens, while everything in between- "Okay, potshotting now – How about Aether?" What a weird word. "I'm trying, okay- Grimm? Edgar? Stephen?" These are all weird words.

"Uggggh, fine," Maka rolls her head back, very much out of frustration until a moment of… something different goes through her head to him. "Okay, this might be a little stupid, but I think I have a good name…"

Should I want it if it's stupid?

"No, no; the name is fine, it's just the reason I thought of it…" A sense of interest looks at her with what he feels is called an eyebrow raise when another movie? gallops through his head, ushering her to well, tell me, then. "Alright hear me out, but… It's a name that's kind of similar to my dad's but I thought of it because there's a, um, horse movie with the same name, so I thought since you're like a horse- but cooler, I thought I'd give you… a name like that, but cooler than my dad, so…" he's on the edge of his what the hell is a seat when Maka takes a deep breath through her teeth and offers it up hesitantly. "…Can I call you Soul?"

…Y'know… I think I finally understand what grinning is.

Soul starts to get infected with her laugh as she readjusts his handle in her hands, the name likewise looked around in his head like he's had hands his whole life. "…So, I take it you want it?"

Yes, actually, this is like, the opposite of stupid. It's so cool even though I've never heard it before but it's cooler than your dad. Like cooler than cool, like- This feels like my name. Like you call me this and it's what I'm called- His feelings in his- his soul light up like they were his horn again, voice all giddy and practically leaping in place. Maka, call me it. I wanna be called it.

She can't help but chuckle, "Okay, okay; You're Soul. Nice to meet you."

Yeah. Yeah. That is so my name- THIS IS AWESOME!!

"Yeah! Yeah it is!!"

This excitement racing through them both is unstoppable and unlike anything he's felt before, almost like he is strong and bright, better than he ever could be on his own – but in a way that made him not alone, and like running across the world, also.

It's just something so unique and precious and he wants to hold onto it forever, much like the way Maka actually starts twirling him around while they both start whooping, until she pauses as a quieter thought rises up to the surface of even his mind. "…Hey Soul, if you came from somewhere else… what are you going to do now?"

And it just sinks into him for a moment while they're standing there out in the middle of a trail in the woods that he doesn't recognize.

…Huh.

#writing #soul eater #soul variant #soul evans #maka albarn #soul x maka #(probably)#also just found out google docs added doc tabs let's fucking gooo

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multifandoms27-blog · 1 year ago

Note

Yu-Gi-Oh dub continuity please. (You can smoosh DSoD dub into the timeline if you want to. I usually do.) Aro ace female reader, neurotypical but weird anyway. (I may be an introvert who spends hours alone by choice and doesn’t have a huge social circle, but I was born to be a ridiculous anime character who dresses flamboyantly, has a sense of the dramatic, and wants to impress people. It’s certainly how I try to live in Real Life.) Reader quickly lets go of past irritations, and is more interested in honesty than not getting her feelings hurt. Smart, and self-teaches herself whatever skills seem interesting or useful to her. Rather childish in a lot of ways even though she is an adult, with a real sense of wonder. Rarely responds to sarcasm with more sarcasm. Reader is also a decent duelist, but not at Kaiba’s level. Physically she’s three inches taller than Yugi, with a very slight build, no makeup, long straight hair past her waist, boyish posture and movement, and a great sense of balance and understanding of moving her own body. Not a lot of physical strength though, she can probably only do about 10 push-ups.

Reader always calls Kaiba by his last name. Kaiba calls Reader by her first name.

Set after the run of the show. Reader and Kaiba have become friends. (Mokuba and Yugi secretly worked a lot behind the scenes for years doing friend-matchmaking in order for the friendship to materialize. 😋) They have similar interests, figured out how to communicate well (although perhaps more brusquely than most,) trust one another, and each believes the other to also be uninterested in romance/sex (which is highly reassuring when you suspect all your friends and relations will one day fall in love and accidentally push you out of their life.)

I’d love some writing with excitement, adventure, trouble, or danger! (If you want to throw in some angst that would be fine as well.) Perhaps the reader and Kaiba end up in a bad situation which is quickly flying out of their control. One of the fun things about Yu-Gi-Oh is the fact this could stem from any number of absolutely bonkers reasons! Maybe they were abducted by aliens to be sold to other aliens as “important Earthlings you can enslave to show off or feel more important.” Or maybe a rival company decided to get quite cutthroat and try to take over Kaiba Corp with literal force. Did they get accidentally transported to a fantasy dimension where they drew the ire of an evil leader? Or maybe an eviler Gozaburo shows up from another dimension and tries to force Kaiba to join him in a multi-dimensional conquest, with the explicit threat that if he doesn’t help, then Kaiba and those he cares about can spend their lives firmly under Gozaburo’s thumb, serving him in much less enjoyable capacities. You can use any scenario that seems fun to write! (You can also include other characters like Yugi, Joey, Mokuba, etc. if it feels like the story needs it. I would love to be friends with any of the good guy Yu-Gi-Oh characters.)

Uh, silly thing, but I don’t like profanity, so it would be great if you could not use any when writing this particular request. (It’s definitely possible to write scary, threatening, creepy dialogue without it, so I hope it doesn’t inconvenience you too much.) Sorry!

And please don’t write the two main characters as having any interest in romance/sex.

Some violence is okay though. Even the dub has a lot of implied violence and brutality. Just, don’t go overboard into R rated territory.

Hope the formatting isn’t too bad.

If you have any questions, or would prefer I send in a different request, or would like me to send in this request again with different formatting, or would like to tell me you are refusing my request, feel free to DM me.

P.S. Do you have a Ko-fi or something similar?

Hiya Dei! No, I don't have anything like that. Maybe I should set up one though?

So sorry this took so long to write, but its finally here! I really do hope you enjoy it!

Edit: Fixed some POV errors and added the opposing companies' name.

Content: Platonic! Seto Kaiba x fem!Reader

Warnings: Kidnapping

Notes: I really enjoyed writing this!! It was like writing an episode of Yugioh and I've always wanted to do that :3 This turned out to be 13 pages long, so yippe!! I had a little funny joke at the end here lol

• ───────────────── •

After graduating Domino high, it’s like everybody hit the ground running with their dreams. Tea moved to America to pursue dancing, Joey and Yugi started working at Solomon’s shop, Bakura left Japan with his father to travel, Tristan began working at his fathers company, Duke left Domino City to spread Dungeon Dice Monsters around…and then that left you and Kaiba.

Kaiba needed someone who could watch Mokuba, but someone he could trust, and someone he could keep close. Joey and Tristan and Tea were out of the question, Duke definitely no, he would be caught dead before letting Mokuba around Bakura, and Yugi can’t keep anybody safe.

So he decided to hire you. A week after graduation, Kaiba approached you with the job position. You were thinking about your future anyway, figuring out whether or not you wanted to go to college, or go straight into the workforce, or do both. When Kaiba laid out the job position for you, you practically jumped on the idea.

“If you can’t handle this job position now, then back out of it while you still can.” Kaiba teased, though to a bystander, he was just insulting you due to his lack of a smile.

“I can handle it, don’t go doubting me just yet, Kaiba.” You jabbed back, also without a smile.

Finally, Kaiba allowed a small smirk to form. “That’s what I like to hear. Come with me, we’ll start the paperwork ASAP, and you start tomorrow.”

It was hardly much work compared to the pay you got from Kaiba. Your job was just to keep close to Mokuba and make sure any shady characters got dealt with. The rest of your time could be spent with Kaiba in his office, or doing something with Mokuba. It truly was a dream - you got to be near your best friend and get closer to the younger Kaiba brother.

So far, no shady characters have gotten past your watchful eye. But about six months after taking the job position, everything flipped upside down.

• ───────────────── •

A new ride and section of the arcade was built into Kaibaland, and Mokuba practically begged you to take him. You agreed, and now you were trapped in the heat with Mokuba and a few other security guards. The guards did a good job at keeping bystanders away from grabbing you or Mokuba, or just getting too close in general. You had to get used to paparazzi, but after the last three years with Yugi and your old friend group, that wasn’t a hard transition.

Mokuba stopped your train of thought by tugging your arm. “(Y/n), (Y/n) look! There’s the new rollercoaster! Can we go on it?!”

The heat was making you nauseous and dizzy. While you wanted nothing more than to go on with him, you knew you had to pass it up so you wouldn’t completely ruin his day. “Sorry, Moki. I need some water, I’m not feeling too good. But I’m sure one of the guards would be happy to go on with you.”

Mokuba pouted, but nodded. “Okay. But can we play games together in the arcade?”

“Absolutely.” You grin, patting the boy's head.

One of the guards, Bishop, volunteered to get on the ride with him. You approved it, knowing you could trust Bishop. He had been with Kaiba for a couple years now, and has always carried out his orders flawlessly. Another guard, Keith, went to grab you a bottle of water. You sat down on a nearby bench and watched as Mokuba got on the ride with Bishop, waved to him, then he was off. Leaning back on the bench, you felt like you were able to relax for the next few minutes. You closed your eyes, knowing the guards will help protect you while Mokuba was on the ride.

More than a few minutes passed, and the sounds of screaming from the roller coaster had stopped. Opening your eyes, you looked up to see if Mokuba had gotten off. To your horror, the ride wasn’t moving. Nobody was getting off or on. Part of the ride was going through tunnels, and since the ride itself couldn’t be seen, you guessed it was in one of those tunnels. Scrambling to get up and run towards the ride, you approached the fear-stricken teen girl trying to operate said ride.

“What happened? Why is the ride stuck?”

“A-ah! Miss (Y/n)! I-I don’t know, the wheels stopped and I can’t get it to work!” The poor girl was shaking, she was afraid she was going to lose her job.

Looking up at the broken up tunnels on the tracks, you had no idea which one the ride was in. Instead, you turned to the girl. “Which tunnel did the coaster go in before it stopped?”

“That one…” The girl pointed to the highest one, before her voice trailed off.

You looked up and saw a helicopter approaching the ride, one that didn’t look like a Kaiba Corp one. You immediately grew anxious. “Keith, Cole, Sam! Code: Mocha!”

“Yes ma’am!” The three men yelled in unison before swiftly taking out walkie talkies to inform other guards of the situation both on and off Kaibaland.

However, it was too late. Two men dropped from the helicopter and - presumably - cut a hole into the tunnel. Your heart rate picked up, and you foolishly tried to mess with the controls one more time, hoping and praying that it would work and you could get Mokuba back safe.

The teen girl next to you gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. You snapped your head back up to see the two men - now with an additional third man - rising back into the helicopter holding a struggling Mokuba.

“Mokuba!!” You screamed, banging your fists against the control panel.

There was nothing you could do. The three men got Mokuba into the helicopter and flew off, then suddenly the coaster began to move, the screams of the other passengers picking back up. Tears pricked your eyes and your head hung low. “Mokuba…”

• ───────────────── •

You sat in Seto’s office, eyes downcast as you informed him of what happened to Mokuba. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and you were afraid he was going to have an angry outburst. He had every right to of course, you just didn’t want something to hit you. Seto took a deep breath before standing.

“You were at the bottom of the coaster?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“And Mokuba was with Bishop?” Seto asked.

“Yeah.”

“I have an idea of what happened then. Come with me, (Y/n).” He grabbed his suitcase, closed his laptop and shoved it in before moving briskly past you.

You got up and quickly followed. You didn’t know if Kaiba was mad, but you decided it would be better to follow than ask questions. Kaiba stopped at Lisa’s desk - his secretary - and informed her to cancel any afternoon plans he had, and have his chopper ready, before continuing his strut throughout the building. They headed for the elevator, and once Kaiba pushed the highest button, you finally began to ask questions.

“Who do you think took Mokuba?”

“Bishop’s old company - Knightly Rook, a rival of Kaiba Corp in the business world for a little while now. But I never thought the company would stoop to this. Bishop was pretty loyal to them, and I had wondered why he quit. Now I know he never really quit.” Kaiba glared at the wall.

“No way…you really think Bishop was in on the kidnapping do you?” (Y/n) asked in disbelief, eyes wide and mouth almost gaping.

Although, it made sense. There had been a third man to join them after Mokuba was caught. Bishop hadn’t come off the ride. Your eyes fell to the ground and you turned your head away. “I’m so stupid…I’m so sorry, Kaiba. I thought he would be safe…”

“This isn’t your fault. It’s mine for not looking into him more.” Kaiba spoke, with an air of irritation in his voice. “We’re going to fix this, one way or another.”

You look up at him. “You mean…?”

Kaiba looks down at you and nods. “We’re going to duel them for Mokuba.”

“Wait, I don’t have my deck-” You objected before Kaiba placed a hand on your shoulder, and the other hand offered you your deck. “Oh.”

“You keep leaving it in my office. Your cards will get bent if you don’t put them in a case.” Kaiba made a mental note to get you one. Maybe he’d get you one with designs of your favorite card on there.

“Are we going to do a double team?” You asked.

“Most likely. The CEO and his assistant are close, and are almost never seen apart.” Kaiba explained. “Of course, I trust you’ll keep up with me during this duel.”

“Yes, Kaiba.” You nod, putting your deck away securely.

The elevator doors opened and they both stepped out into the gleaming sun. It had been an hour since Mokuba was kidnapped, but it felt like it was even hotter outside than before. Or maybe it was your body trying to get used to the fast shift between the heavily air conditioned Kaiba Corp building, and the scorching heat outside. The blades of Seto’s chopper were just beginning to start up, and he continued to stride towards it. After you both sat down and secured yourselves in your seats, Kaiba placed his briefcase on his lap and opened it.

“Can you hold this for me?” Seto asked.

“Sure.” You nodded, grabbing his computer.

He then lifted the bottom of his briefcase to reveal all of his cards. “I’ll allow you to pick ten to boost yourself in this fight. I can’t have you lagging behind.”

You gave him a pointed look. “I can handle myself with my deck.”

“Fine. Five cards, take it or leave it.” Seto moved the briefcase for you to get a better look at the cards.

Grumbling under your breath, you looked over some monster, trap and magic cards before choosing five you figured would benefit you. “Thank you, Kaiba.”

He only hummed, and began assembling his own deck. You saw him slip the three Blue Eyes into the deck of 40 cards, and you cracked a smile, but didn’t say anything, and the smile faded as soon as it showed up. You were nervous. For Mokuba’s safety and wellbeing, for your job, for your friendship with Kaiba. Were you done at Kaiba Corp for this? You hoped not.

Once Seto was done assembling his deck, he turned towards you and noticed your nervous look. He was nervous too, for Mokuba’s safety. But you seemed like you were worrying about a lot more. “...something on your mind?”

“Oh nothing, just going to gamble a child’s life over a children’s card game, what else is new.” You spoke sarcastically.

Kaiba understood. It was a lot for you to take in - before, either he would get Mokuba back himself or you had Yugi and his friends there to help you. Now, you’re Kaiba’s only backup. “I suppose you could put it that way.”

“How long until we get to this company?”

“A few hours. It’s on the other end of Japan. They’ll get there before we do.” Seto explained, looking out his own window.

“What do they want with Mokuba?” You asked.

“Probably something to do with me ignoring their requests for a meeting.” Kaiba spoke dismissively. “I doubt they’d purposely harm Mokuba if they ever want a shot at being in my good graces. Though now, that ship has already sailed.”

You looked back at him. “Kaiba, what happens if we lose?”

Kaiba glanced at you and huffed. “I don’t lose. And just because you’re some second rate duelist doesn’t mean you can go doubting yourself now too.”

Second rate? You thought to yourself. It was a step up from Joey, you supposed. “Thanks, Kaiba.”

“Whatever.” Kaiba shrugged and turned away.

As much as Kaiba acted mean and teased you, you knew by now that it was good fun. He wouldn’t keep you around if he actually hated you, much less let you use some of his cards and duel side by side with him. Kaiba had slowly become an older brother to you, and Mokuba had become a younger brother. You had hoped you’d become a sister to them, if not then a close friend. You watched the world go by as the helicopter flew to the Knightly Rook building. You closed your eyes and decided to rest for a moment before you’d have to hit the ground running.

• ───────────────── •

The helicopter landed and Kaiba shook you awake. The doors opened and once you both stepped out, you were met by a glammed up couple surrounded by guards. The man wore a mahogany suit, looked older (about his 50’s), had a cane that was likely for show, and had a dark grin on his face. Next to him was a woman who looked younger (about her 30’s) with a matching mahogany dress and a white fur shawl that went around her shoulders and down her left arm. On her left hand was a big shiny diamond. The woman laughed.

“Darling, you think they’re here to pick up dear Moki?”

“Don’t call him that!” You yelled, Seto put a hand on your shoulder to stop you.

“Where is he?” He asked.

The man spoke. “Follow us, and you shall see.”

“And if we want to stay up here?” You asked.

“Then I guess Moki will cease to be~” The woman giggled, causing your eyebrow to twitch.

“We’ll follow you.” Seto glared at the couple.

“Excellent!” The man exclaimed, clapping his hands twice.

The guards formed a group around you and Kaiba, forcing you two closer to the couple. The man stuck his hand out to shake with Kaiba's. "Reginald O'Malley, nice to finally meet you, Seto Kaiba."

"Can't say the same." Kaiba reluctantly shook his hand, causing Reginald to laugh.

The woman stuck her hand out to you, and you swore her ring almost blinded you. You hesitantly shook it.

"I'm Sasha O'Malley." The glammed out woman grinned.

"(Y/n) (L/n)." You responded, not wanting to touch her any more than you already had to.

Reginald led you and Kaiba inside. The building didn't look like a company building at all. The walls were a golden yellow, with redwood flooring. The windows gave you a nice view over the city. Wasn't this supposed to be the corporate building of this company? Where were the workers? And come to think of it, where was the pilot of your ride here?

Reginald led you over to the sizable fireplace. "Now friends, I'm sure you're wondering why I've gathered you all here."

"Not really." Seto narrowed his eyes at him. "Just get to it, Reginald. I don't have all day."

The man chuckled before pulling a picture frame to the left, and the fireplace began to turn. It revealed stairs leading down. Was that where he was keeping Mokuba? Was that where his workers were?

"Come my friends, for a duel." Reginald grinned and led them down the stairs.

You clenched your jaw in irritation, but took a deep breath and cooperated, following the couple down the stairs. Seto was behind you. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a gigantic arena fitted with four seats. So this was going to be a double team duel.

"Big brother! Big sister!" Mokuba yelled from his cage, dangling in the air.

"Mokuba!" You and Kaiba yelled in unison.

"Beat us in a duel, and we give the boy back. But if we win, we take Kaiba Corp. Deal?" Reginald grinned, holding his hand out.

Seto growled before taking his hand into a bone crushing grip. "Deal."

• ───────────────── •

The duel was seemingly nearing an end. Sasha was the lowest count with 500 life points left, though that was to be expected. You only had monsters in your deck. Reginald was a little harder to beat, and was at 2300 life points. You and Seto were doing good, Seto with 3700 life points and you with 3000.

It was your turn, so you draw. Mirror force.

"I play this card face down, and my Luster Dragon attacks Sasha head on!"

Sasha didn't have any monsters on the field, with Kaiba destroying the last one last turn with his Battle Ox. Luster Dragon has 1900 attack points, so Sasha's points drop to zero. She whines to her husband from across the arena.

"Darling, I lost! Please win for me, I want that company!"

"Of course dear." Reginald nods and draws a card. "I summon Blackeyes, the Plunder Patrol Seaguide in attack mode! Now, I sacrifice him to summon Wattaildragon in attack mode!"

You knew that card. Wattaildragon had 2500 attack points. So while it couldn't hurt Seto, it could still hurt you. And Reginald knew that. "Wattaildragon! Attack (Y/n)'s Luster Dragon!"

The dragon let out a roar before preparing to attack. You acted surprised for a moment before you smirked, catching Reginald off guard. "You forgot about my face down card. You activated my trap - mirror force!"

The card lifted face up to show mirror force, which made the Wattaildragon's attack bounce off and hit it, destroying it completely. Reginald had no more monsters on the field.

"Darling that is not what I wanted you to do!" Sasha yelled but Reginald ignored her.

"Kaiba!" You called.

"Right. Blue eyes! Attack Reginald head on, and finish this duel once and forever!" Kaiba yelled.

The Blue Eyes let out a roar before firing a beam straight at Reginald. His life points had dropped to zero. You and Seto shared an accomplished look and a thumbs up. Then Seto's phone rang.

"Well it's as I expected. Reginald here isn't a rich man. In fact, he's been committing thirty years worth of financial fraud." Seto gave the glammed out couple a dark grin. "You're both going away for a long time."

• ───────────────── •

It turns out that the pilot doubled as an infiltrator. Seto had planned to duel the couple as a distraction either way. He had managed to get all of Reginald's statements and aliases and fraudulent checks. Police surrounded the building, and both Reginald and Sasha were taken away in cuffs, with an added charge of kidnapping. Their guards, along with Bishop, got taken away too.

Mokuba ran up to Seto and (Y/n), hugging them both. "I knew you guys would come for me! That was an awesome duel!"

"Thanks, Moki." You smiled, ruffling his hair causing him to laugh. "We're just glad you're alright."

Seto nodded in agreement. Mokuba grinned up at them. "Well...for being kidnapped and all, you know how you guys can make it up to me?"

"Therapy?" Seto and you spoke together.

"No silly, ice cream and duel monsters!" Mokuba threw his hands up excitedly.

You and Seto looked at each other before laughing. "Sure Mokuba, sure."

• ───────────────── •

Here is my Masterlist in case you want to request, or look for more of your favorite character!

#seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #kaiba brothers #platonic seto kaiba x reader #platonic #yugioh #yugioh duel monsters #ygo #kaiba mokuba #kaiba seto

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galvanizedfriend · 8 months ago

Note

Hi Yokan 👋

I have questions

First question - how’re you doing? Hope life hasn’t been too stressful for you!

Second question - have you been reading anything that has really resonated with you in the last couple of weeks/months.

Third (and most weird) question - if you could choose a superpower what would you choose? (Dumb question I know😂)

Fourth question - most proud moment in your writing career.

And final question - how’s writing going with the Wolf? Hope you’ve not struggled too much in starting it!

hope your doing okay! ❤️

Hi, friend! How's it going?

Can I just say, it's so lovely to get all these questions! ✨ I love this so much, thank you! 💝

First: I'm ok! Work is always stressful these days, I don't think it's going to give me a break until at least September. 😂 But it's not the worst right now. Tomorrow is my birthday and I just the best piece of chocolate cake humanity has to offer, so I'm cool right now. 😇 Just wish tomorrow wasn't Monday. 🥲

Second: I have read 7 books this year so far, but nothing that's stood out as being great, sadly. :( Still haven't had a 5 stars. I finished a thriller called None of This is True by Lisa Jewell which was pretty good, if you're into thrillers. 4 stars, maybe.

In terms of fanfiction, I've have been reading random pieces of non-Kc fic, as per usual 😂 But I have also read The Little Wolf by @morningstargirl666, which is absolutely fantastic, if you haven't read it yet. It's a retelling of the show's canon about the Original family and how they were turned into vampires, with special focus on Klaus' werewolf heritage, and it's so, so, so good! And so much better than canon! It actually gives depth to the siblings' relationships, and it has so many little nods to what we know of them in the future. Beautifully woven! I have also read Till I Tasted You by @kirythestitchwitch, which is a canon divergent AU where a spell goes wrong and Caroline ends up finding out Klaus is her soulmate. It's hot, it has absolutely nom-nom-able dialogues and A+++ interactions between KC, it features Damon getting his ass kicked! I don't know, it's just the whole package. ��

Third: This would be a very weird question if I hadn't spent an irrational amount of time thinking about that. 😂 I guess it really depends on what kind of universe you mean, because it varies. But I would very much like to have telekinesis like Prue in Charmed.

Fourth: That's a tough one. I'm an extremely critical person of my own writing, so it's hard for me to feel proud of stuff I've done tbh. 😂 But I think I was pretty proud when I finished The Wolf 2. It's not my personal favorite thing I've ever written, but I think it's probably my best written story. I really like the final part of that story, the way I managed to tie it back to TVD, I think it was very full circle and made the story a lot more unique. I also had a lot of fun writing the Mikaelsons and Caroline back in Mystic Falls after the time they spent in Nola. 😂 So maybe that.

Final: It's... going. 🥲 I took a pause after writing two chapters back to back, tried to work on some other stuff, and then I circled back to it. I've actually just started the next chapter, have a couple of scenes. I don't think this first chapter will be a long one, but I think it will take a lot of editing tbh. 😂 I haven't been at most inspired right now, so not sure how much of what I've written will stand the test of a re-read. I had plans to get a chapter out before the end of the month, but I'm not sure I'll manage it. 🥲 We'll see how this week goes. Pray for me.

Thanks for the questions, friend! I hope you have a wonderful week! ✨

#yokan answers #marginally-accurate #nice people being nice

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maintitle · 1 year ago

Text

I’m a big fan of the dialogue option in Inquisition where you talk about Orsino with Varric.

Inquisitor: “In the book, you say that First Enchanter Orsino turned himself into a giant monster made of corpses. How? Why?”

Varric: “Do I look like an expert on magical weirdness to you?”

VARRIC SLIGHTLY DISAPROVES.

Now, this could be read in a few ways by Varric himself, but I don’t see it like that at all. It’s always felt like the writers tilting their head toward the camera and staring directly into the lens. At the time people were entirely confused by Orsino’s actions, forcing a confrontation with the guy you’re siding with for what can be amounted to as no reason.

Now, granted, there is in fact an in-game letter that can be found during your chase after your Mother that infer’s Orsino is dabbling in more than he lets on.

My dear friend, I have obtained the books you requested. I'll leave them at our usual hiding spot. Please collect them as soon as possible. I would hate to see them in the wrong hands! Your last letter was fascinating! You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn't have doubted your resolve, and I hope you will keep me apprised of further progress. Your friend and colleague, O

This is a Codex found just before the confrontation with Quinton in Act 2, one that’s overshadowed by the horror Hawke goes through in that quest. I, personally, feel like it was an afterthought put into the game in order to explain why the seemingly straight arrow First Enchanter is suddenly using necromancy to make a person meat shield.

The biggest thing that makes me think this is the Inquisition writing team acknowledging this, however, is Mark Darrah’s wrap-up video on his memories and the lessons he learned leading the project.

Mark Darrah: “We’ve talked about the level reuse, which I think is probably one of the weakest things in Dragon Age 2. The thing that actually makes me feel the most regret for Dragon Age 2 is the way that the endings go. So, I guess spoilers... but you get to the end of Dragon Age 2, and you have to deal with the mages and the Templars, there’s the whole question of the mages and the Templars. But regardless of the choice that you make there, you end up fighting both Orsino and Meredith and the mages end up going all crazy regardless. You’ve made a different choice, you’ve come down on this decision in a very different way... and yet the game has you play through basically the same content, in a slightly different order, but it’s basically the same content. I think that’s a mistake... I mean, I’m pretty sure that was my decision, but I think that’s a mistake because it undercut the mage/templar question quite a bit.”

Mark Darrah: “Now the reason why it is that way in Dragon Age II is that the games under incredibly tight constraints. Orsino isn’t worthy of being an end boss all on his own, so the decision is that you gotta fight Meredith no matter what. Okay. So... that’s actually, I think, defensible, you could say. Meredith has been corrupted by red lyrium, you gotta fight her no matter what. You can still make the choice. I think the place where Dragon Age 2 crosses the line is that we also make you fight Orsino no matter what, and I think that’s the mistake. And the reason we do that is, it’s content, we want players to consume as much of our content as we can, because it feels like waste if we have content that isn’t seen by a player. And I think that is a mistake, and I think that’s a lesson that maybe video game studios are just waking up to now, that actually it’s NOT waste, content that isn’t consumed by the player ISN’T a problem, that actually you should WANT that.”

Now, that summarization to me covers a lot of DA2, and I’m glad he’s had that reflection, even as the man that pulled the trigger. DA2 deserves a bit of grace considering they had to take an idea for an Origins DLC and make it a full game because EA demanded it, and I’ve certainly been far more forgiving of the game as time has passed. But that’s STILL a decision that drives me bonkers.

Now, that leaves us back at where we began. It’s a FASCINATING moment with the writers, when we get that disapproval at the question. It almost feels defensive. Had they learned the lesson Mark Darrah later learned at that point, or where they still a bit upset by how badly that fight was received by folks who sided with the mages? I’m really not sure, but I love it just because it has such sass attached to it. It’s a moment in Inquisition where Varric once again becomes the voice of the writers, telling the plot of their previous game in a really defensive manner. It’s a unique little moment that stands out so much to me.

#Orsino #varric tethras #DA2 #Dragon Age 2 #Hawke #Dragon Age: Inquisition #DA2 spoilers #Dragon Age 2 Spoilers #Mages #Templars #Meredith

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xelasrecords · 1 year ago

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Hellooo :) Honestly, I don't really know how tumblr messaging works.. I hope I'm doing it right 😢

Anyway, what I wanted to say is.. (and I hope I don't end up sharing TOO much!!) how much I admire your works. I find myself re-reading 'Wedding Scene' over and over again, I love it so much. It is actually something I go back to each time I feel down. Which might be weird.. since it's angst.... but I love it so much :)

Okay, here comes the TMI.. T _ T MC is very relatable (for me) in this fic! I absolutely love the part where Jumin reassures her that she is not a bad person.. Whenever I read that part, I just pretend that someone is actually saying that to me! It feels very nice & warm <3

You worded everything beautifully.. The storyline, the dialogues, the characters, everything is so beautiful! I first read Wedding Scene at the beginning of this year! Probably around April? And I keep coming back to it everytime I feel like I need to **feel** something!! And somehow, only your writing can do that. Your fic is my roman empire.. as a tiktok user would say...

I hope I didn't take too much of your time. Thank you, once again for creating such a beautiful story. :D

I woke up, read this message, and whispered "what the fuck" because I never dreamed of getting such a sweet message like this. Thank you so much for taking the time to craft this🤍 All I want from writing is to make my readers feel, preferably if they feel what I intend my writing to convey. And don't worry, you sent the ask correctly (unless you meant to message me privately? In that case, tap the "send a message" button).

I'm with you on angst being comforting. I think we like to sink ourselves in sad stories when we're sad because there's a comfort in having our pain validated and understood. You don't always get that in real life, so it's such a gratifying feeling when you find it in fiction.

Thank you for sharing about yourself with me! I don't think it's TMI, and I'm glad you could relate to her. Wow, April was a while ago. I had no idea there's someone who'd reread my work, let alone remember it for that long. I need to frame this and start a wall of fame or something.

To share something personal about my fics as a whole, I actually categorise them in a Before and After phase. Fics from Before have a more casual writing style, with the MCs' personalities more ambiguous so people could relate easier. And Wedding Scene was the last fic that I catalogued in Before.

I soft launched the After phase with Haven Burning where I experimented with a different way of describing things and ventured out with a more defined MC, someone softer than how I usually wrote them up until that point. But it was with The Love We Live For that I embraced the narrative style change and created an MC that I knew wouldn't be for everyone.

The point of all that? After I dove into the After, I rarely go back to read my Before fics. I thought they weren't that good since they were my early attempts at fic writing, but you altered the way I see them. So for the third time, thank you. You should know how much your message means to me.

#xela answers #jumin han #mystic messenger #jihyun kim

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trillscienceofficer · 1 year ago

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okay so i’ve seen voyager all the way through once like a few years ago and i am currently rewatching it, plus i’ve been in the fandom sort of for like a couple of months, but like, i’m not sure i follow why b’elanna would be so extremely upset abt c7? i know there were some unresolved feelings(??) in the earlier seasons, and like sure, she might find it weird or that it doesn’t make sense, but why would she be like Super Upset and Resentful at Chakotay for it? is it something i forgot from the later seasons or am i just a bit dense LMAO 😭😭

You aren't dense and I don't think you've forgotten anything, as always when it comes to hypothetical scenarios I'm just laying out my opinion and my interpretation of each character, and it's totally fine if you see things differently.

I think there's also a misunderstanding here, in that I don't actually think B'Elanna would be 'super upset and resentful' about it, I just believe that she'd be disappointed in Chakotay's choices and wouldn't want to talk to him for a while because of this. I understand why this happened as I've made jokes about it for the most part and so I exaggerated things a bit, and that's on me. I don't think B'Elanna is the type to be resentful for petty reasons at all, and if I were to write this in a more structured narrative I would take a different approach in showing the situation.

My reasoning is mainly based on the fact that B'Elanna in canon doesn't really like Seven, and has also the kind of rapport with Chakotay where B'Elanna assumes (or hopes) he is on 'her side', but it's not always the case. I keep thinking about this dialogue between them in “Extreme Risk”:

TORRES: This whole thing is so ridiculous. I don't report a few scrapes and suddenly Janeway thinks there's something wrong with me. Typical Starfleet, huh? CHAKOTAY: You have been running holodeck programmes without safety protocols.

B'Elanna is referencing their shared history in order to make him stop questioning her decisions, but he isn't buying it. In this case Chakotay was justified in ignoring the attempt (she was injuring herself), but there are so many similar cases over the course of the show in which Chakotay explicitly does not take her side even when she's not in the wrong (like about her supposed 'anger issues' in “Juggernaut”). Additionally, Chakotay was the one who ordered B'Elanna to work with Seven when B'Elanna didn't want to way back in “Day of Honor”, completely overriding B'Elanna's authority, and I can imagine B'Elanna having sort of internalized the fact that Chakotay won't be on 'her side' whenever Seven is involved, which hurts all the more given the mentor/mentee undertones they've had ever since their Maquis days. A relationship between Seven and Chakotay would be the ultimate confirmation of her gut feelings, and while I don't think of B'Elanna as a resentful person, she does see the world as an 'us vs them' kind of deal. From her perspective, I think, it would feel like Chakotay is 'betraying' their friendship by forming a relationship with a person with whom B'Elanna's had so much difficulty getting along. She would be deeply disappointed in Chakotay for not understanding, but of course it's not like she's ever said anything to him about the way she sees their friendship.

It's obviously not a very "mature" response but honestly, I think it's very... human to have mixed feelings about a friend dating someone you can't stand (and that they know you can't stand) have had such a difficult time with in the past, and you still don't necessarily want to interact with very often (ETA: see discussion in the replies). And it's just as likely B'Elanna would never even mention that it's a problem for her unless someone prods her, although I do think she'd at least land a couple of sarcastic remarks about it, which may or may not feel like unwarranted attacks to Chakotay, hence the disagreements. But again, ymmv.

#askbox #c7 #voy #eta: i think it could spiral very easily also because i can see chakotay getting defensive about seven

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powderblueblood · 9 months ago

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hello, i hope you are well and having a nice day! you recently made this post (https://www.tumblr.com/powderblueblood/743847014582943744/any-additional-thoughts-on-fandom-and-writing-i) about fandom and writing and i wanted to say that i agree with lots of it and, if u didn't mind, share some of my thoughts about ur thoughts, if that's okay with you, because you brought up some points that i agree with a lot but never bothered to put into words.

firstly, omg dialogue is sooooo crazyyyy its the hardest part for me to write personally (in personal projects, i haven't really used this blog for writing yet) but also the most satisfying. i love the feeling of writing something that i feel a real person, and a specific kind of real person would say, and it's definitely the most interesting for me to read, especially in fanfiction because it's where fun relationships between characters can be explored, but t's also the trickiest because it takes me out of the story very quickly if i don't like the way it's written, both in fanfic and original works as well.

also, while i don't really mind shy readers or badass/snarky and sharp readers, my favourite is but reserved and cautious readers a lot.......like.....they aren't shy.....they are suspicious......they are friendly because that's the polite thing to do but they're not gonna freak it with randos who are weirdly hush hush about what they get up to in their free time. also yeah trying to get a middle schooler to think ur cool is the kind of herculean task that humbles you to the ground and i do think it's a little strange sometimes how quickly a very tight knit group of friends would accept a stranger in their midst, as established with max in s2

and yes omg more characters of colour PLEASE, and for stranger things specifically, imo, i want to just say about the show (which i'm not really watching anymore due to various reason amongst boycotting), i was always sort of put off by how they handled their non-white characters, specifically women of colour like kali, who i think is the only notable woc other than erica, and the way the showrunners handled her character rubs me the wrong way, esp as a desi girl. i also think it would be fun to just write like explicitly characters of colour, both oc and y/n/readers, Black readers, Asian readers, Desi readers, Hispanic readers, that are involved with their specific cultures and backgrounds instead of like, very generalised readers that still do, frankly, tend to come off as white, because of that non-specificity and the unfortunate reality that a lot of "blankness" does tend to get filled up by white norms (i really hope that made sense im so sorry if it didn't)

tbh i also don't really see haringrove because billy freaks me the hell out, but omg....what you said about steddie being any two guy syndrome.......tysm for giving me a word for it, i never knew how to put it other than like, not just that i *personally* don't think they had very good chemistry (not saying their not good actors, just that i don't think they had chemistry), but also i did not see it making thematic sense for either of them and their individual character arcs, as well as a little bit of "get the girl out of the way"-ness that a lot of these specific ships (specific as in the trend of any two guy-ness that can arise in fandom at times) tend to have.

also i never thought about it before, but yeah, having a best friend date your ex that you guys broke off on sort of bad, or at least awkward terms, would be a stressful experience to have to ANYONE in that dynamic. i think i like the idea of nancy and her issues with that, but i think exploring robin and the side of oops i like by bff's ex would be fun and the sort of hurt and weirdness that that could bring to a friendship that has been so far very positive and supporting for both steve and robin.

i am so so so sorry for the disjointed nature of this ask as well as its length, you just brought up some points well worthy of discussion and i wanted to talk to you about it. i'm sorry you feel alienated that's not a fun thing to experience, but if it's worth anything, i think it's nice that a (slightly) older person is still passionate and stuff about something i'm interested in. i feel like especially when your a teen it gets easy to imagine that people in their thirties, forties, fifties have lost all the sort of spark and passion that youthfulness is known for when that's not true! it just changes and evolves and maybe you discover new stuff (me rn as i'm sort of over st and not planning on watching s5 and am largely participatory based on joe keery/djo and maya hawke and caleb laughlin and sadie sink) or re-discover things you'd forgotten about, but idk, i hope i'm able to dedicate some time to my hobbies and such as i grow older which can get tough because of life. happy to hear your thoughts and excited to hear back if you choose to respond. have a pleasant day <3!

sanjana love, I hope you don’t mind me posting this but I think there’s some lovely and valuable bits here and I’m glad some of what I was yappin about resonated with you! big love to you pal

#powder room talk #procrastinationprincesses

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mdhwrites · 2 years ago

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what are your thoughts on luz insisting on calling philip 'belos'? as a trans person it felt like a weird decision cause he specifically asked to be called philip. what makes it worse is he is depicted as an evil monster/irredeemable for being so "two-faced" which is not great when he says something that most definitely does not sound cis

i'm inclined to believe this wasn't intentional malice on the part of the show writers cause honestly they probably forgot he said that or just didn't put too much thought into the dialogue when they were writing it. regardless it still came off as slightly irritating to me. i like ur takes so im curious what u think

So first I just want to throw out that despite the fact that I'm pushing myself more and more to be inclusive, transgender identity and characters is one of those things I'm not comfortable doing myself. I still argue with myself about a joke with Daina in Rich Witch that has spoiler explanations/justifications. It's not because I'm anti-trans either. Trans rights are human rights. Period. But like… There's a reason Juro Rigged Pets, literally started the day I chose to stop watching TOH or close to that, is a converted fic because I want to use the community as a soundboard for not fucking up with my first enby character because Luz is non-binary in that one.

And if you're going "Wait, why are you okay with writing sapphics then?" Well, my personal reasoning is that I see love as love and that that emotion is fairly universal, even if the expression is going to change due to gender. There is still an emotional in for me to write them, I've been exposed to a LOT more sapphic emotions and talking than I have anything about trans identity and in general I just like writing and hanging out with girls more. Not even from a "Hurr hurr, I'm a straight white dude" perspective but more from a "I like that these people seem to be capable of being more mature, emotional and honest than a lot of the guys my age seem to be." I literally spent lunch most of the time in High School with only girls around me. I just don't know if I have a comfortable, emotional in when it comes to gender identity. While identity is universal, questioning one's gender and how people treat you about it is not. It's just not the same from my perception as a feeling like love. Is that maybe small minded me? Maybe. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like the best I can do in a situation is admit my own ignorance and hope I learn to do better in the future. My ears are always open though to try and learn and understand better.

I say all of this because… Well I don't think I have a lot to say about your ask. I mostly agree. It's not meant to have any active malice to it even if it's a dick move by Luz. If we're charitable, it's meant to be reinforcing the point Luz makes in that scene about Belos wanting to be called a human name when he has clearly thrown away his humanity for his goals.

Which… I don't like in general. Yes, he is monstrous and has magic but it's really the only time they make the case and Belos still identifies as human more than he identifies as magical. If they were willing to interrogate it more, it'd be a cool recognition of the use of religion and the like to say you have noble goals while being the literal worst person ever but it's much more about Belos being a literal monster than his inner monstrosity in that moment. Like so much with Belos, it's an interesting idea obviously on the writer's mind but not done anything with because they won't dedicate the effort to it.

If we take it less charitably and look at Luz's character as a whole… Why should Luz care about other people's identities? Her claims of caring about other weirdos and the like never come out to anything. I've talked about before how Yesterday's Lie plus the pilot kind of implies that Luz actively chose never to make friends with nerds because they weren't special enough. That Willow and Gus only meet her requirements because they have magic.

Luz doesn't see Belos as meeting those requirements so why would she care about basic rights such as being given the name you desire? I think this is too mean of a take. I don't know if I personally agree with it but it is the unintentional effect that one can take from it just like how you feel awkward about the dead name being used at all when a preference is shown.

It's like if someone calls me Mikey. I don't like it. Someone pointed out to me that it's like a dog's name when I was a kid and ever since I've HATED being called that. Mike is fine but don't call me Mikey. If someone does, I know they don't give a shit about me and so I shouldn't give a shit about them and we better split our separate ways. Same goes for the assholes who have befriended my brother and called me shit like Chris 2 or Chris' Brother. Alright asshole, I see how little I matter so I'm just going to go now.

Hell, I gained a little bit of an identity issue with my brother when we were both in JROTC because a lot of people go by last names in that program. You have a twin, you end up getting called the same thing. Equated to each other. Etc. like that. Fun times.

But like Luz disrespecting Belos, I didn't take it as disrespectful until people started thinking I could be my brother's wrangler or that I should be matching my brother's athletic accomplishments. And that's what I feel about with Luz denying Belos the courtesy. It's kept at just the functional level of "You're the villain and this is the name you used to rise to power so I will not let you forget that," then seeming to be active malice about a person's identity and how they wish to be called.

Could it have been cut to be more comfortable to those who care deeply about dead names, identity, etc. like that? Yes. Could I imagine people with those same issues also overlooking it because at worst it's a microaggression as presented and the show is at least mostly respectful to people's identities? Also yes. So I don't really know which way to lean on it.

I wish I did. I wish I felt more comfortable with the subject. Frankly I'm paranoid about my personal stories here to give context to my perspective on these matters still being tasteless. I try not to let stuff like this stop me from giving my thoughts but…

Well, I want to be respectful. Maybe even more respectful than Luz is to others, depending on how you want to turn the globe of her character. Edit: I do want to mention that I actually have a fanfic where Luz is non-binary. I'm actually proud of how much that story will theoretically touch on identity and change frankly. At the time I also thought I had a Discord who would help me make sure to do it right/convinced me to give it a shot and didn't realize that enby people are considered on the trans spectrum. It's called Joro Rigged Pets. Like Crises Girlfriends, I plan to convert it someday after I finish it first as fanfiction. I'd love all of yours thoughts and feelings on how I'm doing it because like I said: I do try to be respectful. ========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#The Owl House Criticism #TOH Critical #Luz Noceda #Belos

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sukimas · 2 years ago

Text

Fire Emblem: Engage Story Analysis Longpost

Fire Emblem: Engage's story has been the subject of a "minor" "amount" of "controversy" recently. Some people think it is the best thing since sliced bread, some think it is merely okay, and some think it killed their dog.

I herein attempt to propose an unbiased-as-possible analysis of the major plot beats, dialogue and writing choices, emotional impact, and overall execution- from the perspective of someone who has played every Fire Emblem game to completion besides FE1, and who has played that one to Ch. 22 until the convoy management got to me. I hope to objectively assess assets, flaws, and true mistakes of the storytelling of this videogame.

Extreme spoilers ahead for Engage and EVERY other Fire Emblem game, do be warned.

Let's start off with the...

Synopsis

(Apologies for the length in advance.)

The divine dragon Alear wakes up from a dream where they're fighting a mysterious, buff, and evil man alongside nine other people they've never met before. They are greeted by their three religious stewards, and informed of the fact that they've been sleeping for a thousand years- a fact that they don't remember, like anything else. They are informed that their mother is the ruler of the Divine Dragons, and will be happy to hear that they are awake. Upon hearing this, they set off to meet her, and are accosted by strange undead creatures. Having no memories of fighting before in the slightest and faced with unfamiliar foes, they try to run away before their stewards fling themselves into harm's way to protect them.

They try to protect their stewards, but are too weak to do so, and thanks to a voice calling out to them, call upon the power of a past hero who lives inside a jewelry piece. His name is Marth, emblem of playerphasing. Perhaps you've heard of him. Anyway, alongside Marth (and their mother, Lumera, who arrives later) they defeat the strange corpse people.

Their mother welcomes them home and tells them about the history of the world- where a millennium ago, a hero defeated the Fell Dragon Sombron using the power of the twelve emblem rings (so not just Marth) and sealed him away. She then has a mock battle with Alear to test how well they've grown, using Sigurd (emblem of road tiles), and they head to sleep after a long day of fighting. They wake up in the middle of the night to find that the castle where their mother lives is being invaded; they head to protect her, but there are human soldiers of an unknown origin blocking their path. They manage to break through this barricade with the help of the devoutly religious prince of Firene (a country to the southwest) and his retainers, who had come along to request aid for his kingdom. However, they are ambushed and nearly killed by a cloaked mage; Lumera takes the hit for them and to make them feel better reveals she was dying anyway thanks to saving them another time a thousand years ago. Man, Alear lacks situational awareness. Their mother tells them to gather all the emblem rings, so the fell dragon doesn't. They find a weird crystal on the floor that lets them not fuck up massively sometimes.

After their mother's funeral, Alear goes to help the kindom of Firene, which is currently under attack by both Corrupted (the corpse soldiers from earlier) and the army of Elusia, a country to the northeast. On the way, they are told a few snippets about the four inhabited nations of Elyos: Firene's a recently-neutral nation that had a peace treaty created between it and its neighbors by Alfred's mother the Queen, Brodia is a resource-poor nation that's always attacking its neighbor Elusia with the excuse that Elusians worship the Fell Dragon (lizards of mass destruction), Elusia is a faraway nation that normally doesn't have any problems with Firene, and Solm is a nation ruled exclusively by queens that values a hands-off approach to governance. They head to Firene Castle, rescuing Princess Celine and her retainers from some corpses along the way, and encountering a certified Weird Little Girl, and rescue the queen of Firene from what are confirmed to be Elusian soldiers. They regain one of Firene's two emblem rings, and get the other back from a thief who stole it from the northern shrine on the Brodian border. These rings are discovered to be Celica and Micaiah, emblems of teleporting behind you and saying nothing personell kid.

They decide to head north to Brodia to get their rings back, get attacked by Brodians who think that they're Elusians or bandits, and then find out that there are Elusians there too trying to get Brodia's rings (which is also what they were doing in Firene). It is then discovered that Elusians can also utilize emblem rings because the fell dragon has woken up a little bit but can't move; however he can wake up rings, just like divine dragons can. Anyway, you whip Elusian ass, get to Brodia castle and gain one of their emblem rings (Roy, emblem of hard mode bonuses) and after defeating the encroaching Elusian forces, gain another one (Leif, emblem of being a FE4 boss unit). Said Elusian forces include a wyvern riding mage who has very Camus-like qualities and hauls ass. The king of Brodia won't stand for this and goes to attack the Elusian forces at the border, and gets immediately killed for his trouble. His corpse gets stolen, and you fight miss wyvern Camus again, this time with no emblem as she's being left to die for her failure. (During this time you have recruited both princes of Brodia and their retainers, since they want to defend their kingdom alongside you). Surprisingly reasonably, chatGPT Ishtar decides to stand down after this battle and runs away somewhere else than back behind enemy lines, along with her retainers. That's nice of her. Alear encounters the Weird Little Girl again, and bandages up her hurt leg.

Alear decides that the whole raiding people for emblem rings thing can't stand (and besides, the king of Brodia needs a proper funeral, anyway.) So, they decide, despite getting spectacular levels of Bad Vibes from every single one of their emblems, to raid Elusia's main church to get the rest of the Emblem Rings back.

Unfortunately they get their asses handed to them by Sombron using the kings of Brodia and Elusia as sacrifices to revive himself properly (the latter of which happens right in front of the younger princess of Elusia; maybe she should've had Marth as her emblem instead). You get ambushed by four more of Sombron's goons; while you're distracted, Weird Little Girl, who was actually evil and Sombron's daughter, pickpockets you for your weird crystal and uses it to steal all your emblem rings; Sombron switches them to his side. Alear hauls ass out of the cathedral, ringless and emotionally devastated thanks to the one person who remembers them from before they fell asleep being essentially dead now. They're pursued by Weird Little Girl (whose name, I should probably mention by now, is Veyle) and Sombron's other goons (the Four Hounds), but get aided in escaping by chatGPT Ishtar and her retainers, who bring you two of the emblem rings which were previously on Elusia's side (Lucina, emblem of Awakening Pair Up, and Lyn, emblem of being a 0 weight ballista), as well as the weird crystal (sure helps that one of her retainers is a thief.)

Alear and company head south to Solm after escaping successfully; while protecting people from zombies, they encounter a fraternity house which is soon revealed to be the young prince of Solm and his retainers. He takes you to the palace, where everyone assesses the group for 30 straight minutes before going yeah you know what they seem like we can show them where one of our emblem rings are. You're taken to encounter the worst dialogue in the game before encountering a fairly fun princess and her two retainers, after which she lets you wake up Ike (the emblem of there being an enemy phase in this game). After defeating some bandits, you return to Solm Palace, where you find out that the queen has been captured by a teenager with no backbone. Said teenager with no backbone does not manage to kill her despite being traumatized about her dead dad, so she gets brainwashed into trying to do it instead by one of Sombron's goons (the color of old-fashioned film, specifically). She (along with reddish-brown, brownish-red, and lavender) are successfully defeated, freeing the queen of Solm and convincing the teenager that the villains aren't gonna bring her dad back even if she does everything they want her to. As a bonus, you get her emblem ring, Byleth (emblem of fe4 dancers). You head out to grab Solm's second emblem ring (Corrin, emblem of debuffs and Avo stacking) and meet a dancer, a bunch of corpses, and Weird Little Girl, who has no memories of doing anything evil. Nonetheless, you yell at her, and she runs away to reveal that there's another Weird Little Girl inhabiting her body.

After being rebuffed at Solm, Elusia tries to attack Firene again. On the way, you collect the teenager (Hortensia)'s retainers, and a femboy hands you the only emblem ring you haven't seen so far (Eirika, emblem of mediocre damage output). You reach Firene, and find out that Weird Little Girl was under a spell like Hortensia. Not only that, but the first town in the game that you rescued from zombies has now been burned to the ground under her orders. Whoops. You face down the six original emblem rings, Veyle, the Hounds, and the king of Elusia, back from the dead for emotional torment. After the fight, you grab Leif's ring off of the king of Elusia's rotting corpse, and Veyle, who's managed to cling to a little bit of her goodness, chucks Sigurd's ring back to you off her boat as she's being carried away back to Elusia.

You get to Elusia after a mandatory boat map and mysterious Emblem exposition, find out via Mauve and Outstanding Armor Knight Marron that Veyle's gonna be permanently evil now if you don't save her (and also that they're temporarily on your side so you can do that), and get Roy and Micaiah back. You get to Elusia Castle to save her, but find out she's gone back to Lythos (where your mom used to live) and have to play teleportation tag with the color gray. After you beat him, he tells you that you're actually a fell dragon and Sombron's child and you can eat shit, then leaves. Everyone takes about 5 minutes to process this, then goes Hmm. This has no actual effect on the stuff they do, though? and ignores it for the rest of the game. Alear still feels like shit about it, though. You also get Celica back.

Anyway, you go back to Lythos, where you find Evil Veyle and the two remaining hounds; Veyle is wearing a stupid hat that makes her good side permanently turned off. Outstanding Armor Knight Marron tries to break it, but only cracks it, and gets killed for her trouble by Zephia, who is one of the worse moms in this series but still doesn't beat Hilda. You fight Evil Veyle and get Marth back, and she turns normal for a moment before Sombron (who is also there) gets mad at her and tries to kill her. Alear, in a stunning display of judgment as always, jumps in front of her and gets their shit wrecked. Veyle finds out that you're her sibling and is so distraught that she becomes evil again for a few seconds until she meets you in the afterlife and gets told Hey Don't Kill Yourself. Make Me A Zombie. Upon which moment she breaks the brainwashing helmet herself and does, indeed, make Alear a zombie (so they can reawaken the emblem rings, which Sombron used for a second to bring back Atlantis while they were busy being dead). Zombie Alear reawakens the emblems, but uses up all of their remaining life force doing so and immediately dies. The emblems decide to use their Mysterious Boat Exposition from earlier to bring them back to life as an Emblem, and they get their body back (by possessing their own corpse). They are the Fire Emblem of this game.

Sombron fucks off to a portal in the sky that he opened by bringing back Atlantis, and makes a barrier to stop Alear and company from following him into it using three crystals he left on Atlantis. Alear and company go around breaking the crystals and getting exposition on underdone plot points. The first one gets you Zephia realizing she was emotionally abusive because Griss tells her as he's dying in a ditch, the second one gets you Fell Alear a thousand years in the past spending their time being terrified of being killed like Veyle almost was back when they took the hit for her (and the discovery that the two of them used to have a lot of other siblings. rip), and the third one gets you Lumera (back from the dead and a servant of Sombron now) trying to emotionally abuse you into not killing the final boss of the game and providing a little more depth to the character who died in chapter 3.

After you beat all of those, the final chapter takes you into the sky (where you were sleeping at the beginning of the game) alongside all of your emblems. They're not so hot on entering the portal, and nearly disappear in puffs of smoke initially thanks to the problems of crossing over worlds. Sombron decides to give a big speech on his motives here- how his entire species was killed thanks to a war over emblems and how he was banished to another world with only one emblem ring as a child after that. Then, the spirit of said ring disappeared immediately upon him acquiring friends, which was probably due to the stress of traveling between worlds but he interpreted as disappointment for making connections and decided to kill or use everyone he met from then on because he was sad about that emblem disappearing on him. After the plot dump, he summons the spirits of series antagonists to protect him while he closes the portal to trap everyone there. He does not succeed, and everyone goes home after killing him; in his last moments he hallucinates the emblem he was sent to Elyos with. After everyone goes home, all the emblems disappear thanks to interdimensional travel not being great for them, and Alear watches over the continent for the rest of their life.

The Good

Engage's plot is well thought through, overall. Generally speaking, few things are unprecedented in this game, minus the brainwashing, which shows up rather late; however, Alear being a fell dragon, the Emblems being able to revive the dead, zombies being able to retain consciousness sometimes, and the ability of the Emblems to perform world-shattering magic (beyond the revival miracle) is all foreshadowed from the first few chapters of the game. The brainwashing is also a series staple for the games this game is drawing on, like it or hate it.

Speaking of, Engage draws rather heavily from pre-GBA Fire Emblem for its plot beats. The utilization of lords that end up without a kingdom to return to, the lord that makes big mistakes, Mysterious Kidnapped Sisters, and the entire way the Elusian cast is written is more reminiscent of games prior to FE7 than post FE7. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just an observation that catalyzes some of my other takes. Although it may be responsible for some of the differences in Engage's perception between the West and Japan.

Characters in the main plot, for the most part, act in reasonable ways; though their dialogue choices may be somewhat silly, their actions themselves are not. Let's take a few examples:

Yunaka: A former assassin, terrible at hiding it, comes upon the Divine Dragon and a noble of the country that she's not supposed to be in (being that she is Brodian). Not only that, but she stole something that belongs to them, and then lost it. Instead of taking those odds, she instead pretends to be on their side, but feels bad and comes clean about at least the thievery after the item is recovered.

Diamant: Prince of a militant nation who realizes that it's bringing itself to the brink of destruction through its wars. Tries to stop his father from endangering himself and the nation, but to no avail; with his father dead and nothing but regret to show for it, joins up with his former enemies to save the world and, after doing so, brokers an alliance with them.

Hortensia: A young teenager trying to prove herself to a very results-focused and militant father. Takes a powerful weapon to hopefully show good results, but because she's inexperienced, loses; tries once more, and her father dies for her troubles. She is also convinced that her sister has been killed at this point, and is aware that the people who killed her father have the power to revive the dead. Tries to get them to use their power to bring back the people she's lost, fails, and nearly dies for her trouble.

Ivy: A princess of a nation hated the continent over, with the same militant father. Devoted to her living family, she almost sacrifices her life fighting for a cause she doesn't believe in to protect them. However, when her life is spared by the embodiment of the god she worships, she follows them to the ends of the earth.

Fogado: Young prince who likes to have a good time and be a fool sometimes. However, he uses his overall silliness as a way to get others to drop their guard around him, in order to assess if they're threats to his kingdom.

Zephia: A woman who's lost most of the rest of her species to war and her own overflowing magical power is exceedingly lonely. However, after being taken in by Sombron, her only example for how a family should work is that children are tools who will unconditionally love and obey you, and if they do not do that, they are defective and should no longer exist. Treats the Hounds in the way she's been taught to treat family.

Veyle: Exceedingly young child, incapable of even fighting (though her not-yet-adult siblings were forced to do so). Placed in stasis for a thousand years, waking up with all of her memories being of the time when she still had to live in fear of her father... then her father comes back to hurt her. With all of her siblings gone (as far as she knows) except for the one who cared about her enough to give her a token of their very self, she sets off on a journey to find them; when rejected by them, crawls back to her horrible family. When she realizes that her family is not only horrible to her, but to others, begins to rebel against them and finally fights back a spell placed on her to make her act in a way they were more happy with with only her own willpower. Quite honestly probably the best Julia-type character Fire Emblem has written to date, down to owning up to and atoning for her and her family's past mistakes.

Alear: This dumbass hasn't known love in the slightest and when they feel it for the first time immediately throw away everything for its sake. Whether it's to kill their terrible father, fulfill their adoptive mother's last wish, or save their sister, they'll do all sorts of reckless things out of love. But at the same time, they're a coward and a fool; they try to run away from their first battle, and refuse to acknowledge any threats that might come their way (only to repeatedly be slapped down by the threats they refuse to acknowledge). In a less kind world, they'd very much be in the role of Sigurd (or at least Leif). But Engage is a kind world.

Bouncing off of that- Engage being a kind world- let's talk about it. Though one can't say Engage's worldbuilding is masterful, it does have a couple of key qualities; namely, it's of the opinion that people are basically good (and this goes into the way the nations are developed.) Firene is a peaceful kingdom, even with fairly iron-willed rulers, because the people that inhabit it are mostly peaceful; Brodia, though warlike, can be talked down out of war through reason within a generation of seeing war's hardships. Though Elusians worship the Fell Dragon, most of them aren't bad people, and generally do so in order to hope that they'll gain the power to stop the constant incursions to their west. And the rulers of Solm, though clever and quick-witted enough to surveil their whole kingdom, generally allow their citizens to approach the world as they wish, even though it would be easier on them to directly handle problems before they happen.

Most people who do bad things are generally seen to be either mistaken or intentionally misled or too traumatized to know any better; this is a trait, I'll note, that is fairly common among Fire Emblem games. Though plenty of FE games do have genuinely despicable people, many have the main villains (and people on their side) be people who were once good, but became unforgivable through a combination of their mistakes and reactions to various things that happened to them.

Engage is notable for being heavily on the end of "nobody is truly, inherently an awful person for no reason"; other FE games with this sensibility to this extent include 1, 3, 6, and 7. 8 is close, but it does have people like Valter (who, cursed lance or no, are still kind of awful.) Is this a good thing to put in your writing? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

Either way, it contrasts heavily with its predecessor, Three Houses. You may be surprised by my choosing this point of contrast, but Three Houses, despite being on the surface a game about everyone being justified and having their own story to tell, really falls on its ass thanks to the way it tells its story.

Three Houses is a masterpiece of worldbuilding- I doubt anyone will argue with me there. Its general plot (ambitious young lady decides that the church is evil, goes on a continent-wide rampage about it) is also fairly well-developed; you get to see both the benefits and the downsides of the church on any route you take. Most of the playable characters also have reasonable justifications for their actions on any route, protagonist or antagonist.

Where Three Houses falls flat on its ass is the setup of the whole conflict in the first place. You see, it adds (in order to make our ambitious young lady less morally gray) a team of Generically Evil villains who are not developed even in the slightest. The only development they get is that they tried to nuke God but God had her beam shield up at the time so it backfired. Beyond this, they have no reason to act like they do, besides being mad that they lost the first time (they're not even treated poorly nowadays!) This is in contrast to Medeus II.

Medeus II is the big problem with the "church good maybe?" setup of Three Houses. Sure, you can grant that Fire Emblem games are allowed to have differing sets of morals for their characters- that's perfectly okay. But... Replicating the backstory of the main villain of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, with no modifications, and making her your strongest ally in the game, takes a lot of justification.

Granted, Rhea's oppression is somewhat different; she doesn't enslave a great number of humans (beyond making defying the church a death sentence and expecting tithing). However, she does essentially rule the continent with the expectation that defying her means death (though she's a nice person, so she might not kill you. You know how it is.) and in every other way is essentially the ruler of Dolhr. The backstory that justifies this is not only the same, but if anything, she's less sympathetic; Medeus, too, had his own people wiped from the face of the planet (by humans and Divine Dragons) and spent the better part of nine hundred years actively helping humans and making sure that dragons did not oppress them. Rhea immediately strongarmed humans into ruling for her.

Now, this doesn't make her necessarily unsympathetic entirely! Xane, after all, tells Marth to his face that he thinks Medeus is pretty sympathetic, and that Marth's own personal character is the only reason he's fighting alongside him at all. But it does require a degree of emotional investment from the player, and it does require thinking through the implications of character choices.

To a fairly large extent for its degree of writing quality, Three Houses has a tendency to fail at the latter. Characters do have a tendency to act inconsistently to their motivations, be portrayed in ways that are not congruent with their actions (moe-moe Edelgard on Crimson Flower is another example), or simply have the implications of their backstories not fully be thought through. Bernadetta consistently being a comedic character and her father being portrayed as not-that-bad-of-a-guy; Felix's distaste for dying nobly in war being portrayed as foolish by the entire story, but his fundamentally being treated as a guy who has a point in supports; the way the Ashen Wolves' conflict with their pasts and with the church is simply brushed aside so you can fight a cool dragon, etc. Three Houses is excellent at setting up stories with nuggets of really excellent information and good reasons for characters to do certain things, but flubs the execution repeatedly, and characters act inconsistently.

Engage, by contrast, has consistent character writing as one of its biggest assets. Generally speaking, whether they're annoying, boring, unhelpful, or nice, characters in Engage tend to act in the exact same way no matter where or when they show up. They will have the same level of respect for others, the same level of selfishness, and the same motivations, even if those motivations are not especially interesting.

Now, you may say that characters in Engage have less time to act out of character or be treated inconsistently by the story because Engage's story is shorter. That's a solid point, but as mentioned above, the Ashen Wolves' motivations are ignored within their very own side story.

Engage's characters being engaging is a matter of taste, of course, but I'll list a couple of characters (some that I like and some that I dislike) that I think are particularly key at demonstrating this consistency (even outside of a character gimmick): Alfred, Timerra, Kagetsu, Yunaka, Citrinne, Hortensia, and Panette. All of them have fairly defined personalities outside of a gimmick (maybe with exceptions in Alfred and Hortensia) and all of these personalities get follow-through in any situation they show up in.

Engage's characters are also treated as if their actions in the story have weight; many enemy-recruit FE characters are not given the option to explore that they were on the side that did horrible things in the past (this is especially a problem in Three Houses, but common in many Fire Emblem games). A standout in avoiding this problem is Path of Radiance; the Jugdral games make an attempt but, well, nobody talks much. Having Ivy and Alcryst talk about how he can't forgive her for what she's done or having Veyle constantly try to make amends hits a lot harder than whatever Revelation had going on, and most other FE games treat supports as if your characters showed up from the ether and started chatting rather than having ever been a red unit. This is something I think Engage manages to be head and shoulders over a lot of other Fire Emblem games with; though it can't lock supports beyond story progress in the same way Path of Radiance does with its chapter-deployment-based supports, it has later characters placed into your army when they join rather than "oh Raigh? yeah he's been here forever." Beyond PoR, the only other FE game I think comes close is Sacred Stones.

Beyond overall plot coherence and character, does it do anything interesting as a FE game that other games don't? I don't really think so. While it does have some fairly unique points (you being worshiped as a god, interdimensional travel as an actual plot element, mage dragons are back) I wouldn't say it does anything that is unexpected for FE. Besides maybe making you a zombie, which was a very neat point; I think that FE could do with making more "evil-coded" characters and actions be on the good side without pulling a Fates Conquest.

However, I'm still a devotee at the shrine of Kaga, and that man has written the same story eight times in a row now. I can live with that.

The Bad

Most of these things are present in other Fire Emblem games that are considered to have mediocre writing at worst, and their comparisons will be pointed out when appropriate.

Low villain variety/villains escape fairly often. This is a big one: beyond five one-offs, every single villain in this game is a major character that either joins you, escapes repeatedly, or in the case of one unfortunate soul, immediately gets eaten by a snake. Even filler chapters just have Corrupted bosses instead of actual minor villains; this is not ideal for funny meme characters, IS.

But for the actual impact of this choice: It lowers the threat that the villains pose. Whenever the Hounds show up again after chapter 14, you know that you're going to curbstomp them no matter what, so it doesn't matter. Also, the way that they simply walk off screen instead of using teleportation gimmicks can make it a lot more "why aren't you just killing them" than a lot of previous FE games. In addition, they aren't developed at all, despite appearing tons of times! You'd think that they'd have things to say about being defeated repeatedly, but most of them have zero chapter-relevant dialogue at all outside of their character gimmicks. It's extremely unfortunate.

However, a couple of previous FE games do have this issue; namely, FE4 and Three Houses. Plenty of other Fire Emblem games have the miraculously teleporting villain, but few other Fire Emblem games have them appear so frequently and actively lower villain variety.

FE4 has a lot of minibosses, to be sure, but they're all recolors of each other, and oftentimes have the exact same lines as each other; they're slightly stronger generics for all intents and purposes. The bosses upon whom the plot hinges, on the other hand, tend to fight you at least twice (especially so in gen 2: the only chapter without a boss that is later repeated is chapter 6.) and get conveniently teleported away for the plot to go on.

Three Houses' problem is that during the war phase it wants to tug on your heartstrings the whole time, but there aren't enough students in the game that are locked to one path to do that, so it simply repeatedly tosses the ones that are at you.

Neither of these have this issue to the same degree as Engage, though.

Dei ex Machinae and Diabolae ex Machinae: Engage does have a couple of these. In order: 1. Lumera dies despite healing because she's used up all her dragon power, but she luckily dies Exactly when she meets you again and not any earlier or later; 2. Veyle steals the time crystal from you while your back is turned, and uses it to somehow steal all the emblem rings off your fingers; 3. Zelkov gets you not only the time crystal, but the two rings back; 4. Veyle manages to depossess herself via sheer force of will.

Lots and lots and lots of FE games have these, but roughly similar ones for each include 1. Byron (FE4) and Hector (FE6), 2. The whole Sacred Stone affair (Ephraim route) and whatever the fuck happened to Falchion between FE1 and FE3, 3. There's a whole bunch of lunatic master thief shit going on in this series. 4. Hi Ninian!

Underdeveloped worldbuilding: I'm gonna be real, this was kind of a disappointment coming off of Three Houses. All the countries' history with each other seems to start 100 years prior at maximum. And it's not like you need a heavy story to have decent worldbuilding; FE6 has it. Though, as you may have guessed from what I didn't note... this is a problem with basically all FE games. Some Fire Emblem games teeter on the edge (Archanea is the big one here), but a lot of FE games don't have much at all: FE2/FE15, FE8, FE13, and FE14 all are at or below Engage's par on worldbuilding. Notably, most of the games with good worldbuilding are those that had a sequel to add to it in some way, even Houses with Hopes.

Weird pacing: Probably most egregious with the death scenes, but this game has a tendency to cut some things short and drag others out for obscene amounts of time. The things it gives time to develop (the Abused Kids arc, Elusia) get some excellent development; the things it doesn't often fall flat. Firene and Solm in particular feel like side stories to exposition (in the former case) and more Elusian drama (in the latter case), with everything about them jumped through in 20 minutes or so. Overall, kind of whack. These pacing problems are seen in most post-Kaga Emblems, due to Kaga having the grace of god to never shut the fuck up, which makes all of his writing consistently take forever. Even Path of Radiance has this issue! Good god, get it together, IS. Either learn to cut your story down to size, or start monologuing for 40 minutes prior to each chapter. There's no third option that's good.

Now we're done with that, let's move onto the unfortunate...

The Ugly

Most of these things are not present in any other Fire Emblem game considered to be written well. These are the egregious flaws Engage has that are not seen so often in other games.

Shallow and Gimmicky Characters: This is a big one. Most Fire Emblem games have characters that are either seen once and never again, or well-developed enough that they become interesting; it is not terribly common for characters to both be one-note and that they get to talk about their one note for all of their supports.

This is primarily a problem in the post-Awakening games; Three Houses has less of an issue with it, but it still has some (Raphael, Bernadetta, and Constance are some big ones.) I don't believe giving a character a backstory reason to act annoying as fuck is good writing, and it's often used as a fig leaf in this fandom for it for people who really love certain gimmicky characters, to which I say this: Look. It is fine to like a gimmick character. Truly. But please don't treat them like they are the works of Shakespeare.

Anyway, Engage has a number of these. Even for characters that are normally fairly well-rounded in supports, their introductions often revolve around their character gimmick, to their own detriment. And there are some characters (Amber, Bunet, Goldmary) who are truly nothing more than their gimmick in the slightest. It is fucking untenable.

Granted, in Engage's case I may be somewhat unfairly taking the piss; most other FE games post Awakening are not eminently ironmannable (with the exception of Conquest, and even that is arguable thanks to the incredibly strong units that you can't allow to die.) In an earlier game, these characters would just have their introduction and absolutely no other lines at all, which wouldn't exactly make them well written! But I think that having no lines at all is worse than having a multitude of them that are all really annoying. Almost every character in Engage has 10 or more supports. Please let Bunet shut the fuck up.

Regardless of why it is the case, it's still really annoying.

And the final problem: exposition backloading. Engage is a game such that the impetus for the entire story is backloaded in the last five chapters of a 25-chapter game. Plenty of other FE games have a last-minute exposition dump, I'll grant this; however, even those that do tend to have it be the unanswered questions from the story, rather than a third of the story! All the villains' motivations, all of your backstory, and all of Lumera's actual personality is locked behind twenty other chapters. Those twenty other chapters aren't necessarily written poorly by any means, but combined with the pacing issues above, it feels like Engage's writers wanted to tie everything up with a satisfying little bow. And granted, on a replay, one does see plenty of the foreshadowing that led up to some of the interesting moments in the game. Everything is fairly well set up... except absolutely nothing is treated as more important than anything else storywise, so you do not pay attention to any of the interesting foreshadowing to get your brain gears moving. Thanks, pacing!

Dialogue Choices

This gets its own section.

While I'm normally a fan of localization over strict translation, there are certainly ways of doing it correctly and ways of doing it incorrectly. While Engage has some silly moments in its Japanese dub, its English dub takes the route of increasing the level of silliness rather than decreasing it. In addition, the silly moments present in the Japanese dub are common anime phrasing quirks, whereas such quirks of phrasing are not as common in Western shows (even cartoons). In that sense, some of them may be too-strict translations, but that's up to the viewer to decide, and besides, the finished English product is what the viewer (that can read this post without a lot of DeepL) is experiencing anyway.

Anyway, some of Engage's dialogue choices take away from the story impact in certain scenes. This is fairly obvious to a lot of people, and I personally believe leads to a degree of distaste for the writing that is not justified by the strict plot beats. (As we've seen before, there are many things Engage executes well, and many failure states that it shares with other Fire Emblem games).

There are others, but I think that one of the most interesting choices was the translation of Sombron's species as "Fell Dragon". This is a dramatic and tension-building name for sure. I wonder what Japanese characters it could have been translated from?

"邪竜"

Ah.

That is "Evil Dragon" in Japanese. Alear's flashback speech to Lumera, where they die the first time, involves them saying that "Fell Dragons always have to die in the end... but I wanted to be a good dragon." The latter certainly seems like a childish way of phrasing it, until you realize that they're literally contrasting it with the name of their species. This poor phrasing takes away from an otherwise emotional scene.

Again, there are others, but I want to focus on choices that are poor in both Japanese and English here.

Yunaka's introduction (much as I love her) using a bunch of nonsense words takes away from the fact that she's a suspicious person obviously trying to play dumb by making the player think about how stupid the dialogue choices are instead. Sure, this could be intentional, but there are other ways to make her seem less suspicious initially without insulting the player's intelligence.

Alcryst's hilariously animated kowtow in his introduction again takes away from the seriousness of the scene, and makes it hard to take anything he's involved in seriously again up until chapter 10. Which isn't great, considering that's the last story chapter he's involved in.

Timerra's introduction involving her singing about meat in an off-key tone is just not an impression that she should be giving at all. She's the clever and protective princess of her kingdom; there are other ways to trick bandits into attacking you that do not take the player out of the action.

These are the three most prominent ones, but in general, Engage's dialogue does a fairly decent job of sincerely-yet-cheesily delivering story moments. When it goes fully cheesy in a way that is entirely unbelievable, it takes away from the tone it wants to take, and is unfortunately a damper on one's enjoyment of the whole story.

In general, though, Engage's dialogue is a lot less high-level reading in both Japanese and English; as someone who has to consult a dictionary every 20 seconds when I play games in Japanese, even I can tell the difference in word choice between it and Three Houses. It is not dissimilar to the GBA games here; the English translations of FE7 and FE8 did a particularly excellent job of making games with fairly childish dialogue in JP into all-ages but serious-sounding ones. I think I prefer that method over what Treehouse went with, but I can't say that their localization was inaccurate (besides the infamous Pact Ring conversations.)

Overall, when localizing things, I think the main intention should be to give your audience the same impression that the original audience would get (for all intents and purposes). I think that Engage's localization fails here, despite being a more "accurate" translation than, for example, Three Houses'. (Edelgard's extremely moe-moe act being carried over faithfully would have made that game a lot worse for me to play for 260 hours in English.) However, it can't be denied that Engage's dialogue is a lot more light to read than Three Houses, Tellius, and FE1-5. This is possibly to the detriment of immersion.

Overall Thoughts

So, is Engage a good story?

In my opinion: absolutely yes. It's well put-together, thought through, and has some emotional moments that rival some of my other favorites from the series. It may be cheesy, corny, and goofy at times, but it is to some extent aware of that cheese (otherwise, it wouldn't be written in kanji that are that much easier to read.) Does that impact its quality? I would say no, but it definitely does impact the experience of the story for many people; it's not great at getting one to suspend disbelief due to its pacing issues. Despite this, as an overall collection of plot points, it's one of my favorite FE stories, and certainly in my opinion the best executed of the modern era (from Awakening to it.) While having a slightly lighter overall tone than Awakening, it manages to maintain its tone better within serious moments; It has better everything than Fates (despite having a notable similarity in some plot points); and it is much more self-cohesive and complete than Three Houses, though Three Houses is still my favorite world over it.

Will you enjoy Engage?

That has nothing to do with whether it's a good story or not. But I do think that Engage's story is definitely a more FE1-6ish sensibility in that it does not give a damn about anyone but the protagonist and their cohort to an extent that really isn't seen in any game since. For western FE players, they may be entirely unfamiliar with that style of writing. For Japanese players, judging from the extremely differing reception, they remember it as "ah! my monshou no nazo has returned!"

(Now, is Mystery a good story? That's a post for another day.)

I hope that, if you managed to read through the whole thing, you choose to give me your thoughts in the replies. And I hope that it gave you food for thought. Thank you for reading!

Sincerely, the ghost haunting Shouzou Kaga's attic.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #engage spoilers #LONG POST #i'm not kidding. this is a long post.

17 notes · View notes

seancamerons · 11 months ago

Note

1, 13, 21, 24 & 28

What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again?

I tried to write more often in the past year, 2023 period. i think it turned out better because I've been more motivated to do better and write more. I'm more determined than ever to write the content I want to see or wanna see done differently. probably yes, i will continue the trend in 2024. it'll always be degrassi, i rarely get ideas for other shows.

-I answered 13 previously. -

21. Share your favorite piece of dialogue

This is a small snippet I liked writing from Faking it.

"I don't know, we never talked about that. Like what do you mean?" Sean sighed, "I was like Mr. Hero in the newspapers but I didn't feel like I was any of that."

"The truth is just that it was and it was a reality I didn't want to live in. I just hope if there ever was some weird alternate universe it didn't happen to me."

"I feel guilty I wasn't forthcoming, it was obviously a hard time but I didn't really know what you were going through."

"I'll be honest for the first time and the last time.

Putting in a read-more cut right here!

I didn't talk to Sauve, in fact, I don't think I talked to anyone at all about it. After the shooting, at first, I was just really sad. What I mistook for sadness was this feeling of numbness all over my body. When I wasn't feeling numb, I felt guilty about what my role was and I had a lot of time to think about that part, a lot of time. Time seemed to pass by so fast, I had awful nightmares things didn't turn the way they did so I was hardly sleeping. All the while, in the months afterward, my grades were abysmal. My social life faltered, shutting nearly everyone out even close friends. After that, I went through the motions that I was okay, like fake it 'till you make it. I just wasn't and I wasn't making it. It was probably more than obvious. It took a while for the images to escape my head, the thoughts that ran through me at that very moment. How many nights I wished I was simply gone so I wouldn't see it anymore kind of level of depression. Finally though, when I did feel fine though, everybody just wanted me to show it and that's where I struggled. So I just stuffed it and pretended and now I guess I'll be okay but it takes took time to get to that place. I'm not proud though because it can always come back."

She let out a slight chuckle bringing them back to the reality of their situation, "I guess you can say I'm a good actress." She became essentially a walking, living breathing shell of what or who she was. Nowadays and back then she was lost and not making the decisions or moves she'd typically make. She didn't know who she was anymore. "So yeah, to answer your question, it was hard."

Sean was saddened by this, "It's not funny though. It's serious."

"Did I say it wasn't serious?

"No," He answered downcast before he asked his friend beside him who had just confessed so much about her inner feelings. "Em, why didn't you talk to me?"

She blurted in defense, "I did," and then added, "I am."

"I meant like over the summer, last year I was a call or an IM away. You made it seem like you were perfectly fine and okay. We're friends, and friends talk." Sean uncomfortably lamented out loud. "You were like a goal to be, I wanted to be fine like you were or how I believed how you led me to believe or whatever."

"I didn't want you or anyone to see me like that." Emma remarked bitterly in a hushed tone, "pathetic o-or weak."

They stopped walking, and Sean faced her and softly told her, "You're not though, you're not any of that you hear me? You're strong, stronger than I wish I was. You always were to me."

The words fell freely as Emma found the words ever so easy to describe and quantify her thoughts for Sean. To see why she kept it to herself up until that moment she was never this honest about what she had gone through. "Even the strong have their moments, deep down we're not that different and even the best people struggle. It's not the end of everything in the entire world if that makes sense. It's something I wish I knew then and struggle with it now. Sean, you're one of the strongest people I know. Seeing you get the help you needed is something very brave and also important. I don't know what I'd do if something bad were to happen to you again. I feared what you'd do if something bad ever happened to you. Heck, I never thought I'd ever see you again as if you were gone forever."

"Forever is a long time, Em. You know, I couldn't stay away forever, is that why you looked back? I always wondered why, why did you look back?"

"Because I, I don't know."

"There's gotta be a reason."

"Albeit a stupid one."

"No, tell me. That's just avoidance, no secrets remember? I can handle it."

"Not sure you can but here goes, because, well there are lots of reasons. I thought it was goodbye for good. Sean, you're the only one who ever would be able to silently sit there and without any words or explanation know what I was feeling you know, about what we went through, and in one swoop or in this case, one drive by you was gone."

Losing support in Sean, or so she thought was support, they had just gotten on a good speaking path, the apology meant a lot and was one of the reasons she took the shooting hard. Toby avoided Emma after, almost blaming her for being the straw that broke Rick. Sean simply was gone to her. "We were supposed to be there for each other, friends do that. I know you needed to be away to deal with what happened and I'll never shame you for it because it helped you. I wish I had that kind of escape. I wanted to run away. I had nowhere to run though. It's not something we could've discussed over IM or the phone. It was a face-to-face sort of thing and I couldn't face you with my truth."

There were also a few things she left out, a conversation for another day she supposed. Now they were finally on the same page. Sean let her talk, he said to her once she finished. "Now that we're standing here and you shared some things, no judgment okay?"

Emma answered, "No judgment, promise? No matter what we don't hold this stuff against one another?"

"Promise." They both paused as they interlocked pinkies for a moment, he softly asked her, "How about now, are you okay?"

Emma shook her head no as if she needed to clear the air, "Not exactly but getting there. I guess I needed you here in town, but not in a selfish way. It's not 'cause I loved you in a romantic sense. I don't have some hidden agenda or we were wrapped up in some twisted and toxic relationship. I didn't want it to be like that. Like we are now but different in an indescribable way. At the same time, I didn't want you to see my bad side."

"You know I don't care about that stuff. Just because we ended, doesn't mean I disliked you. In fact, I thought of you often and hoped you were well. It's why I reached out. I guess a part of me felt a little guilty."

"I figured. I knew when we were together, we stopped talking about things that bothered us or upset us. The bad stuff, confrontation, and stuff are why we blew up the way we did in the past. We didn't communicate, we talked but not for real. Not like this. I'd be lying if I didn't hate it."

"I'm glad you shared all that, I feel that way too just replace some things with other things, and felt that way a lot. How does it feel now that we do communicate?"

She thought for a moment as if a weight was lifted from her as she smiled softly, "Better."

"You got to promise me, we have talks like this more often? I feel a lot better too. Us being friends, I like it."

"Promise, and I like it too." Emma echoed the sentiment as she softly replied with a grin. When he wasn't facing her, yet, she knew she had a few secrets left to tell and she only knew those pinky promises won't matter.

24. What’s something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

It didn't happen in 2023 necc., but rather an earlier work. I try not to change or switch gears this one had me do just that.

So for Backtrack (idk if others know, it's like a 10-year old semma fix it fic I've been tinkering with for too long lol😆)

I had this whole idea for Craig and Manny to reignite their past relationship to ultimately have an endgame because I guess I wasn't too big on Janny at the time. I DON'T KNOW, it was a long time ago.

Anyway, I was writing the big Janny split and I started crying while writing the big moment, (embarrassing). I was like, well shit. I wrote the fuck out of a breakup between them, I mean I guess I got into it because I actually started to miss them, writing them, giving them dialogue and such and I decided to throw caution to the wind, abandon my initial plan in favor of bringing Janny into epic romance territory.

28. How did you recharge between fics?

Short answer: I take breaks if I experience burnout or get busy with other things irl or otherwise, and revisit it later, or long answer: I don't period and that means a. I abandon, or b. i take a long hiatus from said fic until a new plot bunny comes along and it reinvents my love for an oldie, c. a secret third option which combines a and b. basically or completely abandon it because that's the thing I do if worse comes to worse if the muse never comes back or i just get sick of it, or write myself a corner where none of it works for me.

basically my fic graveyard goes like this:

orange car of secrets is one i abandoned and never saw through no matter how times i'd tried to figure out what to do. (abandoned sometime in 2014)

* I kind of blended some concepts of this fic in together forever, another wip that i lowkey abandoned but still have hope for. it got me through the pandemic era (2020) after all!)

starlet and the dealer another abandoned because it just is irrelevant, self-explanatory. after all, its a bit of a soapy au season 13, a romance between zoe rivas and zig novak, so i kind of didn't have a choice. who wants to read something like that, let alone write it, so next. (abandoned sometime in 2015)

i also have a ton of half-baked stories, upcoming chapters for other unfinished works, potential one-shots, and drabbles, fic prompts, and idk if they would see the light of day or are being worked on in downtime and may show up once i promise or stick to my promise to finish just one!

I've been writing fics of the semma persuasion for the better part of a decade, over a decade so it's just common. I feel comfortable knowing these characters I typically write, as if they were my own but I create some bg or original characters to support the canon mains, and play like they're sim characters or something I don't know, but it's fun to write and I've become more comfortable writing au's and random newbies/oc's as a result of writing more, I think my vocab has grown a little better too.

(i'll leave you with a fun fact: ) fun fact: the initial title of my most recent work in progress (where are you now?) was lucky and there is/was a really shitty version on an older account from years ago on fanfiction, it's been reworked and retooled since (thank god).

to be fair, i was like 14 when i came up with the idea and it showed. it was VERY bad. some things remain from it, it was very melodramatic (not that where are you now? isn't) it's just I can't explain, I was so wrong and naive tbh.)✨

💌 thank you for the ask! if anyone is willing to send asks about fics and other things, don't be shy.

#asks #maya-matlin #fic #fic rec #answered #writing #writing tag #degrassi #semma #emjay #emma nelson #sean cameron #fanfiction #writing stuff

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honeyhotteoks · 2 years ago

Note

I’m sorry this is going to be a little long… oops? I finally have a long weekend and now that I’m home I’m ready to dive into TNT (which I’ve been holding off for so long it’s insane I didn’t cave in earlier lol)

“Yunho would recommend we all stop drinking water if Mingi said it was a good idea.” I actually giggled at this and scared my parents’ cat lmao T^T This is hilarious and I already love the character dynamics! Also, kudos to woo for helping mc by giving her lozenges, I already love his character juygtfdfghj (I have a feeling he’s gonna be my favourite)

Oh gosh Mingi’s “it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you” and Yunho's “I’m just worried about you, I want you safe” had me melting on the floor. T^T

As someone who finds… the whole abo thing slightly… *sigh* how do I put it nicely? A lot of it goes very close to the nc category and always manages to make me uncomfortable especially since boundaries are not set before and just... Yeah. So, the fact that they’re talking about it beforehand and setting boundaries makes this so much better? I mean I know you said that ch 3 borders on dubcon, but they did talk about it so I guess that worked out well?

Bruhhhhhh I LOVE HOW YOU’VE WRITTEN MINGI HERE JKHTYRDFGCHJH the no-nonsense, level-headed guy~ T^T (who also runs away when things calm down lmao... Well... We can give him this one though, the aftermath is quite awkward)

JKGFVHKJIU You’ve got me all blushing and giggling with the dialogue especially the “Alphas are meant to provide,” He reminds you, “so let us.”

I love the awkwardness and the lingering feelings that are there throughout chapter 4~ And the last line obliterated me jkhgfjlui T^T She just wants her yungi T^T

OKAY CAN I SAY I LOVE JUNG WOOYOUNG? Remember when I said he’s gonna be my favourite in the beginning (lol I started writing this ask like… 3 hours ago oops?) I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON FOR THAT HAHAHA~ Can I get work friend!WY too please?

Oh gosh, okay Seonghwa! LMAO I love how he took the whole thing in stride. We love an unphased man~ And he offered himself up for the next heat??? AND THE WAY HE DOES IT OML. “you’re pretty, I’m pretty.” I was literally rolling on the couch in laughter.

Oh gosh, Sannie being the voice of reason is so on brand. (And side note, the whole, “but being a romantic doesn’t mean you have to let people hurt you” seems like such a San thing to say I— *sob*) I honestly love chapter 5 so much? Can’t wait to see how the friendship between mc and woosanhwa grows (because I literally love them so much rn ahaha) and how things turn out with yungi~

P.S. sorry if this is weird and feels more like a smash of random words jskmsns T^T I'm always kinda nervous to send asks but I loved the fic so much I just had to tell you ;-;

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! okay so i was literally giggling and clapping my hands reading this review i LOVE it thank you so much for taking the time. it means so much to me that you would do this 😭

but also YES to work friend wooyoung, like in my opinion he just has the makings for the perfect best friend character and there's so much more to come with him and the MC here. he's the most fun to write every time, he gets to have the best dialogue lol

also regarding your note about dubcon/noncon, i couldn't agree more! i'm comfortable reading both of those things if called out clearly in a fic, and i recognize why it's a kink, but it's really a sensitive topic that isn't for everyone and should be handled delicately. that was a big reason why i wrote the consent scene pre-heat in, and i'm glad that resonated with you! i've mentioned this on the blog before, but there will be a noncon scene in a later chapter between the MC and another character however, i just want to be clear it is not actually sexual, it's more just the implication of it and reader grappling with being an omega and feeling like she doesn't have the autonomy she wants to have. i really hope that is taken well by everyone, but just wanted to mention it again since you talked about it and for any other readers that may not have seen my earlier note.

also wait yes protective mingi / alpha mingi makes my brain spin. i'm excited to write yunho later on being a little more self assured about everything because he was leaning more hesitant in earlier chapters and letting mingi take the lead.

thank you SO much for your comment again, you pulled out some lines that honestly i was really proud of when i wrote them, so this comment means a lot.

#answered ask #this night together ask

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azurefishnets · 1 year ago

Text

Yuletide Letter 2023

Hello, friend!

I’m excited to have you join me for this Yuletide Exchange! I hope you find something that resonates with you here and thank you so much for taking this on! Feel free to mix and match as necessary; in all cases, all listed characters do not have to be included. I am 100% open to treats of all kinds, visual/non-writing included; they’ve been marked open for this exchange always.

You can always check out previous letters if the prompts here don’t grab you too. And, as always, please know that my order is alphabetical and doesn't mean I want any one canon or any one prompt over any other. If I've requested it for this exchange, it means I would be ecstatic to receive anything from any of them. My previous letters are also still good if there are prompts that speak to you from there!

Candy Hearts Exchange 2023 - Yuletide Letter (2022)

I am also azurefishnets on Ao3.

LIKES:

worldbuilding

sensory details (textures and smells especially)

unusual interactions (anything from slice of life to full adventure!)

puns and wordplay

cool symbolism & unexpected parallels

relationship level ups, whether that means platonic bonding or friends-to-more, etc

non-mundane AUs (no coffee shop, school, etc)

fandom crossovers or fusions (but taken seriously, not cracky unless specifically requested)

missing moments

emotional support/intimacy

demonstrations of physical caring/loyalty

OKAY WITH:

any tense

any amount of plot or none

out-of-the-ordinary story structures

any amount of dialogue from none to screenplay

character explorations

characters appearing that aren’t requested as long as it doesn’t go against my DNWs

DNWS:

non-requested romantic relationships, or ways of writing requested relationships as infidelity

hurt without comfort

underage relationships, non-canon children

pandemic stuff / terminal illness

any kinds of consent issues as regards developing a relationship

FINAL FANTASY VI

Celes

Terra

Edgar

Sabin

I wasn't expecting to see FFVI back on the list this year but the rules change means I'm going to lean hard into prompting More, since at any given time I’m probably thinking about this game. So many questions and trails left to explore! I still love the cast, the setting, the various unanswered questions, especially surrounding the War of the Magi, relics, and the Warring Triad. Any of these questions explored in context of prompts and characters would be exciting. The World of Ruin, with its reopening of old wounds, is especially interesting to me. Hidden secrets from an obscured past… please lean into this stuff!

This group is probably my most used party (min-maxers don't @ me, I like who I like) and I like it as much for the implied party dynamics as their combat usefulness! Estranged but reunited brothers becoming friends with the weird war crimes magic women is just unparalleled to me. Any moments between any two of them or three of them or four of them in any of the places where they actually could be in canon (or, if they are somehow traveling together post-canon) would be just wonderful. I particularly like caves, ruins, and/or links to the world that was...or the world that was before that, during the War of the Magi. A moment while escaping Kefka's Tower together would be cool, or post-canon reluctant adventurer Terra getting dragged along on some trip by the enthusiastic brothers (like maybe some found War of the Magi ruins or something? Beyond the ancient castle, that is. Or books from the Figaro library? I'd love to see ways Terra could reconnect with some aspect of her heritage via history either known or discovered). Or formerly magic ladies relearning how to do extremely mundane tasks together. Or, just, these extremely powerful and forceful people and then, there's Terra who is also extremely powerful but is also not terribly forceful...the other three might enjoy assertiveness training with her (whether she herself would enjoy that is up to you). Or I'm always happy to see these characters aging and trying to change the world in different ways this time...

Fandom DNW: Any romance between these characters. A lot of focus on slave crown times for Terra. Kefka as redeemable.

GHOST TRICK: PHANTOM DETECTIVE

Alma

Cabanela

Jowd

What I love about this triad, in both the romantic and platonic senses, is the sense of tension and balance; they're always kind of orbiting around each other and the game isn't shy about symbolic parallels, so they're just this incredible push-pull that just so happens to include a frankly amazing amount of (sometimes pretty unrequited) loyalty from Cabanela and, post-game, a lot of what I imagine as extremely awkward gratitude/heretofore unrealized attraction (???) on Jowd's part. Alma just happens to neatly fit in the middle as a fulcrum and (I'd hope anyway) sometime moderator/instigator, and how lucky that both she and Jowd have two hands!

As far as writing them goes, for prompt purposes you can split them, you can write just two of them or one of them and that’s just fine, as long as no infidelity is implied if and when you go in a romantic relationship route. I’m also OK with Cabanela being the world’s most fantastically annoying yet fantastically loyal friend to Alma/Jowd, if romance isn't your bag. All I really ask is that you put them in situations and make them figure it out (and possibly kiss. If so inclined. You know.)

If you're looking for prompts, I'm always excited for worldbuilding, although it's not specifically nominated, but there are so many things about this world they live in that are so interesting! There are robots! There are ghosts! There's some kind of cold war??? There are tiny submarines that can be run by only ten crewmen! I just think there are tons of situations you could throw my OT3 (or, I say conscientiously, my OTP+1) at. But slice of life situations are also extremely good, and I'm happy for fluff any time.

If you prefer visual prompts as a writing starter, I'm particularly taken with these excellent OT3 dynamic charts from @mcnuggy, especially F1, G2, K2 or K3, but really feel free to choose from your heart if you use these! (Jowd being pink (of course), Alma being blue (of course), and Cabanela being yellow (sorry, Cabs!They didn't have white or red!))

Fandom-specific DNWS: Cabanela & Yomiel friendship or reconciliation, having the old timeline be remembered by everyone, unexamined xenophobia if writing any person with blue skin.

LEGEND OF HEROES: CROSSBELL DUOLOGY

Any

I love this whole series! The worldbuilding, the lore, the fantastic slice of life moments… I'm Crossbell-only this time but I'm always fine with pulling in lore from the other arcs, although please mind my DNWs! But anyway, I especially love the interesting locations in Crossbell. The Stargazers’ Tower, the Temple of the Moon, the Ancient Battleground… feel free to explore some of the worldbuilding here! Or go more slice of life: I love the vibe and look of Armorica so much, but I'm also very fond of the west side of Crossbell City, Downtown, the harbor...

I'm fine with anyone or any group of someones from the tag set, and I'm fine with any of them being platonically friendly with each other but no ships here please. As far as dynamics go, I'm really interested in KeA's powers, as it were, as the Zero Child, versus KeA's powers of just being an adorable cutie. For instance: Dudley & KeA growing a reluctant (on his part) friendship, or Sergei becoming de facto uncle before he even really had time to register it... I also like, very much, the growth the SSS experiences in learning to make functional and caring found-familial relationships. Any moment exploring that, and/or exploring the SSS's bonds with each other rather than only theirs with Lloyd, would be great!

Fandom-specific DNWs: Romantic relationships between any of the tagged characters, spoilers from Reverie or Daybreak.

SABLE

Captain Singh

SARIN

Sable

Simoon

Worldbuilding

What I very much enjoyed about Sable, beyond the exploring and collecting elements (although those wonderful locations to explore!! The Eyrie! The Crystal Plateau! The Bridge of the Betrayed!! You could worldbuild me right into delight by merely exploring the setting of Sable and I would love it. Anyway...) was the huge selection of unsolved mysteries, from the revelations at the Watch, the presence of the multitude of remains from the wars against the Wyrms (not to mention the implications about Wyrms and hoverbikes), the Hicaric remains' entire deal, the Chum Queen, the Mask Casters, SARIN...nothing is ever fully explored here and I love that tension of what the player discovers vs what Sable just knows and accepts about her world. As said before, you could worldbuild any amount of things and make implications about Midden and I would be delighted, but if you can also somehow capture that feeling of Sable (or some other Glider) exploring that communal memory and experience. It's really implied that the Gliders don't and can't discover anything particularly new in this little corner of Midden--but the Chums may belie that, at least for Sable? It feels like she has an entirely unexplored path if she goes down the Chum Priestess road.

As far as actual prompts go, there's so much I want to know still that I hardly know where to begin. It was a devastating realization that Simoon had to go back to the Ibexii tribes; it truly felt like Sable had to say goodbye to absolutely everything she knew in order to become an adult. If it's like that for every Glider, it's no wonder that some might choose never to return rather than formally give that up. What might one of those wandering Gliders' lives entail? What does one do when your only purpose is never to have to let go of being a child but in doing so one has to truly let go of everything? It's kind of like Peter Pan and I wonder if there are diegetic tales of wandering Gliders used to teach lessons.

There's also the question of Simoon and her possible sentience; what does she remember of her former companions? When she is reset back to basic parts does she lose that experience? Does she feel any connection to the Wyrms, or to the Hicarics?

I would also like to know more about Captain Singh and SARIN. What was their relationship like as the humans had to fight for survival on Midden, as they had to adapt and learn to live with the Perpetual and the presumable radiation/dust which posed them such a threat that they adopted the mask traditions as first a protectant and then a matter of culture? SARIN's overseen so many generations--did it know when it was forgotten? Does a hologram dream of electric ships?

Finally, I'm awfully interested (and pretty saddened) in what drives these people to maintain a capitalist economy when the land is so harsh and they would be much better served with a mutual aid and support system that does not require currency in order to function...they are so few in number and resources are so sparse. Just...why? It seriously broke my heart when I realized that the Ibexii live where they live because they can't afford anything else. Simply? That's fucked up and I want to know more.

SEA OF STARS

Garl

Valere

Zale

Worldbuilding

Oh, this game grabbed me and it grabbed me hard. Of course the parallels and references to Chrono Trigger and other classic RPGs got me but I also got grabbed pretty hard by Garl/Valere/Zale. Like...the sheer loyalty of them to each other. The saving of a simple clay cookie jar for nearly ten years in the hope they'd see each other again. The sacrifice. BOTH sacrifices. The tearful parting and equally (on my part anyway) teary-eyed reunion, only to be literally star-crossed lovers for most of the rest of Garl's life except for that one day a year and then Solen and Luana doing their immortal duty until they are, at last, forgotten (Although I have my own thoughts on The Messenger continuity tbh). The parallels and paradox of godlike immortality against someone who has seen death and come back. That's one experience they can never share, and man the tension could be delicious... Anyway. Yeah. T-T Do you see my vision. Do you understand their tragedy.

Um, anyway, I'm also really really interested in the world Studio Sabotage appears to be building here. I watched a longplay of The Messenger and I'm catching up with the ARG and man there is a ton of connecting lore! But I'm definitely more interested, at least for now, in the present and near future of both worlds that we see in Sea of Stars. The presence of Garl and the diverging timeline Re'shan created suggests that they're now heading toward a different future than the Messenger's...

Anyway. Exploring one of those birthdays where they're all getting older but only Garl looks it...some kind of slice of life or small adventure there would be cool. Or Mirth over the years? Or Mooncradle, now that there are no more Solstice Warriors to cradle...how does Garl change things there...? Or, heck, vignettes from the Garl & Wentworth world tour after Valere and Zale leave! He barely got to see the Sky Kingdom and that's just unfair.... Or maybe stuff as Garl nears the end of his second life and they meet for the last time... I'm OK with leaning into a bit more tragedy here because it's just so damn compelling to me to explore their changing dynamic over time.

Also, if you enjoy visual prompts, the same dynamics charts from earlier might be helpful here! No specific thoughts on color choices here but I do like Valere and Zale getting to have more character and life than we really see in-game. Them getting to be silly or teasing would be a welcome shift from how serious they have to be all the time (and man, isn't that a tragedy in itself? They never even really got to be kids or even non-Solstice Warriors at all, despite what Erlina and Brugaves tried to achieve with their (really stupid) plan. Aephorul truly won there...)

Or, if you do not want to write the triad, please feel free to lean hard into worldbuilding. I'm fascinated by the Queen That Was, the abandoned bird cult buildings, the Lost Ones enclave... the Docarri ruins, the Clockwork Castle, the swamp... all the locations are honestly so good and so compelling you could do anything set in them or exploring their purposes and I'd be very happy!

Fandom-specific DNWs: Valere and Zale being interchangeable paper-dolls, writing them as though there is huge age-difference after Valere and Zale stop visibly aging, Valere/Zale & Garl, any of the villains (if they even come up) being treated without nuance or acknowledgement of the complexities therein.

I can’t wait to see whatever you do! Thanks again for reading and see you on Yuletide!

#writing af #yuletide letter 2023

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