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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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What I Thought About "Through The Looking Glass Ruins" from The Owl House

Salutations, random people on the internet who most certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck! I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons!

When Disney announced episode titles/synopsis for the new season (On a day that left my head SPINNING!), there was one episode that I knew deep down that would cause controversy and discourse amongst the fandom. And that episode was "Through the Looking Glass Ruins." Not because it would be bad, far from it. Instead, because the episode was a Gus episode with a Lumity subplot, that meant that discourse would start as fans decide which story they prefer more. A situation that, might I add, would result in no winners.

Do you prefer the Lumity plotline? Well, guess what! You're a racist who chose to talk about an overrated ship rather than a heavily underrated character who just so happens to be a person of color.

Do you prefer Gus' plotline? Well, guess what! You're a homophobe who decided to shine a light on a character who's underrated for a reason instead of praising a ship that just so happens to involve two girls.

Either side you pick is going to result in making people mad. The only way to avoid that is by explaining in heavy detail that you still enjoyed one side despite preferring the other. Even if you loved both, you'll most certainly have to explain to everyone that you mean it and that you're neither racist nor homophobic. And all I have to say is this: F that.

F that S in the A right now.

Because I, or anybody else for that matter, shouldn't have to explain myself when it comes to saying why I prefer one plot line or the other. I shouldn't have to prevent getting ripped apart by some bulls**t, black and white mentality of people who can't accept that others like a show for different reasons than they do.

You wanna know what I think about "Through the Looking Glass Ruins?" Well, continue reading to find out. You'll have to make your way through spoilers, but it's the only way for you to learn why I consider this episode not worth any discourse that I'm already certain is cropping up.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

The Opening Scene: I'm kind of digging how snappy and to the point these opening scenes are getting. In the span of what has to be less than a minute, we're given all the information we need to know: Gus is insecure about his illusion magic because he accidentally got Willow injured. It's a great way of setting up why Gus wants to prove himself to the Glandus students and a great way of showing how much Willow's friendship means to him. Look at how he's reacting a few days after the incident. He's still mopey and guilty about it, and I feel bad for the little guy.

Gus in General: And while we're already talking about him, let's give this episode a round of applause for giving Gus the spotlight without having him screw over his friends...except for Willow.

"Through the Looking Glass Ruins" really fleshes Gus out much more so than past episodes. As I said, it plays heavily into his own insecurities while proving how he's capable as an illusionist. He's also the best possible outlet to explore more about what illusionist magic can really do. It can't hurt anybody or work well in a fight. Instead, its strengths lie in the act of convincingly tricking others into thinking that something that should be fake is actually real. And Gus got to prove he really is a super witch because of his illusions through a jaw-dropping scene that's as dark as it was enthralling. The fact that he did it all by himself, without the help of an illusion elder who was right there, is honestly even more impressive. A lot of people aren't that interested in Gus as a character, but I feel like, after this episode, he certainly won a few more fans over.

Willow Getting Injured and Missing the Episode: This is a smart move, in my opinion. Willow acts as the voice of reason in the friend group, so if she tagged along with Luz and Gus right away, she would have easily talked Gus out of joining the Glandus kids on a dangerous quest. I love Willow, she's a solid character, but writing her out is really the only way the plot could have progressed.

(I also love that she wasn't mad in the slightest over Gus getting her hurt. She has every right to be, but she also understands that it was an accident, and Gus wouldn't do anything to purposefully hurt her. And that's sweet!)

King’s Prerecorded Message for Gus: That's just adorable. We need more cute friendship moments between these two, DAMN IT!

Gus Being Sick of Luz’s S**t: Of all the characters I expected to get sick of the whole Lumity situation, Gus wasn't really one of them. I'd always thought it'd be Willow, primarily because the rest of the fandom latched onto that idea, but for Gus, I'd figured he'd be more supportive rather than annoyed. That being said, seeing him call Luz out for borrowing his library card to see Amity (Not ask her out. Just to see her) is not only a hilarious moment for Gus but also an adorable moment for Luz. It's something I would never have seen coming, but now that I have it, I want more. GIVE ME MORE!

(Sorry if I'm being a little intense)

Luz Trying to Cheer Up Gus: It's moments like this that prove why Luz is my favorite character.

Willow might have the most common sense out of the group, but it's Luz who still has the biggest heart. She knows her friend is down in the dumps, so Luz pulls out all the stops in cheering him up. Whether it's researching the first-ever human (really surprised he wasn't the tiniest bit excited about that, by the way) and lending him glyphs for his mission to help show up Mattholomule. She may be slow in the romantic relationship department, but episodes like this prove that she excels with a platonic friendship.

Bria: I consider Amar adorably optimistic, and I have no strong feelings for Gavin, one or the other. But with Bria? Holy hell, did the writers do everything they should with her!

At first, it seems like she'll be a generic nice girl for Gus to have a crush on. Only for that writing to be a perfect twist into how she's kind of the worst. You see hints of her true personality in the overly sweet way she threatens to force Amar to eat a bug he gets distracted by. A viewer's initial reaction to that would be to think that while she's sweet, she still means business. But no, it's actually a perfect way to reveal her true intentions while hiding them at the same time. Bria may be rotten to the core, but with how perfectly executed this twist was, I can't help but adore her contribution.

Mattholomule: ...I would sooner expect to have gone insane before believing that this little s**t weasel would make his way onto my good side. Despite that, here we are in episode five of the new season, and I like Mattholomule now.

The reveal that Glandus High forces students to believe that the strong survive and the weak are inferior explains so much for Mattholomule's thirst for power in "Something Ventured, Someone Framed." It doesn't excuse his actions, not by a long shot, but it definitely paints a clearer picture. It also explains his treatment of Gus, as well as Mattholomule's reasoning to help him. Because of Glandus High inserting a "the strong survive" mentality into Mattholomule, he belittles Gus due to thinking that illusion magic makes Gus weak. But after seeing how they're both stooges to Bria's mistreatment, he's quick to apologize and willingly helps Gus out. In the process, the two of them create a believable and cute friendship...a friendship that is absolutely going to be interpreted as something else by the fandom...which is something that I'm more than supportive of--HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! I WENT FROM ONE OF THE BIGGEST GUSTOLOMULE DENIERS TO ONE OF ITS SUPPORTERS IN LESS THAN A DAY! HOW DO THESE WRITERS MANAGE TO TAKE ELEMENTS THAT WERE ONCE ON MY S**T LIST TO THEN MAKING ME MORE THAN OK WITH THEM!

IT'S INSANE!

Mostly impressive.

BUT ALSO INSANE!

Edric and Emira: More so than ever, I am so happy that the writers took their course correction with Edric and Emira. These two work so much better as supporting characters rather than minor antagonists like several fans thought they would be after their treatment of Amity in "Lost in Language." They're quick to pick up on Luz and Amity's mutual affections for one another and do their part to help their friend and baby sister out. It's wholesome to watch, and, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and say it: Edric and Emira Blight are much better mischievous twin characters than Fred and George Weasley. As much as I adore Fred and George, there is an issue how they're always referred to as Fred and George, not Fred or George. It's because their personalities are as identical as they are, so separating them is pointless. With Edric and Emira, they have enough individuality that you could enjoy them separately as much as you could seeing them together. Emira is more emotionally supportive in how she listens to Amity vent her frustrations about her feelings, while Edric is more of a doofus who can't take a hint to save his life. It creates a great set of characters who can potentially work well on their own. I hope they get explored more at some point, but for now, I'm happy with the cute moments these two offered already.

Lumity Moments: BUUUUUUUUUUUUT, nothing compares to the cuteness of these two.

I don't care if I'll be called a racist for it because these! Moments! These moments are the highlights of "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" for me! Seeing these two interact in this episode, now that the pining is mutual, was everything I could have ever hoped for, and so much more. Seriously, how can you complain about anything about all of this when you get cute bits like:

Luz getting flustered of seeing Amity with her hair down

Amity risking her job to help Luz

Amity being motivated to find the diary due to the possibility of a date with Luz in the human realm

Luz going through hell and back to get Amity her job back

All of the blushing

And that F**KING KISS AT THE END HOLY SH--Don't you dare think I'm not going to further discuss that. DON'T YOU DARE!

Gus' story was entertaining with how it surprised me in all the right ways, don't get me wrong. But seeing Luz and Amity's relationship develop more and more always fills my heart with glee that, believe it or not, I'm always going to remember it more. I love you, Gus, but I love Lumity more.

Philip Whittabeen: So we finally have a name to the alleged human who was here years ago, and we get properly introduced to him through a really visually appealing animation change. I'm personally curious to see where the writers go with him, but it's too early to say if his inclusion will be worth something. But I will say one thing, though. One thing, and then I'm going to move on.

Here it is:

Philip sounds eerily similar to Emperor Belos to me.

That is all I'm going to say about that.

Luz’s Sentences in Spanish: I want to give a personal shout-out to mi buen amigo @l-egionaire for pointing this out because there are some things to analyze in what Luz says in Spanish in this episode. Knowing what she means, it's clear that they are ideals that Camila instilled into Luz. Ideals that possibly show a lot about Camila's personality on top of revealing where Luz got her hopeful optimism and sense of determination. It's the second sentence that Luz says later on that I really want to delve deep into:

"Nada funcionará a menos que lo haga funcionar."

Translated, that means "Nothing will work unless you make it work." Again, this proves the dedication that Luz has filled into her soul, but to me, it says a lot about Luz's dedication to Amity. She wants to make this relationship work but fully understands that it won't unless she puts in the effort. It's a sweet sentiment that says so much about how Luz feels about Amity that some fans might not be able to pick up on if they don't speak Spanish. Or, in my case, have a good friend who finds the translation for you (thanks again @l-egionaire).

The Galderstones: Pretty interesting concept, I'm not going to lie. It's also interesting that of all the types of witches in the Boiling Isles, it was illusionists who were the ones that guard over the Galderstones. Because illusion magic can't really harm anyone, it makes a weird type of sense that they would be the ones to keep the Galderstones out of the wrong hands. And, even better, it showcases Gus' strength as an illusionist when he was able to take down Bria, who was hopped up on Galderstone power, through that same "harmless" magic. It just goes to show that if you have a big enough brain, you don't need to overpower somebody. You need to outthink them.

Malphus Being a Surprisingly Cool Dude: What can I say? I'm a sucker for expectation subversion.

Luz and Amity Crying: First of all, a HUGE round of applause to VAs Sarah-Nicole Robles and Mae Whitman through their vocal performances in this scene! They really sold how upset and broken apart Luz and Amity were due to their feelings for each other messing things up. More so with Sarah-Nicole.

Second, this might be the closest these two have gotten to a confession so far ("so far" being the keyword). I specifically latch onto Amity's expression after hearing Luz agree that she's always weird around Amity. In one way, it looks like Amity is surprised to see she made Luz cry, but in another, it could be that she realizes that perhaps that Luz has feelings for her as well. Or, at least, that's how I interpreted things. The thing about art is that there's no one interpretation to agree on. And that's what this scene is: Art. It's performed, written, and animated well, that no matter how you look at it, it's a masterpiece.

“I’ll call the hounds”: One line. One line was all it took for me to love the Keeper of the Looking Glass Graveyard.

Amity Dyes her Hair: I always assumed that Amity would let her original hair color grow out as defiance to Odalia. But dying it lavender? Thus crafting her own identity without having her be compared to either Odalia or Alador?

...yeah, that's brilliant. Whoever thought of that, you are a genius and deserve all of the credit that comes from it.

ALL of the credit.

Amity Kisses Luz on the Cheek!: I'll save my "Wha-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo" for an actual kiss, but for now, THIS IS AWESOME!

This moment, much like other Lumity moments, was everything I could have ever expected and so much more:

Amity's instant panic after realizing she seriously just did that

Ed and Em looking fondly at their sister taking such a big step

The look on Luz's face, which may or may not hint that she realizes that the feelings are more than mutual

And the fact that Luz's legs give out soon after Amity leaves

It was adorable as all forms of hell, and it was a perfect way to end such a perfect episode...or, at least, an almost perfect episode. I do have some issues.

WHAT I DISLIKED

Mattholomule Helping Gus too Easily: The Glandus kids were right there, in-ear and eye-shot, yet did nothing as Mattholomule effortlessly helped Gus and the Keeper escape...how?

Gavin falling for Gus’ Illusion: I want to laugh at how stupidly easy that was...but it's too stupidly easy for me to forgive.

And that’s about it. Just two nitpicks that don’t really take away that much enjoyment from the episode

IN CONCLUSION

"Through the Looking Glass Ruins" keeps Season Two's winning streak going by being another solid A. It fleshes out characters, develops cute relationships, and keeps the story going despite being so character-driven. It's easily more than worth the time...but it's not worth any discourse that comes from some fans preferring one plot over the other.

I highly doubt that some people are racist for loving the Lumity plotline or homophobic for loving Gus'. Maybe some people are, but also consider that maybe, just maybe, a person loves a ship because it's their favorite, or a person likes a character cause he's their favorite.

Which.

Is.

Fine.

There's no definitive way to like a series, and demanding that people like it for the same reasons you do is not worth anything. Because, believe it or not, even Dana Terrace doesn't care how people love her show. In the AMA she did, when a fan asked if she's upset about fans obsessing over Amity's crush on Luz, this is her word for word reaction:

"Not at all! No, the main focus of the series will never be on any romantic thread but that doesn't mean those threads aren't important. And I'm thrilled that people connect to our characters!"

THERE YOU HAVE IT! The creator herself fully admits that she doesn't care what fans latch onto. She's just glad to have people who like the show in the first place! So don't create discourse just because some people enjoy a part of an episode more than others. The second you get that through your heads, the sooner we can all move on with our lives.

(Also, that's five episodes in a row that are hits. And, man, is that stinker going to hit harder because of it.)

#the owl house #the owl house season two #the owl house reviews #gus porter #mattolomule #luz noceda #amity blight #lumity #edric and emira #edric blight #emira blight #what i thought about

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kitkatopinions · 4 years

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I know alot of people thought this volume was Weiss time to shine but her contribution has been marginal at best. Now she's in the same situation as Blake and Yang then their arcs were ended in volume 5. This means when can we expect her to be shipped with someone and be mostly useless?

The way that Weiss was benched this season and the way her seasons-long story was just glossed over is confusing and frustrating. I was really looking forward to seeing Weiss not only interacting with her family in meaningful ways, but seeing her - the Atlas born and raised girl who’s used to how everything works there - not considering things as big of a deal as the others, being something of a celebrity, coming up with solutions only an Atlas born person might know, her having a full arc with her brother Whitley, her interacting with her team more and relying on them for strength instead of being mostly a support character. Instead, Weiss’s arc with her family not only is resolved like it’s easy, and Weiss doesn’t have to grow at all to get it, but it also barely involves Weiss’s friends at all. Also was Weiss treated like a celebrity? Or recognized by the people of Atlas or Mantle? As the very public singer-celebrity daughter of Jacques Schnee? And also, Weiss has spent the past volume acting like Ruby’s sidekick, barely doing more than throwing in some quips and taking four minutes or so to talk to her brother, and then the rest of her story in volume eight is just, being an extra fighter, making the appropriate faces when the creators want us to be shocked or sad or smug. Her last thread with Whitley and Willow has been tied off in a very unsatisfying and weird way...

And oh gosh, you’re right, this sounds really familiar.

Caution, this post isn’t super kind to B//umbleby or the characterization of Blake in particular. Bees I’m sorry if this shows up in your tags, I tried my best and used filterable tags. This is all just my personal opinion.

As soon as Blake’s arc, which was tied up in the problematic White Fang/Faunus racism plot was mostly solved in volume five, the quality of her character started going down, but there was still something there for her until they killed her abuser, and then her whole character was more or less stripped away and she was left hinting at her past in awkward dialogue, doing nothing but emoting in the proper way, occasionally patting Ruby or the others on the back, and being one half of a non-developed ship. Blake has had two moments in the past two seasons that seem to even somewhat include real fleshed out character, and that’s when she decided to trust Robyn, convincing Yang to go along with it, and now showing anger because Neo ‘killed’ Yang. Both of these are framed - and taken by the fans - as ‘bees moments’ though, so it’s still all tied up in her romance.

Now we’ve had some of the same sort of thing for Weiss. Her arc was also tied up in the problematic White Fang/Faunus racism plot (considering her family’s history that Weiss was originally trying to ‘reclaim’ despite her own racism never being fully called out and addressed in a meaningful way.) Once Weiss had broken away from her abusive father and thus at least somewhat solved her arc by volume five, then her quality of character started going down in volume six, and then she had a couple moments with her family in volumes seven and eight - although again, solved in fairly unsatisfying ways. Outside of only a couple of semi significant scenes in the Atlas arc, Weiss has been regulated to emoting in the proper ways, occasionally patting Ruby or the others on the back, and being an extra fighter in the group.

It is possible that she’s going to get some kind of romance and then kind of just... Fall into the same kind of stuck position as Blake and Yang - CRWBY won’t commit to them enough to give real confirmation or make them grow their relationship in significant ways, which means that in order to get across that their is a relationship, they keep the two mostly together, have them seem to revolve around each other and care about each other more than anyone else, and diminishing the connections the other characters have with both people in order to make Blake and Yang’s connection seem clearer. To be completely fair to CRWBY, Yang has been allowed to branch out and have real and natural interactions both with villains (taking on Salem, protesting Emerald’s involvement) and teammates (arguing with Ren, talking with Jaune, acting like Ruby is her close little sister again!) This season, Yang has started to act like her own character again, but Blake hasn’t been allowed much growth. I’d say Weiss would more likely to wind up in the ‘Blake’ position than the ‘Yang’ position as far as being allowed to grow, especially because we’re already seeing her character start to kind of falter now that they’ve tied up her arc in a messy bow, and especially if she wound up with Ruby or Jaune, who I think are the most likely romantic partners for Weiss at this time. But there’s also the possibility of them starting to force a relationship between her and literally anyone else, including any of the three boys waiting in Vacuo, or Emerald, or Marrow.

As a quick note, please keep in mind that this is all speculation for fun and it really might not amount to anything. It would be kind of funny and frustrating both if CRWBY repeated how they’ve done Blake with Weiss, but it’s possible that they’re going to give Weiss a more significant arc and growth in season nine, put more focus on her relationship with Whitley and Willow once things cool down a little after all of season eight was equal parts ‘a crisis mode’ and a ‘sit around and wait for the plot to come around’ storyline. This post is kind of running on in length pretty badly, but here are a couple of ways I think Weiss could really shine next arc.

1. Have her and Yang trapped in the void together without Ruby and Blake. I’ve talked before about how Ruby’s ‘protagonist’ framing swallows up her friend group before, and how Blake and Yang’s relationship tends to swallow up one or both of them, as well as other characters having to be a bit more diminished to try and make bee moments more significant, and I think splitting up the team between Weiss and Yang, and Blake and Ruby could make Weiss grow more significantly and have her and Yang interact meaningfully again (which we haven’t gotten since season five.) In an ideal situation, I’d personally throw Jaune into the mix as well, since I’ve started to enjoy both the concept of him and Yang as friends and the concept of him and Weiss as friends. I think it’d really speak to Weiss’s character and show growth if she made the choice to go in after Yang, since Ruby is needed more in the world immediately (because of her Silver Eyes,) Penny is needed too (because of her Maiden powers) and Blake is needed at least somewhat (since she’s the one with the connections to the reformed Faunus group and Ghira and Ilia and all.) This could add a layer to angst, with Weiss proclaiming herself the least important, but also make Weiss’s character seem much more selfless, as she’s willing to risk her life and is willing to risk being alone in the Void herself even though her whole thing is loneliness, in order to save Yang. Jaune then surprising everyone by going with Weiss, and having an emotional moment where Ruby and Blake realize they have to trust Weiss and Jaune to do this and try and force themselves to still fight and work while they wait and panic and worry... That’s some good stuff! Of course, that would unfortunately bench Weiss’s relationships with her family, but I’d still be very happy with this outcome.

2. Have Weiss go on to Vacuo and not go after Yang, but be the one to rally the people, help them all to the city, deal with Theodore, etc. If Blake and Ruby went after Yang, or Blake, Ruby, and Jaune went after Yang, or just Ruby and Jaune, I think there could be some interest there. Not quite so much for the Void Team, but for the Left Behind Team. Having Weiss have to deal with being thrown into a leadership position when she’s not a leader at heart would be really interesting. Having her trying to hold it together and not let any grief, worry, or panic take her over so she can focus on her mission would be really interesting. We could have at least one member of Team RWBY facing the consequences of their actions and taking the brunt of it, while defending their choices and trying to find a place for millions of refugees. Once again, this could play into Weiss’s themes about loneliness, and Weiss could maybe even wind up resenting her team for leaving her and knowing it’s unfair and knowing they did what they had to do, but it would still create tension when they come back. And this sort of arc could also really push and flesh out her relationship and interactions with Whitley. There’s a lot that CRWBY could do with their relationship in this sort of scenario, but I would love it if Weiss’s themes of loneliness played a part in the early episodes of the volume, with her kind of secluding herself because she doesn’t have her friends and she thinks she’s alone, but then getting closer and closer to Whitley and realizing that she’s not alone, because she has her little brother who she loves. Idk, I just think it could be really good and sweet.

So... Yeah. Those are the ways I think Weiss’s character could grow and be fleshed out. Currently, I’m not happy with how she’s been, but there’s still hope for her. However, I will laugh so hard if she gets some romance and starts being one half of a pairing. XD

#rwde #anti rwby #rwby hate #rwby bashing #anti-bumbleby #anti bb #anti bumbleby #anti bumblebee #I'm trying really hard to make sure this doesn't wind up on the bb tags #anti blake belladonna #anti blake x yang #rwby criticism

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rawliverandcigarettes · 4 years

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens�� that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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marlahey · 4 years

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@rochey1010 going back and forth in long-winded replies seems like unnecessary effort for both of us so I hope you don’t mind another text post as I fully articulate my thoughts. as I’ve said before, you’re obviously entitled to your own opinions, but you’ve now seemed to make a lot of assumptions about me a fan/viewer/general consumer of media that I feel like I should clear up. you’ve also made some further claims about the show I’d like to pick up for discussion. If you want to speak further please feel free to respond but of course don’t feel obligated. This’ll be the last public post/reply I make and we can go back to ignoring each other in the tags!

Well i love Eliott/Lola's friendship and i have an upcoming post on that as i said in other posts. I love lola too but i'm sorry i didn't just start watching this show because lola was invented and there's a w/w love story. I've been here for seasons and carried over from OG. I have investment in eliott for personal reasons (mental health) and elu because duh. Their stories have been long running too as i said. And you don't have to be a main to set up a plot/arc. The things between them have been set up since S3 with minute par minute talk, S4 and Idriss, S5 and the cheating perspective, and now S6 and Lola friendship. That is intentional. Do you think it's a coincidence that Lucas talked about pansexuality and eliott having more choice in S5 and suddenly Eliott has a friendship with a girl. That lucas abandonment issues haven't been resolved and are now coming to the forefront because of this friendship? That max has stated that Eliott feels he can save someone from a darkness he himself went through, that eliott himself was sorta saved from the shadows by Lucas. That neils/david specifically stated that this character can help someone even though he has bipolar disorder. That with Eliott's arc there is a focus on his SKAM. That we now have new info about it serving the season. If you understand writing. These things aren't put there for fun. They are there to imply/hint/foreshadow events actions to come. That there is a character now on the show with Lola basically female eliott. Do you think these are all coincidences. This plot we are seeing has slowly been set up not just since S3 but actually heavily developed starting in S5. And that if you now go back and watch S5 you see our main players being set up for this plot e.g dasille relationship, daphne's ED, Eliott and his individuality, Elu trust/insecurity issues, Eliott's art and it tying into seasonal themes, Lola herself and her outlier persona etc. I don't know whether you are but there are many fans have migrated over from espana just for this season. But you have to understand there is a long term fanbase here that love Eliott, are invested in him and have been waiting for more of his insight. We are now getting that and we will talk about him. He's a hugely popular character as is Lucas and their love. I love both and i will talk about both. Sometimes i won't talk much About lola and talk more about eliott, sometimes i'll connect them and discuss their relationship, sometimes i'll make a post about just about lola, daphne, tiff, benny, movie references as i have. But this is my blog and i'll post what i want to post. You don't have to read any of this stuff. The tag is a big place, just scroll by. As for the theories- just theories. And in my theories i believe these characters are going to make mistakes, fail and grow e.g. lola self Destructing again but being her own hero by the end, eliott and lola being dragged down like lucas said but showing the strength of their friendship by the end, lucas being proven right but also proven wrong by the end. Like i said specific dialogue now being used is not just there to fill the script e.g. "and i have lucas. I can't lose this" "i think one of you may bring the other down" and eliott is heading for a rock bottom as is lola. Again just my thoughts. 👍

While I find it odd that you seem to be gatekeeping the skam france fan community, to be clear I have seen the entirety of three iterations: og, france, and austin. I believe I started OG during s2 or 3, and have seen Fr and Aus from the beginning. I’m not as interested in other versions as I’m very familiar with the plots/characters by now. I’m partial to france as a bilingual canadian as it’s nice to exercise that part of my brain; I’ve also studied/lived there briefly and have some very close friends from france so that amplifies my enjoyment. I’m also bisexual, so I also find this ‘only here for lola + w/w’ when you yourself admit to being emotionally invested in the show’s most dominant queer ship dichotomy very awkward. to be honest, I think many skam’s fandoms tend to fixate on the esak ship and their season. friends have seen other iterations and confirmed this for me. it happened with elu as expected so I was really unsurprised when maya was introduced and fandom immediately put a lot of their investment into shipping two characters of the same gender. nearly every fandom in general does this: teen wolf, glee, supernatural to name a few – even harry potter. I’m not really a fan of the romantic subplot in lola’s season. she is not elliot 2.0 for so many reasons; she’s her own person and she doesn’t need a romantic partner to be a compelling character with a compelling story. that being said, I liked elu’s season. I particularly love maxence’s elliot; he’s my favourite even. I was thrilled to see him onscreen however briefly after S3 every time he appeared. now he’s finally his own person outside of his relationship with lucas and I couldn’t be more pleased to see that. I’m not sure how idriss and elliot reconnecting after the attempted kiss falling out plays into lucas’ insecurity or their relationship. it’s perhaps a reminder of his bipolar disorder or the fact that he clearly had friends/relationships before lucas, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the season at hand. the biphobia discussion with arthur preceeding lola’s introduction as the new main is not proof that lucas’ supposed abandonment issues are founded in any way, or that he even still has them when we meet her. by insisting on it, you’re perpetuating the harmful idea that any bi or pan person will be tempted to cheat or leave (physically or emotionally) when presented with literally any person whose gender opposes their current partner. this is something that skam fr had literally left unaddressed for so long even with representation in alexia and elliot, and I was so thrilled when it finally came up. it’s very uncomfortable that you’re now using that important conversation as apparent proof that lucas will be abandoned or betrayed, inadvertently or not, by his pansexual boyfriend. I know that daphné was meant to be s6′s main and skam fr wasn’t given the rights by og’s creator. so it makes sense that she/her relationship/struggles feature heavily in her sister’s season. I’m personally thrilled cause I love her and lula is a wonderful actress. that being said, not everything is foreshadowing. not every single interaction or conversation will return to further plot or character. sometimes storylines are just resolved or dropped and awareness raised is just awareness raised. sometimes it’s wonderful and sometimes less so. I understand writing. I’m saying this as a literal former english teacher (ignoring capitalization for aesthetic lol) and assistant in film/tv post-production with an MA in media studies. “Lucas, you have nothing to worry about, it’s not like that between us.” “I know, he explained it to me.” I’m not sure how much clearer the literal show can be about this issue. spoiler or not, it’s been made abundantly clear that lola and elliot are not romantically involved. even more importantly and I’ve said this on my blog before, you’re allowed to have intimacy with someone without forcing it into a defined familial or romantic relationship. it doesn’t mean that someone’s partner should necessarily feel threatened or abandoned and says a lot more about that person’s insecurity than either individual in the friendship. we’ve also already discussed how much I dislike this turn for lucas’ character as elliot’s apparent MH saviour so it’s not worth repeating again. as for elliot saving lola, well he literally did that already. I’m not sure what you mean by lucas ‘being proven right and proven wrong’ by the end, but you’re obviously adamant that something will happen. I have also seen maxence’s interview a few times. I’ll not argue with the ‘lucas saved elliot from that shadow’ because it literally came from the actor’s mouth, but maxence doesn’t say he can save anyone else from their struggles, but help them and I think that’s a really important distinction. this whole saving idea doesn’t seem healthy at all, especially as lola and elliot grapple with their mental health. it seems like people want to see a ‘rock bottom’ (whatever that means) for them both and it makes me a little uncomfortable. addiction and MH struggles should not have to reach a breaking point in order to be considered resolved or cathartic; they don’t even have to be resolved, because they’re not a plot device. they’re a reality for so many people. the show does a good job of not romanticizing them but some of the things I see in the tag are just... yikes. as for his ‘dark’ side and the less than happy elu moments, I’d argue that maxence may have meant literally punching out what’s his face to save lola and the subsequent argument(s) with lucas, since that interview came out just before ep 4. but there’s still several eps to go so I could be totally wrong. who knows. it’s your right to theorize on your own blog of course and it’s not my intention to be mean. I’m just trying to further the discourse in a respectful way. I do feel that you may put a little too much stock in what’s literally said/seen and assuming a lot in the unseen gaps, rather than considering a broader context. to wrap up though, lucas is free to have this (however hurtful) fear, just as you’re free to believe it’ll for sure come to pass. I dread seeing either lola or elliot spiral out, but as 2020 has taught me, I very rarely get what I want lol. thank you @cakepleasee for helping me sort out my thoughts!

#skam france #skam fr #elu #lola lecomte #elliot demaury #whew this is a whole ass novel

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damn-stark · 5 years

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Dark Hope ch.12

A/N- okay so this is not going to be the last chapter!! I’m going to continue writing for this series!! It’s not going to be as frequent as before but I’m going to upload just so for when the next movie rolls out then the reader will have more backstory and you all will know more of her character and what her plot is for the next movie and who her Sith family is!! And we’ll also develop the readers relationship with Ben/ Kylo!! So hope you guys like it!! :)

Warning- violence, language

Pairing- Ben solo x Reader

Tagged- @angelmarie823

(Let me know if you want to be tagged)

A/N- send ideas for a new series!! I want to write more Star Wars!! :)

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His laugh sounds haunting and evil as it echos throughout the room. Snoke looks between Ben and you and then to Rey. You struggle to be let go but your attempts fail as he places you down next to Ben. You could feel the fear within Ben as you were next to him, fear on not knowing why you were here or what Snoke was planning to do with you and Rey. The sound of Snoke chuckling caught your attention once again.

“Welcome back Y/N.” Snoke said to you with an evil grin on his face. “My young apprentice has succeeded and brought you here.” Snoke says earning a scoff from you.

“He didn’t bring me I brought myself here.” You tell him with a glare fixated on him. He chuckles once more.

“And why would that be? if not for him. You came for him right?” He said and you stood quiet accepting the truth. “Have you seen something? A weakness in my young apprentice? Is that why you both came?” Snoke said and as he said that you glanced over at Ben who was looking down at the ground. As soon as he felt your gaze on him he looked over at you but quickly looked back down. “You fools it was I who breached your minds, I stoked Rens conflicted soul. I knew he wasn’t strong enough to hide it from either of you...especially you.” Snoke said as he brought you closer to him. At the revelation of Snoke being the one to breach your minds you looked up at him in shock and confusion. And it wasn’t only you and Ben but also him and Rey. You felt a slight bit of anger and hint of jealousy at the thought.

You had thought it was just you and Ben. You had thought it was something special that was connecting you both but it wasn’t. He also didn’t reveal that it was also happening to you and him but to him and Rey too. Why didn’t he tell you? Why did he hide that from you? Many other questions flooded your head but you had no time to ask them out loud or wander to much about them before you were being pulled closer to Snoke. “And neither of you were strong enough to resist the bait!” Snoke shouted. He then got Rey and demanded her to give her Luke Skywalkers location using the force to do so. While he was doing that to Rey he let you go and you hit the ground with a groan. The shouts that came from Rey as she was being hurt because of Snokes interrogation caused you to briefly close your eyes and block out the noise but they were loud and it hurt you to much to ignore them.

As you were about to do something she was let go hitting the ground hard. Snoke went on saying something about killing the resistance and Luke too. You took the chance that he was off guard and grabbed your lightsaber that was hidden in the stormtrooper suit you had on. You got it out and ignited it revealing your purple double blades. You jumped up and ran towards Snoke but he was quick and used the force to fling you across the room. He took your lightsaber and placed it next to Rey’s. Even if every muscle and bone in your body hurt you got up and used the force to bring your lightsaber back to your grasp but Snoke got it and brought it back to him. He then pulled you towards a magnifying glass. The doors opened revealing the resistance cruisers and transport ships. The sight of them being destroyed caused you to gasp and get chills.

It was too late you couldn’t save them. You clenched your jaw together as you felt anger towards yourself and towards Snoke for doing this. “All the resistance on those transports, soon they will all be gone! For you all is lost.” Snoke said causing your anger to increase.

“Not all.” You muttered as you glanced over st Ben, he wasn’t looking at you but Rey was. You stood up and used the force to get Bens lightsaber. As you ignited it Snokes guards took out their weapons too threatening you. A growl escaped your lips as you had the lightsaber ready to strike. “Still that fiery spirit of hope, you remind me of your grandfather.” Snoke said causing you to lose concentration at the mention of your grandfather who was still unknown to you. Your faced turned into a scowl as you tightened your grip around the lightsaber and brought it up closer, the red illuminating half of your face only seeing the rage coming off from you clearer.

It had seemed that Rey was on the same page as you because she got up and got her lightsaber. From the corner of your eye you saw her actions so you smirked as you both ran up to Snoke. “Both have spirits of True Jedis!” Snoke yelled as he flung Rey back and froze you in midair. “And because of that you must die.” Snoke then brought you down and had you kneel down in front of Ben. “You know Y/N I believed you were strong and would live up to your name that you would be the Sith you were meant to be. That you would live up to your grandfathers name! But you have to much of a Jedi in you. You’re too much of a Windu to be a true Sith.” Your eyes go wide at the revelation.

Snoke had just told you what you have always wanted to hear. Your family. Even if your father was with you and then abandoned you. You still had the desire to know who was your family was because you knew their was something more then just yourself and your father you knew you were missing that part of your self and this explained how powerful you were. Windu. You’ve heard of that name and it belonged to a pretty important Jedi but it was said that he had died because of a Sith long before you were born but now you knew the truth. Your father was a windu but always kept that a secret not telling you at all of your familys past, legacy, name or who they were, even if you had always asked. He only told you about your mother who died just after you were born. But now that you knew the truth your life was in danger. And yet their was still that another truth that had yet to be told, the one about your Sith bloodline, Who was the Sith that Snoke mentioned?

You looked at Ben and saw that he looked shocked too but not as much as you were but it passed and he then had a slight frown on his face. He had eyes trained on you and you could feel his fear increase. “My worthy apprentice... son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vadar. Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness strength, Don’t let the love you have for this girl weaken you my young apprentice and complete your training and fulfill your destiny.” Snoke said to Ben. Ben grabbed his lightsaber from the floor and stood up not looking away from you.

“I know what I have to do.” He said and you closed your eyes briefly and when you opened them again you saw Ben and his eyes were glossy same as yours.

“Ben.” You whispered to try and get to him so he wouldn’t do what Snoke was telling him to do.

“Ben don’t do this.” You heard Rey say as she was kneeled by your side. You didn’t look over at her only kept your eyes trained on Ben.

“You think you can turn him?” Snoke questioned when he heard both you and Rey call to Ben. “Pathetic children.” Snoke said with a chuckle. “ I cannot be betrayed. I cannot be beaten. I see his mind. I see his every intent. Yes.”

“Please ben.” You mouth to Ben knowing he understood and also not letting Snoke hear you. You search his eyes and see something in them.

“I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true and now foolish girls he ignites it and kills his true enemy!” Snoke shouted and then you heard a lightsaber ignite. You half expected it to be Bens but when you didn’t feel it stab you then you knew who’s it was and who it stabbed. You and Rey hit your knees on the ground hard as you were let go. You turn to look back and see that Snoke was impaled by Rey’s lightsaber. He looked like he was going to say something but as the lightsaber moved forward it cut him in half. Rey caught her lightsaber and then you brought yours to your hand.

Rey and you stood up from the ground and you turned to look back at Ben. You wanted to run and hug him but you knew that would not happen not after what he had done. So instead you give him a small warm smile. You both ignite your lightsabers as you look at one another with lingering stare. Your eyes then shift to Rey’s and you both smirk before the three of you turn your backs facing one another and face the guards coming your way.

You swing your lightsaber at the guards who are swinging their weapons at you. You dodge and duck their swings. The one in front you keeps trying to strike you but both of your weapons clash with one another, You try to push him back but he’s strong so you step back and put your hand on Bens thigh and bring him back to you so you could push yourself off the ground and kick the guard in front of you.

You move forward and then impale him in the chest making him fall to the ground with a loud thud. From the corner of your eye you see another guard with a sword heading your way. He gets close and swings at you but you throw your head back avoiding the sword. He didn’t see your lightsaber that was beneath him so you swing it and slice him in half. You jump back up and two gaurds are running your way seeing that you were a threat. Your hands goes to your blasters but only meet up with emptiness. You bring your lightsaber up and look to both of your sides seeing the guards come closer. You square your shoulders and smirk. They get closer and as they’re close to hitting you, you jump and flip before you land on the ground you spin your lightsaber in your hand and behead them both. You land on your feet and look up with a smile excited for yourself as you had just done that. You then spot Ben across from you and your smile widens as you noticed that he saw what you done. He looks impressed but before anything could happen three guards corner him.

You run over his way and jump up and stab one. Ben manages to get the other off from him. The one on his right notices you and breaks his sword in two making a twin sword. You smirk again part your double bladed lightsaber in two as well. A cry escapes your lips as you rush to him and swing your now twin lightsabers. He was better then other ones so it was harder to fight him. Your two weapons clash into one another making a big spark. He kicks you back hard and you drop your lightsabers. You went to pick them up but he swung at you managing to cut your arm.

“Really?” You question as you glare at him. He swings at you again but this time you use the force to freeze his movements. You outstretch your hand and begin to choke him. His hands move up to his neck as he tries grasp for air, dropping his swords as he did that. You tilt your hand slightly to the side and his neck snaps and his hand drop to his side and he’s no longer struggling. You drop and collect your lightsabers and connect them back into a double blade.

You turn around and your eyes go wide when you see that a guard had Ben in a choke hold. He was struggling to get him off but the guards grip on him was strong. “Ben!” You shout as warn him and throw your lightsaber so he could catch it. He caught it and ignited it, impaling the guard who was trying to kill him. You looked around and realized that he was the last one. You take a deep breath but you knew that you wouldn’t have time to take a break. Ben throws your lightsaber back to you. You both once again have lingering stare wanting to say something to one another but the sound of Rey’s voice interrupts the both of you.

“The fleet!” Rey shouts “order them to stop firing!” Rey says as she runs to the magnifying glass. You rush to her side and see the fleet behing destroyed. Your eyes water at the sight not knowing if Poe or any of your other friends were alright. “There’s still time to take the fleet!” Rey says pointing to what was happening outside the ship. You look over at Ben and you immediatly knew he wasn’t planning to stop the attack. He walks over getting closer to the both you. He picks up Rey’s lightsaber that was on the ground and then stops before reaching the throne. Rey notices what was happening and stands by your side.

“Ben?” You question as you walk to get closer to him. You noticed the way he was breathing heavily, out of anger and exhaustion.

“It’s time to let old things die. Snoke, Skywalker , the Sith, Han Solo, The Jedi the rebels let it all die.” He says as he walks towards you. Rey tries to pull you back but you move your arm to get out of her grasp and take a couple steps forward. “Y/N. I want you to join me.” Ben says as he outstretches his hand out towards you. You look at his hand and then at him. You swallow thickly soon realizing what his intent was. “We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy.” Your shoulders drop and your eyes begin to water.

“Don’t do this Ben.” You say quieter then intended. “Please don’t go this way. You’re so close.” You continue saying.

“No, no. You’re still holding on!” He shouts in an agitated voice. You take a deep breath a take step forward. “Let go!” He shouts.

“Don’t y/n. Ben don’t do this.” You hear Rey say.

“You Can join too Rey. You want to know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You’ve just hidden it away.” He says and you didn’t have to look at Rey to know this was making her upset. “You know the truth. Say it... say it.”

“They were nobody just filthy junk traders.” Rey said as her voice broke because she was crying, you could her tone. Her weakness. Ben was using her parents as way to also make her want to join the dark side.

“Ben please.” You plead once again interrupting him from making Rey even more upset then she already was. And also trying to help her out from not being convinced to join him. His eyes shift back to you when he hears you, he gets closer only leaving a short distance between the both of you.

“You know the truth too. Your father left you alone and let you get tortured. He didn’t care for you.” He said and hearing him say those words hurt you more then anything. Memories of what had happened after rushed through your mind only making the tears roll down. But as the bad memories came the good ones also took over. And then you heard the voice again call to you but you ignored it. “But I care... I care for you Y/N. You don’t have to feel alone ever again.. we both don’t.” He said his voice softening. You looked at him and saw that he also had a few tears rolling down his cheek. Hearing him say that, reveal those emotions made your heart quicken and the offer sound tempting. “ you don’t have to live in that fear of being alone anymore or fear of being hurt again... I care for for you and no one will hurt you if you join me.”

You looked at his hand and then at him again. You couldn’t help but notice what you have always seen in his eyes that spark of light. At this moment it was clear to you. It was clear that you needed to join him. Not because you love him but because you need to help him and this was going to be the only way.

“Join me..please” the way he said the last word made you weak and you took a step forward but he could still feel the conflict in you, but he knew he was convincing you.

“ y/n... don’t.” Rey whispered. Ben heard her and got closer to you.

“Please...... I... I love you.” Your eyes went wide not expecting at all what he had just said. Your lips parted as you looked at him shocked. Your lip begins to tremble and your heart quicken. You felt butterflies at the sound of those words. You slowly outstretch your hand to touch his.

“Ben.. I lo—” before you could finish what you were going to say you were pulled back hitting the floor. You groaned as you hit your wound on your arm. You pushed yourself up and saw that it was Rey who had done that to you.

“I’m sorry y/n but I can’t let you do that.” She then reached for her lightsaber that was on Bens side but he fought back.

“Don’t!” You shouted as you saw them both struggling to be the one to win. As you went over to them you heard them both shout as they both used the force to get the lightsaber and tugging at it like it was a game of tug a war. You were going to do something but as you were the thing broke in half making a big explosion sending the three of you back. And then nothing but darkness.

Your eyes fluttered open and you felt a huge headache right away. You pushed your self up and saw that Ben was unconscious. You looked over at Rey and saw that was also getting up. You walked over to her and helped her up. It took her a couple minutes to say something as she saw what had happened.

“Let’s go they need our help.” She said as he made her way to the door. You followed her but stopped once you reached where Ben was laying. She froze when she felt and heard that you weren’t following her anymore. She turned back and you could see the pain in her look again. “No y/n you can’t stay.. come back.” She tried convincing you but you had made your mind up. “Don’t become this...please come back. Luke can help you and we can train together... just please don’t turn this way.” You smiled faintly at her and went to her.. you grabbed her hand and smiled wider with tears rolling down your cheeks.

“He needs me Rey. I can feel it he’s close to turning back... I need to bring him back. I have to.” You said and she now was the one crying.

“Don’t do this for him he made up his mind. It’s not to late for you.” She said.

“Not for him either... I have to do this... for him... and his dad he wanted this and I want this. I want bring him back. I’m going to bring him back. So go please.” You let go of her hand but she didn’t move.

“No y/n. Come back with me , Chewie and Finn please.” She pleaded again but she wasn’t going to convince you.

“Tell them I’ll return and that I miss them all. Poe too. I’ll get back I promise.... I do have to get my blasters after all.” You joker mustering up a small laugh. Rey swallowed thickly and stepped towards the exit.

“Go! Now! Before Ben wakes up and stormtroopers come” you warned her. She looked back and wiped the tears from her face. You smiled again and she returned it before heading out. You go back to where Ben was and kneel by his side. You wipe the strands of hairs that were covering his face and smile.

“I love you too Ben.” You whisper.

It had taken a couple minutes but then you heard people approaching. Your hand moved to your lightsaber that was hanging on your hip as you waited to see who would come through the entrance.

A man with red hair and black attire, he looked like a general came in alone. “Stay there you rebel scum!” He shouted keeping his distance. The man saw behind you and noticed Snokes body. His face turned red and stormed over to you. “You did this!” He yelled and you had your lightsaber out. “You killed Supreme leader Snoke!”

“No! If i had I wouldn’t be here would I?” You said not wanting to fight him since now you were part of the first order. He shoved past you and went towards Snokes body.

“You’re lying! You’ll die for this!” He yelled as he was about to go get stormtroopers you presume you stopped him. He was surprised and scared but you couldn’t let him go or else this would create a mess that doesn’t need to happen.

“I’m with the Kylo ren now. I joined the first order I’m not a threat.” You said as he spun him to face you. You let him go and he looked angrier. But then Ben woke up. The man noticed and stayed still. He composed himself and looked at Ben.

“What happened here?” The general asked giving you a side. Ben was still getting off the ground and didn’t notice you.

“The girl murdered Snoke.” Ben said and you knew he was referring to Rey. He didn’t notice you at first but when he did he looked surprised. His mouth parted to say something to you but he remembered that it was not just him and you alone.

“This girl you mean!” The general shouted accusing you. But Ben glared at the man.

“No! She had no part in it. She’s with us now.” Ben said as he continued to look at you. The general didn’t believe Ben at all but he didn’t fight him on it. “What happened?” Ben asked as he noticed Rey was gone.

“The girl took Snokes escape craft.” The general announced but you had already known the answer to that. You followed Ben with your eyes as he walked past you.

“We know where’s she’s going. Get all ours forces down to the resistance base. Let’s finish this.” Ben said as walked back.

“Finish this?” The general asked not understanding Bens tone. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” He asked and you knew already knew the outcome of his question. “You presume to command my Army! While you lay with the enemy! Our supreme leader is dead! We have no ruler!” Ben turned quickly to face the general. You stepped back and watched what unfolded.

“The supreme leader is dead.” Ben said as he force choked the general. You looked away not wanting to see the struggle.

“Long live the supreme leader.” The general muttered out as best he could.

“She’s not the enemy. She’s one of us so you’ll listen to her now and respect her!” Ben said as he let him go. “Let’s go y/n” Ben said to you in softer tone but still demanding. You quickly followed behind not looking at the general behind you.

On the way to the planet that the resistance was on you stayed quiet. You were dreading going there. And when you had gotten there you saw the mine they were hiding in. What was left of the resistance was inside that mine and you knew that Poe and the rest of your friends were some of remaining rebels. You hated being on the opposing team all you wanted was to help them and keep them alive but you couldn’t.

Ben noticed your quiet self and questioned himself if he wanted to ask and talk to you on the matter or talk about how you ended up staying here with him but their was no time and their was to many people. So instead he left you to your thoughts knowing that the reason you were this way was because of what was going on now.

You stood up from where you were sulking and Kept close attention to the resistance fighters that were heading towards the first order. You feared for their lives because you knew that they didn’t have much to fight anymore which meant it was a big risk sending the fighters. And as you saw the line of red salt that trailed behind them as they came towards you, that’s when you knew Poe was one of fighters in those old things they were on. How could he not be in the front lines it would take a lot to get him to stop and not risk his life but this was job and he liked saving people. And that’s what scared you. Him risking his life in a time like this where he had limited resources to fight.

It had seemed that Ben noticed how scared you were for your friends because he stood next you and took your hand in his. You knew head the giving the orders to kill them but him trying comfort you made you feel better. You looked up at him a offered him a small smile. He discreetly returned it and in that smile and the way he looked at you like if there was no one else here but you and him you heard unsaid words.

The moment though didn’t last long because you both then spotted a big ugly ship. It was the Millenium falcon. A bigger smile grew on your face knowing exactly who was on it. Chewie and Rey. “Blow that piece of junk out of the sky!” Ben shouted as he let go of your hand and went to the people who were the ones shooting the Millenium falcon and the resistance fighters.

Your smile died down though as all the tie-fighters went after the falcon. And then your worry only grew when you saw that their was one suicide fighter heading for the canon in means of destroying it. You didn’t know who it was and you didn’t want to know just in case if it was anyone you knew. That guilt would eat you up.

When the cannon fired and made a hole on the door you feared the worst. You took a couple steps back to afraid to see the outcome. But as you got closer to the mine you noticed Bens whole mood change. You walked back to where you were previsouly and saw single man walking towards the ship. Ben ordered all the fighters to stop and that’s when you noticed who the man was. It was Luke skywalker. No one else would out Ben like this.

“He’s here.” You whispered to yourself as you saw luke walk closer.

“I want every gun we have to fire on that man.” Ben said and the way he said sent chills down your spine. You looked at him and saw how serious he was. You made eye contact with the general who you knew as general Hux and you both had the same expression your face. “Do it.” Ben said. You kept a close eye on Luke as the fighters began shooting at him. “More!” Ben shouted and the way he said that made you look over at him in shock.

“Ben don’t.” You said to him but he didn’t you in his own anger. You saw the way he tightened his fist as he saw all the blasts hitting where Luke was. “Ben.”

“More!” He shouted again but this time louder. You finally put your hand on his and he looked at you in surprise. He snapped from whatever stupor he had been on. When he looked at you he changed he calmed down and He seemed to realize what he was doing because he looked as if almost sad.

“That’s enough.” You instructed the men but they didn’t hear you. “That’s enough!” You shouted this time and it caught their attention and they stopped. Ben sat down in his chair and he still had the same look of sadness and guilt.

“You think you got him?” Hux asked Ben. Once the red salt started clear Ben stood up and watched what happened. You all noticed that Luke was Untouched. You were impressed and relieved. Luke pretended to wipe dust from his shoulder and that made you head back a smile. But as you tried not to smile Ben grew angry once more.

“Bring me down to him..and keep the door covered and don’t advance until I say so.” Ben said as he turned to head down. He avoided looking at you because he knew that if he did you would stop him. And he would stop. That’s why he couldn’t face you right now, instead he ignored your presence.

“Supreme leader don’t get distracted our main goal is —” Hux tried explaining but before he could finish he was force thrown to the wall.

“Ben dont do this.” He ignored you as best he could and headed down to meet Luke. You watched as they fought one another and it hurt your heart to much to see the outcome but curiosity got the best of you. You were impressed that Luke missed every strike Ben swung. But then it occurred to you that it was just Luke fighting alone with no one else. He was distracting Ben so the resistance could escape. You stayed quiet on the matter and watched. You went down and stayed by the door. The conversation they were having was not audible due to them being to far. Luke turned and looked at you and smiled before disappearing.

You looked at yourself through the mirror and saw your new black attire. You put on your new jedi like cloak and tried on the hood. Black did always look better on you, you thought. You felt a chill on the exposed skin that your shirt didn't cover. The shirt covered the top half of your body but a their was piece of long fabric that ran down the center and connected to thr pants. You put on your silver studded gauntlets and couldn't help but smile. You turned over and caught Bens attention who seemed to be lost in his own mind. When he noticed your new attire he smiled slightly.

“It- it- you look great.” he said with a light blush on his cheeks you thought that the way he fumbled with his words was cute. He had complimented you in the best way he could.

“let's go they'l be waiting for us.” He got up headed for the door. Today was the day that he was going to announce his role as Supreme leader and announce that you were going to rule by his side. as you followed him out the door you walked past Vadars destroyed helmet. You got a chill that you could feel in your bones and then you heard something a voice much darker then the one that usually called to you. This felt different colder, more demanding and with anger and just pure evil.

“Y/N...my granddaughter.” the voice said then he laughed an evil laugh and you saw a flash of a man his face hidden by a black hood. You shrugged it off as best you could and followed Ben out before you closed the door you looked at the helmet again and heard the evil chuckle once more.

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sally-mun · 5 years

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Episode 3: We Can Rebuild Them

With Robotnik’s threats sufficiently subdued due to plot things, life is able to quiet down for the disparate Acorns. As noted last time, Elias and Sally both have long and painful healing periods ahead of them, and although Queen Alicia makes the trip from West Acorn to visit with them, Max remains behind. This fact takes a toll on Sally and notably interferes with her recovery; her past depression threatens to return, which leads to her not eating enough (a way in which she coped with it in the past), and combined with the fact that her burns made it incredibly difficult to sleep, her body had a hard time finding the energy to heal. This, in turn, extended her overall recovery time, which necessarily extended her time on some very powerful pain killers.

Finitevus took notice of this last fact very early; Knuckles had been making a point to regularly visit Sally during her hospital stay (given that she’s literally his only childhood friend), and naturally Fini would occasionally tag along. As someone that’s dealt with outrageously bad burns for years, it caught his attention immediately that Sally was teetering on the edge of becoming addicted to her pain medication. Supposedly as a favor to Knuckles, but likely as a simple act of empathy, Finitevus set to work constructing a healing tank (akin to the sort in DBZ but horizontal) to help accelerate her progress. Sally is surprised by the gesture, but grateful all the same. Fini’s tank successfully helps close the gap between where Sally’s recovery had been versus where it ought to have been, allowing her to back off the pain medication before it became a lingering problem.

Meanwhile, Elias didn’t seem to be recovering at all – and yet he didn’t seem nearly as bothered by this fact as one would imagine. Just as when he’d been rescued, Elias was almost completely blind; he only had very faint vision from a specific portion of his left eye, but the sight was completely gone from his right. Even so, Elias adapted to this surprisingly well and even more surprisingly quickly. He learned to navigate his home (after the Brotherhood had banded together to repair it, of course) and perform basic functions mostly by touch, and refused to allow it to interfere with his ability to have a relationship with his daughter. It was around this time that Elias began forming a friendship with Knuckles as well, due to both of them frequently visiting Sally during her hospital stay. The two realized that they had far more in common than they’d guessed and began making plans to hang out together on their own time.

This became a life-changing decision for both of them, as it wasn’t long before the two had become nearly as inseparable as Sonic and Tails themselves. Upon further reflection, it made perfect sense: They’d both been raised by the Brotherhood (albeit in a more hands-off way for Knuckles), which meant they both preferred outdoor activities and natural surroundings. Their friendship deepened so much that Knuckles gave Elias a warp ring to allow him to visit the island anytime he wanted. This, of course, meant that Elias became a semi-regular figure in Knuckles’ and Finitevus’ household.

During a rare instance when Fini decided to actually engage Elias in conversation (versus kicking him and Knuckles out of the lab before they wrecked something), he asked why Elias had never sought further medical procedures to restore his eyesight. Vision replacement surgery wasn’t even a new procedure, after all, and someone with his sort of family ties would easily be able to get such a treatment if he really wanted it. Elias very casually replied that Megan wasn’t comfortable with the idea, so he’d never looked into it.

Of course, Fini being Fini, he wasn’t able to let this go; if there’s one thing that always rubs him wrong, it’s people rejecting science and medicine in favor of nonsense. Finitevus waited for Elias to head out with Knuckles for their hike (or whatever they planned to do that day), then quietly took a trip out to Feral Forest to have a word with Megan.

To say that Megan was surprised by her visitor would be an understatement; in fact, it took her several minutes to even let Finitevus into the house. Her feelings about him were clearly mixed, as she still had the old image of him razing entire cities to the ground, and yet he’d been integral in finding and recovering Elias from Robotropolis. Finitevus did his best to put her at ease and not overstep his boundaries, and after weaving the conversation around a few mundane topics, he got around to asking about Elias’ vision. Megan’s visible anxiety jumped up a few notches, and she eventually came around to tell him that she didn’t want Elias to be “legionized.” This caught Fini completely by surprise, and he explained that not EVERY robotic prosthetic was equivalent to legionization. Fini was even more surprised, however, when Megan persisted, this time claiming that it would be on par with “roboticizing his face.” Other odd reasons, such as the cost (despite being members of the Acorn family) or holding out hope that his eyes would heal on their own, continued to come up as well.

At this point, Finitevus stopped her, and told her that it’s clear she has some trauma in her past related to robotics, but he wasn’t going to press her on what that was. Instead, he simply pointed out that his only reason for discussing this was because he wanted to help, if just to make his own spouse happy. Fini offered to build Elias a prosthetic replacement for just one eye – she could think of it as a trial, if she so desired – and would only build one for the other side after she felt more comfortable with a double transplant. To his amazement, Megan still resisted the idea and continued to give feeble excuses against it. Finitevus decided that he’d prodded her long enough and got up to excuse himself, but on his way out he passed by Alexis’ playpen. In one last attempt to sway her, Fini commented that Elias opting out of procedures to restore his sight meant that he would never get to see the woman his daughter would grow up into, and that he hoped Megan would think more about their conversation.

A few days later, Knuckles very eagerly approached Fini with some great news: Elias had decided to look into getting prosthetics to replace his eyes! He even wanted to know if Fini could do it for him or give a recommendation! Finitevus just smiled and said he’d be happy to help, but never mentioned anything about his visit with Megan. Instead he simply got to work and built a replacement for the eye that was completely dead anyway.

Following his surgery, Elias’ spirits remained high – not only because he could finally see again, but because he said he was pretty sure this was clearer vision than he’d had in the first place. It took some time to adjust to, since having only one functioning eye also meant he didn’t have proper depth perception, but it was still easier on him than being completely blind. Only one side effect ever came to light following his surgery: Elias is no longer able to tolerate people reaching near his face. Anytime someone’s hand comes within a foot or so of his head, Elias reflexively jerks away and his pulse skyrockets, even if he’s pointedly trying not to. He very likely has PTSD as a result of Robotnik striking him in frustration, but he’s never taken it seriously enough to look for a diagnosis and simply deals with it. This panic reaction continues to follow him to this day.

Somewhere around this time, things took an unexpected turn for Sally in East Acorn: she’d gotten pregnant. Out of wedlock. As the queen. Sadly, the joy that she should’ve been feeling over the pregnancy confirmation was completely overridden by her fear of what would happen when word got out that it had happened before she’d gotten married, which is a HUGE no-no for the Acorn family. Would her citizens look down upon her? Would she lose credibility with them? Would she lose credibility with other leaders? What would her parents think of her when they found out?? Sally was so distraught that she kept the news a secret for a full three days as she desperately tried to figure out what to do. By no means did she want to end the pregnancy, but she couldn’t spontaneously get married to claim it happened on the wedding night, either. Royal ceremonies take weeks to plan out, sometimes months even, and by then she’d be too far along.

When she finally shared the news with Sonic, his elation was also overridden – but in his case, it was because he couldn’t believe Sally wasn’t elated herself. After a few minutes of Sally word-vomiting the worries that’d been haunting her for the last few days, he interrupted her to tell her that she didn’t owe anyone an explanation. She’s the first queen of a new kingdom, and she can set whatever rules and standards she sees fit. She has the power to decide that pregnancy before marriage is acceptable; after all, there was literally no one that could stop her. He also firmly told her that she did not owe A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G to her father, and the fact that Max was able to get inside her head and take away her happiness over this sort of news even after not having seen her in all this time is just a testament to how toxic he’d become and that she needed to let go of that concern for his opinion.

Despite the fact that she still felt like an emotional wreck, Sally conceded that he was right. It was something she’d already known on some level, but had never wanted to say out loud, feeling in a way like it was a betrayal. She finally admitted that the relationship that she wanted with Max was definitely not the relationship that she currently had, and if she was going to bring a child into the world, she couldn’t afford to let herself be deluded like that. Sally gathered her courage and finally announced that she was expecting her first child – and that she was finally going to marry Sonic after all these years.

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prixmiumarchive · 6 years

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Conservation of Mattering

Naomi Nagata has endured more than her fair share of pain for the sake of her relationship with her child's father. She has finally reached her limit and decides to leave. However, escaping the grasp of someone like Marco Inaros isn't going to be easy without a lot of help.

This fic is the kind of thing I never write, but here goes. It’s a Modern AU setting, and it’s about Naomi keeping her baby. A friend of mine, when I was describing the concept, described it as the “Dad Material AU” and I’m going to go with that. I tagged this fic with a poly tag because I want to be free to go there, but I don’t know how far we’ll get. It’s gonna be a lot of gen and plot-like things and found family stuff before that. If you want to keep reading without further information and adieu, you may click or scroll on, but if you prefer the AO3 format or want to see things like tags, rating, and notes about characters and their roles, then you can find all that here on AO3. Thank you to @thetruecaptain for answering my questions about age-appropriate baby behavior!

She wakes up the same way and in the same place that she has for a couple of years now. There is a low, white hum of mid-morning sun melting away dew and awakening many of her neighbors. Her phone says it's 10:06, and she still doesn't hear another adult in the apartment. She stays very still and very quiet, lying on her back on the mattress which is set simply along the middle of the wall on the floor of the larger of the two bedrooms. She is bracing herself for movement, for what comes next – rehearsing half-sobbed and half-dreamed plans from the night before with sticky eyes and a clearer head.

She braces herself for getting up, smoothly and quietly. She is hoping that she can manage to pee before the baby awakens after her for the final time of the morning. For the final time here, in this place, before something changes.

She doesn't quite make it. The soles of her feet are over the cool threshold of the bathroom before she hears the subtle movements of her son squirming in his crib back across the hall. She sighs softly and steadies herself. She goes to the crib, and the moment she lays eyes on Filip, the ache in her abdomen is forgotten. He is sitting up and reaching for the rung at the side of the crib. He appears alert, eyes darting this way and that.

She grins at him and gestures up toward herself in an encouraging motion. Filip does his best on the little mattress, and she helps him pull himself up and out the rest of the way. She holds him close, his cheek touching her neck. He squirms and she feels his hands brace at her collarbone. She soothes and bounces him idly. Her eyes dart around the room, considering how this is the only bedroom Filip has ever known.

He is so young. He'll outgrow all of this. He'll forget and move on. She isn't so sure about herself.

She takes him to get him cleaned up and changed. She gets him fed and comfortable. Then, at last, she finds a place for him while she tends to herself and washes up in the nearest sink. She feels a little bit of sweat clinging to the back of her neck, but she can shower when she gets where she's going. Every moment she can save is one more moment that she doesn't have to explain. It's one more moment she and her son won't have to endure shouting, guilt trips, or anything else that might follow honesty – the real truth.

A little while later, Filip is sitting on the rug in front of a silent, blank television, shaking a toy in his tiny hand. Naomi glances over at him while she packs half a diaper bag full of things from the kitchen cupboards. She doesn't leave them bare, but she takes enough. The past hour has been filled up with removing small piece by small piece of her life from the apartment that has been her home for going on three years. She finds herself putting things back neatly, as untouched and clean as possible. It feels like she expects to walk back in tonight with none of this making any difference, but she has made up her mind.

“You got me out of bed and over here before noon, and I'm still waiting,” Camina says dramatically. She has turned and folded her arms across her chest, leaning her back against the body of her car even with the fuel cap. The back passenger door is open with a car-seat affixed inside. Naomi notices the deep intake of breath no matter how much Camina seems determined to hide that this is anything but easy.

“It's half-past twelve now,” Naomi points out, only when she has descended the last steps from the door and come halfway across the green-space between the side door and the curb. She has Filip held to one side of her body while one strap of a backpack is slung across the other.

“Same difference,” Camina insists as she pushes off her car. She reaches out and wordlessly takes the backpack, hauling it around the car and placing it behind the driver's seat while Naomi positions Filip. He fusses a little as he is placed on his back and strapped in, but there's nothing to do for it. She touches his chest and tickles lightly across it. She stills her hand and tries to focus her eyes on his. She smiles, letting him see her practiced grin before she speaks. He makes a sound of punctuated confusion, abrupt focus, cutting off his complaint.

“We're alright, little man,” she tells him. She rubs his chest again without looking away from him. “We're okay.”

Naomi looks up with a little bit of a start when Camina moves and almost bumps the back of her head on the roof of the car.

“At least sound like you're telling the truth,” Camina advises.

Naomi can't even manage a glare. Her lips fall open, and she looks at this woman – her friend, maybe, be someone she hasn't seen in a long time who is suddenly here at least – and manages something more like incredulity. She gives Filip a guilty, quick, pointed glance for Camina's sake.

“Not like he knows what I'm saying yet,” Camina says flatly.

“He'll learn,” Naomi insists.

“One day at a time,” Camina says, the words rolling off her tongue in a way that makes it hard to tell if she's thought about them. “Ready to go?” she asks, moving quickly from one topic to another. The volume of her voice alone is enough to set Naomi on edge. She catches herself glancing around, wondering if Camina is making herself heard, wondering if it's going to draw any kind of retaliation before they travel a mile.

Naomi's eyes flit to the items that occupy the seat behind the driver's. A backpack, a diaper bag, several blankets and pillows, a few towels, and an extra plastic shopping bag or two of bottles of cosmetics and soap and children's toys make up what is left of the life she is trying to leave behind.

“As I'll ever be,” she says, trying for honesty she thinks Camina will appreciate.

Without offering a reply, Camina steps back. She pushes the back door closed behind her with a little too much resolve for a risky drive across town. Naomi gives Filip another gentle stroke across his chest and withdraws as diplomatically as she can. She checks the straps and slides into the front passenger's seat beside Camina. She leans back as much as the upright seat will let her. She sighs heavily, feeling tension try to leave her body.

“I'm serious,” Camina says as she adjusts her rearview mirror. It strikes Naomi as a more vigilant move than she might have expected. “You are going to be okay,” she says.

“I wish I shared your confidence,” Naomi replies, allowing herself to give in to a little bit of the easy smiling that exhaustion brings.

“I wish you did, too,” Camina says, louder than the grinding start of the vehicle. Naomi feels the soft gravity push them back as Camina breaks the speed limit a little on the way out of the neighborhood. “I'm telling you, you're gonna be fine,” she says, making a turn. She doesn't seem the least bit afraid of him, but she does seem mindful of territory or to have some innate sense of it. She speaks again only when they are in the clear. “Marco's always been an asshole.”

They make it to the other side of town, and the sun streaming in through the car window starts to warm Naomi just beyond the point of comfort. She cracks the window and feels a rush of air touch her face. It almost smells clean. She goes along in silence, and she wonders how much of that is a habit. Camina's apartment building is taller and there is very little grass at the base of it. Naomi glances in the rearview mirror to catch sight of the car-seat. Filip isn't old enough to walk yet, and this has got to be temporary, but she feels a little pinch of sadness in her chest for him. At least back home there had been grass in front of and beside the building, a swing set not far beyond that had seen better days but which hadn't rusted through. There were other things there, though, and she didn't want to take him back. She doesn't want to go back.

She rises earlier in Camina's apartment, she realizes. On the second morning it holds true as she braces herself and stands up from the brand new air mattress. She hears little pops and cracks as her joints settle into place. She kicks the blanket back into something of a natural arrangement and goes over to the black bars of the crib that also smells as if it has just come out of a box. The one back home had been made of wood and had the marks and dings of use already etched into it when she had helped Marco set it up with the bump on her belly just showing. She sees Filip fast asleep but with traces of dried tears and spittle on his face. Her heart pangs at needing to have him in some new and strange place, but it's for the better.

She reaches down into the diaper bag and withdraws a soft cloth which she feels beneath her thumb. She heads for the bathroom sink where she already finds Camina tying up her hair.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, taking more cautious steps forward through the half-open door.

Camina shakes her head and nods to the sink as she sidesteps it a little.

“Whatever you need,” Camina says with the same energetic force that there always seems to be in her voice, even this early in the morning. Naomi tenses and almost shushes her, but she won't. This is her home, and she needs to clean up Filip's face anyway. She's sure he needs changing. There list of things to do is a comfort when she doesn't know what else to do with herself.

She turns on the tap and begins adjusting the water, waiting for it to warm enough and then nudging it in the other direction so it won't be too hot for Filip's delicate skin. She glances up and catches Camina's eyes in the mirror. A smirk creeps across her face.

“I thought you complained about being up before noon,” she remarks.

“Things change,” Camina says.

“That quickly?”

“All the time. Thought you knew that by now.”

Naomi's smirk turns into something closer to a grimace as she runs the cloth beneath the stream of water.

“Fair enough.”

After getting Filip clean, awake, and ready for a day of quiet working out what to do now, Naomi carries him into the living room. Her feet almost miss the presence of stairs as Camina's apartment is flat, compact, and clean. While Camina is busy making coffee, Naomi spreads a blanket on the floor in front of the sofa. She sets a few of Filip's toys down for him and places him near them. He plops down with a soft grunt, seeming to take stock of is surroundings. She is relieved when he reaches out with happy recognition for a soft little ring that he closes his fingers around.

“How did you afford all this stuff?” she asks quietly without looking up.

“What stuff?” Camina asks. At least she isn't offended by the question. It catches her off-guard if anything, it seems.

“The crib. The mattress. That's easily a few hundred dollars in the space of a day,” she says. To some people, that wouldn't be very much. To people like them, it's a lifeline. Or so she'd thought.

“Where there's a need, there's a way, Naomi,” Camina hums. She looks over her shoulder, and Naomi senses it enough to look up to catch her eyes. “If you'd like to audit me, I'm sure that can be arranged.”

Naomi feels her stomach churn even as she smiles.

“Nope, that's just fine,” she says quickly. She looks down on the blanket, still sitting on the edge of it herself. “Thank you,” she adds after a moment of quiet. She leans back against the sofa's lower half, watching Filip entertain himself, a wet blubber of noise coming from his lips. The smile that comes with that is easier to bear than any. She almost feels like it could lull her back to sleep when there is a strong, loud knock on the door. She jolts upright and looks at Camina who stops playing with her spoon in her bowl of cereal.

Camina meets her eyes, puzzled this time.

“Not expecting anyone?” Naomi asks, not bothering to hide how weak and dry her voice has gone.

Camina shakes her head, but she stands and touches her waist and hips, smoothing out her shirt. Naomi wonders what else that might mean. She sees a set in Camina's jaw.

“I'll get it,” Camina says with command. “You stay right there. You and that baby aren't going anywhere,” she says.

Naomi nods without a word. She doesn't trust what she'll say next.

Camina approaches the door with a light step and she checks the peephole quickly.

“Fucking—” she murmurs lowly, close enough to be kissing the door. She grumbles to herself as she backs away, stopping the course of any more creative swearing. “It's a cop,” she says, seemingly to herself but informing Naomi, too.

The news that it is anyone but Marco is something of a relief. She hears Camina take a breath. She watches as she undoes the chain and the deadbolt with a decisive movement. She sees the man standing beyond the door in a sharply crisp, dark, dark blue uniform and just as quickly feels what is an engrained response by now, no matter how much she might wish it weren't. It's a whisper when it escapes her lips, and she otherwise stays very, very still. One hand creeps toward Filip, willing him not to make a sound.

“Shit,” she whispers, and panic and the man's words ring in her ears.

Please feel free to leave feedback here or on AO3.

#the expanse #expansefic #roci posse #naomi nagata #Rocinante crew #jim holden #amos burton #alex kamal #camina drummer #filip inaros #marco inaros #myfic #mine #dad material au #long post

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astarsdarkheart · 7 years

Text

Tagged by @doorsclosingslowly for some questions about fic!

A work that is one of your personal favorites: I’m still pretty proud of Each Scar a Black Hole - the plot isn’t much to write home about, but it let me really hone in on Anakin’s thought process, and I think the imagery is richer for it. Usually that stuff gets buried under the dialogue in my writing.

One that you’re neutral about or don’t like anymore: Watch Your Water and Nightmares Always End both I have kind of meh feelings about. WYW still feels a little disjointed, and NAE was just a desperate attempt to process feelings. But neither of them was really written with high concept in mind, so I guess they’re about what should be expected from what I went into the writing process to do?

Your favorite topic and/or aesthetic to work on: Human duality and contradiction. (Probably a pretty natural place to go for someone who glomped onto Anakin so hard, heh.)

The character or pairing that’s easiest to create for: Anakin’s a favourite, although Padmé’s POV throughout Saving Anakin Skywalker went surprisingly smoothly, considering it was my first extended effort at fanfic.

The character or pairing that you love to create for, regardless of difficulty: That honour belongs to Luke in his Glass Candles incarnation, all the way. Writing Luke, the Skywalker I resemble least, and then making it about aroaceness is an Effort, but it’s still something that feels good to do.

A work that you wish had gotten more attention: Eh... I could stand to see in morsum ardeo and Each Scar a Black Hole get a little more interest, but compared to the rest of my work, the things they’re falling short of in terms of stats are SAS the multi-chapter efforted happy-ending thing and Glass Candles the meaningful serious thing, so I’m not that bothered that ima and ESaBH aren’t as popular as those.

Among your WIPs or musings, what is taking most of your attention recently? It’s split annoyingly evenly between another idea I had relating to the aroace Luke fic drive thing going on over at @acesinspace (which I would love to conclusively say I’ll be able to finish before the extended deadline, but the first half of February does not tend to be good on my brain), Could Have, Would Have, Should Have and Coruscating, the next entry for in morsum ardeo. If the attention would just be split a little less evenly, maybe I’d get somewhere with one or the other of them.

Something that took longer or was harder than expected to work on: Anything extended hits snags before long thanks to my brain’s tendency to just randomly crash and lose steam, heh. SAS wasn’t meant to take anywhere near as long to finish as it did, and in morsum ardeo I was definitely hoping to be further along in by now. And then there’s also the issue with ‘ow this is personal’ that crops up a lot in Glass Candles.

Something that went faster or smoother than expected: Incandescence was the work of a few hours to write, edit and post, despite the weirdness of both concept and Anakin’s increasingly haywire POV.

What you would like to improve on: Consistency and commitment, more than anything. Even when I like an idea I get stuck with motivation issues. (And executive dysfunction problems...)

Something you’re proud of about your style: Quickfire characterisation is something I’ve been working hard on in orig work, and it seems to be translating well to the fanfic - the relationships and tensions between characters, what matters to them and what they focus on, come through a lot clearer with a minimum of exposition than I’d expect myself to be able to write it given my own uselessness at dealing with other humans.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do it because my brain is hard blanking on names.

#holocron data #writing #fic #tag games

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ninthfeather · 7 years

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daigakuimo mentioned you on a post “Hi! For the Detective Conan questions: 1, 3, 11, 15, 18!”

@ninthfeather Thanks for answering! I’m actually curious about to hear more of your thoughts on Bourbon…I do like him, but definitely have mixed feelings here and there about his character. This is the first I’ve heard of another fan with a similar opinion! Since you seem to have written about it in the past, do you mind pointing me to the post? I’d love to check it out!

So, fun story, I thought I’d written more about this in the past than I actually have! The only time I’ve actually come close to spelling this sort of thing out was here, and a lot of it’s in the tags. I also made a few comments about Bourbon’s spying ability on backtodc’s reblog chains, along the lines of this.

First, before I get yelled at by anyone who’s a big fan and has happened across this post, I don’t loathe Bourbon, exactly. I just wish Gosho had done him differently. There are things I like about him--his character design is nice, he’s got a good VA, and his name is a Gundam reference. Also, his hand-to-hand style is very nice to watch. But I’m unsatisfied with a lot of other aspects of his character.

To be a bit clearer than I have been in the past, what really drives me nuts about Bourbon is his inconsistent competency levels. He has his moments of being terrifyingly competent, for example getting the kids out of that refrigerator truck and his investigation and planning during the Scarlet Showdown. But then there’s the times when he just...completely loses the plot, usually related to his grudge against Akai. He made a death threat in front of a bunch of police officers, for heaven’s sakes. If he ever did manage to kill Akai, exactly how did he plan to cover for that? He’s risking his cover every time he does these things. On his introduction, I was really hoping for him to be a uniformly competent spy type, along the lines of Vermouth, Kir or Akai, so this frustrates me a lot. I love spy narratives, I love that aspect of Detective Conan, and I was frankly expecting more from Bourbon in terms of competence than I received.

On a more personal note, to me, the narrative hasn’t yet managed to convince me that he’s justified in the trail of collateral damage and questionable moral decisions he’s leaving behind him. As of the current manga, we have at least some understanding of why Bourbon hates Akai so much. But there is so much wrong with an undercover cop being so invested in his hatred of a certain person that he’s willing to potentially compromise his undercover assignment in order to determine that this person is absolutely dead, and murder him if it turns out he isn’t. I acknowledge that I’m also just not generally that sympathetic to murder as a revenge method. As stated earlier, no small part of my feelings about Bourbon are strong personal preference. I am also never under any circumstances in favor of characters impersonating others’ loved ones to get reactions; it wasn’t cool when Corbeau did it and it wasn’t cool when Bourbon was Scar!Akai.

To me, he’s just...like, not an utterly terrible person, and in many ways a fairly good one, but also ultimately one who finds all promises, relationships and people to be less important than killing Akai, making him effectively untrustworthy. So for me the “friendly guitar-playing/tennis-playing/cafe-waiter” thing is just unsettling, and not even in the fun, creepy way Vermouth is. Vermouth is unreliable because she plays headgames. Bourbon is unreliable because he doesn’t always decide he’s going to be a threat before the moment he becomes one.

#daigakuimo #2 #3 #4 #5 #detective conan #meta #bourbon #tooru amuro #analysis #about half of this is literally unsubstantiated opinion so please no one give it excessive weight #detective conan spoilers

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thefickledreamer · 5 years

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Unsolicited Review of “Rebulto”: Sculpting Mental Health Awareness in Theater

Madrigal, once again, made his point artistically louder and palatably relevant in his latest screenplay “Rebulto”, still bearing his unique writing and directing style with an unconventional yet familiar manner of teaching valuable life lessons similarly present in his earlier works such as “Si Dr. Kwago, Si Kosmeng Kuba at ang Mamaw” and “Ward 13”.

Adamson University’s Tinik ng Teatro, in its 10th season, premiered Rebulto in the Adamson Theater with two shows booked for the whole afternoon of March 18, 2019. The one-hour and half cocktail of all possible modes of expressiveness-slash-monologue-type back-reading of a life-thread centers on the life of Lion, a sculptor on the verge of retirement and is on full-mode preparing for his much-awaited final exhibit. His lifelong interest in sculpture has grown over the years, and at this time, he is on his final showcase which includes his last sculpture named Thea, which he has been working on enthusiastically and lovingly.

The play starts with a serious-toned interpretative choreography only to be cut-off with a funny intro, paving a reassuring note that this isn’t a typical play, rather an unconventional and modern one which deemed as a strategy to make the younger audience tuned in and interested. The long paragraph below would be an attempt to summarize everything I have witnessed before providing the hopeful criticism of it.

The flow of the story, as Lion reminisces his past, showed his childhood with a dysfunctional family – a loving mother who had a past of ballooned depression and a drunkard father who can be tagged as “nakakarimarim” or despicable (you’ll find out why later in this essay).

His interest in the human body and the influence of his mother to Greek studies inspired him to pursue the art of sculpture but in some way had affected him to act femininely which was apparent in how he plays with dolls, and this motivated his father, coming home one night heavily intoxicated and angry, to sexually abuse him at such young age.

Living in an inharmonious home with his mother being subjected to verbal and physical abuse, Lion opted to live normally, still pursuing his interest in sculpture, but self-harmed himself at times when he cannot carry through with his memories of abuse from his father. His mother, upon learning this and what his father did to him, tried to handle what has happened to her family unsuccessfully – mounting to a regressive depression and overdosing while his father ran off to escape such accusation only to be killed off in the streets in what can be assumed a result of his substance abuse (and by substance, and by assuming, it has something to do with the local war on substance, ehem, drugs, or so why would he be running all over the place and get shot down from nowhere, right?).

With all these, Lion still went through victoriously and kept living his life, following suit with his early adulthood years. Lion’s youth, which depicts common phases of friendship and love, has awarded him this time with both aspects happier and wonderful, unlike his childhood struggle, only to end up being betrayed by both friend and lover. Failing to find a similar envisioned future with the love of his life - Ersa and being rejected and left behind for an unclear reason as he proposed for them to get married, Lion gets accidentally hit as he mindlessly crossed the road, providing an explanation to why the reminiscing older Lion had a cane, limping as he told his story to the crowd.

Bearing a train of pains and gaining depression from his younger years, which is by the way can be assumed hereditary due to his mother’s condition, frustrated and hopeless Lion was further put into more anguish upon learning that Ersa’s rejection was caused by her unknown affair with none other than Lion’s childhood best friend Hamil. This anguish awakened the only sturdy and reliable thing in his life – his sculpture Thea – magnificent and dainty in her casted movement and being. Understanding that Lion’s anguish is unbearable already, Thea stood out to give Lion the refuge he needs and reaches out to him warmly, encouraging him to take revenge at the world by giving up and quitting the unfair life he is living.

Hinting the climax of Lion’s battle with himself, another interpretative choreography was rendered by the cast featuring an exhausted and confused Lion being influenced by an antagonizing Thea. The dance seemed to be Lion’s sanity battle, staging an internal fight to keep on breathing or take flight, away from all his despair, and into the loving embrace of Thea which signified Thea’s encouraged choice, a choice to end his life. Stage black.

And for its finale, an unexpected twist of event – or rather, mindset – portrayed Lion’s triumphant final exhibit show with an emcee about to reveal the much-awaited final sculpture created by Lion. Upon the taking off of the cloth covering his final piece, the expected lone-standing beautiful Thea was turned into a couple sculpture showing Thea embracing a self-sculpture of Lion, symbolized by his cane, both with smiling faces. This take off was ended with Lion coming out of the stage to give his ending remarks, in which he provided his imaginary audience with a brief backgrounder on his final piece – the very symbol of his victory against the battle he had with himself – bottling the event with his encouraging words to “speak up, seek help, keep on.”

Lion was able to overcome his depression. His pursuit to finish his final masterpiece passed by hand in hand with his journey through the series of downfalls in his life which all ended up in a happy note – a finished sculpture equal to an end of his own struggles.

Still, it had very specific scenes which were dark and deep and, as cautioned prior its beginning, can be triggering for certain people or would seem inappropriate. But the way the cast had carried such scenes were remarkable enough, balancing its darkness but easiness of being performed on stage. Masked with Greek-influenced theme and mix of current trends, overall, Rebulto tried to give its audience an easy-to-digest sandwich tackling the darker side of mental health.

But it was too easy, as an audience, to watch Lion’s time of struggling to his time of overcoming - - - with him ending the show with words of encouragement to the audience of his exhibit vis-à-vis the actual audience of the Madrigal’s play. Lion’s story might have tried to sell the “this-too-shall-pass” concept – that no matter how dark a person’s past has been better days will still come just as long as he or she chooses to not give up. The story’s resounding ending lesson of retaining a positive outlook in life is good and helpful, and could even be linked to Pygmalion Effect, perhaps, because generally, having better expectations also aid in actually achieving better situations. The fast-paced scenes from Lion and Thea’s thrilling dance-off, a quick lights off, and then a sudden happy twist of Lion still keeping up and breathing can be deemed exciting and supportive of the perceived general message of the play that life will still be good. And of course, going back to the essence of the play to still remain amusing to the crowd because of the slight plot twist, these scenes were necessary. For a normal viewer, this brought out the element of thrill and suspense because we really can’t tell if Lion’s going to let Thea totally win over and give up or if not. Fortunately, he didn’t. But for some who might still be dwelling in their dark days, it would have been more helpful if the play showed clear-cut solutions that could possibly help strike out the stigma on mental health. Offering an actual or visible portrayal of time-based solutions on overcoming depression, a possibly step-by-step guide or available solutions some of us could take, such as engaging with a mental health professional, bravely joining support groups, observing proper food intake and sleep, doing mindfulness activities or even doing recreational and even creative activities – like how Lion immersed himself with creating sculpture – a clearer picture showing that these things are doable, would have been beneficial for viewers, especially those with still limited knowledge on mental health or general psychology, to clearly understand how one can really win over mental health problems.

The play also touched issues on child-rearing and showed how critical it is to parent a child; after all, a damaged childhood is usually the root why people are experiencing mental health problems. Partly, it was a saddening realization that both Lion’s parents had horrible effects in the course of his lifetime and their part in the play had unpleasant endings. Rebulto, also, subtly communicated how the younger generation treats relationships – with the heightened trend of fearing commitment, tendencies of false love that also leads to infidelity, and how friendships are overtaken by self-serving decisions – and God, how we hope these aren’t true but all these are happening in our current society, and specifically, among the youth. And what’s greatly compromised is everyone’s mental health. Here we see how parenting should be taken seriously and that we should actually start working together for preventive measures. (*again, I shout with my typing, “moral recovery!”)

Largely, Rebulto was worthy to watch and I hope it could be shown again with larger crowds that can witness it, just as how much I would want to re-watch the rest of Madrigal’s earlier works. For someone who’s not directly practicing psychology-related tasks, the play, other than being a delight, also served as a breather and refresher on suppressed issues about mental health. With how the world is rushing all of us now, it’s always a good option to take a step back and relearn things – even the most basic ones we can consider – such as talking out with friends, doing things we like regardless if it seems uninteresting to others, being kind, being optimistic – and to remember that there’s always help available if we also make ourselves available to help ourselves and others.

And just as Lion’s positivity drew out overflowing-ly in the end of the play, may we also find ourselves the same, hopeful for what’s better ahead and fearless in speaking out, seeking help and keeping on.

Still, I would like to express my awe and appreciation to the cast, director, writer and the technical people behind this play. Mind you, these people are college ones yet they have performed exceedingly and surely has made the play’s impact felt by the audience. Long live AdU’s Tinik ng Teatro!

(Note: All photos taken by the reviewer.)

^ took me almost 3 months to finish this review piece (even had it lost along the hundred GB files I lost in space from 2 weeks ago, good thing I had it in a separate flash drive, huhuhu), at least I finished it as promised. ^_^

#rebulto #tinikngteatro #filipinotheater #adamsonuniversity #rolandmadrigal #pygmalion #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #theater #tnt

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wanderingjotun · 7 years

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Pop Culture Paganism, Semantics, and My Practice

I resisted the name of “Pop Culture Pagan” for a while, not because I wasn’t interested in working with pop culture spirits, but because there was this feeling that being a PCP required worshipping these spirits as divine entities, as gods (or, alternatively, only working with the particular gods of a pop culture system, like Hylia from Hyrule). And that never really sat well with me. Not because I don’t believe they can be gods, if they wish or that’s how your practice shakes out, but because that wasn’t what I was looking for when expanding my spiritual practice. I already have gods meddling enough, thank you very much. And, to be quite honest, I’ve never really been one for ‘traditional’ worship to begin with.

I don’t really know where this idea that pop culture entities were to be treated like gods or “you’re doing it wrong” (ugh) came from, but I let it keep me from really exploring pop culture paganism until recently. I was determined to stick purely to the Norse pantheon—the gods I gushed and cried to and had to swat off when I needed private time. But I liked the idea of pop culture paganism a lot. I kept a TARDIS papercraft on my altar, partially because I saw Loki in the Doctor and partially because, deep down (though I wouldn’t admit it at the time), I wanted to work with the Doctor in my spiritual practice. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t wind up opening that door at the time. I wasn’t ready. And one cosmic Trickster was enough.

In an attempt to learn more, I would trawl through the Tumblr Pop Culture Paganism tag, hoarding ideas, unconsciously refueling my “I can’t do this” bias, and marveling at the people who could. I tried to pick a fandom I thought I could start with if I ever decided to try, but every time my fear of permanency—of fucking up and being stuck with that poor choice forever—kept me from actually giving it a shot. Add in a healthy sprinkling of self-doubt and self-consciousness about how other people might see me, and the very idea started tying me up in knots. Once that happened, I would ditch it completely for a while and remind myself that I was a Good Heathen™ (let’s just ignore the whole “working with Loki” thing and the fact that “Good Heathen™” is super problematic in other ways for now) and couldn’t possibly work with pop culture gods, because I was devoted to the Norse deities. Eventually, the curiosity and the urge would hit me again.

So, I was caught in this weird on-again, off-again consideration of an idea I found both appealing and off-putting. As a sort of middle ground, I made my Fandom Oracle deck—a stepping stone toward working with pop culture spirits by using their likenesses (and, potentially, energies) in a divination tool. Almost a year after putting it together, it’s my favorite deck of all time. But I was still exceedingly uncomfortable with the idea of further incorporating pop culture entities into my personal practice. There was still that hang up of “worship.” I sucked at worshiping the gods I already worked with, how could I justify potentially reaching out to more of my own accord? And that wasn’t even counting the fact that I almost never initiated a relationship with a spiritual being on my own. Normally, they’re the ones that reached out first. I had no idea where to even begin.

By the time I started watching my roommate play through Final Fantasy XV, I had finally resigned myself to doing pop culture magic and divination, but never really being a person who could be in contact with pop culture entities. There were no PC gods that called to me, and my other internal issues were their own block. I never expected to feel so attached to three (well, four, but Noctis is a special case at the moment) characters in a game I wasn’t even playing yet. Especially since I’d never actually made it through a full game in the franchise before, mostly because I’m just not a huge gamer and got distracted by other things.

But I couldn’t get enough. I looked up fanart. I read the game spoilers. I started my own play through. It became my de-stressing tool at the end of the day and, even on days when I felt like I had no energy for anything, I could manage to play an hour or two and spend time with the Chocobros. The banter and the easy relationship between the boys was a safe, comforting space for me. And that’s not even including the beautiful scenery, the catharsis of beating up imaginary creatures, or the amusement of the game glitches.

The game became my escape, in more ways than one, and I started realizing I felt like I knew Ignis, Prompto, Gladiolus, and Noctis better than I knew some of the people in my life. I felt like I could trust them for some reason, even though I knew they’d been programmed to act a specific way. I connected to them in a way I hadn’t connected to characters in a long time, and I’m still not even sure why. But it happened.

One night, on a pure whim, I jokingly asked my pendulum if I should consider reaching out to Ignis spiritually, since I was so similar to him. To my utter surprise (and anxious horror), it gave me an incredibly firm “Yes.”

I’ll admit: I panicked. I must have done the reading wrong. It was just supposed to be a joke; I couldn’t possibly actually reach out to Ignis! So, being paranoid and a devotee of discernment, I did about a hundred other readings (including asking for some third-party blind confirmations) and everything came back positive, no matter the iteration or subtle word changes I used. Yes, yes, yes, talk to him already!

When the message finally sank in, I reluctantly reached out. And, as things tend to do in my spiritual life, it quickly snowballed. In the span of two days, I had had brief interactions with Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio, because package deals are apparently my thing. The moment I opened up to their energy, to the idea that they were real PC spirits and I’d somehow gotten their attention, I could feel them clearer than I’d felt spiritual entities in ages. I was pretty sure I was losing my mind, but I pushed forward nonetheless.

So, now I’m working with pop culture spirits and there’s no turning back. Does that make me a Pop Culture Pagan? Yes and no. I am a Pagan/Heathen, and I work with pop culture spirits alongside the Norse pantheon. I don’t believe the Chocobros are gods, nor do they seem to want to be (jokes about Prompto being the god of photography aside). I’m not worshiping them in any traditional sense, but I’ve made a list of gifts and activities I think they’d enjoy, same as I’d do with friends on the physical plane, and I’d love to get figures or art of them for my altar. They’ve already helped me through panic attacks, intrusive thoughts, and awful meetings at work. They still make me smile every time I feel them around, or boot up their game (even when I’m crying about the uber-angsty plot), but I don’t pray to them or have the same ‘godly’ feeling I have when Loki or Odin or Frigga pop in.

If I had to create my own label for my current situation, I’d probably use something along the lines of “Pop Culture Spirit Companion.” Which is entertaining in its own right, since “spirit companion” is another descriptor I’d never really thought to apply to myself before. But it fits here. First and foremost, I’m friends with the PC spirits currently in my life. They want to help me, and I want to help them, but mostly we just goof off and sass each other. And that’s perfect for us right now. It’s friendship, companionship, with spirits that originated from a video game (well, I mean, multiverse theory suggests they have their own plane and whatnot, but most people will look at it as “these are video game characters, Nonir”) instead of more “traditional” spirits like ghosts or fae.

“Pop Culture Spirit Companion” isn’t really a term I’ve seen used before, either. From what I’ve seen of other people sharing their experiences (admittedly, this is pretty much confined to Tumblr and the godsawful tag search system), the closest is a discussion of soulbonding with PC entities, but that doesn’t feel quite right when discussing my relationship with Iggy, Gladio, and Prompto. It is, of course, a matter of semantic preference more than anything, since these sorts of terms mean different things to different people, but I like to think there are more people out there who have a sort of spirit companionship-type relationship with PC entities, even if I’m the only one actively working with the cast of FFXV.

For some reason “Pop Culture Pagan” still carries a connotation for me of venerating PC spirits and entities the way one honors other gods (because my paganism is inherently polytheistic, this is where my mindset goes; I know, logically, there are a lot of different pagan paths that don’t include deities at all), and that just simply doesn’t describe my current path. But if I have any hope of connecting with other people who work with PC entities in any form outside specific spellwork, it’s a label I have to uncomfortably shoulder for now.

There’s still resistance, and there may always be. But for now, I am a Heathen and a Pop Culture Pagan/Spirit Companion. And I’m learning to be okay with that, for both their sake and mine.

#pop culture paganism #Nonir's spiritual flailings #Long post #Astral Chocobro Adventures

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