#I experimented a lot with the water so if it seems inconsistent that’s cause it is

[talkinowlaboutit]

I really enjoyed this scene. Enough that I actually did 7 fully colored pages. I rarely color so this was tough for me lol

@gladumf

[tiannarosetarot]

Your Love Life In October | Pick-a-Card Reading

It's been a while since I've done one of these so I wanted to come back with a pick-a-card reading for what might be happening in your love life during the month of October!

There are 3 piles in the image below. See which one resonates with you, and scroll down to find your specific pile.

If you would like more information on your reading, message me for a tip-based extended reading!

And if you just want to help support me so that I can continue to make more readings, all feedback and tips are super appreciated! My Venmo is TiannaRoseTarot 💖

Pile 1

Seems like you've been feeling a little depressed or worried, probably having some nightmares lately maybe about your connection or about love in general. If you haven't been in a relationship for a while you may be feeling bad about yourself or questioning whether you're ever going to find love. It seems like these fears are bigger in your head and it will be most helpful to put work through them or put them aside because while they do feel authentic they're not necessarily accurate.

We have the Fool so you're starting off into a new connection this month and trying new things in general. Maybe you don't have that much relationship experience already so everything could feel new to you. There’s this feeling of childhood innocence in this connection. We do have the Ace of Water or Cups so this will be a really emotionally deep connection, and it does seem like a new relationship will be starting for you in October or soon after. You're in those early stages right now. Your person does see you as really attractive and an amazing person. It seems you are becoming more self-confident and it’s showing on the outside. People are sensing some shifts in you, maybe emotionally or physically that are causing you to be more attractive. Now, you may typically be a more courageous person or you are being called now to be more courageous and confident. Maybe you’re typically more independent and you don't really feel like you need somebody, but that doesn't mean that you don't want to be in a relationship. So it's important to stay determined and believe that you can have it.

Now on top of that, we have the oracle cards Courage so it’s clear that you are being called to step forward, maybe take a bit of a more proactive role in your love life. Then we have New Moon in Virgo, “a time to give rather than take”. It seems like when you do get into a relationship this will be a good balance and it may be helpful for you to focus more on giving but also make sure that you're not putting in all of the work. This also just connects to feeling more confident in yourself with the Virgo energy and because we're just finishing with Virgo season right now this new relationship could already be in the works so just be patient and see what happens. The Courage card also represents Libra energy, so lots of important things happening this October. We also have the card Leadership, just continuing to encourage you to step forward make that first move, maybe whatever you feel resonates, but you may need to step out of your comfort zone a little bit in order to make this relationship happen in the way that you want it to.

One thing to be aware of is love bombing, so if they seem to be inconsistent. If you have a situation further down in the relationship where you are starting to pull away and then they start to come forward and show you all of the reasons why you fell to them in the first place just be aware that that could be potentially harmful if they're doing it in a more manipulative way to get you to stay with them and then go back to just not seeming to care. But we do have the card “they wants what's best for you” so it seems like they might not necessarily be doing this intentionally and they do really care about you like they want to be with you and they don't want to lose you. They might just not know how to go about that so it's important to communicate because they do learn from you. They want to know how to help, they want to know how to be the person that you need and your own action on yourself might inspire them to take action to improve themselves as well. This person does see you in their future want to be with you.

While this does seem to be in quite the early stages it's definitely moving forward in the month of October so be patient see what happens. Don't be afraid to take a jump and see what happens. It’s definitely scary to take risks but it seems like your feelings/actions will be reciprocated.

Pile 2

So you have been through some stuff, maybe we're seeing some form of the betrayal, maybe even being cheated on, poverty or a major financial loss, just feeling lost overall. Throughout all of this, you've stayed strong taking care of the things you need to, becoming really smart about handling your own stuff.

If some of these things happened early on in your life you may have had to grow up kind of fast and may have missed out on some important parts of your childhood. The Six of Water or Cups is indicating that you can go back you can still be a kid, maybe now that things have kinda calmed down a little bit you'll be able to revisit some of the important memories from your childhood and get back to your center. If you are in a relationship right now there is a chance that some of these negative things will happen or are happening in your current situation but I think you'll kind of know if that is what's going on.

We do have the Love card which is of course a super good sign to get in a love reading, so I think if you're realizing this you need to get out of whatever connection you might be in right now there will be another one that is better for you, so don't worry. We have the Full Moon in Scorpio, “time to release negativity”, so it does seem like those negative things are going to come to an end and you'll be able to focus more on happiness that is coming into your life this October. The Love card has Libra energy so, with that and the Scorpio card, it seems like these changes may occur in later October or early November so it might take a little bit longer but it is still happening. Then we have the card Prosperity. So if you have struggled with what the Five of Earth or Pentacles is referencing of poverty or financial loss or insecurity, you will be reaching a new state of prosperity financially as well as in love. Maybe for the first time, your material and financial needs are actually going to be met, and it seems like your emotional needs are going to be met as well.

Then we have the card love-bombing just like came up in Pile 1, but I have a feeling that this relates to more of a past negative relationship when maybe you got cheated on or maybe you just felt betrayed because of that manipulation. It does seem like this person is looking at your social media so they probably still think about you but we're done with that I'm moving on, it was not a good position for you to be in and there are better things coming. This person may also be thinking a lot about your past conversations, they're kind of reminiscing on the memories that you guys shared together. I have a feeling that overall you know that this is not the best situation.

This card could also refer to your new relationship coming in October. Maybe they're thinking a lot about what to say because they don't want to mess it up. The next person seems to care a lot and maybe there's a little bit of intimidation because they know how much you've gone through and how you've grown from that. They don’t want to be the one to ruin your glow because they can see that you are just finally starting to get back on your feet after some negative events in your past and they wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize that.

So overall despite what you guys might have gone through in your past or in your childhood there are changes coming in October and then into November and lots of love going around, so let’s start spreading more positivity and happiness and prosperity.

Pile 3

There's some powerful energy here with two major Arcana cards and two court cards. You seem to be a very passionate person but you still tend to be a bit more on the practical side. You’re more grounded or you are being called to become more grounded. You may be some type of artist or creator, but no matter what you put your mind to you put your all into it. So before getting into a relationship you want to make sure that it's correct because you don't want to put all of this time and energy into something if it doesn't work out.

With the Hanged One it seems like it might be best for you to kind of try to release some of that control because you don't really get to know ahead of time whether a relationship is going to work out or not. So relax a little bit more, enjoy it, ask the universe to bring you what you need. You might be the type of person who is not afraid to go out and get or ask for what you want but instead of going directly, it might be best to ask for the universe to provide this instead. Focus on manifestation and then let what things happen in the way that it needs to. This is important because it seems like there may be multiple different options or paths that you can go down. You’re kind of staying on the outskirts right now because you are not sure which path to take. I'm hearing that you want to go full speed ahead into a relationship and when you get into a relationship maybe you aren't afraid of it going quickly because when you feel more confident in yourself you're allowing things to happen. But since you don't know which path to go down, maybe there are two good people that you could be in a relationship with, or maybe you have some opportunities that are not directly related to relationships but one or another could bring you a different kind of relationship. You have all of these opportunities in front of you and you have to choose which one you want to take. So try to release control a little bit.

It's really important to focus on grounding, if you've been working on that more during Virgo season and now going into Libra season you can be focused more on just reaping the rewards of your hard work and of your manifestations. We have the Full Moon in Taurus, “your dreams need a practical plan” so again you may want to focus more on grounding; figuring out what you truly want and then if you are a go-getter or somebody who likes to take action you'll be more confident in your decision. And then also just remember that you are safe no matter what happens. You're being protected so if you do jump a little bit headfirst into a new relationship without necessarily knowing how it's going to go, things are still going to work out for you. It just might take you a little bit longer to figure out where you need to be.

Now at the same time be a little bit cautious. Look out for any red flags because they may exist that might even help you to make your decision if you do choose to go forward with any of these different options that are being presented for you. Then also trust yourself. Trust your intuition and what you're being called to do. The universe does have your best interest in mind as long as you make it clear what you want. This relationship may be happening within a few months, so right on track with what this reading is focused on, October. This is going to be somebody who you can laugh with, I feel like you guys are going to make each other smile and have lots of positive emotions. Not that there won't be anything negative but you guys are going to be a great match together and you'll be able to handle these difficulties that you might go through. It seems like you won’t have to be so focused on the relationship and making that work; it'll be more of a sense of security that'll help you through other more difficult things in other aspects of your life.

Overall trust yourself, trust the universe; the universe is going to direct you in the right way so although you might have a lot of options you're going to be able to come to some type of decision.

Thank you

so much for being here, and I hope you enjoyed this reading!

Reach out if you have any questions or if you would like a tip-based extended reading!

Have a great day!

[spacerangersam]

Okay I can't get this dumb au out of my head so let's just go for it - The Goes Wrong Show Ghosts au.

Chris Bean inherits an old theatre (the Cornley Theatre) after a distant family member's death and decides it's the perfect place to put on his shows. He drags along his friend and trusty stagehand Trevor and the two begin trying to fix the theatre up.

Chris can see the ghosts that haunt it after a near death experience (that's obviously caused by Robert), and Trevor can't. But he does believe Chris after the ghosts haunt him for a week straight. Speaking of the ghosts, in no particular order you have...

Robert, a WW1 soldier who died the day he became an officer in the theatre that was being used as a training base. He has the power to touch things, though it takes a lot of energy, and uses said powers for chaos. As he should. Died via heart attack after a bomb unexpectedly went off near the theatre.

Sandra, a 1920s flapper who used to sing at the theatre. She has the power to talk to people through spirit boxes, microphones and recordings but it's very inconsistent, much to her annoyance. Died after accidentally being knocked out the window during some mid show, ahem, mingling.

Max, a 1960s janitor who worked at the theatre just for the chance to watch shows for free. He has no powers, but he is by far the happiest to be there, which is sort of a power in itself. Died after slipping on his own cleaning supplies and falling down the stairs.

Vanessa, a Victorian lady who was given control of the theatre after her father's passing. Her power is sight, as in she can occasionally be seen by people, which is a shame she since she'd rather not be seen at all. Claims she died of stress after a show went horribly wrong.

Dennis, a medieval jester who worked and lived in the castle that was on the land where the theatre is now. Sometimes people can hear his bells ringing when they walk by, and he is convinced he's possessed by a demon, though he doesn't seem that bothered by it. Died after accidentally drinking poison meant for the king.

Annie, the youngest of the ghosts, a 90s stagehand turned actor who performed the occasional show in the theatre. She can mess with the lights and the sounds/music if she tries hard enough. Died via electrocution after a leak in the roof caused water to get into some of the equipment she was holding.

And Jonathan, a...well, nobody's actually sure. He's very vague on when he died and his past, and no can remember when he showed up. All he has to give away what time he came from is his underwear and socks as he is otherwise naked, and they're not much help. He can make things levitate, but only if they're very light. No one has any idea how he died. If you ask, he'll say it had something to do with a grand piano.

[logicalbookthief]

Things Left Unsaid -- An Analysis of Rei & Touya

Apparently Rei has been getting a lot of flack lately, all of it undeserved, and since I had a post analyzing her relationship with Touya in the works already, I figured no time like the present.

Disclaimer #1: There are a lot of issues with the writing for Rei’s character that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the storyline is using her, which I will address and examine.

Disclaimer #2: I’m someone who, while always curious as to what kind of relationship Rei had with her oldest son before he died, never thought it would be revealed that Touya was close to his mom. I don’t think you get the Dabi we see in Chapters 290-295 without him being so warped by his relationship with his father yet so dependent on his attention that he was willing to kill his brother and himself simply for his father’s acknowledgement.

But that’s what I find so interesting about Rei and Touya -- it’s a relationship that mainly consists of regrets and things left unsaid. There isn’t the anger or resentment Dabi feels for Endeavor, because that intense level of emotion sprung from the loss of the father who used to be his whole world. His feelings toward his mother seem more amicable, but also more distant.

And while she could’ve done some things differently in regards to her oldest, I want to make it clear that the distance between them was very much by design.

After all, Touya was the end goal of their marriage. It was never any secret as to why Enji wanted to marry her and to some extent Rei must’ve realized that this child was not meant to be hers: the child was the transaction, the thing she was needed to create, to give to her husband. Of course she loved Touya and was likely his primary caregiver for most of his life, but there was no doubt that once his quirk manifested and he could begin his hero training, his life would be dominated by his father. Which is what happened.

Here, I would like to point out something I noticed in the flashback chapters. We never see any panels of Enji alone with any of his children during their infancy -- even with Shouto, the perfect child he longed for, we see Rei holding Shouto, sitting by him as he sleeps. Enji is there tangentially. Once Shouto begins his training, that is when we see him with his father.

So to see Enji with Touya when he was a baby, prior to his quirk manifesting, strikes me as a big deal. But it makes sense if you remember that he’d placed all his hopes, dreams and expectations on his firstborn. Initially, it doesn’t look like he even considered the possibility that Touya wouldn’t be his successor or that his little eugenics experiment would fail; this was his first, most optimistic attempt at a masterpiece. So I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to see him spend more time with Touya right off the bat (it’s what will make the eventual abandonment all the more crushing).

However, Rei isn’t seen at all in the snippet of Touya’s infancy, despite us knowing she was relegated to the caregiver role. Rei is literally out of the picture. Compare this to how she features prominently in Shouto’s infancy or how we see her holding a baby Natsuo. You could argue that, hey, we don’t see her holding a baby Fuyumi either, but there’s other scenes where Fuyumi’s attached to her mother’s hip or crying over her being hurt. Things that suggest a closeness, when the only scene we get of just her and Touya is one where they’re at odds. 

As we move further into Touya’s childhood, though, Rei becomes the only voice we hear advocate for him against his father. I’m referencing two specific instances:

When Enji coerces her into having more children to replace Touya now that his father has deemed him a failure, something she knows will hurt their son deeply.

And after Touya lashes out at Shouto, which Rei doesn’t blame on Touya, but rather on his father. She delivers such a satisfying condemnation of his actions, probably the most cutting one Endvr’s received to date, and it so accurately sums up one of his major character flaws.

How can you call yourself a hero when you can’t even face your own son?

The tragedy of it all is that Rei never said any of this in front of Touya -- it was always said in private, just to her husband. That alone took courage, yes, but it would’ve meant everything to Touya to hear her condemn his father aloud. Instead when she does speak to him, she says this:

It’s why I can’t wrap my head around that scene in Ch 302, where after Enji admits he didn’t know what to say to Touya, Rei replies, “Neither did I.” 

When we’re shown in flashbacks during that same chapter that she did understand her son. “He just wants to be acknowledged by you” is quite the indication that she, at the very least, understood the cause of Touya’s turmoil even if she couldn’t fully relate to it herself. So why can’t she say any of this to him?

The answer is in the way she addresses Touya, as it is nearly identical to how Nao addresses Tenko in this scene:

Both Touya and Tenko grew up in similar households: the father had all the power, physical and financial, so the mothers were left to try and comfort their children in a way that didn’t go against their husbands’ desires -- and so, to use Tenko’s own words, they would “reject them with kindness.”

So it’s no wonder that Touya lashes out at his mother after she suggests he pursue other things. He isn’t five like Tenko was, he’s thirteen and has a much clearer understanding of why she says this and why it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s aware of her situation, too.

Just as she was bound by her family, who wanted her to marry Endvr for the money and status, he’s bound by the expectations of his family. I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone else touch on this detail, but when Touya states that he knows his grandparents sold his mom into marriage so his dad could have a child, we could infer that Touya knows enough to realize that his mother might not have necessarily wanted him.

Not him specifically, but any child — the story has neglected to flesh her out beyond her marriage and motherhood, so we have no idea if Rei wanted to become a mother prior to this arrangement, despite how much she loves her kids now — although it is possible that he might’ve internalized it this way.

So you have Touya, who at least knows with certainty that his father wanted him to exist, yet he comes to understand that his father only wants him if he can meet a specific set of expectations, and if he cannot, he’ll be discarded. If he can’t surpass All Might, he can’t fulfill his reason for existing and his father will have to replace him. So to have his mother urge him to follow a path other than becoming a hero would mean, to Touya, accepting that he is the mistake he fears he is. Of course he isn’t going to respond well to that.

I don’t like when people try to compare Touya’s reaction in this moment to Shouto’s when Rei tells him he isn’t bound by his father’s blood, using that to paint Shouto as the “good” child and Touya as the “bad” one. They didn’t react differently because of any innate sense of goodness or lack thereof -- they reacted differently because the situations are different.

Telling Shouto that he didn’t have to be like his father comforted Shouto, who only knew his father as the bully who hurt his mom. He associated his father, and his father’s fire, with all of that fear and pain -- and thus, he associated the part of himself that took after his father with those feelings. She wasn’t denying his dream of becoming a hero, only assuring him that when he became a hero it could be whatever kind of hero he chose to be, that he wasn’t doomed to be like his father.

Whereas what she tells Touya sounds a lot like what his father told him, which was to give up on being a hero and pursue other aspirations.

Encouraging Shouto to become his own version of a hero still falls in line with what Endvr ultimately wants, which is for Shouto to be a hero capable of surpassing All Might. Whereas this is what happens when Touya continues to train to do that against his father’s wishes:

This is where the framing begins to bother me and where Rei’s characterization becomes inconsistent. 

So in this scene from Ch 302, we see Enji abusing his wife for “letting” Touya continue to train, punishing her for her “failure” to stop him. Obviously, none of that is Rei’s fault. If anything, Enji would be more responsible for preventing Touya from hurting himself since he’s the reason his son is hurting himself in the first place.

Moreover, the fact that he hits Rei over this sort of muddies the water of an previously-established narrative. Since the Sports Festival arc, we’ve known that Endvr abused his wife because she tried to interfere with Shouto’s training. It got to the point where she was terrified of her husband and it drove her to a breakdown. Why introduce this new aspect to the abuse, when it was already established that a) he was physically abusive and b) his motivations for abusing her were explicit to the audience? 

I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense that a man who hits his wife for one reason could find another reason to do it and justify his actions to himself. And while the scene does portray Endvr in a bad light to show how wrong his actions are, literally draping his figure in shadow, why does it even dare to suggest the idea that Rei was remiss in her duties as a mother? Again, the scene isn’t even necessary, since the narrative has long-since showed the audience that Enji abused his wife. 

By itself, the scene would read as further exploration of how Rei was victimized and how it affected her children. When you look at it with the chapter as a whole, though? Remember, this is the chapter where Rei claims that all of the family shares the blame in what happened to Touya, displacing some of the blame that rightfully rests on Enji. 

But my major gripe with this scene is how it reframes the sole moment we get of Rei and Touya alone. Because we know that Rei understands Touya, based on her confrontations with her husband in Ch 301 & 302. Rather than encourage him to be what he wants or acknowledge that his father is in the wrong, however, her advice falls in line with what Enji wants -- to stop Touya from training. And this comes after a scene where we see Enji beat his wife when she doesn’t stop Touya from training.

With all that in mind, it could potentially be read as Rei trying stop Touya for the sake of protecting herself and the family -- I don’t think it’s coincidence that in the scene where he hits her that we see Shouto, Fuyumi & Natsuo all as witnesses who are very distressed by what’s happening to their mother -- at the cost of Touya’s need to be validated. And if executed well or at least better than it has here, that wouldn’t be a bad choice of narrative per se, and it would fit into the pattern where the households the villains were raised in -- notably Shigaraki, Dabi & Toga -- mimic the society they live in, just on a smaller scale.

Except. Does that sort of narrative make sense based on what we already know about Rei?

Certainly, it is natural to want to protect yourself under physical and/or emotional duress by appeasing your abuser. This sort of complicated dynamic appears in the Shimura family, too. Just like in the house that Kotaro built, the Todoroki family revolves around the desires of the abuser and is dictated by his whims.

I would argue that Nao does give us a well-written example of this narrative. From the beginning, it’s established that she loves Tenko dearly. But in the house her husband built, there’s no room to love her son as he deserves. She prioritizes the feelings of Tenko’s father for the sake of maintaining peace in the household and this is established quickly and plainly.

Early on in the flashback, Kotaro exerts his control over the house, while Nao + her parents look uncomfortable. Despite this, we watch as they comply with his rules, all at the expense of Tenko’s feelings. When she stands up to Kotaro at last, it is not where Tenko can see and already too late. It’s a painful story, full of regret and sadness, but it is consistent from start to end. Nobody feels out-of-character or there to prop up anybody else.

So why doesn’t Rei feel as consistent in this narrative?

Because it doesn’t fit with everything we knew about Rei prior to her abuser’s subpar redemption arc.

The way she interacts with Touya would make sense, if this was how she was portrayed from the start. However, her behavior in Shouto’s flashback -- where she was first introduced -- contrasts what we get in the later Todoroki flashbacks.

Let’s compare this to the scenes in Ch 302. Here, Rei interferes on Shouto’s behalf. She advocates for her son in front of Shouto where he can hear. She stands up to his bully/villain and tries to protect him, while also validating his feelings in the process. Directly after this, Enji hits her, not for failing to comply with his demands, but for defying him. 

It is difficult to reconcile this Rei with the Rei we get in Ch 302. And if you try to find an in-story reason for the inconsistency, the options either do a disservice to Rei or make things even more painful for Touya. But I’m sure most of you have realized that I’m going to suggest a reason for this inconsistency that goes beyond the canon.

Because when Rei was first introduced in the story, Endvr was unequivocally the villain in the Todoroki family, not some misguided patriarch trying to atone for his “past” mistakes. Years later and in the midst of his redemption arc, the narrative seems to be intent on making this man more palatable to readers, and it’s used Rei at every opportunity to prop up his efforts to be better. Often, though, it takes some of the heat off Enji by displacing it onto other family members, most significantly Rei & Touya.

Like, you can literally see the difference in the frame from early in the manga to now:

Ch 39: Endvr trains his five-year-old to the point where he’s throwing up due overextension and being punched by a fully grown adult who is also his father. Rei tries to protect her son and gets slapped by Endvr. All the blames rests squarely on Endvr, who is clearly the aggressor and painted as the villain here.

Ch 302: Endvr hits Rei for not preventing Touya from sneaking out to train, knocking her to the ground. Again, Endvr is clearly the aggressor, but oh this time it’s not driven solely by his selfish desires it’s also cocnern for his son; Rei is the victim but oh she also should have been watching him more closely, and oh well why was Touya going out in the first place, when everyone has told him to stop and he knows his mom will get punished for it?

Honestly, I can understand where some people have mixed feelings over Rei’s character, particularly since the writing has done her such a disservice recently. With that being said, however, it takes a minimum amount of critical thinking to recognize that while you can criticize some choices she made, you cannot hold her to the same standard of accountability as Enji, it’s absurd. The power imbalance was obviously tipped in Endvr’s favor, always.

It is a shame, too, that we can’t have more discussions that don’t turn into some readers (a lot of whom are attempting to make Endvr sound less horrible than he actually was) trying to demonize her. It’s doubly a shame the story itself doesn’t bother to flesh her out as a person, instead using her as a prop, because the complex relationships she has with Touya -- with all her children, really -- has plenty of room for exploration. 

Like, there was no reason to add this new dimension of resentment due to her spouting Enji’s words back at Touya, when there was already a source of tension supported by previous canon -- the neglect the Todoroki kids suffered because Rei couldn’t be the parent they needed, due to her declining mental health and eventual breakdown.

Or, if you want to complicate their dynamic further, why not add something that focuses on Rei and has nothing to do with Enji? We learn in the flashbacks that Rei agreed to the marriage more-or-less to please her family, lamenting that she “intended to smile through it to the end,” essentially admitting that her hope was she could grin and bear it. It is telling that she had this attitude before entering her marriage; evidently, she was raised with the idea that she should be acquiescent to her parents’ whims and not express herself if she was only going to be contrary. Maybe she didn’t know how to deal with Touya’s very expressive, very emotional outbursts as a result. And her inability to respond would be the exact opposite of what Touya was seeking.

Not to mention that Touya died, and for the last decade, Rei was under the impression she had lost her son forever. He died while she was hospitalized, torn up with guilt over what she did to Shouto, only to find out that her other son died in a frankly horrific manner, and she could do nothing. By the time she would’ve found out, it was too late to even try to do anything. I can’t imagine what she must’ve felt in terms of regret alone, plus her grief. And I’m still mad we were robbed of her reaction to Touya being alive, because now suddenly there is a chance to do something, to change what was once written in stone.

Or what about Touya’s feelings for his mother, that have yet to be given much depth? As the oldest and most aware of his existence, it seems like he was the first to truly understand his mother’s situation and I can’t help but wonder: If Touya knew he vessel for his father’s ambition, and his mother was sold into role of creating/caring for him, did he question her love for him? Once he found out one parent’s love was conditional, it wouldn’t be a leap for him to consider it for the other. And yet if that’s true, Dabi doesn’t appear to hold any ill-will towards her for that. He was angry at her hypocrisy, because he knows she should understand, but her words to him didn’t reflect that.

All of that is fascinating and so much better than what we got in canon, so far at least. I’m hoping for them interact in the present at least once before the end of the series, and I think they will, but as to how satisfying a reconciliation it’ll be, I guess we’ll have to wait to see how the Todoroki plotline progresses from here on out.

[cancerjupiter]

💨 air moons💨

If the Moon is in Gemini, Libra, or Aquarius, one adjusts oneself to the inflow of life experience by first assuming an intellectual detachment to assess things objectively through logic, or to test what is at hand using familiar concepts or theories. This tendency can of course lead to too much analysis, and a lack of clear decisiveness; but the potential for constructive and intelligent forethought can be valuable, and it is a quality often lacking in those with Water or Fire Moons.

gemini moon

If you multiply the fluctuations of the constantly changing Moon by the eternal changeability of Gemini, you arrive at some inkling of this Moon sign. It is the very opposite of stable and predictable. The strength of Gemini Moon is the quickness with which they react to input and to other people, and the rapid connections they can make with many ideas and possibilities. They adapt quickly to changes and their perceptions are often intriguing, motivated as they are by endless curiosity. In fact, they constantly need a variety of mental stimuli to keep them feeling alive and developing. The major problem for these folks, and for those who try to relate to them intimately, is that they never seem to know who they are for very long. They scatter their sense of identity and inner security along with their diffuse concentration. Emotions are a rather foreign territory for those with Gemini Moon and somewhat baffling for their illogical and fluctuating nature. They therefore need to communicate verbally about their emotional life to find some mental clarity about their irrational and changeable feelings (although sometimes talking endlessly and tiresomely with no resulting clarity). In short, they need to verbalize their emotions in order to feel connected with them. And, in close relationships, these glib and flirtatious individuals often continually experiment with their feelings, first expressing one thing and then another—to the profound dismay and frustration of their would-be partner—as if their chronic inconsistency and changeability have no impact on the other person.

This Moon sign is perhaps more averse to commitment than any other, and their emotional superficiality does not help the situation. There is a pitiful lack of touch with the subconscious, and although there is endless logical analysis of motives and rational examination, there is no change. This is only one manifestation of the dual-mindedness of this Moon sign, wherein one part of the mind does not know what the other part is doing or thinking. Contradictory reactions (even simultaneously) and unfocused thoughts and emotions often lead those with Gemini Moon to spread themselves too thin.

Gemini Moon desperately needs mental variety and learning of all kinds. But the primary challenge to them as they grow through life is confronting this question: With all these ideas and “facts,” do I have any depth of real knowledge, and with all this learning, have I gained any understanding? At their best, Gemini Moon people are witty and amazingly skilled in a vast number of areas, and they also have a lively communication style with a diverse array of people. At their worst, they seem possessed by—and thus at the mercy of—their own thoughts, leaving them endlessly perplexed and confused. They are also sometimes so subjective that they will not really even notice the other person with whom they are so actively talking and “communicating.” Grant Lewi also wrote perceptively about the intellectual pride of Gemini Moon:

“The picture of yourself that pleases you best is that you are an exceptional intellect to which the world listens to thankfully. To be as intellectual as you would like to be is a big order and may take more application than you are willing to put on it. Cleverness pleases you better than profundity. You would rather be funny than fair, exciting than stable, provocative than studious.”

Those with Moon in Gemini are often very clever, and they like to emphasize it, but their overly active minds, and their attempts to figure everything out through intellectual theories, can make them chronically unhappy. Despite the intellectual pride referred to earlier, their self-image is unstable, perhaps most of all because Gemini often finds it difficult to believe in anything. There is often therefore a confused self-image—and thus sometimes also an unclear sexual identity.

Women with Moon in Gemini are very talkative, very social, project a level of nervous energy in everyday life. Being around anybody with Moon in Gemini, there is a highly energy-charged atmosphere. The men share these traits with the women but also seem to be more like the types that “get around,” who are always on the go, doing something, giving somebody a hand. There’s a lot of versatility in both sexes, interested in many kinds of people and activities.

Emotional reactions are light-hearted, cool and startlingly versatile. Feelings flit like butterflies and are just about as hard to catch. To some, all the colour and brightness is irresistible. To others, the display is much too hollow, too unemotional, too fickle.

libra moon

Like Gemini Moon in the tendency toward indecision, but not nearly so scattered, this Moon sign weighs everything in their minds before reacting to any experience. One can get a feeling for this Moon sign by imagining a combination of the fluctuating Moon and the Libra symbol of the “scales of justice,” which oscillate up and down, continually adjusting even if a feather’s weight is added to one scale. Libra Moon often balances off whatever interpersonal input they receive, usually doing so gently. They take personal relationships seriously and pride themselves on fairness and being able to see the other person’s point of view. This tendency of putting themselves in the other’s situation, more marked in Libra than in any other zodiac sign, can be carried so far as to see them lean over backwards to please the other person—often even ignoring their own interests. Thei need to beliked that motivates much of their person-to-person behavior, to where it can undermine their highly valued objectivity. The desire to avoid unpleasantness can lead to relatively superficial, placating responses that may not be completely sincere—occasionally verging on flattery. They easily lose themselves in the other’s energy field and become confused about where they end and the other begins. Their spontaneous reactions are unconsciously modified by how the person they are interacting with is reacting!

There are, however, people with an imbalanced Libra Moon who exemplify one of two extreme modes of expression: either those with the tendency to please others and avoid any appearance of disagreement even to the extent of hypocrisy; or the occasional unpleasant ones who make it a point to be especially irritating and aggressive, as if to show you they don’t care what you think. In the first group, despite the powerful urge to play nice and pretend kindness, they seem almost unconscious of other people’s real thoughts and feelings. And of course, the second group would never in any situation bother in the slightest with anyone else’s thoughts or feelings. With either extreme type of Libra Moon personality, there is an inability to relate deeply and authentically.”

In both of the “imbalanced” types of Libra Moon just mentioned, the result can be a rather lonely life, something that is difficult and depressing for anyone with an emphasis on Libra, the sign of partnership par excellence. Libra Moon folks need sharing of ideas and idealism in life, and without that dynamic interchange and companionship, they do not feel secure or fulfilled. One sometimes wonders if there is deep down a profound fear of personal intimacy with some of these people, the emotional reactions often being so inhibited, regulated, and unspontaneous. One could easily interpret the motivation of the aggressive group mentioned above as a way of guaranteeing that no one likes them, thus making a close relationship, wherein they would have to give of themselves honestly and openly, completely impossible. This type of Libra Moon is completely self-centered and insensitive to others, and very exclusive in their views of other people and in their social lifestyle. They are also extremely opinionated. Although even the more pleasant and considerate Libra Moon folks can be very opinionated (even though they rarely acknowledge their true views in case it would cause disharmony), the irritating type of this lunar position is usually rigidly opinionated in a way that makes true communication a hopeless impossibility. People with this Moon sign often seem to lack intellectual confidence and thus seem unable to be comfortable with the natural Libran ambivalence toward important ideas. They then retreat into a safe opinion that does not have to be questioned or shared. The truly balanced Libra Moon personality can readily handle many sides of any issue or concept with impartiality.

aquarius moon

Those born with the Moon in Aquarius are the ultimate nonconformists. They instinctively react to most experiences in an unpredictable, often eccentric way. They will respond in a rather contrary way if you say, do, or expect anything that is socially or intellectually conventional. Independence is their primary guiding principle, and they pride themselves on their objectivity and intellectual integrity. In many areas of life, they are extremely experimental, and they rarely take anyone’s word for “truth” or as an ultimate authority—a quality that does not endear them to most of their bosses, supervisors, or even close friends, who may be far more knowledgeable in a certain field. Aquarius is after all the sign of the truth seeker; and it is the most scientific sign of the zodiac, in the true experimental sense of the word.

These guys feel most secure when exercising complete personal freedom of ideas, self-expression, and innovation. They need freedom like they need air, and they habitually rebel against too much restraint or anyone who tries to control them. Periodic radical life changes (social, geographic, domestic, or intellectual) provide some of this desperately needed personal space, rejuvenating and nourishing them, even though it may be difficult for themselves or their partners to endure. They have a rather odd emotional nature that infuriates and frustrates more conventional, predictable people, and this leads to their reacting eccentrically to many situations. The fact is, although they seem coldly mental, aloof, and sometimes even without normal human feelings, their emotional pressure builds up over time (since they find it impossible to keep in tune with those bothersome and murky passions and embarrassing needs); and it eventually explodes in impulsive, radical actions, or in sudden changes of plans or viewpoints. More than any other, Aquarius is a sign of extremism.

This Moon sign must be socially involved either directly with many people (such as in teaching or organizing conferences) or through publishing, social activism, or politics. They have an emotional need to affect large groups of people. Their humane understanding of broad human and social needs is actually much more perceptive than is their understanding of the needs of individuals. In fact, they often like studying entire societies or languages or other global issues, and the social sciences are frequently fields of interest for them. Aquarius Moon people identify with a society or with humanity as a whole. Their impersonal approach often elicits criticism from others about their aloofness and “coldness,” but in fact that very detachment enables them to respond to the emotional crises of others by remaining objective and staying above the turbulent and confusing emotional level. They are great friends and need to have friends that they would do anything for. You can tell them anything, and they’ll understand. They are utterly trustworthy, reasonable, and straightforward.… You discover how irrationally loyal these folks can be. Cool and detached they may seem, but they stick like glue to the people they love and respect. They stay in situations long past what others could handle and put up with.…

In fact, Aquarius Moon people rarely find their sense of security with family or physical relatives. They feel especially uncomfortable with such groups and the obligations and social protocols involved. They always seem to feel dissatisfied with their parents’ lifestyle and lack of communication, and sometimes that feeling of dissatisfaction extends to the country or culture of their youth. Therefore, they not only feel the need to detach themselves from the “oppressive” family, parental, and cultural influences, but they also sometimes extrapolate their dissatisfaction onto all of society and often expound many types of social protest. Good examples are John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, and Lady Diana. A streak of rebelliousness thus pervades their memory of childhood and parental influences, and this affects their lifelong behavior in society. They insist on freedom from social obligations and conventional values.

The automatic contrary streak I mention above manifests in interpersonal reactions, in ways of thinking and discussing ideas, and in lifestyle. But it is the emotional contrariness and independence that sometimes cause them difficulty in relationships through others’ resentment or feelings of alienation. There is often an aloofness toward the sensitivities of others. Aquarius Moon folks prefer to maintain their stable focus and broad perspective than to be drawn into what appears to them the endlessly confusing morass of emotions that many people would like them to indulge in.

A dislike of routine and a strong need to prove self-sufficiency. A thread of separateness in relationships always seems present, as does unconventionality. Security with excitement is a major hard-to-achieve goal in life; needs constant stimulation within a fixed environment. I’ve had several close relationships with Moon in Aquarius individuals and none of them put any pressure on me to be any different than I am; they either accept or reject people but they rarely put anybody on the spot. I find Moon in Aquarius individuals to be straightforward once they’ve opened up. I always find myself confused in trying to figure out the independent yet sentimental nature of the Moon in Aquarius.

Both sexes can fixate for quite a period (sometimes days) on some extreme mood—either negative or unshakably upbeat. But the men were usually far less analytical about their current emotional state. In fact, whereas men with Aquarius Moon are usually seen to have remarkably steady moods, perhaps too steady in the view of many people who would like them to be more obviously responsive on a feeling level, women with Aquarius Moon seem to focus on their emotions and moods and then act them out in quite an extreme way. 

These people are very detached in daily life!! You can never tell what they are thinking or feeling, often they seem not to be listening at all! They dislike hassles and can withdraw at the drop of a hat, becoming very hard to reach or read. They are very matter-of-fact, very independent, self-assured when they do respond. They usually have something “different” about their lifestyles or interests. They usually have a very liberated sex life, experimental and blunt towards it.

[fireemblems24]

Post Grondor Field AM Analysis

I'm prefacing this by saying that I'm still not sure I can write a good analysis of this scene for two reasons:

1. I don't know what comes after, and

2. I'm very emotionally involved in what happened.

But I tried my best. One thing is for sure though, what happened in Grondor in AM was an incredibly significant turning point for AM and Dimitri and my thoughts and analysis on it will definitely expand as I keep writing about and playing the game.

Part of me is just so happy I got to see Dimitri's supports, have the inevitable turn around, and get to do things like tea and dinner time again that it's hard to be objective about this scene.

And by "this scene," I don't mean that actual fight at Grondor, but everything from Fleche's attack to Byleth's words in the rain later.

It wasn't all about Byleth . . .

Given how poignant Dimitri's character arc has been so far, I had a deep rooted fear player-pandering would ruin it. Byleth, as a concept, isn't bad, but too often the heaps of praise feel underserved and other things (like Claude's intelligence, Edelgard's relationships with everyone else) get ignored to make more room for player-pandering.

Thankfully this did not happen. Byleth, throughout the early chapters of AM's part 2, failed to reach Dimitri. And, honestly, seeing Byleth actually struggle for once has done wonders for how I view her character. Still, I worried that player-pandering-power, rather than something that felt earned, would cause the inevitable eye-opener for Dimitri.

But it wasn't just Byleth. Fleche's vengeance kicked everything off, what veered Dimitri away from his fate in other routes. He accepted his death at her hands, not bothering to defend himself. Rodrigue stepping in the way and his parting words forced Dimitri to confront things he'd ignored. Throughout AM so far, people have posed questions to Dimitri who refused to answer them because he didn't want to face what they asked. But Rodrigue dying for him, spending his final words telling Dimitri to live for himself - combined with Fleche's attack - forced Dimitri to confront things he avoided. It wasn't until after all of that when Byleth steps in.

And Byleth didn't "fix" him either. Dimitri's supports show a young man who's still very much struggling with his mental health, poor self-image, his previous actions, and wondering if he deserves not only to live for himself - but if he even deserves to live. Byleth didn't hand-wave Dimitri's problems away.

Everything about the scene is stronger because it didn't fall back on player-pandering, but more earned, realistic, and dramatic actions and consequences - including Byleth's involvement which felt far more earned than usual because of prior failure.

But I wish Dimitri's friends played a bigger role.

Not everything was perfect though. I wish we got a little more than we did from Dimitri's house mates - especially his childhood friends Sylvain, Ingrid, and extra special mention to Felix and especially, especially Dedue.

Throughout all of AM, none of the above mentioned characters feel utilized to their full potential. This isn't a problem exclusive to AM, and by all means it's far from the biggest offender, but given how close all the ties are in AM, it's felt when it's not there.

I still don't know what exactly I would've done with them. Maybe I'd need to make the game an actual novel to do it, and you can't forget how perma-death has historically held back games at times, limiting major moments to a select few "retreat" candidates.

Still, though, getting a bit more from Ingrid, Sylvain, Felix, and Dedue would've made the scene even more powerful.

I actually really liked the scene in the rain.

I haven't made it a secret that I dislike Byleth. Or maybe disliked is more accurate. Lately I've been rethinking my stance on Byleth, in part because I've heard from people who like her or found ways to make her work and from my own thinking about the game while planning future write ups.

I don't think it's Byleth I really dislike, but the player-pandering. Separating the two isn't easy, but it's easier since I've starting coming around to seeing Byleth as her own character.

There's been a few moments that made me care for Byleth, and this scene in the rain was one of them. Because she didn't just fix everything. She tried and failed for months to reason with Dimitri, and despite everything she never gave up on him or failed to keep offering her hand.

I'm not going to lie. I got all the bubbly, heartwarming, heartbreaking feels the writers wanted me to in this scene. Seeing Byleth reach for something and fail, and then finally, finally get through was rewarding in a way many of Byleth's prior accomplishments aren't because this one felt earned. And by God did she earn it.

Some people will likely disagree with that last point, but I disagree with them. She asked Dimitri hard-hitting questions, forcing him to come to unpleasant conclusions rather than trying to force him into anything. She kept Dimitri from veering to far off course, even at expense to herself when she killed Randolph. She saved Dimitri from Fleche when he refused to save himself. She quietly supported him, coaxing out the good she knew was still there and refused to give up on.

I'd never in a million years say someone in real life should put up with Dimitri's toxic behavior and verbal abuse, even considering his extreme trauma and aggravated mental illness. But seeing someone fuck up so badly still get forgiven, still get supported, still struggle but honestly change for the good, still get loved, start to accept and forgive himself through the power of love and forgiveness from others is very powerful, especially since media so often downplays those "softer" things as weakness in comparison to the "badassery" of ambition and stoicism. Using Byleth, who previously had little experience with feelings, who was encouraged to experience them in healthy ways by Dimitri, return the favor isn't really the worst choice.

It's cliche, but cliches aren't always bad.

The mentor dies. Redemption in the rain. Revenge against the protagonist's actions opens their eyes. Etc . . . This scene was chuck full of cliches, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Tropes serve an important narrative purpose because a writer can rely on them to convey a message to the audience that either saves time or sets them up for something unexpected or even expected. Fire Emblem has always and will always be incredibly cliche and full of tropes. It loves tropes so much there's in-universe ones that make some unit or character discussions sound like a foreign language to people outside of or new to the fandom, talking about "Ests" and calling someone a "Camus."

What matters is if a story pulled something off well, not if it's terribly unique. A mentor dying is powerful because it forces the student to grow. Redemption in the rain is high symbolic of water washing things away + the somber atmosphere rain creates. Someone trying to get revenge against a character provides an eye-opening experience about the ripple effect of their actions. We see these things in fiction all the time because they work.

All the tropes worked like expected in this scene. Using images instead of cut scenes did make less of an impact, but more on that later.

Tl;dr: There's nothing unexpected or terribly unique about what happened. It was honestly painfully predictable, but that doesn't make it bad and is in a series that does this all of the time.

The voice acting carried because those images can't.

A major downside to this scene is that it used vague images instead of a cut scene. I get that budget and time were likely concerns, but many cut scenes from earlier in the game seem rather trivial. Did we really need that dance one? Really? I don't think so.

This was a hugely important, action heavy moment. Using one or two still images to convey everything that's happening and all those emotions, really makes it less than it could've been.

That said, the voice acting saves it. I've raved about how amazing Chris Hackeny is as Dimitri, so nothing new here. Rodrigue's and Fleche's VAs also did a fantastic job. No one oversold or undersold the emotions. Even without the cut scene, you felt what happened thanks to the skill of the actors. This scene would've been so much harder to engage with without them, if this was an older FE game where all you got was text. This is 100% one of the moments highly elevated by the decision to have a fully voiced game and choosing high caliber talent (let's not talk about Radiant Dawn's voice acting).

Questionable support timing.

One issue I had came right after the scene when I viewed Dimitri's supports. The nature of some - like his with Raphael and Alois - didn't quite line up with the character I saw in dialogue right after. I wish they staggered them a bit more or got picker about what you could get in part 1 or 2.

This isn't limited to Dimitri either. In the same support batch, I also got a Marianne B support where she still had no confidence or self-worth. And then like 10 minutes later I talk to her in the monastery and she mentions about how seeing all the death in Grondor made her value her life even more.

In the past, I've also received entirely valid opinions that Dorothea in part 2 is hard to understand because she's cherry and flirty in her supports, and morose and hates the war in her monastery stuff, making her seem inconsistent.

It's a bit jarring. It's not really an issue for characters who don't change much like Edelgard or Raphael, but even for characters with more subtle differences than Dimitri, Marianne, and Dorothea - like, say, Lorenz - you get a lot of weird stuff because of supports. I just think Dimitri's stands out because he's a main character with a really prominent, important turning point for his growth.

[pepperonitimeline]

There is an interesting emphasis on timelines in Steven Universe

but like. Why?

Hypothesis: Steven Universe is made up of multiple timelines, but shown in an order that makes the events seem linear. read part 2 here!

I'm not the first person to speculate this at all. A lot of this stuff has been pointed out by @dogcopter​ @arrozbrillante​ @stevenutheories and many others on various platforms!

I just gathered the most conspicuous "evidence" into 1 post. If you’re interested in SU theory and analysis you should check out their blogs. :o) This was as short as I could make it..

And a big thank you to @love-takes-work for her podcast summaries!!! 

So, most ostensibly there’s Garnet, who can see multiple futures. In Pool Hopping she begins to call her visions timelines specifically.

Garnet: In this timeline, we do the opposite of that. Hey, you! Have a pizza!

Steven: Hey, Vidalia's house is around here. Let's bring her the last pie.

Garnet: Now, that would be nice. She must be upset that her son was taken into space by those Homeworld Gems. (referring to the events of I Am My Mom)

Steven: You mean Onion? He isn't in space. He's right over there. *points*

Garnet: Sorry, I-I must be thinking of a different timeline.

-

Garnet: My bad. I was sure we were in the pepperoni timeline.

-

Garnet: It's important to keep in mind that all these horrible things did happen to you in alternate timelines. Safety is fun.

In Steven and The Stevens:

Yeah

It was confirmed on the podcast that the Steven we see from that episode on is a different Steven than the one from episodes 1-21. In “The Fantasy of Steven Universe” Sugar explains:

"I think, early on, we knew for sure what we wanted to do was to create episodes that feel self-contained but give you a new piece of information or change the characters fundamentally. So, Steven and the Stevens, is tight but Steven does change fundamentally after having that experience. He's not the same- in THAT case he's LITERALLY not the same character..."

It’s muffled because they're all laughing but right after they say this Matt Burnett goes “He died.” 

Link to the episode

Love-takes-work also has a text summary of the episode

But something I haven't seen discussed very much is the time travel chase scene. Granted it’s very blink-and-you’ll miss it, there are some Stevens who witness the other Steven’s fighting but that don’t end up in the Sea Shrine at the end.

Way back in 2015 @stevenutheories already did the math as to how many alternate timelines may have stemmed from the time shenanigans: 3 to 5. Not counting the original one who is definitively gone. 

Technically quantum mechanics don’t work like that and those Stevens should have been Thanos’d too. I’m not going to pretend I understand physics, that is just what I’ve been told by someone who does. But then again the magic time thingy wasn’t bound by rules of real-life physics in the first place… so ??

Let’s cross-examine SATS’ accompanying KBCW post.

“At any given moment, if you asked me what I was thinking about, the answer would be one of two things: katana swords, or THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATE TIMELINES RUNNING PARALLEL TO OUR OWN!

Proving the existence of these timelines can be pretty tricky, even for a seasoned paranormal investigator such as myself.  An inter-temporal incursion caused by the momentary weakening of the time-space continuum doesn’t really photograph well.  And all the cross dimensional time travelers I know don’t want to go on the record about their experiences.  Frankly, the only thing I can submit as evidence of alternate timelines is the fact that THEY ARE PROBABLY JUST SO COOL AND AWESOME THAT THEY HAVE TO BE REAL.

Think about it!  What about a universe where that asteroid missed Earth and we had DINOSAURS for pets instead of dogs?  Or a universe where someone was like “Hey, zeppelins are way cooler than planes, let’s just do that!”  Or a universe where AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF ME CAN GROW A FULL BEARD?!  What an amazing life that Ronaldo must have… in THIS stupid reality I have a really hard time getting my moustache to connect to the rest of my facial hair and it’s incredibly frustrating.”

KBCW and Ronaldo’s commentary in general are usually half-right. Like the “Polymorphic Sentient Rocks are aliens who want to hollow out the earth… to make it lighter so they can transport it back to their star system” thing.

I can't help but think the "Dinosaurs for pets instead of dogs" is a reference to the live action Super Mario Bros. movie- where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs sent them to a parallel universe instead, causing mammals to go instinct in said universe. (Don’t know about the zeppelins.)

And then, and THEN there’s Keep Beach City Safe, KBCW’s more obscure rival blog run by (most likely) Onion under the pseudonym "The Observer". Apparently he’s planted cameras all over town to record Steven’s adventures. There's also a "Recruiter" and second mystery narrator calling themselves "Marco Díez", it's a whole thing,

Assuming it’s real, here’s one of the posts I think are the most relevant.

“I have been on zero gem hunts over the years, and what i have learned over the years is: always be prepared for anything, and everything. Connie’s already knows that and this her first mission. I, wasn’t so fortunate on my first mission. It was a crisp Autumn morning, - with notes of cinnamon in the air. I was the mountains, the air temperature, humidity and level elevation levels, were perfect.

Then, I noticed the creature, it was charging me. I tried to evade the gem monster, but it just kept on coming, and coming! There was no escape! And then- Wait! I just remembered. I never been on a gem hunt! So where did I get that story from?”

This was posted on August 1st alongside Gem Hunt… and the day after the Greg The Babysitter post, which was deleted earlier this year, right after people started interacting with it again.

Being a Babysitter is hard, especially if your Greg Universe. This guy, in the picture above me. Wait did I just become self aware? Hey, I did! Haha, I always knew I was more to me than just a narrator. Actually this is the first time I thought about, Because I'm self aware baby! Woohoo, yeah! Wait, what was I talking about? Ah yes, Gregory. So this Greg guy,Has to Babysit this cool baby, because he owes her for letting him mooch off her. And Greg, is like totally irresponsible, he some how lets the baby climb a Ferris Wheel. How does that even happen? This dude is so not getting payed. And what's up with his hair!?!

So here it is, another story, told by Greg, about his past self. I wonder how many times I started a paragraph with the word so. And when he was telling this story, we got some clues that could finally tell use when all of this started. We know about the gems and what happened  thousands of years ago, but we don't know about the hems and  what happened thousands of years ago. They wee being very vague about the whole thing. Almost intentionally, well it was obsessively intentional.

?

There are subtle inconsistencies in Beach City's layout. ("The Observer" points this out, too.)

Remember Danny’s? In Bubble Buddies and Joking Victim, there’s a shop named Danny’s Salt Water Taffy.

Then in Watermelon Steven it’s gone.

As for a prop: Chaaaaps used to just be Chips

That’s from Monster Buddies, the episode right after Steven and The Stevens.

It's just as likely someone on the show simply thought the background/chips looked a little too busy or whatever. But re-doing stuff costs a lot of time and money, yknow? Neither of which is the animation industry very generous about. Did you know even props have model sheets?

Of course it could just be another brand of chips. Maybe Utz got involved somehow.

Lastly I want to highlight a quote from a Rebecca Sugar interview regarding SU ending.

“The story is continuing off screen and I do know what happens next, at least in certain timelines, for the characters,” Sugar says. “But I would have to decide how and when I’d want to dig into that, or if it’s best to give them their privacy.”

yeah so like what the fuck

[ladyeliot]

Your legacy is my nightmare [½]  Re-written

Avengers: Age of Ultron / Post Civil War

Pairing: Avengers/Tony Stark x Avenger!Reader

Summary: Your past was marked by Tony Stark, ever since a Stark Industries bomb hit that restaurant when you were 10 years old, during an attack on Novi Grad, the capital of Sokovia. From that moment on, the rage for revenge took hold of you, but things didn’t turn out the way you expected.

Warnings: Angst. Trauma. Deaths. Violence.

Word count: 5378

A/N:  Sorry for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

Reader Powers: Psionic Force Projection. Psionic force fields that she can manipulate in various ways. 

When you were five years old you discovered that there was a completely different world inside that magic box. A world that seemed far away from the small town you lived in, a world that could capture your attention, that made you laugh, that grabbed you, and that you dreamed of living in in the future. It was then that American sitcoms became your world.

Your childhood in Novi Grad, the capital of Sokovia, was like that of any other child, totally happy. You were an only child, you were born and raised in a hard-working and extremely loving family, your parents loved you and you loved them, because all they wanted was to make you happy. Your birth took place on a sunny morning in June, creating the tradition that every birthday you went out to do something special, something out of the ordinary routine of everyday life. On your sixth birthday your parents took you to the amusement park, discovering that you weren’t too fond of Ferris wheels. During your eighth birthday your parents opted to take you to a football match, which you enjoyed quite a lot. On your ninth birthday, the three of you took a little trip to the mountains, discovering that you were completely allergic to wasp stings, but on your tenth birthday, everything changed.

For several weeks you had been pestering your mother to go to the new restaurant that had opened in the city centre. Remember that you were madly in love with American sitcoms from the 1950s, which were constantly on reruns on Sokovia television, so you couldn’t have been luckier when you found out that they had opened an American-style restaurant in the city centre. Your mother used to make excuses for not going, but not because she didn’t want to, but because she wanted to wait until your tenth birthday to go and have lunch with the three of you as a family, and that’s how it happened. The morning of your tenth birthday, Novi Grad dawned bright and shiny, there was hardly a cloud in the sky, and the sun was shining. It was Saturday, so there was neither school nor any job that would prevent you from spending the day apart. Your face changed to excitement when you discovered a note along with a special breakfast, informing you of a surprise lunch at Fred’s, the American-style restaurant. At the time you thought you were the luckiest girl in the universe, and that nothing and no one was going to change your mind, but things never work out the way you expect them to.

At around 13:15 you were seated at a table, and you yourself had decided which table you preferred, opting for the one right next to the large window, where you could watch the crowds passing by on the street. While your father informed the waitress about the menu you were going to have, you played with the bottle of ketchup while looking out of the window, on Saturdays the centre was usually crowded and that put you in a good mood. A Jukebox harmonised the atmosphere with typical songs of that decade, you had no idea what the song was, but you knew that you had heard it before in some sitcom. You were delighted, you seemed to be part of one of those comic scenes that made you laugh night after night, however something outside caught your attention, making you drop the bottle of ketchup from your hands. The scene was strange, people were no longer walking, running, no longer laughing, shouting, but you barely had time to utter “Mum…” before a bomb smashed through the large window.

Trauma. An inconsistent word that has so many negative connotations for the person who suffers from it. You never thought that a life filled with numerous catastrophic experiences could ever find the meaning of the word ‘Peace’ again, yet there you were, searching for it. The placid singing of the water crashing against the stones of the riverbed was the best melody you could wake up to every morning. After so many years you had found a place away from civilisation, far from the terror of humanity. A hut in the middle of the green and brown fields of Wakanda, a place where nothing and no one could disturb you. You could say, you could barely remember the time when you were at peace with yourself, maybe your childhood, but there was nothing left of that. However, the harmony around you, together with the humility of country life had given you back all the strength you needed to be able to go on with your life.

But now the question is how you came to Wakanda and why. It had been almost a year since a terrifying experience in the maximum security prison for humans with superpowers, also known as the Raft, prevented you from ever finding inner peace again. During the indeterminate period of time you were held in that underwater facility, the guards did terrible things to your brain. Fear for your powers caused them to take the initiative in using brain torture methods, the only way they discovered that was effective in overriding them. It left scars on you that would last a lifetime, if you made it out of there alive, which you came to believe would be impossible.

The next question is how you came to find yourself in that situation, but we’d better go back to the beginning, when that bomb hit that American-style restaurant in your hometown of Novi Grad. The darkness came moments after the projectile pierced the glass of that building and found its way into the ruins inside, creating a gaping hole underground. The loss of time and space came upon you, when you opened your eyes there was nothing, it was all darkness, yet a red, flickering light was just a few centimetres from your face. You could not move, your limbs were confined by the debris, you could only see the light that slightly illuminated the small air chamber in which you found yourself. You saw that metallic object in front of you, which had written on its side words that were engraved in your memory forever 'Stark Industries’.

It was a long period in which tears silently flowed from your eyes, it was indescribable the way fear clung to your body, with a small hope of being found that flickered on and off with that red light. You hardly knew what that light meant, that it really was a 'lucky break’ for you, at least that’s what all the news said when you were rescued two days later. Eventually you discovered that the bomb must have exploded, that like your parents and all the other members of the local, you must have died.

Your life after that did not improve, but you found them, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Your similar experiences during the bombing of Sokovia brought you together, they had also lost their parents and now you were three orphans who were confined from house to house waiting to come of age and flee the place.  The country of Sokovia became a war zone, with US troops frequently invading the streets, causing protests by the locals to intensify. During your youth you were a very active part of them, along with the twins, especially those against 'Stark Industries’. What those experiences generated was that the hatred you had hidden for Stark resurfaced again. The three of you wanted to purge your nation of foreign conflicts, so you met a division fighting for the same thing called HYDRA. You joined together, hoping to change the world, hoping to seek peace and freedom again, but that is not what happened. That group had very different ideas, ideas that you three were obviously not a part of, yet your innocence played a trick on you. Stucker, the leader of the division, offered you power, an outlet in the fight against violence, and you accepted, exposing yourselves to a series of physical experiments, called the 'Miracles’ programme. The programme consisted of exposing your bodies to radiation emitted through a sceptre that you had no idea what it was. Thirty-two people participated in the experiment, only you three remained alive. This caused a series of supernatural powers to develop in each of you. In your case, the psionic force took control of your body.

At this point HYDRA had got what it wanted, three superhumans to fight the Avengers, including Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries. It was impossible to admit that this was too juicy an incentive for you to pass up. The Avengers travelled to Sokovia with the intention of stealing the sceptre that gave you your powers. It was then, at the age of 25, after fifteen years of waiting for that moment, that you came face to face with the creator of the bomb that killed your parents, in that HYDRA operations centre in Sokovia. For the first time you could look him in the eye.

“Hey, J, a quick infrared scanner to the room,” he said in the middle of that wide ship, he had shed the suit, which was now operating on its own.

“The column to your left, I detected a human presence, with radiation levels off the charts,” the suit spoke up, discovering your position.

There was no point in staying hidden, it was the opposite of what you wanted, you wanted him to see you, to have the courage to look you in the eye, to not know who you were and let him know. Tony turned quickly towards that column that the inner voice of his suit had informed him about and bumped into you. The moment came. The brown of his iris projected towards you, he looked terribly harmless, he raised his left hand and Iron Man’s limb covered his own, projecting the palm of his hand towards your body. A smirk of arrogance amplified on your mouth.

“I mean you no harm,” his voice came out fast.

“So late,” you whispered without wiping away the smile, as you slowly raised your palms, creating a psionic field in a circular shape.

Just as Iron Man’s limb had attached itself to yours, the entire suit suddenly encircled your body. At that very moment you projected the psionic field towards him, starting a fierce battle in the middle of that ship. A battle that lasted no more than ten minutes due to your lack of ability to control, manipulate and project your powers. But that would be the first of many times you were to encounter him, that first encounter left you with a thirst for vengeance that would eventually fade, but at that moment it was impossible for you to know.

Things evolved over time, from HYDRA you came to ULTRON, who immersed you in his power, told you he was coming to save the world, but also to wipe out the Avengers, trapping you again in his intentions, believing his were the same as yours. Baron Von Strucker was killed shortly after by Ultron, now it was just the four of you, Ultron, the Maximoff twins and you.

At Salvage Yard, on the African Coast, was the second encounter. Your little group had headed out to meet Ulysses Klaue, an international criminal and underground black market arms dealer, to obtain the world’s most durable material, vibranium, however the Avengers also showed up, making the encounter more interesting. Thor, Captain America and Iron Man stood before the four of you in the middle of a gorge of corridors inside that container ship. There was Iron Man again, covering the body of Tony Stark inside.

“Are you comfortable?” Pietro turned his gaze to a set of missiles that were located on the lower deck. “Like the old times?

"This was never my life,” Iron Man replied, his voice neutral.

“Of course not,” you interjected, stepping to Pietro’s side. “He’s just the enforcer, isn’t he?”

“You can still walk away from this,” Captain America interjected, offering a nostalgic gesture from under his helmet.

“Oh, we’ll do it,” you said with marked indifference. “When the time comes.”

“I know you have suffered,” Captain America commented, eliciting a broad smile from you.

“You know that…” you whispered with a grin, lowering your gaze to your hands where psionic force was slowly concentrating through your fingers. “I really don’t care if you know.”

“It’s about me,” Tony’s stiff voice hit the mark.

“Bingo,” you said wryly just as a wide psionic field formed between your hands offering the signal for the battle to begin.

Disproportionate beams of light slammed into your pupils, energy bursting from each of you, causing the others to stand on guard and find their opponent to carry out their actions. Ultron’s minions moved to counterattack, while you scattered without a specific destination. You had had weeks of training to be able to face the new encounter you all knew was coming, and you could feel your control over your powers becoming more extended, but to do so you had to have your full attention focused on your actions.

The clash between you and Iron Man sent you off course, into a maze of dark corridors and passageways that were only illuminated by the energy coming out of that armour. Your psionic strength kept at bay the radiation that poured from the palm of his gauntlets and the monorail on his chest, causing it to bounce hard off the iron blocks of the walls.

“I’m not who you think I am,” Tony Stark’s voice came through the armour.

“Very subtle when you hide behind a mask,” your words caused the mask that covered Tony’s face to be exposed.

You stared into his eyes, feeling the energy burning inside you, feeling it building up in your hands, so you raised the palm of your hands without holding back, letting all that power come out and collide with the stealth lightning that Tony Stark let out of the palm of his hands. As if the two segments of energy were fighting a battle of their own they connected. With each draw of energy, exhaustion began to wash over you, knowing that you couldn’t last much longer than a couple of minutes in that situation. The clash caused sparks to reach each of the four sides of that corridor, denting the iron, melting it, but neither of you noticed.

At the third minute you pulled your hands away and threw yourself to one side so that its beam would not hit your body. Almost out of breath you dropped to the ground holding your palms up, Tony stopped the repulsor bolts of his gauntlets and turned his gaze upon you, but just as he took a step to approach you, a sharp, screeching noise caused you to change the destination of your gaze. What your eyes saw caused a nightmare to cling to your memory, the ceiling began to collapse, your exhaustion prevented you from creating a psionic field, your body became unresponsive and your mind locked. Your only institute was to close your eyes as tightly as you could, not knowing what was going to happen, but at that very moment when you heard how everything started to collapse, arms caught your body clutching it against a rigid chest and pulled you out.

So it was that once again a new failure was added to the list of your interventions. When you opened your eyes your body was lying prostrate in a corner of the main ship’s nave, where it had all started, but where there was no one left. The consumption of energy you had expended had left you without a shred of power within you. You looked up, your eyes a representation of the terror that had just reminded you of that moment, barely able to keep your breathing calm, and barely able to keep the words in your mouth when you saw Tony Stark’s face in front of yours again, before he looked away and walked away.

That was a turning point, for the next time you met Tony Stark face to face, you were on the same side. After the battle at Salvage Yard, the four of you, Ultron, the twins and you travelled to Seoul where Ultron’s true intentions were revealed. Ultron intended to create a genocide of humanity as a whole, he intended to create an enhanced body to dispose of his own. This horrified the three of you, causing you to flee from his power, causing Ultron’s wrath to prevail, creating a conflict in Seoul, in which the Avengers appeared. But the important thing in that was that the three of you joined the Avengers to save what had been your city, the place where you were born, Novi Grad.

You knew of Ultron’s plans for humanity, his intention was to create a device that would lift the city of Novi Grad into the sky, then drop it to Earth in a meteoric impact. On the way back to Sokovia, the place where it all began, a host of inexplicable feelings came to you, anger, shame, humiliation, hypocrisy… all related to your actions. Silence was present over the three of you, no conversations except those present to plan actions upon your arrival.

“Ultron knows we’re coming. Odds are we’ll be riding into heavy fire, and that’s what we signed up for. But the people of Sokovia, they didn’t. So our priority is getting them out, ” the words coming from Steve made you nod, keeping your eyes averted. “All they want is to live their lives in peace, and that’s not going to happen today.” You felt Tony’s eyes on you, you looked up to confirm it, but this meeting of glances made you uncomfortable, changing your position. “But we can do our best to protect them. And we can get the job done, and find out what Ultron’s been building. We find Romanoff, and we clear the field. Keep the fight between us.” He paused. “Ultron thinks we’re monsters and we’re what’s wrong with the world. This isn’t just about beating him. It’s about whether he’s right.“

Those last words crashed into you, you had been asking yourself the same question for weeks, you also needed to have an answer to it. So that’s how the end of the beginning began. You could never imagine what it would be like to see hundreds of people running through those streets again, the streets where you had grown up, where you had fought for your ideals and where you were now saving all those people so that the events you had experienced would never happen again. Each of you had a specific area, your mission was to guide the population to the safe side, protecting them from Ultron’s minions. Everything seemed to be going as assured, however time ran out, the ground began to crack, creating cracks, splitting the earth, causing an area of the city to rise into the air.

The terror of the scene brought you back to your childhood, you leaned against a building keeping your breathing as calm as possible and looked around you, the horror was present again, the screams of the people made a dent inside you, you closed your eyelids as tight as possible and put your hands to your head trying to erase that sound from your mind. Your back was slowly sliding down the wall until you were sitting completely on the ruins of the building.

“Hey!” Steve’s voice sounded close to you. “Are you okay?” his question barely got an answer from you, you felt his hand resting on your shoulder. “Hey, look at me. Are you okay?” you opened your eyes again and with a terrified look on your face you nodded, looking for the strength to face it. “I need you, those people need you, I know this is crazy, I know you’re terrified, but so are they.” You looked around you contemplating the massacre. “You can help them, they are your people.”

Again, Steve’s words gave you the courage you needed to find the calm within yourself, stand up and do everything you could to stop those robots that Ultron had built and turned into his allies. You knew what your mission was, you had a mission now and you couldn’t let it paralyse you.

“Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed… walk it off.”

The population was congregated in a specific point of the city, there was no solution to evict them if that part of the city did not come down and land again, until a ship, the Helicarrier, appeared between the clouds to create a solution to one of your problems, the eviction of the population. Now all that was left to do was to get that piece of land back in place.

“Avengers, time to work for a living,” Tony announced over the intercom. While the population was getting to safety in the boats, you as a whole had gathered at the church in Novi Grad, where Ultron had located the core, or rather the button, with which he would bring the city down, destroying all of humanity.

“What’s the plan?” you asked, confused by the situation.

“This is the drill. If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose,” Tony replied pointing to the vibranium contraption in the centre of the shattered dome.

In front of you hundreds of robots captained by Ultron approached without stopping their pace. You sucked air into your lungs, awaiting the arrival of one of the most crucial moments of your existence, perhaps the most crucial, for in a few hours you could possibly be extinct along with humanity.

“This is exactly what I wanted. All of you, against all of me,” Ultron also had his plan and that was. “How could you possibly hope to stop me?”

“Well, like the old man said,” Tony looked at each of you. “Together.”

The battle for survival began. You thought the previous battles you had fought were the ones that could change the course of your destiny, the ones where you had faced Tony Stark, but you couldn’t have been more wrong, that was nothing compared to what you were going through right now. Each of you was part of that team, your energy was renewed every time you used it because you were fighting for a reason, the strength in you shone through. You were all a team and you were getting through this together. One by one Ultron’s robots fell, until there were none left standing, but it wasn’t over.

“We gotta move out. Even I can tell the air is getting thin. You guys get to the boats, I’ll sweep for stragglers, be right behind you,” Steve asked just after the last robot was down.

“The core-” began Tony after he had bared his face, but you barely let him finish his words.

“I’ll protect it,” you said firmly, giving a slight nod to yourself, “it’s my job.”

Tony connected his eyes with yours offering you a slight nod, just before he covered his face again and flew away. “I’ll stay with you,” added Wanda to whom you offered a faint smile before everyone disappeared from the scene and Pietro was ordered to return to you once everyone was in the boats. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, only a few straggling robots were presenting themselves to you with the intention of overthrowing your mission, but something happened. You felt your friend’s body collapse right behind you, you turned your head and saw Wanda’s face distorted, your eyes widened in confusion as she began to utter a scream that made your eardrums ring. She fell to her knees, causing her powers to spiral out of control in the crash, destroying every element in her path, so you had to create a force field around yourself in the hope that you would be unaffected. Your thoughts began to connect, trying to find an answer to his attitude, and you found it. Pietro.

You both walked through the streets, but she scattered within minutes Wanda disappeared in search of Ultron, leaving you there, but there was no one left to fight with, or fight for. It was at the very moment you questioned the functionality of your existence that Novi Grad plummeted thousands of feet into the air, offering you the answer to your question. Your eyes closed but you were no longer afraid, on the contrary, you had been able to find peace, everything came to an end in the same place where it all began. But as if someone had been watching over you, you felt arms holding your body and slowing down the frantic rhythm of the plummeting fall. You opened your eyes and found yourself being held by Iron Man’s armour.

“ I got you,” he said flying in the opposite direction, managing to dodge the ruins of that city. “Now Thor!”

A new turning point that changed the course of your actions and your destiny lay before you. Despite your best efforts, nearly 120 lives were lost during the Battle of Sokovia, including that of Pietro Maximoff. It was a before and after, symbolising the power of war and what could be its fatal consequences. For you it was a judgement, a learning experience, feeling guilty for much of what had happened, for helping HYDRA, for helping Ultron, to elaborate his actions. Your guilt led you to rethink your future, the course of new events led you and Wanda to a new country. You arrived in the United States, welcoming the New Avengers Facility as a new home. Offering you a roof to sleep under, training for your powers and a new family, though you didn’t feel that way at first.

You spent many hours in search of solitude, at the end of that green esplanade, when the tall oak trees were beginning to remind you of home. It was one afternoon in the first week, when you were still adjusting to it all, and you found yourself reading, leaning against a tree trunk.

“Hiding?” Tony’s voice pulled you out of your reading. “Oh, Sylvia Plath, great,” you looked at him, but offered no response, so he opted to sit awkwardly right in front of you on the grass. “Listen, we haven’t had much time… you know,” he took off his sunglasses and shrugged. “I’ve been looking through the files and … I know what happened to you… with your parents.”

“You know,” you said with a raised eyebrow, putting the book aside. “Do you also know what happened to the other thousands of people or do you only have a file on me and a file on Wanda and Pietro?”

The confidence in your voice was at odds with the insecurity Tony was showing, so when you saw him turn his head to the right side as he crumpled his face you opted to do what you had been thinking about for the last few days, call it a day.

“Listen. I’ve spent many years imagining what it would be like when I had you in front of me,” you began to say calmly, keeping your gaze fixed on your fingers as Tony watched you with his head cocked to one side, listening to you intently. “In what I was going to tell you, in the way I would let you know the pain I felt inside, because to me you were to blame for everything bad that had happened to me,” you paused, took a breath and thought about what you were going to say next. “But the moment I had you in front of me I didn’t say anything I had planned to say, I let my anger and pain guide me, and it didn’t do any good. The same thing happened the second time, and the third time it was pointless because there was something much more important to fight for.”

“I…” Tony interjected.

“Please, let me finish,” you cut him off, causing Tony to nod and turn his attention back to you. Sadness clouded his features. “So now I have you in front of me again I just want you to know that I have realised that…” you paused causing Tony to make a slight gesture of approaching you, but when you started to speak again he stopped. “I have no intention of you bearing my ghosts, but I need you to know that I spent two days under the rubble waiting for Stark to kill me,” your voice cracked, and Tony’s eyes reddened. “Watching your name light up on the side of that missile every time that flashing red light illuminated the darkness, hearing that beeping sound that I still can’t erase from my mind, terrified that my breathing would cause that bomb to detonate because my limbs could barely move.”

For the first time you raised your face to meet wide open brown eyes, reddened and unable to hold your gaze for long. Tony’s face was pale during those moments, his body was no longer upright and he was nervously running his hand over his lips.

“With that said, it only remains for me to let you know that I will not let the hatred and vengeance of a ten year old consume me,” you looked back down at your hands, allowing Tony’s eyes to fall on you again. “I’ve seen the power that resentment brings with it, I don’t want that for myself,” you connected your gazes. “Then I suppose I must forgive you in order to move forward.”

Silence. Silence flooded the room leaving heavy breaths in the air that symbolised the tension of the situation you were both experiencing for the first time right now. There was no right answer to everything you had said, it was clear to you that Tony didn’t know how to act at that moment. You sat cross-legged on the damp grass, watching him, seeing how he couldn’t hold your gaze since you had explained that you saw his name reflected in that missile. Yet he fought against it and focused his brown eyes on yours.

“I promise you…” he began stiffly, but again you cut him off.

“Tony, don’t promise me anything,” your voice was soft, as if you were talking to a small child.  "Please.“

After your denial of his action, he only nodded. He merely nodded as he intertwined his fingers and began to fidget restlessly with his left leg.

"Then I don’t know what you want,” his tone offered an enormous insecurity marked by nervousness.

“That’s the point. I don’t want anything, Tony,” you said without fidgeting.

“All right,” he nodded confusedly, rising quickly but awkwardly from the grass in an attempt to get away from the situation. “So… I hope it’s all to your liking.”

With that said, he turned his back on you and left the same way he had come. Leaving you under the shade of that oak tree with Sylvia Plath.

Now, too much had happened since then, much of it was why you found yourself in Wakanda trying to juxtapose all that had happened, but what you didn’t know was that on that placid morning when you went for a walk along the banks of that small riverbed, Shuri and T'Challa would come to inform you that he was there and that he had asked to speak with you.

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[mybg3notebook]

The Party Scene

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

In these “scene posts” I will explore the scene of the title looking for the information in the dialogues. What I will be looking for is how much Gale “lies”, how much lore is provided, and any extra detail that may be of our interest to highlight. At the end of these posts there are summary points for those who don't want to read the whole post.

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in this (post) while disclaimers about Context in this (one).

The party scene, I personally think, needs plenty of polishing. The fact that many characters can have a "jealous" behaviour towards Tav no matter their approval looks suspicious to me. Gale's case is even weirder because if Tav did not romanced him at all, Gale will still share those judgemental comments that seem to come from jealousy, as well as strange dialogue options about “being a bad loser” when the context is not romantic at all. This would make some sense—to a certain extent—if Tav romanced him, but if Tav locked him as a friend, it has no purpose. Especially if Tav explores the option of suggesting him to spend the night together, which ends with Gale rejecting the situation because "they are just good companions" after such display of incoherent jealousy coming from a char who values privacy (and therefore would not meddle into Tav's personal affairs). It seems to contradict his character and therefore, it makes me suspect that the whole party scene is just very raw and unpolished in general. 

As I said, the party interaction is very confusing since it doesn't follow the relationship context created by Tav, and in Gale's case looks inconsistent with his char as well, inviting a strong misinterpretations of his character (this is probably a consequence of the decision of making Gale part of EA in the last moment). So this scene analysis may be a bit messy since the scenes are messy too (hence this post's length. I'm sorry). 

Whether Gale was locked into friendship or romance, Gale drops his famous line: 

As they say in Waterdeep: In wine there is truth. That's usually followed by: In water there is good sense. Good sense will have to wait till the morrow.

A great warning line from a narrative point of view: he is basically saying that what will be shared that day under the effect of wine is true, but it certainly won't be "good sense".

In a friendship path, he would not want to waste Tav's time any longer, and will bid them a good night while promising a bed-story the next day. In that case, the wine line could be interpreted as the final decision of a confession that will happen the next day: Gale has finally reached a degree of trust in Tav that gives him enough courage to finally speak about the details of the "orb" (and I emphasise details because in broader aspect, he already shared what's most important: the "orb" in his chest is a dangerous thing. If Tav assisted with his death protocol, this is undeniable by now, unless Tav allowed him to keep his privacy). 

In a romantic path, this wine line could be interpreted as the decision of inviting Tav to share a night, and explaining the details in the morning, the “good sense”. After the wine phrase, we have other piece of prose in which Gale describes a book that it's a bit more than a sexual book:

Gale: Allow me to make the following proposition: there is a book that circulates in Amn, detailing the first thousand nights of a newly-wed king and queen. They turned everything they did into an art. The art of conversation. The art of taste, time honoured and newly acquired. The art of the body. The exploration and acceptance of the self and the other. The art of the night itself. I say we take a page from their book. 

Considering that Gale is not only a verbose char, but also a poet and a scholar, the enumeration of the concepts in the description of the book speaks a lot in my opinion. Gale is not inviting Tav to a night of sex (let's remember he never uses that word in EA) but to a deeper degree of "intimacy", as he calls it. There is a lot more involved in what he asks for: confessions in the art of conversation, pleasures in the art of the body, and, hopefully, acceptance. For Gale, acceptance is a big deal: it’s not by chance that he left it last in the enumeration, summarising the whole concepts with the "art of the night". Gale is truly eager to access these concepts, and in doing so, I personally believe he shows a fair level of naivety on this matter. It seems (especially later with his unpolished arguments in the morning) he felt he needed this level of intimacy—of acceptance first—so he could speak the details openly. He wants to have this night before any confession because he thinks that it would allow him to acquire something that would prevent the abandonment that he viscerally fears: acceptance.

Any of the options taken by Tav keeps showing his eagerness. He wants this to happen in whatever terms Tav desires: as a brand new experience (“blank slates on blank sheets”) or with the promise of commitment (writing the prequel of a newly-wed couple). Or if Tav romanced Gale and then chose to spend the night with another companion, Gale will still insist in sleeping together, showing he was open for Tav to have casual sex as long as the "commitment" part would be established with him. This is reinforced by the fact that, if Tav never shared the Weave with Gale, there is no way to sleep with him: Gale is not a character for one-stand nights. He craves for deep connection, for commitment, in whatever fashion he can get it. Mystra taught him not to ask about exclusivity after all.

Gale is so desperate to have this deep connection that if Tav doubts about spending the night with him, he will drop a line which can trigger an alarm in the player:

Tav: I'm not sure you're the one I want. Gale: That's because you've yet to find out what you're missing. Doubt is a spoilsport. Cast it aside.

Gale, the scholar, the one who kept encouraging Tav to doubt and to think critically about everything, suggests to dismiss doubts. Once more we see he needs this to happen. Some players interpret this as manipulation as well. I personally think this also says something else in Gale: since the dev's notes show no second intentions in the only two scenes where dev's notes existed, and instead, they display how much fear Gale has for a second abandonment, Gale is showing here his inexperience with relationships as well as a constant fear for abandonment.

Gale is looking for commitment, for something that can last longer than Mystra's affair did: he wants something solid, but his inexperience in this field made him "acquire" knowledge of how things should work via romanticized means such as books and poetry. In his mind, the acceptance he needs can only be acquired due to the "art of the night", very well detailed in this book he describes. 

It's true that, all this part, if we completely ignore the narrative weight that the book has for a book-based character such as Gale, can be interpreted as Gale manipulating Tav to have sex alone; desperate to obtain it, doing everything in order to get it. We can also see the description of the book as a “bait”, as some people do. It's a valid interpretation, especially for a Tav who respected Gale's privacy during the Loss Scene and the protocol, so that Tav has no information with which to connect the dots. But I personally find it an over-magnification to see him as a "mastermind of manipulation". The few dev's notes we have about Gale seem to confirm that nothing shadier than his “orb” despair and his fear for abandonment are going on. These fears are constantly echoing in his mind, and they are, as I said in other posts, the main reasons why he becomes emotional and prone to make mistakes. 

Is this action manipulative? It can be seen as “withholding information” by any Tav who didn't push him to explain, otherwise, all the information in a general way has been offered already and there is no withholding at all. Is Gale a manipulative character? In EA we don't see a pattern of that behaviour to qualify him as such. He has been quite honest, explaining in all scenes what he can say and what he cannot, drawing his boundaries clean and clear. We saw him struggling with the explanation of what he lost. The few Dev's notes reinforce mainly his fear for abandonment, lacking any manipulative behaviour behind his actions. His pattern, in my opinion, is that he tends to make mistakes in his emotional state, which is mostly triggered by the “orb” and the concept of “abandonment”. Not so much with Mystra per ser. He seems to be nostalgic but more aware of what loving a God causes (his regret is explicit during the conversation of Karsus). He is quite done with "her love as a lover", but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to be forgiven nor he doesn't love her as the essence of Magic itself. More details in the post of "Mystra and her Chosen ones".

After the party, Tav can have a romantic conversation before the sex “intimacy” or can reject the chance. What seems incoherent in this part is when Tav is not in the mood for sex, and Gale simply cuts off the situation. He is a character who craves connection and intimacy, and pretty much like Wyll, he needs a bond before stepping into romance. To waste a night of celebration that could be used to share any other level of intimacy (let's say, talking? The man clearly LOVES to talk) seems strange. If this reaction is truly meant to be in the game, it would seem that he certainly was more desperate for sex than what all the previous scenes hinted, but in that case it would have done little sense to leave the tale of the wizard for the next night. Gale already knew Tav did not want to have sex, so no point in delaying the explanation of the details. I personally suspect these incoherences are a consequence of Gale being added into EA at the last moment, making him more “shadier” than he is meant to be. 

To justify my opinion that this seems to be an unpolished scene: if Gale is not romanced, and conditions are given, Lae'Zel will spend the night with him, talking. Why would Gale prefer to share a night of talks with a companion with whom he had not the Weave connection before, but he won't do it with a Tav who shared it? I see some incongruence here, probably as the result of being added into the EA in a rush. His scenes are less polished and much more messier than the other companions' (certainly not more than Wyll, though) and his bugs and triggering priority show it. 

This part is also seen as "coercive" by some players:

Tav: I’m sorry, but I actually don’t think I can do this. I’m just not in the mood. Gale: Not even a simple kiss would change your mind? Tav: No, it wouldn’t.

Tav: Maybe a kiss was enough Gale: Are you sure? One kiss is like one chord in an entire symphony. It begs for more.

Gale: (disapproval) What a pity. One should never be afraid to live life to the fullest. Before we part.. I know there are many things about me that remain shrouded in mystery. You’ve been very patient with me, and I appreciate that. You’ve brought me back from the grey shores of death. You know of my condition, and you know about my unfortunate efforts to win Mystra’s favour, but those are but the broad strokes. The time has come to paint you the true picture. So come find me another night, yes? No kisses, just words. (Leaves)

Asking seems to be coercive for some people just because there is a disapproval. I personally separate very clearly what Tav sees and receives as information from the NPCs and what I, the player, do. Tav should react to what they see, but the player is having a “meta-knowledge” of the situation with the info of the narrator and the approval system. The player knows Gale is disappointed in not having intimacy now, and he expresses it. Then he behaves completely natural, and continues talking (of course) about what he will explain about in the following morning (I don't understand what impedes him to say it in that moment: is it the wine? He fears his charisma checks are at a disadvantage due to the wine? Is it just a reflection of the rush in which he was added to the game? We will see in the full release. To me it looks inconsistent.)

Anyways. The scene continues in the early morning or simply the next night depending on what option Tav picked. Here, Gale presents the details of the revelation: “It is a story full of answers long overdue. It is a story of a man who fell in love with a goddess.”

Tav: You're really about to tell me about another lover? What's wrong with you? Gale :I couldn’t do it before. I couldn’t ruin the chance for us to happen. You were there. How could I say no to you? Dev's notes: Gale revealed he was in love with Mystra. He tells this the morning after. Understandably, the player can react negatively to his timing. He tries to explain himself. 

This line clearly shows that there was an intention in hiding the relationship he had with Mystra, which it's an “answer long overdue” (is it?). Now, some players consider this the proof of Gale's manipulations; the greatest betrayal, because people are entitled to know all the details of their partner's past before sleeping with them. Other players consider that it's in poor taste to disclose this exactly the morning after sharing the night with Gale. And I agree. However, I see a scene with a lot of over-magnifications and making things more problematic than they truly are. In my opinion, “the chance for us to happen” is deeply linked to the book of Amn for all the reasons explained before. It's not by chance that this book has such a weight in the scene. Gale also shows with this line that he has no experience nor idea how relationships develop. 

I also think that Gale fails so much in delivering decent lines in this scene because, 1) this is a very unpolished text in EA, or 2) this is very on purpose, emphasising that Gale is ready to speak about the two topics that turn him into an emotional disaster and his word choices could be attributed to as someone failing many charisma checks. Maybe that's the intention.

If Tav considers this the greatest of the betrayals they can tell him to leave and Gale will not resist the rejection, leaving the party immediately and facing one of his biggest fears: Abandonment. And once more, the abandonment as a consequence of his own mistake. The irony of this path. 

If Tav allows him to explain, Gale will accept any "judgement after telling his story". This is something very related to Gale's approvals: to have a complete grasp of a situation, you need to have all the evidence, hear all the details of the event, before drawing a conclusion. And curiously, no matter what aggressive option Tav picks, Gale gives no disapproval unless he is forced to leave the party. So, after some dramatic reaction, Gale will try to proceed with the telling.

Tav: It’s clear as day you are talking about yourself, you know Gale: I know, but a bit of narrative distance will make it all so much easier in the telling. Indulge me.

From here, Gale gives Tav another courtesy gesture: to pick the version in which this will be explained. He clarifies that the long version, more pompous and verbose and in third person, is the one he would prefer due to the distance. Since the first meeting on the road, or the stew scene, passing through the Loss Scene, we see this pattern again: Gale, the character who always has a lot of things to speak about, has also topics that are difficult to explain and needs to use narrative tricks to do it. Not by chance he is a reserved person: those topics he can't talk about are always personal. 

Long version

Gale: Once upon a time, not quite that long ago, there lived a wizard in a tower. The wizard was what one might call a prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the Weave, but compose it, like a musician or a poet. Such was his skill that it earned him the attention of the mother of magic herself. The Lady Of Mysteries, Mystra.

Tav: What did Mystra’s attention feel like? Gale: Love.  Dev's Notes: nostalgic, regretful, bitter, sad, lost romance–all with a bit of hesitation on the front of the line. Tav :He sounds like a very talented individual Gale: He was. Even though it was in Mystra’s affections that his true power lay. Tav: Teacher’s pet, was he? Gale: He fancied himself much more than that. He fancied himself favoured above all others. 

These three options give interesting additional information: Gale was convinced that Mystra's attention was love, because he was young and naive. He is now very aware that his talent meant little, because the true power he had was in Mystra's affections, meaning in being a loved Chosen one. He fancied himself unique, as a Chosen would do. 

Gale: Perhaps it was not quite love, Dev's Notes: A little embarrassed Gale: but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. Mystra showed him the secrets behind the veils. The gossamer veils first, draped across the Weave. The delicate veils next, draped across her body. ‘Chosen One’ she whispered, as she slipped them off completely.

This is another fragment with interesting, yet disturbing lines: Gale now, as a narrator, questions if that past feeling was Love. He has matured his sentiments for Mystra, they are less "teenager-like". He is convinced that in the past it was love to him, implying that now he has doubts (concept reinforced once more by the end of the scene). The disturbing line is the definition of "very young man", which I will talk about in the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Grooming". 

Tav: The veils draped across the Weave? Gale: Indeed. What most wizards perceive is but the ripple of the Weave’s surface. Untold wonders lie beyond. I enjoyed them for a while, as we enjoyed each other.

Once more, in these details, the narrative reinforces how intense is the connection of Mystra with a Chosen one. Again, this is lore information. Chosen ones have a deep connection with Mystra/the Weave/Magic, which is unique. More on this matter can be read in the post about "Mystra and her Chosen ones".

Gale: One day all too soon, the whispers stopped. The goddess spurned the mortal. The veils were drawn once more, and the wizard was left behind heartbroken.

Tav: Poor wizard Gale: Poor wizard. Silly wizard too, for he wouldn’t take no for an answer Tav: What happened next? // I hate to say it, but he really could have seen this coming Gale: He was blinded by love. Good stories are rife with lovers’ follies after all. Tav: Perhaps she, like you, had other lovers she didn’t tell him about. Gale : She might well have had, but that didn’t stop the wizard from trying to reclaim her affections.

Gale: Like so many of the heartbroken, he did something infinitely foolish. One has to think big if one seeks to win back a goddess. So the wizard thought big. [Here he explains all about Karsus who] sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdated creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”

Another part of the scene that keeps giving us a lot of information: Gale is very aware now how silly he was in his youth (at this point, one can almost remember his words during Arabella's quest: she is not innocent but that doesn't mean she is guilty) and his past young self was unable to take a no as an answer (which apparently Gale learnt very well when before this revelation or after, Tav can reject him and he simply leaves the party without putting much resistance, despite knowing that Tav only has a fragment of the big picture). The other answer reinforces his blindness by this strange concept that Gale thought it was love, and pretty much uses the word Folly for describing or making an analogy with his past, which again, it's not a casual word: Folly is a formal way to say stupidity and it's also a word that Gale uses to compare his mistake with Karsus' folly. As an extra, the last answer seems to explain very much what he does when Tav romanced him and then slept with another companion. Details of this in the post "Gale Hypotheses- Part 2", section: "Proposition to Cheat".

Short version: 

This version is shorter and more into the point without an excess of dramatic details that may end up annoying Tav more than making the process of comprehension better. The short version makes much more clear where Gale is standing: the facts are presented without his typical pattern of embellishing the story.

Gale: […] I am what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the Weave, but compose it like a virtuoso. Such was my skill that it earned me the attention of Mystra herself. I soon fell in love with her, and she returned my affections. […] Before long Mystra tired of me. What was I, after all, but a mortal plaything in sacred hands? You have to realise I was heartbroken. I was a young man, she was my first love. I thought it would last forever. 

This part reinforces once more that he is very aware that a relationship with a goddess was very unbalanced, that Mystra was his first love, he was a young man, and he thought it would last forever. 

For completion's sake, the goblin version has a different introduction:

Gale: Let's just get this over with. No doubt you've guessed by now there was something rather special about my relationship with the goddess Mystra. The thing is, we were lovers once. I am what one might call a wizard prodigy [...follows the same speech of the short version]

Three versions converge in the kneeling. The scene in this point has a different narrative value; a proud character as he is, who has a deep regret for his mistake with the “orb” (he says it explicitly in the "Loss Scene" post) kneels before Tav to humbly show the traumatic experience by placing their hand on his heart, where the “orb” resides:

Gale: Here. Place your hand over my heart. Let me show you Narrator: You feel the tadpole quiver as you realise Gale is letting you in. Into the dark. You see through Gale’s eyes, staring down the corridors of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry…

This scene speaks of opennesses in all senses, honest and without any interest of pretence: Gale is showing his greatest regret, the lowest of the lowest he reached, the despair that it inspires. For once, he is not talking, he is showing it (because the experience is the one that makes him speechless and its memory seems to cause him great pain too due to the facial gesticulation). And what Tav sees shows again that Gale has nothing extra to hide: this has been the same exact information that Tav could extract from him in earlier opportunities with successful tadpole intrusions. So, if Tav never reveals that they saw this in Gale during the stew scene, Tav will realise that Gale kept his promise: he was reserved for a while, trusting slowly in Tav, to finally open up and show that he was going to explain the “why” much more later, because it's truly difficult for Gale to speak about.

1-Yank your hand away Gale: Terrifying isn’t it? And that is only the beginning 3-Tav: Gods – why show me this? Gale: I’m sorry, but I had to. After all, that is only the beginning 4-Tav: I slept with a monster. Gale: I didn’t sleep with a monster despite the tadpole in your head. We are none of us monsters. We are merely hatcheries for monstrous things. So we fight them.

This is one of the most ominous information Gale gives us, in my opinion: The experience of how the “Black Weave” rushed into his body is grotesque and painful, and it's meant to cause despair. But that was only the beginning: Gale is everyday dealing with that feeling, but on a bigger scale as its hunger increases with each passing day. The descriptions of his emotions during the artefact scenes adds more despair and anxiety to it. Gale is living in the worst mental state that a person can, but he manages it thanks to his wizard training and the Weave he consumes (he is still alive thanks to Magic, of all things). This shows the mental power of a wizard in DnD. And if you read the post about "Well-known Characters" section: "Elminster", Gale could have been inspired in him since I can see this level of endured torture similar to the one that Elminster was exposed to when he was kidnapped and dragged to the Hells. 

Gale: This Netherese taint.. this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled up inside my chest. And it needs to be fed. As long as it absorbs Weave it remains stable – to an extent. The moment it becomes unstable, however..[...] It will erupt. I don’t know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I’d say even a fragment as small as the one I carry…. It’d level a city the size of Waterdeep. Dev's Notes: He admits he’s a walking disaster waiting to happen. This is said very seriously. The truth is finally out and he has no idea how the player will react to such monstrous news.” 

Tav: I should godsdamned kill you Gale: Perhaps that is what I deserve, but you deserve no such thing. To kill me is to unleash the orb. I understand your anger, I do […]

Here is where we know that Gale calls it “orb”, but it's not an orb. For more details, read the post about the "Orb". Tav already knew since the Stew scene that Gale could cause a catastrophe without artefacts. In this scene we just get some extra details about it. 

Gale: It is my truth, finally revealed. It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through.. (After the night we spent together). Surely we can brave even this side by side. Dev's notes: Solemn. Full of yearning his news will not lead to him being abandoned by the player.

And there, Gale's “truth” is “revealed” (not truly, it is only more detailed in the information): We know that the Weave he consumes from the artefacts keeps this condition stable (something we already knew since the Stew Scene) and it will erupt if it doesn't consume artefacts (which is something we knew since the Stew Scene too). So the revelation scene is not so much of a revelation. The whole scene has a writing with a lot of weight in “shocking” revelations and “dramatic” reactions when the context provided shows that there is little to be shocked about, in my opinion. If anything, this whole scene needs serious polishing.

Then it follows the “coercive” part according to some players, which again... it's only Gale hoping this situation doesn't end in a second abandonment. The concept that the “intimacy” of the shared night gives more reasons to stay by his side seems pretty naïve, but maybe that was the intention (thus my suspicion that Gale has no experience at all in relationships, only what he learnt from romantic books). What it's clear is that after the detailed explanation, Gale is desperate to avoid a second abandonment, yet he knows it's unavoidable. This can be seen when Tav doesn't forgive his betrayal (?) of not saying anything about Mystra or the "orb" (he did in the Stew and following scenes, but this context is not acknowledged here), and Gale simply accepts it, showing that Mystra's experience made him learn to accept a no, leaving the party forever (in EA). 

Tav: No. This is too large a betrayal. Gale: I see. I am sorry. I am sorry that it had to come to this. All that’s left to say is farewell. Dev's Notes: A slight hesitation, hurt but understanding. He makes a polite little bow, then we see him walk away.

Really, I don't understand what happened with this scene because it's either ignoring any annoyance that the situation can cause on a Tav who didn't push Gale to talk, or it offers an over-reaction when all the information has been shared already, at least in a very generalised way during the Stew Scene. A Tav who doesn't push Gale to speak will have no more details than the ones provided during the Stew Scene at this point in the game, but one who pushed Gale will basically have the whole story covered. The Rpg-options we get here are so white-and-black, and not even coherent with the context, no wonder so many players turned Gale into a “mastermind in manipulation”. This scene is very unpolished in my opinion.

Tav: Gale, are you still in love with Mystra? Gale: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know. She is my muse still, the embodiment of magic, but the embodiment of love? Only if we ever meet again will I know

Here we have once more confirmation that Gale questions what kind of love he has for Mystra. Considering all the context he gave us previously, it seems that his love for his Goddess as a devotee will never cease, but romantic love is a big question for him. He has given Tav all the hints to make them suspect that Gale probably never knew romantic love outside his experience with Mystra or what he could read in books.

Tav: What would permanently rid you of the orb? Gale: The orb was kept safe and inert in a pocket of Astral Plane, suspended in time. If I can somehow manage to expel it from my body while in the Astral Plane, it will be rendered inert again. Alternatively, I could learn to control it’s chaotic magic, that is; to succeed where I failed before. But without Mystra’s favour, I don’t see how that may come to pass. Of course there could be different answers as well. Faerûn brims with more magic than any one wizard could fathom, let alone comprehend. Who knows what outlandish solutions may yet present themselves?

The last bits of information are more interesting: Gale thought of two possible solutions to solve his “orb”problem. One is to expel the object out of his body in the Astral Plane where time doesn't exist so its hunger or ticking mechanism stops, so the magic will remain inert. The other option is to control Netherese magic. He informed Tav that he already tried this option, so it's clear that Gale's intention when obtaining this book was to master this strange piece of Weave and give the secrets of that control to Mystra. But he failed.

Summary of the post:

There is an important emphasis in acceptance: only through acceptance Gale can open up to share the details of his mistake. He wants to have this night before any confession because he wants to acquire this acceptance that, in his mind, would prevent the abandonment he viscerally fears.

In all the scenes there are many hints suggesting Gale is very inexperienced in relationships: the acceptance he needs can only be acquired due to the "art of the night'', which is one of the main points in this book. His notions related to relationships seem to have been acquired via romanticised means: books and poetry. He may believe that intimacy guarantees acceptance.

Gale “reveals” his truth: he was a Chosen of Mystra, he was Mystra's lover, and the “orb” problem was a mistake he made to earn Mystra's attention. All this information is now detailed here when it had been shared already. There is little “revelation” in it.

Gale's actions can be interpreted as manipulative for a Tav who respects his privacy and has little information about the “orb”. But hardly the pattern extends to his behaviour. His need for acceptance makes him make bad decisions.

A Tav who pushed Gale to speak in previous scenes finds little new information in this one: they will have a more detailed picture of the situation and they will know that Gale and Mystra were lovers.

Gale is very aware that Mystra's love was not exactly love, but it felt like that when he was young. He also knows that the true power of a Chosen is related to being loved by her. He is also aware that a relationship with a goddess is a very unbalanced one. He states that Mystra was his first love, the affair happened when he was a (very) young man, and he thought it would last forever. 

Potent narrative image: Gale, a proud character with great confidence, kneels before Tav to humbly show the traumatic experience by placing his hand on his heart, where the “orb”resides.

In general, the whole tone of the scene jumps constantly in my opinion. Tav's options are not toned to the general atmosphere of the scene: or they ignore completely the value of what Gale says, or over-react magnifying information as if it were the first time Gale says it, when a lot of it was shared during the Stew Scene and following scenes. It feels like a very unpolished scene, probably as the result of Gale being a companion added to the EA in a rush.

The Dev's notes explain the whole situation as: 

Dev's notes: synopsis: The principal portion of this dialog consists of two main parts: a romantic night intro that leads to a fade to black and implied intimacy, and a section in which Gale tells you his true story in either of two ways (chosen by the player). These are the ‘story’ variant in third person, and the slimmed down ‘story-light’ version in first person. It is the story of how he fell in love with the goddess Mystra, was spurned by her after a brief affair, and how he got himself into big trouble when trying to win her back. The dialog was originally meant to contain only the above, but for recording and cinematic purposes, the story sections of it are also used in a variety of other ways, that is to say, the dialog also contains an intro section in which the scene begins with no romantic intent. In specific cases though, Gale will still try his luck, which you’ll see in the repeat of some lines of an earlier dialog. 

This shows that, so far, the intention was always to make Gale explain the “true story” in this scene, which was the one we were told. I think that expecting more secrets would water down this intention here. In any case, the future secrets, if there are some left, may be secret even for Gale himself.

This post was written in June 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[mr-gallows]

Astrological signs for Anakin Skywalker!

I mostly just focused on the signs and planets, not on the houses that they fell into, so there may be some inconsistencies! I might change these later the more I learn, but this is just for fun! Here is my take on Anakin! (with some minor Obi-Wan analysis for comparison!) Read Obi-Wan’s interpretation here. Edit: I changed Anakin’s moon!

Before I get into this, I want to explain the elements and the modes: Air = thoughts/intellect Earth = materialism/pragmatism Water = emotion/spiritualism Fire = Action/Instinct 

Cardinal = initiative Fixed = stability Mutable = adaptability

Anakin has mostly Fire and Water, making him active and emotional. He has just enough air to give him an unconventional intellect. He is also Cardinal and Fixed dominant, which gives him initiative and stability (not often a word you would describe Anakin with!). He has a beautifully intense chart, this boy belongs in a Gothic novel. Lord Byron would be proud.

Scorpio Ascendant: The ascendant is our mask or ‘filter’. It is the first layer of our personality, what we show to people before they truly know us. Anakin processes the world around him through the lens of a Scorpio; with high emotional intensity and an almost psychic perception. He is reserved with most people around him, he keeps his guard up like a Scorpio. Most of the time he keeps quiet, letting Obi-Wan do the talking with his more chatty Libra Ascendant. Scorpio Ascendants also look very intense, and may come across as cold to people. Unlike Obi-Wan’s airy Libra, Scorpio has a very heavy presence, because it’s a fixed sign. It has the intensity of a black hole. 

He’s not going to budge an inch, until he knows that he’s safe around you. 

This is probably why Anakin comes across as a loner most of the time, even though this boy is like ‘im so lonely please love me i’m so lonely’. When people get to know Anakin better, and he lets his guard down, they get a glimpse of his core Aries self (Obi-Wan is very familiar with this side). 

Aries Sun: The Sun is the ‘core’ part of the personality. Anakin is an Aries Sun, a fiery cardinal sign, making him highly action-oriented. Anakin seems to have a lot of trouble staying still, always needing to do something with his body or work with his hands. He needs to see the fruits of his labors right now dammit.

Anakin often gets typed as a Scorpio Sun, however I think Scorpio, for all of its emotional volatility, can be frighteningly calculating. Scorpio Sun likes to hide in the shadows, waiting patiently for the perfect opportunity to strike. Anakin broods like a Scorpio, but he has the impatience of an Aries, and carries out most of his actions like an Aries.

His Aries Sun is very active, always on the move, acting on its feelings almost without thought. Anakin seems to be flying by the seat of his pants in most areas of life. He’s also naturally pretty fiery and competitive, having no issue with showing off. Anakin is restless, he has an urge to push boundaries and to experience everything. He’s very open, and his moon blends in easily with this. It’s this fire and action-oriented cardinal energy that has given him drive to become a Jedi, and probably his Aquarius/Scorpio that gives him the follow-through. Cardinal energy wants to lead, and Anakin is a natural-born leader. It comes more naturally to him than to Obi-Wan’s mutable Virgo!

Moon in Sagittarius Leo: The moon is our vulnerabilities, our emotions, and our maternal instinct. It is the side of ourselves that comes out when we are most comfortable. I thought that Anakin was a Sagittarius moon, since he seems given to sensory experiences. The more I saw how he interacted with Ahsoka, however, I’m starting to think he is in fact a Leo Moon. His emotions are wrapped in his pride. I remember the idea that Anakin wants more than what a Jedi’s life offers, even though he shouldn’t. He has strong desires. There is a nobility to Leo, fiercely protective of what it claims as its own. The way he tells Ahsoka he would never let anyone hurt her makes me think of a lion protecting its cub. Anakin is so fiercely protective of her, he sneers at the mere implication that Asajj sees a part of herself in her. With Padme, he wants to express his love in grand, dramatic gestures, probably in ways that he wishes he could show the whole world, but he can’t. He wants to save people who are suffering and right wrongs in a very grandiose manner. It feels like a divine calling, a narrative in which he is the main character, it is his purpose in life. This is how Anakin mothers the people he loves. Extreme, devout protection and gestures of adoration. Just think of a Lion’s majesty and ferocity, and you’ve got Anakin’s moon. 

Mercury in Aquarius: Mercury is all about how we understand things, think, and communicate. Anakin’s Aquarius Mercury is having a hard time breathing with all these fire and water signs around it. This is where Anakin’s unconventional thought patterns come from. Anakin will come up with a solution to a problem that is very unexpected. Anakin’s action-driven Sun, his possibility-driven Moon, and his forward-thinking Aquarius Mercury combine to make him a very daring pilot. Honestly it makes him very daring in many areas. His Aquarius Mercury is fascinated by tech and creating new things with it. He also doesn’t care much for social etiquette, and may even be amused by saying something blunt. He has a taste for innovation. Him and Obi-Wan having Mercury signs in air makes me think that’s why their banter is so amusing. They are both quick witted in this regard.

Venus in Scorpio: Venus rules romance, aesthetics, and taste. Oh boy, this is a doozy. Where do I start?

Having a water-based Venus is compatible with Obi-Wan’s water-based Moon. Water signs are compatible with other water-signs. However, there is a problem: Obi-Wan’s moon only comes out when he feels completely comfortable to do so. That happens extremely rarely. 

Anakin’s Venus is pulling at Obi-Wan’s Moon, demanding that Obi-Wan share a part of himself that Obi-Wan only shows when he feels absolutely safe to do so. Unfortunately, being a Jedi, it’s never safe to do so. Scorpio probes, which might even feel parasitic to Obi-Wan.  Obi-Wan will block it out, because it’s sensitive, it hurts. Anakin interprets this as a rejection, and thinks that he did something wrong, when it’s really just not the way Obi-Wan expresses his love (most of the time). That said, the detail-orientation of Obi-Wan’s Venus and his emotionally-psychic moon are extremely precise in detecting Anakin’s mood-changes and feelings.

(Obi-Wan’s Moon/Venus: “I love you but I don’t know how to deal with this.”)

Anakin’s love is raw. It is an all-consuming type of love, it’s like an addiction, a drug. Anakin wants to know the depths of someone’s soul, he wants to know someone’s deepest traumas and demons, to accept them and love them for all that they are, because ultimately that is what he craves for himself.

This kind of love is extremely intimidating to Obi-Wan’s gentle Virgo Venus and sensitive Cancer Moon. I don’t think Padme really knows how to deal with it either. I don’t think he’s shown all of it to her.

Scorpio Venus, along with his Scorpio Ascendant, makes Anakin very possessive and stubborn. This doesn’t mean that Scorpio Venuses are bad, only that they have an urge to take things to an extremely intense depth that most others don’t feel comfortable going to. Not everyone sees that as love. A Scorpio Venus has to learn that not everything has to go that deep, and that boundaries need to be respected.

On the plus side, you can probably tell your deepest secrets and insecurities to Anakin, and he won’t tell a soul. He’ll probably feel closer to you. 

Suspecting rejection, Anakin thinks he has to prove how much he loves someone, so that they don’t let him go. I think of the scene where Anakin gives his lightsaber to Padme, as a symbol of his life and love (I also suspect that Padme is probably a Cancer Ascendant, which would explain Anakin being drawn to her because she has a mothering, caring energy that he wants in love). Anakin doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have to go to these extreme lengths to prove that he loves someone, he doesn’t see that they already love him. He feels wrong and broken, and he wants someone who can heal his soul, when he really needs to look inwards and heal himself.

A Scorpio Venus can also take things very personally and become wrathful. Scorpio has a divine wrath, it is complete and utter destruction. Anakin is fire and ice, he burns everything to ash and freezes it over.

(Anakin’s Leo Moon/Scorpio Venus: “Why are you leaving me? What did I do wrong?”)

Losing someone he loves is death itself to him. When he speaks to Master Unduli about not giving up on Ahsoka, the thought of losing her looks like it physically pains him. 

In short: Anakin not properly dealing with his Scorpio Venus/Leo Moon is probably the cause of his fall. 

Also: Scorpios like darkness and intensity. To them, it is the most real, the most deep. Explains why Anakin likes black, huh?

Mars in Aries Scorpio: Mars rules passion, war, instinct, and sexuality. An Scorpio Mars is a planet in the sign of its old rulership! It is not as potent as Aries, but I changed it because I examined the way Anakin goes to war. He is more likely, at least later on, to use underhanded and sneaking tactics. This is where he becomes very cold, calculating, unyielding. Having a third inner planet (Ascendant sort of counts as a planet) in Scorpio makes his personality slightly unbalanced. There’s a LOT of Scorpio here, a lot of intense emotions that he has difficulty understanding. He can never completely express himself, there is something he’s always holding back, and he doesn’t even know what it is that he’s holding back.  

When it comes to sexuality, this is another area where Anakin gets possessive. This is where not only his Mars, but his Scorpio Venus and Leo Moon all come out to play. The eroticism is ridiculous. It’s wild, uninhibited, dark, passionate, emotional, and probably loud. What a drama queen. He’s easily aroused and wants to give everything he can to his partner. Having Scorpio in the planets of love and sexuality makes his expressions of love tinged with darkness. He probably has a dominant edge and wants to explore dark taboos. He wants to utterly consume his partner and have them consume him in return. This is an intense sensory and emotional experience for him, and he wants the best. His ideal is a luxurious bed with candles, a beautiful moonlit view, and nobody else for miles. Leaving his partners exhausted and satisfied is what he strives for, and he’d wish they could do this forever. Aries/Leo/Scorpio make his head, back, and well...his genitals, his erogenous zones, respectively.

[pinevalley]

“It’s called the Future Well,” Francis said, sitting cross-legged beside the hole in the ground. They ran their fingers along the boards nailed across it. “My grandad said that his grandad said that if you jump into the well water, you’ll see the future.”

“That’s a kinda lame name.” Grace dropped a pebble through a crack in the boards. She counted five seconds before it clattered against something. No splash. Grace stood, took a step back, and frowned at the well. “And now it’s a dry Future Well. They’d only see their death coming up to meet them.”

A morbid joke, but a chuckle still left Francis. Grace smiled. Her friend’s grandad shared many strange stories, either from his own experiences or passed down from others. Grace knew Francis found them fascinating. She also knew Francis tended to believe them. Or they said they didn’t believe them, but she still caught them casting a wary glance at the antique shop their grandad had warned them about, or carefully stepping over a dry patch of grass at the edge of one parking lot, which their grandad claimed would bring danger to anyone who touched it.

Grace found the stories interesting as well. She didn’t believe most of them, though. Her mind pointed out their many flaws and inconsistencies. True, the valley’s logic was peculiar by nature, but Grace was also skeptical by nature. She believed her friend’s grandad twisted truths or invented details to add to the intrigue. Rumors likely influenced the stories as well. She also guessed the truthfulness of older stories had faded over the years, their details shifting and reality blurring with each retelling.

Still, they inspired conversation and adventures between Grace and Francis. The sixteen-year-olds often went exploring when they weren’t in school.

A few days prior, they’d found the well in a clearing in the woods. Francis had consulted their grandad, learned the ‘truth’ behind it, and invited Grace out to visit it again because they’d discovered it was special. A typical start to adventures for the duo.

So they’d returned.

“So,” Grace continued, “back when there was water and you didn’t die, you jumped in the well and saw the future. And then you were just... fine afterward? You climb out and that’s that?” Sometimes strange things happened to people in the valley, and they had strange effects. That much was true. The effects tended to fade within a few hours or a few days.

Francis shook their head. “No, it’s like, a permanent thing.” They chewed their lip, their voice grave when they went on. “My granddad said you look around and see bits of the future everywhere. Forever.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad. I bet it would help you get better grades on your math tests.”

Francis sighed at her teasing, but amusement still glinted in their eyes. “Yeah, maybe.” Their gaze returned to the boards. “But like… it sounds kinda creepy, right? Getting glimpses of what’s gonna happen? And what if it’s like in the movies? Where somebody can see the future but they can’t change it, no matter what, even if it’s something bad. Seems like it would be better to just… not know.”

They shivered and pushed themself further away from the well — as though worried that if they stayed too close, an unknown force would smash through the boards and drag them in. Grace bit back a grin.

Something rustled behind her. She turned to look, expecting a squirrel or a deer rummaging in the leaves. Or maybe some weird valley animal.

Her mind stuttered.

It was a deer, grazing at the edge of the field. Or something vaguely shaped like a deer. Its spine rippled as it stepped forward and tore at another clump of grass. Its dark coat appeared rough, covered in small ridges and uneven bumps, and glossy, as though drenched in water. Grace imagined running her hand along it and the sensation of cold, damp gravel shifting beneath her palm.

It lifted its head. Its depthless eyes met her gaze. A heartbeat passed before it ran straight toward her.

Grace stumbled backward and her shoes thudded onto wood. The boards creaked, old and rotted with age. Panic shot through Grace; instant realization.

The deer leapt over Grace as the boards collapsed. She fell; her heart leapt into her throat; the brick walls rushed past. Francis’s shout echoed after her.

A split second thought crossed her mind: “I’m going to die.” The future, but she’d misspoken when she’d mentioned it to Francis — death wouldn’t come up to meet her. She’d plummet down to meet it.

And then she hit the bottom of the well and pain shot though— no, she plunged into ice cold water and sank. The shock left her frozen before her lungs fought for— no, she didn’t need to breathe.

The water enveloped her. She found herself unable to close her eyes, let alone swim upward. The slightest movement proved impossible. She might have been a stone dropped into the well. She continued sinking, her descent slow and her surroundings dim yet strangely still visible, as though weak sunlight streamed through the water at every depth.

She couldn’t turn her head, but the brick wall in front of her appeared further away than it should have been. She sometimes glimpsed things in crevices. Coins. Some dull and some bright; some coppery and some silver. The brighter ones glimmered before she sank past and they vanished above her.

She couldn’t look down, but she sensed something far below her. A presence. Waiting.

It felt cold and ancient; solid yet shifting. She sensed depth beyond comprehension; water slipping through a vast labyrinth beneath the ground; wishes ingrained into coins threading through the same maze; forgotten spaces concealing forgotten secrets; time fraying between rocks; time worn thin.

Aside from the pressure and the smooth current that rippled over her skin, she could barely distinguish the water from the sensation of freezing air. The presence stayed fixed below her, growing stronger as she sank deeper. Her dread grew. Again, with remarkable clarity, she thought: “I’m going to die.”

And then another voice came, a low voice, a voice that welled up from rocks deep in the earth and surrounded her and pressed into her ears and mind.

‘You will not die.’

The rocks far below Grace shifted and sank and scraped against one another in the darkness. When the voice welled up again, it matched her own.

‘You will not die.’

A sudden surge in water pressure, and her ears popped in a burst of pain. Her hands raised to cover them and grazed the walls instead. The well had returned to its proper width. Her muscles also obeyed her desperate need to escape — at last, she stopped sinking and began swimming upward.

Seconds passed with no daylight in sight. Her need for air returned with a vengeance; her lungs burned. Exhaustion weighed her down. Her vision darkened; the coins in the walls glimmered like starlight in velvety blackness. For someone not going to die, it felt an awful lot like death was closing in.

And then the passage tipped over backward, from vertical to horizontal, and her back slammed against the wall. Dizziness swept away her thoughts. Her fingers clutched at the bricks at her sides and—

Grasped handfuls of soft grass instead.

A waterlogged cough left Grace before she could gasp in air. Brightness blinded her, and she shut her eyes against it. Dizziness still washed over her. Her skin prickled and begged her to move, though, so she unsteadily pushed herself to a sitting position.

A muffled sound came from nearby. Grace looked toward it to see a blurry figure kneeling beside her. She blinked. Francis. Crying. Grass and trees around them; the clearing. The well; the boards gone.

She shook her head to jostle the water from her ears. She almost regretted it; her friend’s ragged sobs brought a sharp ache to her chest. They hugged her, and though her mind still struggled to catch up, their tight embrace lessened the lingering numbness. A few seconds passed before she regained her senses enough to wrap her arms around them in return.

Dry arms, she realized. Her clothing was dry. She was dry. A ghost of pain lingered where the walls had scraped her hands, but her skin had no scratches.

She’d died, Francis told her once they’d calmed down enough to speak, their voice still hoarse and their words jumbled. Or they’d thought she died. They’d seen her fall and lunged to grab her hand. Much too late. They’d looked down the hole.

And seen her crumpled at the bottom.

They’d shouted and she hadn’t moved. They’d ran toward the edge of the clearing to get help, but before they reached the trees, a sudden impulse had caused them to glance over their shoulder. Grace, unbroken, lay beside the well. She’d sat up by the time they’d ran back and knelt beside her.

Despite her friend’s protests, Grace peered into the hole. Dry. Rocks and broken boards at the bottom. Still, something pulsed in her chest at her closeness to the well, so she moved away again.

She tried to explain what had happened, but she could tell Francis was too shaken to process her words. Their face was pale and their gaze intense, fixed on her, as though they expected her to vanish or fall to pieces at any moment. Which made sense. They’d seen her dead or close to death. Now she sat beside them, discussing her not-death, unscathed.

Unscathed and… seemingly unfazed. Realization struck Grace — the proper response would be panicking, crying, but an eerie calm had settled over her. And that realization should have brought alarm, she knew, but instead it brought interest. She could talk about this as easily as commenting on the weather. Logic had always kept her levelheaded in crises — she could layer facts and observations over her emotions until those emotions smothered, a useful defense mechanism against the valley itself — but this felt different. Deeper. Foreign.

Like the water — or a piece of whatever presence lurked beneath the well — had sunken into her, wrapped around her lungs and bones and muscles, blanketed her nerves and made a home within her, inextricably twisted into the very fibers of her being.

Unreasonable. Illogical. Impossible. But why had she coughed up water? Had she ever opened her mouth as she sank or swam? Moreover, her clothing and skin had been dry when she woke up beside the well. So why had water clogged her ears and muffled her hearing; stung as it blurred her vision?

She pushed those thoughts aside. Smothered them beneath the fact that right now, she needed to reassure her friend. She told Francis she hadn’t seen the future, hoping to spark their curiosity, but they only acknowledged the comment quietly, their fingers pulling at each other. The remnants of their fear and panic shone through when they lifted their gaze — tears still brightened their eyes and flushed their face. She didn’t want to scare them more.

Maybe staying quiet was for the best. Maybe they needed to respond the way many locals responded to terrible things: shove the incident behind them. Never mention it again. Pretend it never happened. They’d already done that a few times in the past.

Grace still asked about the deer. A glance around her had revealed no trace of the creature — no hoof prints stamped into the grass, no glimpse of its dark coat and pitch black eyes between the trees.

“What deer?”

They hadn’t seen a deer, they said. They’d only seen her turn around for some reason before she’d stumbled backward and fallen into the well.

Confusion and worry had spread across their face, their brow furrowed and teeth digging into their lower lip. Grace knew she needed to respond before their concern spilled over and they asked whether she’d hit her head, whether they should find a doctor. Grace did not want to see a doctor. She imagined them looking down her throat, giving a solemn hum, and informing her with calm professionalism that they’d spotted groundwater and that she ought to consider visiting a specialist in well entities.

Grace could have sworn she heard gravelly laughter in the back of her mind.

Francis was staring at her. Grace spoke quickly. “Never mind. Just imagining things, I guess.” She managed a smile. “Really, I, uh… I kinda just wanna get a milkshake at the diner. I’ll feel better then.” And Francis would feel better then, she hoped. They liked milkshakes more than her. The diner also offered normalcy; milkshakes and jukebox music and laughter would wash away the memory.

Relief swept over Grace when her friend’s shoulders relaxed. They helped her stand. Or rather, they held her hand as she pushed herself upright, their grasp loose and trembling. They squeezed her hand once. Grace remained intact under pressure. They seemed to find solace in this, more tension leaving their form, and they released their hold and stepped back.

Her dizziness passed. Briefly, they debated what to do about the well — a danger, clearly — and decided to tell their parents about it so they could replace the boards. Hopefully with much sturdier ones.

As they walked away from the hole, Grace spotted a patch of clovers. Nothing unusual about it. But the moment her gaze fell upon it, the well’s voice spoke in her mind again; groundwater slipped between rocks; time frayed and slipped along with it.

‘It will rain soon.’

A casual statement. Commenting on the weather.

Grace swallowed hard. She tugged her gaze away from the clovers and focused on walking, on Francis insisting on paying for the milkshakes. It meant nothing. She’d likely imagined it — the prior terror playing tricks on her mind, twisting her experience with the whole ‘future well’ business Francis had described. And if she hadn’t imagined it, the effect would likely fade within a few hours or a few days. She needed to get over it and move on.

“Seems like it’s gonna rain,” she heard Francis say from beside her. Grace tilted her head upward to see the sky. It had been clear and sunny the last time she’d checked. Grey clouds now darkened it.

And a drop of rainwater fell onto her forehead.

[itsuki-minamy]

“K - THE FIRST STORY”

CHAPTER 10: THE MAN WITH THE FOX MASK (Complete)

* K - The First Story (List of Chapters) * Projects & Chapters

Translation: Naru-kun Raws: Ridia

He doesn’t remember the first thing.

However, when he was secretly called by the Slate and became "King", he knew that the color of the "King" he received was "Colorless", and he remembers that he was strangely convinced.

He was a transparent man like water. Not individual and flat. He was a person who had few emotional ups and downs, had no noticeable thoughts, was not attached to people, things, or even himself, and was just there in silence.

Why did such a person become a "King"?

He somehow he was convinced that he knew of his ability as "King".

He was able to insert his soul into someone else's body, read and swallow someone else's memory, abilities, and life and make it his own. In other words, it was just water in a large pot to make soup. That is why he was transparent, tasteless and colorless.

He had no interest or attachment to himself. So he left his body without any regret and walked around the bodies of others.

He doesn't remember it well, but at first he thinks he probably didn't have any particular purpose.

However, since he had become a "creature with such power", he continued to swallow the lives of many human beings with the vague idea that such power should be used.

"I wonder if this power can save people." He entered the body of a nurse and thought so.

"If my mind drifts, I can be a genius, right?" He entered the body of a college student, and that was the end.

"Most of the people in the world are stupid. It should be led by a powerful person." He entered the body of a politician and cross his arms.

"To have power, first of all, violence! Fear has brought people down." He entered the body of a yakuza man and breathe.

"Let's get what we want from one end. I can do that." He entered the body of a rich woman and laughed a lot.

"This is strange. This is wrong." He entered the body of a teacher and held his head.

"It's lonely. I want someone to praise me." He entered the body of a lonely child and cry.

He walks through many human bodies.

Many skills, knowledge, thought, experience and life have become his. He started to get a sharp idea and his emotions got higher and lower. Although his capacity was great, as a result of continuing to take possession of the lives of people with conflicting ideas and sensibilities, his thoughts, desires and actions became inconsistent, and his personality as a human being was disturbed.

One day he was visited by a parrot.

"Putting on a mask is a good idea. You are a person."

Said the parrot.

At that time, he was an old man who owned an antique store.

Interrupted by his personality and spirit, he took an attacking action, knocking the merchandise out of the store to the ground and rampaging, not knowing what he wanted to do.

The air outside was cold in late fall, but the windows were open. A parrot with green feathers was standing on the window railing and speaking in fluent words that could not be considered as a bird.

He should put on a mask.

"Who are you?"

The passion that had made him rampage like crazy until then subsided, and he asked calmly as he watched the strange parrot.

The parrot inclined its head in a strangely human gesture.

"I'm a passing advisor. You seem to be in trouble, so I called you. It's advice."

"What does it mean to put on a mask?"

The parrot makes a rattling noise and spreads its wings. It was very similar to how an exaggerated person extends his hands.

"Now you are unable to unify your will and your actions. This is the price of your great power. As a result of assimilating all human memory, your memory has been altered."

"Other than that, I don't regret anything in my memory."

"Still, it would be a problem if you couldn't define 'who you are'. You're just a bankrupt person. Without you, you have no purpose."

The parrot who spoke softly, did not take his eyes off his emotionless eyes.

"What do you do with a mask?"

"I entrust 'myself' to the mask. That mask will become your faceless face, and it will be a good idea to assemble the ego that is being photographed."

He silently stares at the parrot for a while, and suddenly he looks down at a point in the messy shop.

There was a fox mask that fell on the tea utensils that broke on the floor.

He reached out and lifted the fox mask, staring at the elongated, eerily cut eye hole.

The "King" fox, who is bad for others, is a source of the fox. He felt it was a good match for him.

(This is the face of "myself".)

That perception mysteriously fell on him and became the outline of his shyness.

He raised the fox mask to his face and looked at the parrot.

"I am the Seventh King, the 'Colorless King'."

"Fufu.", Laughed the parrot.

"Nice to meet you," Colorless King ". What is your dream?"

There were various thoughts and voices in him. Soft voices used to be quiet, lost to loud and violent voices and became inaudible. He heard many inner voices and shook the baton like a conductor to combine those voices into a piece of music and put it in his own thoughts.

"I will be the strongest 'King'."

After that, the parrot became kind to him.

He gave him various information and advice when he started acting to become the strongest "King".

It was fun talking to the parrot about his ambitions and acting like him.

"The meaning of my birth was probably to unite the world. I am a recipient that accepts the whole world."

"I see. It's an interesting idea."

"The King does not need seven people, and I will swallow all of his power, skill, experience, memory, and thought, and unite him."

"That's your way. I understand."

The parrot disagreed with his words, but showed understanding.

He took the sincerity of this parrot to simply listen and understand that that was his chosen path, rather than a weak empathy.

"There are four 'Kings' that we know where they are now. The first king, the 'Silver King', who is still flying in the sky in an airship. The second king, the 'Golden King', who lives in the huge Mihashira tower. In Shizume, there is the third king, the 'Red King', who lives in a bar. And the fourth king, who has a camp in Tsubakimon, the 'Blue King'."

He licked his tongue, wondering where to start.

"The "Golden King" is still a bit overloaded. It will be difficult if you don't get the power of another "King" before sneaking into the stronger "King". The powers of the "Red King" and "Blue King" are similar, but the red is unbalanced. Between these two people, the red could be broken."

"I agree. We are going to come up with a strategy for that."

"Oh, but before the red, it is better to start with the easy part."

"The easy part?"

"The only king of his kind, the 'Silver King'. I think he's no longer motivated to play the 'King'. It's better for him if he gets it right away."

The parrot was a bit quiet.

"But it's also the beginning of the Dresden Slate. Don't let your guard down."

"My power is effective in humans who have a void in their hearts. The "Silver King" has abandoned the responsibility of the "King" and has been fleeing all the time. My heart is empty. For me, he is the easiest person. to catch."

Also, the attributes of "Silver King" are not modified. In other words, basically, he will be the strongest body that will not get hurt or die. He argued that once he had that power, it would be much easier to eat another "King".

"Okay, so it's a good idea to plan in parallel the contact with the 'Silver King' and the trembling of the 'Red King'."

When the parrot decided to take over from the "Silver King", the parrot seemed eager to cooperate with him, although at first he was a bit reluctant.

By carrying out the plan, the parrot even gave him a nice body as a gift.

A harmless boy with a pretty face and a simple identity.

"As he is an unaffiliated child, you can use it however you want and it will not cause you any inconvenience. I have tampered with the information and erased the public records, so it is unlikely that you will be caught by a public institution."

The boy's body was in good shape. He sang with his body. A song of delight. It was a song of joy.

He was ready. The necessary tools, including firearms and bombs, were collected on the way through the body and stored in various hiding places. The body of the mob was useful for collecting tools, but it was inconvenient for them to live after using them, so, he kill some of them when he leave their bodies. He killed them, but no one needed to cry, since all the memories and experiences of them were stored in him.

The parrot had never denounced or denied his actions. He was just there, taking care of him and giving him advice and information if he asked. For him, the parrot was the only "friend of the outside world."

"Hey, parrot."

The night before the decision, he told the parrot.

"The 'King' creates the Clansmans, right?"

"As for the presence or absence of Clansman and the amount, it depends on the 'King', but basically it is affirmative."

"Why don't you become my clan member?"

It was a funny word. But it's not that he wasn't serious.

The parrot rolled its eyes and bowed its head.

"I can't do that. Didn't you notice?"

"No. I noticed. Are you also a 'King'? 'Green King', Nagare Hisui."

There was no reason not to notice. In the first place, it was clear that he was not the only one who felt and he contacted the awakening of the "Colorless King", which not even the Golden clan could capture, and now he had this parrot ready. He was in the body of a young boy. All the memories of the boy were inherited by him. This boy was a user of an SNS called "Jungle" operated by the "Green King", and a game in which he actually completed missions issued from him and received points, a game in which many people are crazy behind the scenes. He knew, of course, that it was one of the more well-known games, and he kidnapped the boy in the first place because he was invited to an unpopular place called a mission.

The boy who possessed this body was a transparent boy who had little connection with people, like air, like water.

He felt that this boy looked a bit like the original me that he had forgotten about.

Just as the boy, who was not interested in interacting with people, was still looking for some connection with the peculiar social network "Jungle", he could have looked for something in the parrot.

"I just said it. I sent three people thinking that it would be fine if there was one person who could see me from the outside."

"Are you dreaming of putting the world in you? Don't get halfway there."

The parrot simply replied, spreading its green wings.

"You and I are walking different paths and dreaming differently. You were very interesting and I helped you because it was perfect for the basis of my dream. It is a unit of interest."

"Oh."

"In order for you to capture all the 'Kings' and become the strongest 'King', you will eventually have to fight me. So, let's play a good game."

The parrot's eyes were directly directed at him, not reflecting his emotions.

"Then, goodbye."

There was a creak.

The green feathers that flew fluttered in the air to his feet.

"Hey."

He called involuntarily, looking at the parrot, which flew away and got smaller.

The parrot, who appeared when he was about to destroy his ego, put a face on him, listened to his ambitions and gave him an answer, he was terribly gone.

Being left alone, he felt asexually reluctant.

He felt that the lonely child in him was crying "alone".

"Hey."

He calls back to empty space. At that moment,

"What?"

There was a voice to answer.

It was a voice that came out of his mouth, there was no one.

Oh, yeah, it felt like a revelation.

He was not alone. Even if he had only one body, he was filled with the greatest abundance. There was a world in his body. He lifts the world.

He heard the voices of the many personalities within him, but before the voices confused him and broke his ego, he covered his face with the fox mask.

"I am the Seventh King, the 'Colorless King'. A human being who accepts all 'Kings', gains all power, knows everything and becomes the world itself."

It felt clear in his head.

He grabbed the pistol he had prepared and stroked the black barrel with his slender fingers.

"Let's step forward. First of all, as the first stone to destroy the 'Red King', let's kill Totsuka Tatara, an executive of the Red clan who is also a plug of the 'Red King'."

Then, he will go to see the "Silver King".

Once he has the immutable defense and the flame of destruction, he will no longer be afraid.

Making a smile under the fox mask, he also sang a song of joy.

++++++++++

"Damn!"

He attacked the "Red King" and, on the contrary, he was bitten and jumped out of the room in anger.

Immediately afterwards, Suoh's flames, which were chasing his power, exploded and the force of the explosion sent him rolling down the hall.

The room he was in until now was blown up, and when it burned, the flames consumed everything. The power was great even though it was an attack from a remote location. He clicked his tongue feeling ridiculed.

He thought the unstable "Red King" was weakening in the "Scepter 4" dungeon, but he still seemed reluctant. Nothing is more dangerous than a beast that has some physical strength left.

His forehead ached a little and he touched with his hand. The fox face he wore was gone. Looks like he was blown away. He appeared to have a small burn on his forehead. It is not something he cares about, it is just a temporary body. There is no problem if it breaks.

"Wow! Hey, are you okay?"

He could hear the footsteps and the voice of the schoolgirl running down the hall. When he raised his face, Kukuri Yukizome, a girl who was a classmate of that body, came running up and looked at his face anxiously.

"Oh, I have burns on my forehead! I'm cold! What happened?"

Kukuri immediately wet her handkerchief with water and put it on his forehead. She made a confused look.

"I don't know... When I passed by, the room suddenly exploded..."

"That room shouldn't have been strange, but... maybe a gas explosion."

He reflected, looking at Kukuri, who was afraid to look inside the charred room, saying that she had to contact the fire department and the police.

Perhaps the red clan will reach Gakuenjima before the fire department and the police. The "Red King" Mikoto Suoh must have identified this place by grabbing his tail, which has interfered with his psyche.

It was easy to leave that body and escape before the "Red King" entered, but it was also an opportunity. This island, which is isolated to some extent from the main world, is a perfect place for battles between kings. He was ready to face it.

When the "Red King" arrives, the "Blue King" will definitely start moving. It's a good idea to push red and blue to physically weaken them before eating.

And the mystery boy, Isana Yashiro. The boy, who was alive even after being thrown from the airship, suddenly began living on this school island with the face of a student. He was in a position to be hunted by both the red and the blue, but he can return if this school island turns into a battlefield.

He will have to meet Isana Yashiro again.

"Hey, Yukizome-san."

He told Kukuri, returning the slimy handkerchief to his forehead.

"Do you know what Isana is doing now?"

"Isana-kun...? Um... who...?"

Kukuri turned her head with a confused face. It seems that Isana's memory is not preserved.

"Oh, Yukizome-san, you don't seem to know Isana. Nothing, don't worry."

"Oh, where are you going? Let's report the explosion together..."

"I'm sorry."

He smiled at Kukuri. Perhaps because he wore a fox face all the time, he smiled like a fox.

"I'm busy with a lot of things to prepare from now on. And since only one room exploded, Yukizome-san, you don't have to worry too much."

It's not as bad as a disguise or two disappearing, because something was about to happen.

When the Himmelreich crashed, he kidnapped the boy's body and rushed to the crash site. He examined the body of the "Silver King", who had fallen from the airship, but after he left, his body had no pulse and he was not breathing, and he never woke up like Weismann again.

He left Weismann's body unattended, left the scene before the police and "Scepter 4" reunited, and went to a hideout in search of firearms and bombs to retrieve it.

He then kidnapped the driver of a truck carrying goods to Gakuenjima, loaded weapons and bombs, and invaded Gakuenjima. Weapons are important to him who does not have much attack ability currently, and Gakuenjima, who is very isolated as a hiding place, is unexpectedly convenient and above all, Isana, who is the person in question, was on the spot and was likely to return. After hiding the guns in the school, he kidnapped one of the boys and settled in the school.

It was a miscalculation that the "Red King" was stronger than he expected, but he was more or less within his calculations.

They were ready to start the festival.

Sitting in front of the clock tower, he was looking in the direction of Gakuenjima gate.

The sky above the door distorted and a red light exploded.

"He already came."

A huge sword emerged from the tension created in the sky.

The red Sword of Damocles.

The shape of the sword collapsed, cracked here and there, and the debris spilled into small pieces.

Well, he was impressed that he kept that spirit in that state.

"It's an early arrival, 'Red King'. Well, it's a day early, but it's the start of a fun school festival."

At the same time as his words, the door exploded. The screams of the students echoed.

From the rising smoke, Mikoto Suoh, the "Red King", appeared with a large number of clansmen behind him.

The students were stunned for a moment by the sudden explosion and the invasion of men with terrifying apparitions carrying weapons like metal bats and iron pipes, and then they all escaped at once, starting with someone yelling.

Looking at the fleeing students, Suoh made a troublesome face and developed a flame in his left hand.

He shook his arm with the flame lightly. The flame flew straight towards the clock tower and landed.

"Whoops."

Sitting under the clock tower, he hurriedly jumped out of the place. When he turned around as he evacuated inside where sparks and fine tiles fell from above, he saw the clock tower bend cleanly from the middle, kick up dust, and collapse.

(Just bullying the loud boy, I don't think it's an attack aimed at him, but... he's a strangely level-headed bastard.)

He was alone on the inside, with a cold sweat and a smile on his mouth.

The students, who were in a panic and trying to escape, were left with pale faces, witnessing the extraordinary power and the clock tower that collapsed.

The area had changed from the previous annoyance and was quiet. It is a horror that you can imagine, but when you witness a horror beyond your imagination, people become rigid.

In the frigid air, a man in sunglasses raised a megaphone. Izumo Kusanagi, the executive member of "Homura".

"Hi, keep calm. Didn't you learn anything at school? Don't push, don't run and don't talk during an emergency. It is important to obey those three 'no's. We are not here to cause you trouble. So please remain calm and cooperate. This shouldn't take long."

Kusanagi said with a smoky smile and a soft, reassuring voice, and when he removed the megaphone from his mouth, he exchanged a word or two with Suoh. Suoh seems careless, and now he was walking towards the clock tower that he destroyed.

After looking at his back and taking a breath, Kusanagi turned to the "Homura" people and raised his voice.

"Find the boy who murdered Totsuka, even if you have to destroy this place!"

According to the command, the members of "Homura" screamed. A large group of young men with bad style rioted. He snorted and looked to see if these unmannered thugs could conquer this vast school, but "Homura's" men were unexpectedly well-mannered on a personal level. They began to divide them by hand, and while listening to the students, they began to put them together in one place.

He gently left the place.

When he returned to the school building while he was avoiding the "Homura" boys, the students who still didn't understand the situation were wandering around.

"What's going on...?"

"I just heard an explosion nearby..."

Kukuri, Inaba, Mishina and others huddle together eagerly. He approached them casually.

"Now a lot of people like gangsters have broken through the door and invaded."

In his words, Kukuri and her colleagues expressed fear and suspicion. She maybe she couldn't believe her words because she couldn't feel reality.

However, the school broadcast started to flow at a good time.

"Well, from this moment on, Gakuenjima is under the control of "Homura". I repeat. Gakuenjima is now under the control of "Homura"."

"Lie."

Inaba muttered involuntarily and covered her mouth with both hands. Kukuri supported the one who staggered with a pale face. Mishina turned his face around and looked at the speaker he was broadcasting.

"Students must follow the instructions of our members. As long as you do, you have nothing to fear. We are currently looking for a friend of ours. He looks like the image on the screen. If anyone recognizes him, please report immediately to the closest member of our team."

The hologram monitor in the entrance hall of the important school building, which was sending information about the school festival, was distorted and the video was changed. An image of a boy holding a gun was projected.

"What is this?"

"Oh, this is the guy I saw at the website earlier."

Along with the stunned Kukuri and the others, Mishina screamed. Kukuri looked at Mishina with wide eyes.

"No, it was rumored that it was a video of a murder done as a prank, but I was curious and I kept it. But, it is true that they are looking for him like that. He is a murderer…"

"Why come to our school to find such a person?"

Inaba pursed her lips with a tearful face.

Apparently "Homura" is still looking for "Isana". The body of a child who was his favorite with a cute and harmless face.

That body now walks alone. He still has something to do with "Isana". If "Homura" can find him, it would be better.

Well, that seed is already broken for the "Red King". For Suoh, searching for "Isana" may just be to find a clue.

"Oh, the staff is here! Everyone quietly enter the room!"

Several men from "Homura" ran into the school building and intimidated the students. The schoolgirls scream in fear.

On the other hand, some well-built male students looked at each other and sent signals to each other, and all at once jumped to take control of the "Homura" boys. There were more male students than "Homura", and they probably had confidence in their strength in the martial arts athletic club or something like that. In fact, the boys managed to take the metal bat that they had as a weapon from several of "Homura's" men.

"You are the ones who should be quiet!"

One of the boys barked. However, the "Homura" man laughed. The guys who tried to support themselves turned and kicked with a single kick.

Shouts and echo of marshal. The man from "Homura" did not use flames, but the boys' large bodies flew slightly and fell silent.

"If you follow me, did you say on the air right now that you are not afraid? On the contrary, if you do not obey and make a fuss, I will hit you! Remember that!"

A man from "Homura" said that and took the metal bat that was picked up by a student. When the man shook it slightly, the bat turned red and on fire.

The strange sight increased the voltage of horror from the students. In addition to the fear of simple violence, the fear of the unknown cultivated the students.

"Good.", He giggled inside.

His power pierced people's hearts. He sneaked into the other person through a space in his heart, he shook the other person's heart and opened the door, and made the other person's content yours. Therefore, it is difficult to get into a stable human being.

But now there is no one in this place who has a stable mind. The students were shaking with fear and anxiety, and "Homura" was more excited than usual.

He licked his tongue alone, watching a convenient stage complete.

As the ready meals are lined up, he walks melee.

When the student's body was restricted in his actions and it was inconvenient, he entered "Homura's" body and then entered another student's body and wandered around the school.

Every time he changed bodies, he gained new memories and experiences.

Naturally, he was singing a song of joy again.

The song of delight shone well on the island where elation and crying mingled, and it seemed like an auspicious cry.

He shook his body from side to side, sang a hummed song, and walked down the hall. There was only one voice that followed the melody, but in it many voices overlap and reverberate like a magnificent chorus.

The chorus was the proof that he was not alone, that he was a "King".

(Who will move on? It might be interesting to eat the best ranks of "Homura" here. Oh, but isn't it bad to get close to Anna Kushina? I shouldn't look into that girl's eyes. That girl's sensitive eyes will see through of anyone inside.)

First, he will delve into the mixed environment. The blue will come and start to bite the red, then...

Ping, pong, bread, pong. And a silly sound that was not suitable for this situation echoed, and the transmission flowed again.

"Oh, attention to all the members of our team. The blue dogs will pay us a visit. The groups near the gates, reinforce the guard."

Izumo Kusanagi's voice was heard giving instructions to his friends.

The blue dog is "Scepter 4." It seems that the actors are getting together.

He laughs like a fox. The great delicious song chorus that hasn't stopped yet.

[vajranam]

Power Of Virtue

Results of Doing the Ten Non-Virtues

1. Killing any living being. It includes abortion, suicide (ruining a body that could have reached nirvana in this life), and participating in the military (even being a cook, it is as if you shot the gun yourself).

Personal Result: Your life is short; and you get sick easily, have little energy.

Environmental Result: Food, drink, medicine, crops, have very little effect, are always inferior, are not nutritious, are hard to digest, and cause disease in you. Most beings around you die before reaching the end of a full life.

2. Stealing anything of value: includes shady business deals, cheating on rent, taxes, or bills, underpaying what is due to local government or society, etc.

Personal Result: You do not have enough to live on or to make ends meet; and what you do have is all just common property with others.

Environmental Result: The crops are few and far between, they have no power to remove hunger, they spoil or never come up; dry spells stay on too long; it rains too much; the crops dry up or die off.

3. Sexual Misconduct. It mainly means adultery — cheating on your partner, a person to whom you are exclusively committed. It also includes some specific secondary behaviors.

Personal Result: The people who work around you are “inconsistent” (unreliable); and you find yourself having a lot of competition for your partner.

Environmental Result: You live in a place where there is urine and feces all around, and mud, dirt, filth; everything stinks and everywhere seems unpleasant and distasteful.

4. Lying, giving someone else a wrong impression about what you have seen, believe, or know; unless it would save someone’s life or prevent real suffering. If you lie and get something, the benefit comes from past good deeds, not from the lie.

Personal Result: No one believes what you say; even when you are speaking the truth, others are always deceiving you.

Environmental Result: Your work in cooperation with others fails to prosper and people around you do not work well together; everyone generally is cheating one another and is afraid, and there are many things to be afraid of.

5. Divisive Talk, splitting people up with your talk; saying things to alienate or separate two different people, (regardless of whether or not your words are true); causing one person to like another person less; it is usually subtle, like in your tone of voice.

Personal Result: You lose friends easily; people around you are always fighting one another; and people around you have an undesirable character.

Environmental Result: The ground you live in is split up, uneven, covered with crags and gullies, highs and lows, so travel is difficult and you are always afraid and there are many things to be afraid of.

6. Harsh Talk, with bad intent and effect; it includes sarcastic “nice” words and swearing.

Personal Result: You hear many unpleasant things, you hear things as bad sounds; and when others talk to you it always seems to you as if they want to start a fight.

Environmental Result: The ground where you live is covered with obstacles like fallen tree trunks, thorns, stones, sharp broken glass; it is rough, dreary, no streams or water springs; the ground is parched and poisoned, burning hot and threatening; there are many things to fear.

7. Idle Talk, meaningless chatter, criticism, disputes, useless joking, whining, complaining, speaking out of the motive of attachment or craving; gossiping about politics, sports, etc., or about people engaged in wrong livelihood; reciting prayers while not thinking about their meaning. Gossiping about others’ values or spiritual practice. Dharma is sacred and should be discussed in holy private whispers on special nights, not casually — talk in hushed tones, very beautiful sacred speech, talk about inspiring things. As an aspiring bodhisattva, you may need to discuss mundane topics with others for their benefit, but keep the ultimate goal in mind, and do not be drawn into worldly conversations.

Personal Result: No one listens to you; no one respects what you say — no one thinks that what you say has any particular value; and you are afflicted with a lack of confidence and self-esteem.

Environmental Result:Fruits refuse to grow, or grow at the wrong times, seem ripe when they are not, have frail roots; there are no leisure places around like parks, or pools of cool water; many things around make you afraid.

8. Craving/Coveting, is similar to coveting in the Ten Commandments. Wanting others’ possessions and personal qualities like their intelligence, health, fame, youth, or spiritual achievements. It comes in five stages: you are attached to your own possessions, desire to accumulate more than you have, discover another’s possessions, like to make them your own, and the desire becomes unmanageable and you “lose shame” (then you act).

Personal Result: Your personality is dominated by desire; and you are never satisfied with what you have.

Environmental Result: Every good thing you manage to find starts to get worse, decrease as days, months, and seasons pass.

9. Ill-Will, is to wish bad things upon others; being pleased when others fail or have misfortune; competitiveness, like “Oh, how did they mess up? Tell me more…” not feeling as bad for an unfortunate person as you would feel for yourself if you were them.

Personal Result: Your personality is dominated by anger; you are always finding yourself without help, or never find the help you need; and you are always hurting others, or always being hurt by others.

Environmental Result: You live in a world of chaos, diseases spread, evil is everywhere, plague, conflict, fear of harm from the military, dangerous animals, you are surrounded by harmful spirits, thieves or muggers, etc.

10. Wrong View, “Incorrect world view” means not regarding karma as being the direct cause of every microsecond of experience we have. This leads to doing misdeeds #1–9.

Personal Result: Your personality is dominated by stupidity; you are a person who keeps harmful views; and you are a deceitful person.

Environmental Result: You live in a world where the single highest source of happiness is steadily disappearing from the earth; where people think that unclean and suffering things are actually nice and happy; where there is no place to go, no one to help you, nothing to protect you.

THE TEN VIRTUES

Any actions we do that cause both oneself and others to experience happiness as a result are known as virtuous actions. The classification of virtuous actions is:

Not taking the life of living beings

Not taking what is not freely given

Abstaining from sexual misconduct

Speaking truthfully

Not engaging in divisive speech

Speaking gentle words

Not gossiping

Not coveting the wealth of others

Giving up holding ill-will towards others

Right view

Contrary at what we think virtues wasn't here before the Buddha teaching, we can find on vedic and pte hindu text the notion of virtues very similar, now when we come to Buddha teaching Shakyamuni stress on those virtues because he realised that without that nothing happened.

Virtues is rightous act made in selfless action, without thinking “ gonna get good karma doing this “ , virtues are made in selfless mind to.

How do we do virtues by practicing the Dharma ? So we do virtues because first we renounce to samsara, second we want to practice for sake of all sentient beings and last we generate bodhichitta. Without those we won’t make any virtues, now virtues applications so yes we will mess up in today world full of extreme yes we will do non vitues to cancel them we need to confess fault and hiden fault by the body, speach and mind.

There's a zen proverb that say that the zen master made more mistakes than the students. So making mistakes well it’s normal our day will be more grey tham pure with or dark. What we mistaken to be like Garchen Rinpoche for example that years of work, Garchen Rinpoche himself said himself if we look to his karma he didn't had much virtues but he didn't give up on Dharma not even for a day.

That same attitude we need to have, yes we will face hardship someday we will make just non virtues and that ok because we will regret transform and carry on its part of learning Dharma to the deep.

It’s very easy to see if we got virtues and on what we use those virtues, in past I was worried about money because I was very poor, till I notice well I am not so poor because I met Karmapa, Shamarpa, took refuge very high vows with Garchen Rinpoche, recived empowerments that Milarepa himself had, wasn't poor was extremely ritch I just noticed that virtues was in Dharma there for I focus on those and left the rest. So we maybe poor, ritch or whatever but we can see on what way go our virtues for example in our life there's an area that very grow that where is our virtues, after that area maybe not Dharma mean we actually burning virtues and if we want to practice we need to develop bodhi mind .

[thereluctantinquisitor]

OC Kiss Week 21

I arrive with a humble entry, dedicated to my lovely @frenchy-and-the-sea. Thank you for letting me borrow one of your Seven Cities characters!

This turned out a lot longer than expected because of who I am as a person. Anyway I hope you like it, and I apologise in advance for any wild inconsistencies with the Captain of my Heart and Soul.

~2000 words, original fiction (a hearty blend of Stonebreaker and Seven Cities)

                _______________________________

There weren’t a lot of things to be said about sailors. Well, other than the conclusive fact that they were all utterly insane. But there was something about that cocksure Captain Alex, with her big hat and big ego to fill it, that had been keeping Sylda up later and later into the night. Before, she would just lie in her makeshift pallet, entertaining increasingly ridiculous ideas; the kind that scythed their way through her skull to the rhythm of the rocking ship. This time, partly out of desperation, she had opted for the aid of fresh air to clear her mind.

Perched on the wooden taffrail, her gaze - and left leg - swung out over the ocean’s dark oblivion. For the first time in over a week, she was finally alone. Thinking.

Just... thinking.

How Delver had managed to find them passage on a remotely seaworthy vessel was nothing short of a miracle. Sylda hadn’t asked any questions - she certainly knew better than to look the proverbial horse in the mouth. But the fact that they hadn’t been gutted and keelhauled the second they lost sight of land still hadn’t quite sunk in. She’d heard stories about the mad seafarers of the east. About their obsession with dark water. About their greed and cold steel. About the way they used people as bait to lure creatures from the deep... 

Well, she supposed she should be grateful they hadn’t ended up on one of those vessels. Delver was a lot of irritating things, but at least a decent judge of character appeared to be one of them.

The sound of a door suddenly creaking open earned a carefully languid glance, the motion at utter odds with the lurch of surprise in Sylda’s stomach. Relax, she chided herself. This wasn’t some ale-soaked back alley. It was probably one of those twins - Fin or Din or something - wandering out to take a piss.

Her rational side’s attempt to assert dominance crumbled the second she realised who had actually stepped out onto the afterdeck.

“Captain Sheffield.” Sylda wasn’t about to snap to attention, but she gave Alex what she felt was a suitably deferential nod. “It’s a nice night. Out for a stroll?”

Alex’s nose wrinkled slightly. “Some fresh air, more like. Not much strolling to be had back here.”

That was true enough. There were far better options for an evening walk than the stern, after all. Letting the door swing shut behind her, Alex groaned softly and moved forward, hands on her lower back, stretching as she went. From her vantage, Sylda swore the line of Alex’s spine had fixed itself into a slight bow, ready at any moment to diligently curve itself over a desk. Whatever she and Delver had been up to, it seemed to have gone far longer and far later than expected. He probably drove her half-way mad, rambling on the way he does, she thought, smiling slightly to herself. At least someone else got to experience the uniquely infuriating pleasure of his company.

As quickly as the smile arrived, she shooed it away with a start. No - she would rather die than admit to even an ounce of fondness for the insufferable man. He was a means to an end, and she was exactly the same thing for him. That knowledge - that truth - had served them well over the seasons.

A sharp clearing of the throat pulled Sylda from her thoughts. Alex had stopped a few steps from the door, and something about the hawk-like intensity of her gaze made Sylda feel very much like a mouse on a platter. “Do me a favour,” Alex began slowly, as though each of her words required careful and deliberate measuring. “If you’re plannin’ on tipping yourself into the sea, kindly do so when I’m not close enough to feel obliged to go in after you.”

That startled a laugh out of Sylda. “Oh? Is that something captains do?” When Alex’s stern expression didn’t waver, she cocked her head and smiled. “C’mon - don’t give me that look. Are you trying to tell me that daring rescues aren’t actually part of the job description?”

It took a moment before Alex responded, and when she did, it was strangely like a confession. “It’s... more a personal habit than a demand of the position.” She snorted softly. “An unfortunate one at times, if you ask Tahir. Reckon that particular impulse has had a fair hand in turning him grey over the years.” The brief moment of levity, however, vanished as quickly as it arrived. “But let me be clear; I've no intention of feeling guilty tonight.”

There was no mistaking the unspoken command. And frankly, with those piercing eyes leveled at her, Sylda didn’t feel particularly keen to risk disobedience. That was a strange thing all by itself. Divider, she’d cussed out bandits with a knife to her neck - spat in the face of guards hauling her off for a week in the pit. But now, she found herself sighing and swinging both her legs ship-side. Without even a trace of her usual malicious compliance, she slid smoothly until her feet were pressed safely to the wooden deck. “Well, I wouldn’t want to cause you any grief, Captain.” Her eyes flicked up and she flashed a half-smile. “You know, I’ve actually got a pretty steady set of legs under me. Been running rooftops since I was tall as your waist.”

“That so?” Alex folded her arms, but something about her posture had shifted. Loosened. “Well, when rooftops start pitching in a swell, make sure you pass on word. I’m sure plenty of folk will be keen to know another viable application for their sea legs.”

“Alright, alright. Point taken. I’ll keep my arse off the rails.” Still chuckling, Sylda turned, leaning her forearms on the lacquered wood instead. “Can’t imagine a stiller night than this one, though. Can a ship even move in this?”

The sound of boots against the deck heralded Alex’s approach. Arriving beside her, the Captain mirrored her pose, allowing her weary back to settle into a more familiar position. “Aye, it can, but not at any particular speed.” She motioned at something in the dark, her finger tracing a line over the water. “The current here runs south-east. We’ll just let her drift in that direction until the wind picks up.”

“That won’t take us off-course?”

Alex shrugged. “Not far enough to be worried, unless we’re becalmed for days on end. But I can’t say I’ve had that happen out here. The Pale’s not a quiet sea. This is...”

Alex trailed off, closing her eyes, as though to better feel the strange stillness. There was no real need for her to finish her sentence; Sylda simply allowed herself to lapse into the same peaceful silence. The sound of the water lapping against the hull was a soothing rhythm for tired souls. It had been a long few weeks. Seasons, even, if she were being truly honest.

“Hey... can I admit something?” Sylda eventually asked. That, it seemed, piqued Alex’s curiosity. The Captain turned away from the water, arching a brow to indicate her approval. Maybe even her curiosity, if Sylda felt like flattering herself. “Coming out here,” she continued, “out on the open water... it kinda scared the shit out of me.”

To her surprise, Alex snorted. “And here I thought you’d be telling me something I didn’t guess the first hour out of port.”

Sylda cringed. “Was it that obvious?”

“Finn reckoned you were wound tighter than a tenday clock.”

Groaning theatrically, Sylda made a show of hanging her head. “Alright, alright, laugh it up. At least I kept all my meals down.” They shared a glance at that, and twin smiles slowly spread across their faces. Who would have thought that the image of Delver, green-faced and dramatically clinging to the rail, could actually bring people together? For a moment, Sylda almost forgot where she was. Who she was with. It was like being back in Yelen. Back in the Nest, sitting across from someone she knew. Someone she trusted. Respected, even. Someone with eyes of steel and a liberal dusting of freckles.

Someone she might just want to lean towards and...

As quickly as the feeling had taken her, Sylda remembered that everything she knew about Alex Sheffield could comfortably fit into a thimble - with her thumb already in it - and the smile drifted away. Clearing her throat, she did her best to hide her burning cheeks, turning back towards the quiet, dark ocean. The Pale. An ironic name if ever there was one. “Anyway... I heard a lot of stories. About the deep water. I’m not sure if any of them are true, but they were enough to convince me I wouldn’t let myself anywhere near it. Just in case.”

Alex turned as well, the folds of her shirt shifting softly as she leaned backwards against the rail, her weight resting on her elbows. With the stillness of the night and her head tipped slightly skyward, Sylda couldn’t help but picture Alex as a kind of statue, her sight forever set on the stars. She supposed anyone willing to sail the open water had to be a bit like that. A bit in love with things distant and unknown.

“But, despite it all, here you are,” Alex said after a moment. Her voice was suddenly soft. Thoughtful. Somehow, Sylda got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t just talking about her anymore. That was alright. It was a night for quiet contemplation, apparently. That could be nice, sometimes. Calming.

Leaning into the moment, Sylda exhaled slowly, feeling her shoulders dip. Feeling the weight of her feet pressing against the deck, of her arms on the rail. “But here I am,” she replied, then playful smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Fuck me, right?”

Alex snorted. Confused, Sylda turned to discern the source of her amusement, and when it hit her a half-second later, she let out suffering groan. “Oh come on. You’re better than that.”

“Am I? You’ve seen the kind of company I keep.”

It was Sylda’s turn to laugh. “Okay then, maybe not. But if we could side-step the gutter for a moment, I’d like it known to you and anyone eavesdropping nearby that I expect at least a kiss first.”

“That so?” A gentle breeze stirred - just enough to tease the curling locks framing Alex’s face - before quickly falling away again. For a second, Sylda’s words stuck in her throat, and she realised just how close they were. Just how alone they were.

Then the playful gleam in Alex’s eyes - as though she somehow knew exactly what she was doing her - tugged Sylda back to the present.

“What can I say? I’m an old fashioned kinda gal.” Sighing in mimicry of the high class ladies whose purses she liked to pluck, Sylda arched her back and mimed demurely fanning her bosom. “I require courting.”

“Really?” Alex raised a brow, her lips twisting in what Sylda quietly hoped was amusement. “With just a kiss?”

Sylda grinned and mimed tossing the fan into the sea.

“Well, I never said a lot of courting.”

Laughter seemed to carry further on still nights. It was as though, in the absence of wind, it sought to fill the sails all by itself. For the first time since leaving port, Sylda felt lighter. Not without burdens - never that light. But at least, for a few moments, she could flit and flirt and pretend it was something a person like her just got to do. Without guilt. Without worrying about all the things standing in her way. About all the ways she would inevitably fall short.

And for her part, Alex proved surprisingly open to the game. Maybe it was just because she was tired, and her walls were lower than usual. Despite her curiosity, Sylda hadn’t expected to even catch the Captain alone, yet alone rope her into a starlit conversation. After all, she knew - acutely well - how much of a time-siphon Delver could be. Particularly when his passions were piqued. It was a miracle he hadn’t shackled himself to Alex’s ankle like the ball and chain he was.

No. That's not fair. Closing her eyes, Sylda pulled in a long, slow breath. When she opened them again, Alex was regarding her quietly, her arms folded once more, her head cocked ever so slightly. Sylda knew when someone was sizing her up, but this... well, it wasn’t quite the same. A step to the left of it, perhaps, where she knew something was being measured, but she just wasn’t sure what.

“Copper for your thoughts?” Sylda asked eventually. Alex blinked, then reasserted herself, her arms unfolding as she hummed and levered herself from the rail.

“Just committing some things to memory. Don’t worry yourself over it.”

At that, it was Sylda’s turn to arch a brow. “Oh?” She reached up absently, her fingers twisting the ends of her hair as Alex smirked and headed back towards the door. Then, finally, she decided to be brave. “Well, before you head off, here’s another thing for your memory. I wouldn’t mind, ah... worrying myself.” She paused, then hastily added, “Over it. That.”

She swore she heard someone snort from somewhere in the rigging, but she was already too mortified to pay it any real heed. Well, that was smooth as fucking gravel, Sylda thought, cringing inwardly. It took everything in her power not to flip herself over the rail and into the sea. Idiot. This is why you don’t do this. This is why...

Again, maybe it was the product of weariness, or perhaps the strange stillness of the night, but Alex Sheffield, Captain of the Ranger, actually turned back. Her hand rested on the carefully carved doorknob. Her hair, untouched by wind, curled loosely at its ends.

“Well,” she said, then graced her with a quick, sly smile. One that went straight to Sylda’s knees. “Suppose I’ll go ahead and add that, too.”

[a-tale-of-legends]

Naomi 🤝 Carol

Getting really fucker over emotionally when Hop decides to go on his own for a while.

I've been thinking about Naomi and how I feel like I've been presenting her inconsistently. Or maybe I just don't talk about her enough to really show what she's other than shy and nervous.

So. Who is Naomi?

Recently I've changed her bio from " I don't want to do the gym challenge" to " I don't understand why Hop would want me of all people and I can't seem to remember my own past" TBH I was honestly testing the waters a bit, with the whole I don't remember much of my childhood/ my childhood is a bit hazy like fog

While her being dependent on Hop is a good character flaw, I didn't like how I stated how weak-willed she was to him. I mean, she is, she doesn't want to hurt him, but I just made it seem that it was only to him. She's just like this with Carol. And her mom. And her cousins. She doesn't know how to say no, or properly voice her opinion ( something that I personally deal with). Though, despite all that, she's also very stubborn. She may not be able to say no but she also won't take no for answer( I was always so worried that her being weak-willed and stubborn would be bad character writing, but like. It also keeps the story interesting? As well as still tying to her character). Like, okay, if Hop and Carol are goofing around and she REALLY doesn't like it, she will pull out her Unova accent and she will scold them. Or if a Pokemon is in danger, she won't stop until it's safe. You see what I'm getting here?( I'm just now realizing that I've talked so much about Naomi's character flaw and not her strength, but this is getting long, so I'm gonna save that for another post)

Speaking of cousins, I realized that while they love each other a lot, they hardly really know each other. I'm still working out the timeline of Naomi's dad, his death( or his "death"), and when the Jones family can visit. But one thing I know for sure is that the two families don't interact much. I honestly feel like Soul's death( Soul is Naomi's dad and Jazz's, the Jones twins mom, twin brother) would cause a bit of rift, leading to lack of communication. Not saying that they hate each other, the opposite, there's just some.....guilt there.

So when the Twins comes to Galar, it's kinda awkward. In a sense Naomi is meeting strangers. And given Alexis' and Elliot's experiences with journeying, they would be a bit protective of her and her friends. Elliot was less paranoid about it because unlike her brother, she had time to grieve in a healthy manner and figure out a way to move on( But that's for another time, but TDLR thanks Alder). Alexis', while better than he was before, hasn't. This greatly effects Naomi a lot . One side is like the rest of the adults in SwSh, preventing her from getting in harm's way, and the other, while still protective, is low-key encouraging her to take those bold steps. That'll be interesting.

Speaking of which, why do the twins come to Galar? What were they doing before? I'll probably save that for post cause I've had some thoughts from my original idea.

Okay that's all! Wanted to ramble about Naomi.

[veryvincible]

Do you think you could share some of your Tony Ty youth/relationship days hcs? hehe

Yours truly,

Tys obsessed fan

Oh boy! I have been sitting on this for a few days now, because there is, uh, a lot. Also, I adore you, and I love every Ty ask I receive.

I think this post would end up far too long if I responded the way I desire to in my heart, so I’ll keep it relatively simple (edit: it did not stay relatively simple, and also it branched out slightly into other topics. This is so very long. Be warned.)

Content warnings here for psychological/emotional abuse/domestic abuse/child abuse!

I like to think they didn’t really have a “let’s get together!” moment. I think they ended up becoming close, they were casual with each other, and it just kind of... became what it became. I think they probably ended up using labels at some point, but I don’t think there was ever an official, “Would you like to go out on a date with me?” or “Would you want to be, like, boyfriends?” moment. 

I think Tony was a generally isolated kid (obviously, he gained acquaintances like Bruce and potentially Reed as he grew older, but you know) and Ty was... probably also a generally isolated kid. Ty may have had a few other “friends” around, given what we know about him; he’s certainly charismatic. I don’t think Ty would have really developed close friendships with many people, though, given that his personality seems more rotten the closer you get to him.

We don’t see a lot of their childhood together at all, so this is almost entirely shit I’ve come up with for the sake of fic writing and general note-taking for the sake of coherency with how I write Ty, but.

One thing I tend to lean toward is the idea that Ty had kind of an awful home life. This isn’t really an, “Aw, boo, so sad, what a tragic man,” sort of thing so much as it is that... I think Ty and Tony are at their most interesting when they’re contrasting forces, and the idea of Tony (a victim of abuse who broke the cycle) becoming friends with Ty (a victim of abuse who perpetuates the cycle) at a young age, not in spite of their differences but because of them, is something I really like to think about.

We don’t actually get much of Ty’s parents in canon-- they’re kind of implied to be, like, Fine Parents. They’re contrasted with Howard Stark, who pulls the shark-eat-shark business motherfucker thing and basically causes Mr. Stone’s business to, like. Drown, or whatever. You know. The contrast there is implied, and I respect that for what it is. That being said, that’s not what interesting for me to write, and as such, I’ve chosen to tweak these little details for the sake of my more personalized (and slightly more self-indulgent) fic writing experience.

I think there’s a lot of potential in considering the differences between how they act at home as opposed to how they act with each other, too. I think Home Tony is generally apprehensive and subdued, but more uncertain and anxious than outright fearful 24/7. In IM Vol. 1, Howard was shown to be unpredictable; we got to see a lot of bad, but there were also sparkling moments wherein they seemed to be bonding as a father-son duo, and Tony would actually get to work with his father and learn from his father. I think that very well could have exacerbated the anxiety he felt, because he’s not being taught to never touch anything ever-- he’s being taught that there are very specific circumstances under which he’s able to explore as he’d like to, and those circumstances are 1) virtually impossible to accurately predict and 2) subject to change at the drop of a hat. So, Tony has been shown to be at least a little bit capable of testing the waters with what he’s allowed to do in the house and what he’s not allowed to do. That doesn’t make it any less anxiety-inducing, it just makes him a tiny, tiny bit of a more active child than one who’s constantly paralyzed.

Home Ty, to me, would be the opposite-- he is fearful 24/7, and as such, his behavior as a child is kind of... flawless, at least in the eyes of parents who think that children should be seen, not heard (and sometimes not even seen). I think both of his parents were abusive-- his father more so than his mother, but certainly both of them, if only because I think it would be yet another nice contrast between him and Tony, whose mother wasn’t perfect but certainly tried harder and felt more for Tony than Howard did. I like to think Ty was kept on a very short leash at home; boundaries were predictable, there were no “glimmering moments” he could grasp onto in order to make him feel like there was ever a chance of having normal family dynamics, and he was too afraid to really... do anything about it.

In contrast, I think Boarding School Ty was probably a lot pushier, a lot more risk-taking, and generally just... took up more space. I think he was still pretty fearful of authority and nervous about punishment, but he was well aware of the fact that this was distinctly different from being at home and that most people at school didn’t give a flying fuck about him. It likely could have been both liberating and anxiety inducing for someone so used to being around people who found it important to control him. I think he was probably pretty manipulative at this point, but I don’t think it was at the point where you would point to him and go, “Oh, what a fucked up, toxic person!”, especially since he was, like... a little fucking dude. Like, a fucking young’un. But I think the seeds were sort of planted here, and given that he had no healthy relationships to model himself after, he worked off of the assumption that in order to have control as opposed to being controlled, he needed to 1) possess things, 2) protect them aggressively, and 3) make sure his authority wasn’t threatened.

Boarding School Tony (from what little we’ve seen of him, though we can imagine he was probably similar to pre-boarding school Tony for a while, just with more Issues now) was probably the opposite-- less willing to take up space and less willing to take risks. It’s not unimaginable to assume that he might have thought his (extremely) mild exploratory tendencies might have had something to do with the abandonment, and he very well could have adjusted accordingly; if him causing trouble for people was what pushed his parents to leave him, he would very simply not cause trouble. A lot of this is nabbed from Adult Tony tendencies, wherein pretty much everyone else is prioritized over himself and he’s practically incapable of finding himself worthy of anything at all.

It’s the classic “extrovert friend-adopts an introvert” trope, except... it’s a severely damaged child feeling gutsy enough to finally, finally take up space and find something to possess and control for his own for once... friend-adopting a severely damaged child who very likely feels like the best way to proceed in relationships is to very clearly identify boundaries, figure out what it is the other person wants from him, and try to adhere to those desires as much as he’s able.

Of course, canon portrays the relationship as a “friendly rivalry” that Ty takes much more seriously than Tony does. From what we’ve seen of Tony, though, Tony doesn’t actually want to be better than anyone. In fact, he tries his best to make it seem like the opposite. He treats everyone like they’re on the same level, he tries to simplify the concepts he’s explaining so no one feels inferior to him, and, generally, he just... isn’t much of a braggart. That isn’t to say competitive/proud people can’t be kind and gentle and want to level the playing field often, but in Tony’s case, it seems that competition is best for two things: 1) having two intelligent, capable people trying to outdo each other and, in the process, creating better and better technology for the betterment of society at large, and 2) lighthearted fun.

For Ty, it very clearly wasn’t just lighthearted fun, and I think most of their childhood rivalry would have become formulaic at a point: Tony would put a good amount of effort into their competitions, but if it seemed that Ty was lagging behind too much, Tony would simply back off and let things even out. I don’t think Ty was predictably a sore loser; in fact, I think he was unpredictable, and I think a part of Tony that had only known life to be unpredictable found some level of sick comfort in that.

For Tiberius Stone specifically, I tend to read more into the unintended consequences/implications of his character based on one-off lines that... weren’t really intended to say much. The story canon gives us isn’t incohesive, exactly! It’s a pretty good story, especially if you’re not hellbent on analyzing character motivations. There’s just a lot about Ty that doesn’t seem very stable. Obviously, he’s not a stable person, given that he, uh, freaked the fuck out and tried to take over the world. But when I say Ty doesn’t seem very stable, I mean his character doesn’t seem the most stable at a second glance; we’re given conflicting accounts about his motivations, his intentions, his past, and even what he’s trying to do in the moment. And some of these inconsistences can be found in dialogue from Ty’s own mouth.

Now, if you read into it from a point of view that’s canon-adjacent as opposed to canon-compliant (i.e., assuming there’s much more of a story there than canon offers, and canon’s “case closed!” for the timeline of Ty’s life isn’t actually a closed case), you can gauge not only some level of dysregulation, but also... a level of delusion, almost. Ty seems disconnected from reality, but it’s not like there’s one single alternate timeline of events that’s cohesive in his head. It feels like his view of the world and, most importantly, himself (and this is excluding dialogue wherein he’s explicitly lying to Tony in order to manipulate him).

Most notably, we can kind of gauge fluctuations in his own views of his self worth. He engages in constant competition with Tony, he refuses to come back to America after leaving until he’s more successful than Tony, and pretty much everything he does is to prove he’s better than Tony. So, he thinks he’s better than Tony, right?

Well, not really. Because so much of his life was spent with the understanding that he wasn’t better than Tony. That was the whole reason he was gone for so long. He said he’d come back once he’d beat Tony, and... he still hadn’t beaten Tony. The beginning of the narrative leads you to assume that he thinks his big victory was being richer somehow, but it was all a set-up to bait Tony into Dreamvision. He comes across like he wants to kill Tony at first, and when that doesn’t work, he wants to... keep Tony. Like a pet, almost. But he also wants Tony to... kill him?

It’s a lot. It’s messy. It’s inconsistent. And that’s kind of what’s interesting about it. It (unintentionally, probably) suggests that Ty doesn’t have consistent motivations, which is something you do see often in people who are in survival mode in environments that don’t necessarily warrant it. It suggests a psychological wound that’s easy to poke at.

Essentially, Ty just comes across as very... hurt. Which, y’know, doesn’t justify shit and doesn’t make him any better of a person, but it provides the opportunity for some interesting narratives to sprout. Figuring out all the ways that Tony could unintentionally pick at this psychological wound of his and all the ways Ty could poorly respond is neat, I think, and I feel like these kinds of narratives tend to be very... raw, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. They just kind of hit hard, especially for those who have experienced similar situations.

It’s just something that’s terribly common in abusive relationships-- any implication that the traumatized abuser is doing something wrong can be a trigger for a borderline nervous breakdown, which makes communication practically impossible and, if the victim of the abuse feels obligated to stick around or take on the role of caretaker, turns the relationship into a cycle of insecurity and misery on all fronts. That’s not to say the abuser and the victim are suffering equally or are equally justified/valid, but it is a kind of relationship dynamic that can be incredibly cathartic to both write and read, and it’s also just... I don’t know. It just, as the kids say, hits different.

So, rewinding about four paragraphs there (whoops, this is getting long), I think most of my feelings about youth/relationship days Ty/Tony kind of center around this concept of two suffering people handling their trauma in totally opposite ways. I think it’s especially interesting to look at it from the point of view of them as younger adults (or teenagers, or children) who aren’t so set in their ways quite yet. You see these redemptive qualities and you see these children and these teenagers who are so, so ready to be helped and saved and cared for, but with the knowledge that they just... don’t get that. Not for a long time, at least.

It can feel fatalistic from a narrative standpoint, and... I mean, it kind of is. There are very few circumstances under which I could see Ty getting a redemption arc of any kind, and that’s kind of what makes a younger Ty so tragic. Everything he does is born of insecurity and anger, and everything Tony does is born of insecurity and love.

I think (for a short period of time, at least), they molded each other. Ty’s anger and competitiveness only solidified Tony’s inferiority complex and Tony’s inability to really, genuinely stand up against Ty in a way that would make any lasting meaningful changes only cemented the idea in Ty’s head that this was an acceptable way to be.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are some more simple and concise headcanons, because you asked for them and I’m sorry this became so terribly long and broke off in so many different directions:

- I think Tony and Ty bickered a lot as they got older. I don’t think Tony was totally incapable of standing up for himself, but I do think Tony probably had a tendency to call Ty out in the moment, and when Ty became too agitated and too unreasonable, Tony just left it alone and let it settle. 

- I think Ty can play house extremely well. He probably remembers all of Tony’s favorite foods, favorite songs, favorite fabrics, favorite... I don’t know what other favorite things you could have, but you get my point. I don’t think he always used this information, but I think it would be incredibly important for him to know how to make someone feel loved, even if he didn’t always employ these methods (and in some cases, may have actively withheld certain kindnesses as acts of pettiness). I think it was also incredibly important for him to know Tony’s dislikes, for... obvious reasons.

- As I said before, I think Ty had a tendency to become terribly dysregulated; I think he was more than capable of both premeditated manipulation and unintentional manipulation. I think he very likely could have fallen into a spiral of thoughts that could make it pretty clear just how easily his self worth and his view of Tony’s worth fluctuated. 

- Tony’s just... a stronger person than Ty. That’s a given. That’s been proven. And I think a lot of Tony’s willingness to put up with Ty would have come from this idea that he was more resilient and Ty was more fragile and volatile, so if Ty needed to take shit out on him every so often, that was fair enough.

- Another factor that may have played into Tony’s tolerance of Ty’s behavior in their youth (which, again, wasn’t nearly as awful as what Ty did as a grown ass man, given how Tony responded to Ty post-Dreamvision and how he pretty much immediately broke things off-- though, I very much enjoy the concept of Tony making some effort to make amends and Ty failing to meet him in the middle yet again) could have been the fact that it feels like Ty probably didn’t have a lot of other friends at all, especially not close friends. I think Tony would very much carry the weight of this “Maybe I’m the only person in the world who loves him” mindset. He values human life quite a bit, and I believe that even on a less intimate scale, if Tony tried to view the situation through the perspective of an outsider, he would still feel terribly, terribly saddened by the very human tragedy of being forced to take more than you can reasonably handle and becoming difficult to redeem as a result of this-- not because there’s no good left in you, but because you’re so frightened by the idea of even touching the trauma that you can’t force yourself to acknowledge you have a problem to begin with.

- I don’t think Ty feels the same comfort and warmth from physical contact that most people do, not because of anything innate (i.e. a natural preference), but because the only physical contact he received for a long, long time was, uh... Awful! That being said, I think he enjoys physical contact on the basis of being the center of attention, and he probably initiated physical contact quite a bit. I think Tony’s very big on physical contact, and Ty would very much play into Tony’s preferences here, too. Just to make himself seem like a better, more attentive boyf.

- This one is less tragic-- I think Ty and Tony get pretentious together! While I adore in-canon comparisons between Tony and the rest of high society, I also think a long-forgotten part of Tony’s character in fanon is the fact that he really does fit in with a more yacht-having crowd just as much as he fits in with your average Joes. He was raised by them and with them, after all, and his education was shaped by this. Of course he doesn’t love a lot of the culture around it, but with regards to the more harmless aspects of being a privileged kid in the environment he was in (the experiences one might have that aren’t inherently negative, that is, like having certain extracurriculars or being exposed to certain educational content), I think Ty and Tony really mesh here. Tony’s sense of humor with Ty would be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Steve, which would also be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Rumiko. Tony’s incredibly well-rounded, and I think he could match Ty’s Classics-loving, borderline classical theater kid tendencies very well.

- This one is 100% headcanon, based on virtually nothing other than, like, one comic panel... that isn’t even awesome evidence. It’s just a personal hc. I think Ty’s gay. Like, obviously, he’s gay for Tony, w/e. But I think Ty’s gay as in, Ty is exclusively attracted to men. The only women he ever had eyes for (or showed interest in) were the women that Tony had shown interest in/dated first, implying that there’s more of a possessive/competitive aspect than anything really... genuine. Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t be bi, pan, or anything else (or straight, obviously, but this whole post is about him and a guy he likes to fuck, so that doesn’t really fit into the theme, here), but I prefer to write him as someone who’s only really interested in men (Tony specifically), and I prefer to write Tony as a bisexual man with a preference for women. This wasn’t really intended to be a big contrast between them; I had the headcanon for Tony already set in stone (haha), and for a long while I wrote Ty as a bi man, but recently I’ve kind of shifted things around to better accommodate my feelings about these characters.

- I love, love, love tattooed Ty. Get this man a quote in Latin on the base of his neck. Get this man some symbolic tattoos. Let this man be a poet who simultaneously wants to appear profound for appearances and wants to have these symbols on his body just because he likes them, and he likes to look at them, and they feel reflective of who he is. I have very specific Ty tattoo thoughts that I do not remember at all, but this is the gist of it.

- I think Ty handles the “normal” adventurous stuff, but he’s far more of a, uh... I don’t know, a pussy? than Tony is. Tony deals with actual threats; Ty deals with fake, stupid threats. Ty is the guy who rids the dorms of cockroaches when Tony’s too afraid to and Tony is the guy who handles home invasions.

- I think the vast majority of Ty’s abuse is emotional/psychological, not only because this is what comes most naturally to him and it’s easy for him to fall into these manipulative tendencies without necessarily thinking about it, but also because physical abuse would cross a line for him in his head that would be very difficult to ignore. I think, if you take into consideration how volatile he seems, his flip-flopping back and forth between how he feels about both himself and Tony could become more exaggerated and more severe, possibly leading to an irreversible breakdown of his psyche. I think there could very well be an, “Oh, I’ve become my father” moment if that were to happen, which is exactly why it doesn’t happen. Ty’s too wrapped up in this idea that, so long as he doesn’t cross that line, everything he does can still be justified. Which is garbage.

- Tiberius did not like Sunset Bain. Sunset Bain did not like Tiberius. 

There’s a lot more that comes to mind, but this is already upwards of 30 paragraphs, and I, uh. Do not want to make this longer than it already is! So, do with that what you will.

Again, obligatory note here that this is canon-adjacent and canon-inspired, but not an analysis of canon material in the sense that I’m attempting to pick apart what the intents of the writers were. What canon provides is much more straightforward. These are headcanons, this is for funsies, and a lot of less important background details have been tweaked for the sake of the narratives that I, as a fanfic writer, would like to write and see written.

Thank you so much for the ask! This was legitimately so nice to write. I rarely ever get to spam about this, which is very likely why there’s just so much text every time I receive an ask like this, but. Again, it was very nice and I’m very grateful for you, anon.