#I really need to find a better white solution for goofy things like stars

[outeremissary]

Just the art from this prompt post.

[alotsgonnachange]

Fan apprentice Bios

for the alotsgonnachange/the arcana cinematic universe that eye personally believe to be better than the original game...

Name: Isabella Ciccino

Meaning: Promise of God

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Height: 5′10

Birthday: October 28th

Star sign: Scorpio

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Patron Arcana: Justice

Sexuality: Lesbian

Favorite Food: Lemon chicken orzo

Drink: White wine (Vinho Verde)

Magical abilities: Plant care/recognition (green witch), Foraging

Ethnicity: A small rocky/mediterranean esque island off the coast of Venterre that would strongly resemble sicily and malta.

Family: Mother, Angela Ciccino (deceased). Younger sister, Annamaria Ciccino (deceased)

Backstory: WIP

Occupation: Seamstress/tailor

Hobbies: Ballet, reading, drinking wine, dancing, tending to plants

Familiar: None (for now i guess??)

Love Interest: Nadia

Description: Isabella is a mysterious and alluring magician. To most people she is kind and charming, but private. She is incredibly helpful and caring to those she is friends with and cares about and will drop what she’s doing to assist. Likes to do quiet introspective work like reading, sewing, knitting and caring for plants. She’s a bit of a homebody in that sense. She comes across as level-headed and assertive in formal settings and does not allow others to talk down to her. With friends, she is a bit more sassy and teasing. She hates answering personal questions and has strict boundaries, which can lead to her being standoffish and stubborn at times.

As a Love Interest: Very loyal and committed, generally very gentle towards whoever she is seeing. You are going to have to get her to open the fuck up though she’s not good at being vulnerable AT ALL. The type of gf who may or may not qualify as a therapist/mother which…yikes. needs to work through her fear of intimacy before she can have a healthy relationship awwww 5/10

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Name: Danielle Dupont

Meaning: God is my judge

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Height: 5′6

Birthday: September 7th

Star sign: Virgo

MBTI: ENFP-A

Patron Arcana: The Sun

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite food: Pain au Chocolat (Chocolatine for my canadians…)

Favorite drink: Espresso or a good wheaty ale

Magical Abilities: Sexual magic, chemistry/potionmaking, candle magic, topical balms/solutions

Ethnicity: Whatever the Arcana equivalent is of like. Western Europe germanic? A country including but not limited to Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland. Who cares really she is white and an Orphan

Family: Orphan!

Backstory: WIP

Occupation: Shop owner who sells potions, balms, candles and various other uhhh items usually of the purpose of sex (literally think a modern day sex shop with dildos and shit but also candles and skincare too)

Hobbies: Socializing, singing, making/testing potions, foraging, baking

Familiar: None, is in fact frightened of several animals due to trauma :(

Love interest: Lucio (Her taste is questionable and that’s okay!), also portia

Description: Danielle is a cunning and animated witch. She’s outgoing, bright and carries herself with confidence. In the past this has made her friends and enemies alike. She’s charming but can be a bit of a trickster. Her demeanor is generally calm and she does not often experience strong anger. She’s very smart and dedicated to her craft, and she is a perfectionist. As a worker, she gives excellent customer service and is a good saleswoman. To her friends, she’s teasing and wild, but loving and encouraging. On her worst days, she has the potential to be a bit more inconsiderate and is not the best at handling huge displays of emotions from others.

As a Love Interest: Girlllll…. first of all she needs to stop being emotionally stunted! My good sis cannot handle open displays of emotion at all and tends to shut down! The physical aspects are all there and excellent and she is going to be sweet, caring and loving but she needs to take things more seriously and be able to talk about feelings!!! 3/10

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Name: Jia Song

Meaning: In korean it’s “clear” or “good”

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/her

Height: 5’5”

Birthday: August 5th

Star sign: Leo

MBTI: ENFJ-A

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite Food: Pulled pork or a good seasoned steak

Drink: limeade

Magical Abilities: Potions/herbs and healing

Ethnicity: Her father is from the same country as Ki (in a modern AU, this would be like. Korea.) and her mother is from somewhere uhhhh near nopal or something. Warm tropical nice (in a modern au this would be Brazil), but she grew up in her mother's country.

Family: I don't currently have names but basically, her father, mother, aunt (deceased) and two younger brothers.

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Healer, researcher, linguist

Hobbies: Dancing, reading, adventuring

Familiar: None

Love Interest: Julian

Description: Jia is a bright and curious magician. She’s a bit nerdy and loves reading/learning new disciplines. She is an energetic and altruistic person who is liked by many. She comes off as kind and forthcoming. She is very helpful and if she can’t help directly she will find someone who can with her connections. To her friends, she is loyal and sweet and affectionate, but also has the potential to be grumpy and even a bit negative. She’s very determined in hard situations and won’t back down until things are made right. Despite this, she can potentially overthink and overestimate situations and is incredibly stubborn when she wants to be.

As a romantic partner: loving, but definitely also able to keep independence. Not necessarily a stage 5 clinger but somewhere in the middle. She will love just spending lots of time with a partner and just picking their brain and learning everything she can from them. The type to brag about them to her friends. A wonderful listener but give her a chance to speak too she likes talking a lot as well! 10/10 would recommend

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Name: Ki (Kiyoung) Kim

Meaning: Debatable but Ki alone means arisen and i’m getting “Vigor and eternal” But i think names differ based on the characters u use i am not korean so take this with a grain of salt

Gender: Nonbinary i think...

Pronouns: He/him or they/them doesn't have a preference

Height: 5′8″ Short king

Birthday: February 27th

Star sign: Pisces

MBTI: INFP-T

Sexuality: Gay

Favorite food: Budae Jjigae or Yongeun jorim

Favorite drink: any alcoholic beverage where you can’t taste the alcohol and strawberry milk

Magical Ability: Divination and mediumship (idk what the proper term is) so he can communicate with spirits/the dead

Ethnicity: Think of a small nation veeeery far away from Vesuvia that's cold for a lot of the year (for reference, think Korea).

Family: a twin sister named Jiyoung, 3 older sisters (Jiwoo, Jeongyeon, Joonhwa), mother and father and paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother who are living.

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Musician - mostly guitar and piano. Enjoys instrument care, arranging and performing in large ensembles, not a soloist by any means. He’s a great singer but he’s shy and singing gives him anxiety

Hobbies: Playing guitar, composing/arranging, reading, writing, shopping

Familiar: a tiny white dragon named Egg. Idc if dragons exist in this world but i feel like they HAVE to..

Love Interest: Asra

Description: Ki is a perceptive and witty magician. To most he comes off as a bit anxious and shy, which he is. Once you get past that, he’s eager, forthcoming and empathetic. He is very kind and likes to believe people have good intentions. He is very helpful and always tries to make sure others are comfortable and happy. He enjoys music and learning musical instruments. He prefers to work more in the background so as to not draw attention to himself. With his friends, he’s actually very talkative, silly and goofy. He’s prone to anxiety and may tense up or feel attacked when put into frightening situations. Unfortunately he has self destructive tendencies and low self esteem and has a hard time due to that.

As a Love Interest: perfect little s/o shut the FUCK UP…. that is if u can deal with low self esteem and anxiety! He really really tries though! He’s also shy with physical affection but will warm up to it eventually with familiarity and trust. Very doting and randomly shows up with delicious food and takes care of u when ur sick. 8/10

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Name: Mathilde “Tilly” LaRue

Meaning: Mighty In Battle? Lol

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/her

Height: 5’11

Birthday: January 16

Star Sign: Capricorn

MBTI: INTP-A

Sexuality: Bi

Favorite Food: Lentil soup

Drink: Black coffee

Magical Abilities: Divination, telekinesis, herbs, defensive magic

Ethnicity: From a large urban area with a large population somewhere in an area a bit cooler and rainier than Vesuvia. (think like. England)(in a modern AU think Afro-caribbean)

Family: Mother and Mother and an older sister named Topaz

Backstory: will be linked coming soon

Occupation: Court Magician (but like simply a well rounded witch who goes wherever the money is)

Hobbies: Exploring, foraging, reading

Familiar: A white ferret named Elle

Love Interest: Muriel

Description: Mathilde is a gentle and thoughtful magician. She is soft-spoken and hates raising her voice, and is often making bizarre and thought provoking side comments in most situations. She is curious and intuitive when it comes to magic and often able to use several methods to predict the future for others. She carries herself in a dreamlike/contemplative manner and does not really care what others think - She’s off in her own world. With friends, she has a good source of humor and gives good advice and is a very good listener. She has an affinity for animals and nature, and would generally prefer to be outside. She can tend to be unrealistic and naive and loses hold on her emotions in tough situations (angry crier…) and feels misunderstood by those around her.

As a love interest: Downright adorable. Sweet, will bring you cool items she found and very endearing. She’s also encouraging and surprisingly cheesy. Not outwardly clingy but if you let her she will. but good fucking luck starting to date her! She is extremely pretty and gets asked out almost every day, turning down 99.999999% of applicants because other people do not particularly interest her and her taste is insanely picky! 10/10 but FAT CHANCE

[coffee-fueled-weeb-witch]

Write Your Witchcraft (#37)

All of the questions

1-4 answered  |  5-8 answered  |  9-12 answered  |  13-16 answered  |  17-20 answered  |  21-24 answered  |  25-28 answered  |  29-32 answered  |  33-36 answered 

37. Who do I honor (ex: deities, ancestors, myself, etc), and how do I, or would I like to, honor them?

At the moment I work with Athena, Hermes, Hades, Persephone, Apollo, Artemis, and recently also started working a bit with Ares and Hephaestus.  I’ve also had a little bit of experience, though not much, with Hestia and Dionysus thanks to one of my best and closest friends working with them.  Now, since there’s quite a few of them, I’ll start with what I do for all of them and then I’ll go into more specific things for each one.

In general I have a playlist for each of the gods I work with and then there’s two others- a playlist for Hades and Persephone together and one for Hermes, Apollo, and Dionysus together (If you guys are interested I could make a post with links to said playlists).  I’m also in a small coven on discord, consisting of me and my friends, and there I have a channel for each of them that I use as virtual alters.  Another thing I do is sit and work out a sigil for each individual god that I can use if I feel I am struggling to connect to them or to help dedicate something to them.  Now I’ll get into the individual things- which I tend to work most with Athena, Hermes, Hades, and Persephone, so I’ll probably be listing a bit more for them than the others right now.

Athena

I am always studying and trying to learn about a variety of new things and often dedicate my research and reading time to her.

When in stressful situations with conflicts brewing I try to remain calm and keep a level head, sometimes asking for her help with this as I try to think things through rationally and work on a solution.

Whenever my friends need help understanding something or finding information I do my best to teach and guide them, sharing whatever wisdom and knowledge of my own that I can and helping them find more because Athena encourages me to do so and like her I too enjoy sharing my knowledge.

I have a nice little amethyst gemstone that I dedicated to her and I always have it close by.

I do my best to protect others and have become fairly skilled in protection magick, and when I feel a situation calls for it I will ask for Athena’s protection or for her to help me be able to protect those I care for or am trying to help.

I have a small, white owl statue on my nightstand that used to belong to my grandmother.  Because of Athena’s connection to owls, I put it there for her- though it’s so old and fragile it’s literally slowly crumbling into a powdery dust, so I’ll need to replace it sometime sadly.

I also like to dedicate my crafting and jewelry making time to Athena.

Hermes

Since he is connected to Wednesdays and has a lot to do with languages, every Wednesday I spend at least an hour working on my Japanese and I often ask him to help me understand things I struggle with or remember certain things.  After I will usually watch anime that involves something he is associated with in some way or I think he may like himself.

I usually offer him some of morning coffee and thank him for helping me out with various things and even just being there.

When I’m getting over stressed and know I need to lighten up I take a step back and try to have more fun and remind myself that I don’t need to be serious all the time, that like Hermes I can just have fun.

On really low energy days for me I tend to binge watch vine and meme compilations on youtube and dedicate that to him.

Hermes encourages me to not be so embarrassed and afraid of being laughed at,  so I’ve been letting myself become more... well, myself.  If someone wants to call me cringey for being weird or chaotic, then they can.  I’m having fun and being myself and my boi Hermes is right there cheering me on, so fuck anyone who doesn’t like it!!  In other words, he helps me a lot with being less afraid to be myself and being comfortable acting like a deranged little crackhead goblin and just enjoying myself- so for him I like to just love myself and let go of worrying about what others think of me.

Hades

I love spending time researching death practices and beliefs over the years and in different cultures, so I dedicate that time to Hades.  I also put a lot of time into learning as much as I can about spirit work and death witchcraft which I’ve been getting more interested in since working with him.

When I find someone or see a friend who is struggling and seriously considering death to be their solution I try my best to help them.  I’ve personally lost someone to suicide and it’s something I don’t want anyone else to experience.  I’ve also had a few interaction with the spirit of the one who passed and spent a lot of time helping him work through the emotions he had and get to a point where he was more at peace and not hating himself for what he had done.  Since then I’ve also come to learn and understand that it genuinely saddens Hades and Persephone both to see how many young people end up cutting their own lives so short, so for me doing what I can to help those people is so important for so many reasons.

As I said I lost someone I loved dearly, so at times when that starts to weight on me or when my own depression’s getting to be a little hard to deal with I often turn to Hades for comfort and help in getting through it.  He is very much like a father figure to me, which I no longer have anything to do with my real dad, so it helps a lot to be able to turn to him for help and guidance when I’m struggling.

I like to leave him little offerings when I can and so far have found that he really enjoys the dark chocolate I give him.

I always make sure to thank him for helping me and also for watching over the souls of those who passed.  It makes him really happy and he appreciates it so much.

Persephone

A lot of the things I do for Hades I also do for Persephone, so I won’t repeat all of them again.

For years I’ve struggled with dealing with toxic people who had me convinced I could only be one thing, that I was the reserved and quiet friend, I was always mature, I didn’t goof off as much, I loved darker things and horror and thus could only love those things and behave in a certain way, but Persephone has been helping me understand that this is not true and I can express my softer, more goofy and childish nature.  I can be dark and spooky, but I can also be soft and sweet.  She is both a Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld- if she can be these two opposite things, then so can I.  So similar to Hermes, I like to practice self-love and acceptance for Persephone.

I also like to give her small offerings when I can, which she seemed to really enjoy the marshmallow peep I gave her!  

This is one I also do for both Hades and Persephone, and because I know how difficult it can be- when I know someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one, I try my best to offer them comfort and just be there for them.

Apollo

I like to dedicate the time I spend drawing to him and when I’m experiencing a lot of artists block I’ll ask him to please help me overcome it or help me find some form of inspiration.

When I start to feel a bit sick I’ll often ask him for a little extra help in feeling better, alongside Artemis.

When my insomnia’s so bad that I’ve ended up staying awake all night I like to take a moment to just sit and listen to music while watching the sunrise.  Likewise, in the evenings when the sun is sinking and the light comes in the window I love to just close my eyes and relax as I let it wash over me and thank Apollo for the brightness and warmth, and for being there.

I often scream-sing along with songs that remind me of him.

I also remember reading that Apollo watches over the decomposing bodies of those who died and graveyards, so I like to thank him for that.

Artemis

I’ve always been a night owl and have always had a love for the moon and stars, so when I can I like to just sit and listen to music and the sounds of the night while looking at the dark sky as I think over the day and will sometimes just talk to Artemis and tell her how things are going and stuff like that.

Like I said before I sometimes ask her and Apollo for help if I’m starting to feel sick.

I actually found a really nice set on imvu for Artemis, so my friend helped me get the outfit for her.

Ares

I haven’t been working with Ares for very long yet, so so far there isn’t nearly as much for me to share.  So far, aside from making a playlist, sigil, and virtual altar for him, I’ve been trying to stand up for myself more and he has definitely been helping me to do this.  I may write a post actually talking about my most recent and strongest experience working with him.

I’ve also always tried my best to stand up for others (honestly better at it than I am standing up for myself), so now I also consider this another thing I can do for Ares and that I feel he greatly approves of.  

Hephaestus

Like Ares I haven’t been working with Hephaestus for very long, so I again don’t have much a whole lot to list yet.  Still, one thing I’ve been sort of dedicating to him is the time I’m spending learning how to wire wrap gemstones.  It’s not exactly the same as being a blacksmith, but still sort of involves working with metal and crafting and he’s enjoyed me sharing my progress with him and how hard I’m working to learn this new skill despite my disability making it a bit difficult for me.

I’ve also been trying to love myself more for Hephaestus when it comes to my disability.  I’ve grown up constantly being made to feel like an inconvenience, a burden, and a waste of time, but help from my friends, my boyfriend, and recently Hephaestus, I’ve gradually been working to overcome the negative thoughts and beliefs that were carved into me.

Well, that’s all I can think of typing for this one- I’ve normally been doing this write your witchcraft thing four questions at a time, but since it took me so long to fully answer this one question I decided to just do this one.  

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Will of Light - A Light Sora/SoKai Story

The last thing I wrote for Sora’s birthday.

Summary: Sora finds a way to get a heart of pure light--and to even give others hearts of pure light--in order to try and prevent Heartless... which sounds wonderful, which will lead him down a slippery slope that he might not be able to come back from. SoKai. Destiny Trio, etc.

Will of Light

Kairi’s PoV "Sora, you had your light take in more light for me… how? Why?" Kairi asked the obvious, as she stood on the small islet where the paopu tree was. And she took in not only Sora’s pristine white outfit, but the fact that rays from the sun itself seemed to come from him now. "Weren't you light enough already?" It was insane to Kairi that he would think any differently, when he had the purest heart she’d ever seen and had done more than anyone else in the world had. "...No. And I felt I was maybe tainting you by even being near you, so I- I had to do something… Well, that’s part of it, anyway. I’ll tell you more later." "But…” Kairi started, as she took her shoes off so she could feel the sand beneath her feet. She needed to feel something real, because this didn’t feel like it was that at all. “Sora... aren't you worried that you'll have lost some of your personality and be 'boring' this way? “...Not that I ever want to doubt the light, of course... But when Riku and I had that spat after we lost you—and at first, I wanted to stay on the paopu tree and just wait for you... in thinking that you'd had to die at all, since I’d thought I could fight when I clearly couldn't—he oddly told me that if I did that, I’d be boring… “And that snapped me out of my funk more than anything else could have. Maybe because I was worried that I’d lose you then—when you eventually did come back—if I was like that… and aren’t you worried about the same kind of thing?” If she’d had to say anything to Sora to try and convince him this was, perhaps, a bad idea… she had no idea why she’d chosen to babble about him becoming boring in being pure light. Sora could never be anything but interesting, and Kairi knew that well. Everyone did, really. And how did she even know this was turn out badly? …When they’d been looking for Sora a few years back, Naminé had showed Kairi all of Sora’s memories. And she’d seen when Goofy had suggested that everyone’s hearts were full of light, the Heartless would probably go away and Sora had excitedly nodded his head. Was this the answer to the Heartless problem? Would it create a better world? What did she know, really, in order to doubt that? …And yet Kairi couldn't help feeling that this was much more wrong than the times Sora had been consumed by the darkness. Because even she—a being of pure light naturally—had access to negative emotions, but this Sora didn’t seem to have that choice anymore. "No... not really,” Sora answered the question she’d just asked, that she’d already almost forgotten. “And even if it is true… why worry about boredom when you can worry about the world instead?! Isn't that the reason you stayed behind for Riku’s—and my—Mark of Mastery, Kairi? Because you couldn't fight yet, and didn't want Riku or I getting hurt protecting you if something sprung up? You were thinking about the universe then." That was true. And it actually amazed Kairi that Sora had now seen that about her. In learning that he had fallen in love with her after she had him, she’d begun to think that maybe he hadn’t noticed as much about her as she had him… and that that was what had taken him a while to fall in comparison. So, if this Sora was so all-seeing and empathetic, could it really be a bad thing? “Sora!” Kairi exclaimed, touched, as she sprung forward to quickly peck him on the lips and had to giggle when he spun her around as he held her afterwards. “Kairi…” Sora whispered against Kairi’s forehead—that he’d just kissed—after they finally stopped. “I- I know I wasn’t always the best boyfriend to you in the past, and I apologize for that. I took you for granted and didn’t spend enough time with you. I see that now… And I feel perfect. Maybe like I was always meant to be, if Xehanort hadn’t interfered. And I think I should pass this feeling onto other people, don’t you?” With all of their moving around, the two of them lost their balance at this point and fell into the water that was far below them. And though it was quite a fall, Kairi barely noticed since Sora had used his newfound light magic to shield her from the impact. And as it stood, something more important had Kairi’s attention now, anyway. 'But what about Riku?' Kairi wanted to ask… but she didn't. Afraid of what Sora might say, and what the right answer should be. Riku had found the perfect way to walk the Road to Light and Darkness together: the Road to Dawn, so was Sora saying he should give up the darkness… or would he be the one exception to this new idea? And what if other people didn't want to give up their darkness? Seeming to sense she was troubled, Sora helped Kairi to her feet and kissed her ear as he put a strand of hair behind her ear. “Kairi… let’s get married. What do you say to that? You’re too polite to say so, but I know you think I’ve somewhat messed up with you in the past. So let me make up for it now!” “Sora!” Kairi exclaimed, truly in shock as she swatted his arm. “We’re only seventeen! And we don’t come of age on the Island until eighteen!” But even as Kairi was technically refusing Sora here—because they were still so young, and since she had the bad feeling that Sora was trying to manipulate her here (that she tried to stamp down)—she did think they could probably be engaged for a year and get married as soon as they turned eighteen. Maybe that was the best solution here, because—if she was being honest with herself—Kairi had dreamed of their wedding. And as Sora almost looked disappointed for a second (before it was gone so fast, she had to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing), Kairi decided to spare his heart some as beings of pure light did… So maybe she and this new Sora weren’t do different, after all. “Alright, Sora. We’ll be engaged for a year and then get married as soon as we can! Lighten up!” Kairi said as she kissed Sora’s cheek, and little fish chose that moment to swim over her ankles. “To a year of engagement, then!” And Sora was spinning Kairi around in the air again—and oh, how it made her giggle—but she also couldn’t get over the awful sense that Sora was lying about much. ... The next few months on the Islands—as Sora and Kairi tried to convince their parents to let them marry, and Sora talked to everyone about lightening their hearts—passed by pretty normally. …Except that Sora was more respectful to his parents than Kairi he ever seen him be before—so much so, that he hadn’t see Riku or her for a while, when Sora’s parents had banned him from “seeing those he had traveled to other worlds for” for two days—and he was doing a lot more chores now… but Kairi supposed it was nice that he was closer to them than he ever had been before. Sora was also now cooking his amazing dishes for his parents, and her and Riku all the time now! And not even once complaining that they were using him, or exhausting him, or anything. The day he had actually succeeded in making her love mushrooms, was the day Kairi thought she'd died and gone to heaven. And Sora couldn’t have been happier that they were all happy, and was writing many nice journal entries about what he’d learned and “the wonders of understanding people’s feelings” But even so… Kairi—and Riku, too, she thought—still had their suspicions. And Riku was somewhat sniping at Sora even now, as the three of them sat atop the shack on the Play Island together. "So... how's your mission going, Sora?" Riku asked as if he were suspicious. "I still don't know how you found more of your own light to give yourself, and a way to give your light to others…" “I- I went to the Final World, of course Riku. It’s partly dream there. At least, the pathway that links to the Final World there. Dreams… and my heart. So if, in my dream, I want to imagine there’s more of my light there, I can. And through Chirithy’s help, I found a way to make it physical… to literally give more light to myself this way, and others.” Well, this was all news to Kairi. She hadn't known that Sora had been going to the Final World at all, and if she had she would have stopped it immediately! She turned towards him with a glare on her face now, and nearly slapped her betrothed. How dare he be risking his life like this, when they’d all just gotten him back?! "Sora, you can't do that kinda risky thing!” Kairi said with her hands shaking, as she started seeing stars and thought she was going to black out. “I don’t like this. At all! And I thought Chirithy was with Ven! Why did he go back? Or is it a new Chirithy, and-“ "Kairi KairI Kairi!" Sora tried to calm her, as he gently held her in his arms now and looked at her with the most loving expression he’d ever worn before "...I swear to you that it's going to be okay this time. Since the new Chirithy at my Station of Awakening knows that I fall asleep and end up there by accident a lot, he's given me an ability called 'quick sleep', where I'll wake up in three seconds after having fallen asleep… but I’ll have been there longer in the real world, of course. But three seconds in that world—in real world time—won’t hurt anyone." ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep’, Kairi wanted to say… but she didn’t. Riku was absentmindedly nodding his head now, so maybe she was being the crazy one and all would be okay. But then again… Riku was just as selfless as Sora was, and would easily die for the sake of the world or someone else. Kairi didn’t know if she trusted either of them to be good judges about this, but for now… she’d bite her tongue. "Kairi... I swear I'm fine," Sora promised. And despite everything that had changed with him now, Kairi believed Sora's sincerity here. But she also realized… that he had no idea that she still had his qualms about what he was suggesting to people—for whatever reason—though at least he’d left Riku alone… And she must have still seemed shattered, because Sora took it up a notch even further. "Kairi... I'm asking you to trust me now,” he said now, as he kissed Kairi’s neck and Riku laughed (huh. This was a new way of trying to comfort her). “Please please please please do so, love." And with that kind of earnestness—and this sweet new endearment for her--how could she do anything but? Kairi leaned her head on Sora's shoulder then, and happily breathed in his scent as he moved her to sit in his lap. She wouldn’t lose Sora again. She just wouldn’t! "I have to wonder, though," Riku broke the silence, as he jumped down to try and spear a fish, "What made you first get the idea to try all this out, Sora?" And at this, Sora sat up straight a little and scratched his chin in thought, as if he hadn't really stopped to try and articulate it before. That surprised Kairi; she had imagined he at least told the King. "...I guess because of this pretty peaceful world I went to, with more elderly people there than anyone else? At least that I saw, I mean. I followed this old man… with pristine white hair but still some pep in his step, and watched him be in this play about murder... "But despite the fact that a neighborhood full of elderly people was putting on a play about murder… I swear I could sense so much light in their hearts! “Like, the man I was tailing was, to be honest, not the best actor in the world? But do you think anyone would dare hurting his feelings to tell him that? Nope! And it was actually pretty sweet. They instead tried to change the play to fit him, as best they could. "But anyway…. I guess there's proof that, no matter what—unless we change things—the brightest light will always cast a great shadow, because this woman in it ended up being a real murderer, unfortunately! “And the lawyer—the, umm, bad actor—had to figure that out with my help... Throughout the play, there was a line Matlock kept failing at saying: 'Murder, Miss Isabel, that's what it was..." And it was the woman who played Isabel who did it! And then Matlock had to say that to her in the courtroom when she was convicted... it was awful. “And after that, everyone decided to try and get rid of the darkness in their hearts. Even the lady who played Isabel. Yeah." Well, when Sora put it like that... Kairi could maybe understand where he was coming from. Seeing such a light place even have a darkness like that… it would make you hate the dark even more, wouldn’t it? And deciding that Sora probably was making a real utopia here, Kairi brought Sora’s hands to her face, and summoned the light out of them. “I’m curious now, Sora… can you add even more light to me? Perhaps the world will be even better that way.” And as Sora made will-of-the-wisps float around them, as Riku cried out to them both, he did just that.

[myfriendpokey]

Morality Play

What does it mean to have a videogame tell you you're a good person? It doesn't know me, can't see me. I don't know if you can be *immoral* in a single player game outside of some very inventive custom controls. Why should I care what a game says? Any inner moral life that a videogame or a painting might possess would be more alien to me than that of a bug or a starfish. Of course videogames and paintings are made by humans, and shaped by the moral opinion of humans.. but we might make a distinction between what the human says and the object says, we might still feel the latter is more important, somehow. 

The moral authority of an artwork or object comes from the fact that it's not quite human, that it comes to us from outside humanity to an extent, is distinguished from the unreliable back and forth of human consciousness in motion. But this distance is exactly why you might expect those moral verdicts to be unintelligible to us, or at the very best, to be untrustworthy, an imitation. So what's the appeal – that of having a human voice which speaks with the gravitas of an immortal object? The pleasant conceit that the general shape of our minds is universal, like all those Star Trek aliens that are just regular guys with slightly weirder ears or foreheads? The void speaks, and turns out to sound like a computer engineer.

But maybe not necessarily, maybe in fact it's sometimes not universal authority and moral support that we seek from the object: maybe a certain jankiness of verdict around the way these things communicate in human terms is itself part of the appeal. I think of paper fortune tellers, magic eight-balls, "love tester" machines that return a romantic prognosis based on palm temperature. The entrancing bathos of the chance-driven or mechanistic judgement that still speaks with a human voice: I’m sorry, I cannot answer right now. Please shake me, so I may try again. How different is that to the widely beloved and magnificently broken romance system in Dragon's Dogma, where, spoilers: your "soulmate" is not a matter of direct moral choice, but of variables being tracked over the course of the game including who you talked to and what sidequests you completed - which means it could arbitrarily turn out to be the weapons merchant, or a grandpa npc you found a potion for. Which is goofy, but only in a slightly more blatant way than "accidentally unlocking the romantic option in a dialogue tree from just clicking around" or "having your morality score drop 5 points because you pressed the wrong button and accidentally hurled a rock at someone's head while trying to equip shoes". 

I think something I appreciate about videogames is the kind of insectlike moral life that they tend to portray, the sense of value systems which are in some way recognisable but which have mutated in conversion to something alien and horrifying. Lara Croft shooting a wild eagle is unfortunate, Lara Croft shooting a thousand wild eagles is bizarre – but really those thousand eagles are just the one eagle, the one self-contained pulp encounter fantasy, which has been extended, extrapolated, systemised as result of being placed in this machine. The latter may be more egregious but it’s still composed of repeated incidents of the original encounter - and part of the strangeness in these games is just the uncomprehending machine effort to systemise the half-formed gunk substance of our terrible fantasy lives, which only bear a vague and halfhearted relation to any notion of ethics in any case.. We can contemplate with envy and excitement the possibilities of running more realistic, recognisable emotional and moral situations through the meatgrinderof the format in this way. How about a solemn middlebrow videogame about divorcing 50 different wives, each one larger and more powerful than the last (excluding sprite recolours)? 

All this is not to say that the casual political and moral stupidity already in videogames should simply be excused or exist outside of critique. But in addition to the body of discourse  around "moral commodities" - commodities invested with moral  or political meaning independent of any brutal labour practices they might entail or monopolistic accumulation of private  wealth they might support – I think it's also worth considering the purpose of the "moral object" itself. The alienation intrinsic to the object form can be a way to think, and also a way to avoid thinking. To project moral beliefs away from the specific context of a creaturely human existence can be a way of expanding that existence, but also of denying it. The paltriness of the human can itself be problematic next to the splendour of the object, and the reflected moral superiority of those with the means of producing such objects.

*****

There's a famous line in the Spiderman comics that with great power comes great responsibility. But it's also kind of a weird line because, while obviously applicable to Spiderman, the person it's actually delivered to is Peter Parker - who is, for all his uncle knows, still a physically awkward and friendless nerd with no immediately visible "great power" to speak of. He does like nuclear physics, though - maybe the advice was intended as a friendly intervention to keep him from turning into the next Edward Teller? Or possibly it's just a kind of unconscious, pulp-writer-trance-appropriation of the muscular liberal rhetoric of the then-current Kennedy administration. Or maybe, and stretching a bit, it's a line that relates more to the conditions of pulp culture manufacturing itself, to the awareness that the stuff you make will be printed thousands of times and sold to kids around the country, poured raw into the national subconsicous. With great sales figures comes great responsiblity.

I mention it because I think it connects to an issue with the kind of cultural criticism that emerged, like it or not, from the specific context of an age of mass media. With great power comes great responsibility - but conversely, to execute your great responsibility you also need great power. And what are you meant to do if you don't have it? Does no power mean having no responsibility? It's possible, but i feel like most people would be dubious about this as a moral lesson - and the inescapability of heavily-financed blockbusters in the culture means that an assumption of already "having great power" sometimes becomes a critical starting point. If you don't have power you should get it, so that you can then have great responsibility and contribute to the discourse. The effect can sometimes be like climbing a mountain of corpses to get a better platform for your speech about world peace.

A good essay on jrpgsaredead.fyi points out the way that certain industry conversations on "accessibility" revolve specifically around access to whatever mainstream AAA action games are currently dominating the news cycle. And the related effect where both problems and proposed solutions are particular to these games, the audience they have, and the resources they can bring bear: More consultants! More characters! More romance options! Better character creators! If you're speaking to an (essentially captive, given the marketing monies involved) audience of five million people you'd better be sure your ideas are, at least, not actively harmful, and in fact should ideally be improving - - fine. How about an audience of 50 people? Or an audience of 0? Does that mean this work is less moral than what speaks to a larger crowd - in effect, that it's worse? And what about the relationship to audience that this kind of teaching implies? i can think of several occasions where people from different subcultures or minority groups were reprimanded because something in their own experience might read differently, or problematically, when presented to a presumably white/cis/affluent etc audience - which is of course the audience that matters, because what's the value of presenting work from an alternative perspective to an audience already familiar with that perspective, to whom it has no automatic moral significance (might, in fact, merely be 'aesthetic')? Compare the complexity of a specific local audience which can think for itself to the easy win of the alternative:  a phantasm audience of moral blanks to whom rote lessons in hypothetical empathy can be tastefully and profitably imparted over and over, forever.

****

If the ethical act is that which we'd be willing to posit as universal law, perhaps we could say: the ethical artwork is that which we'd be willing to mass produce. Small or hobbyist developers are encouraged to work from the perspective of a mass-productive capacity they do not in fact possess; their successes and inevitable failures are hoovered up alike by the industry proper for later deployment in the form of cute dating sim or inspirational narrative with similar but sanitized tone or aesthetic. In essence a kind of moral QA testing, with all the job security and recompense that this implies. 

The hobbyist is, by definition, not universal: they are enclosed within the local and the material. What time do you get off work? What materials do you have to hand? Are those materials always legal? The entire western RPG Maker community exists as result of widespread bootlegging; the entirety of videogame history and preservation essentially depends on stolen copies; we find out about it through ROMs, videos and screenshots which mostly depend for their continued existence on copyright holders either not finding out or choosing not to pursue these debateable violations.  It's a complicated discussion whether this stuff can be justified on a general, universal level - but also I'm not sure we can do without it. When Fortnite uses dances from TV and music videos of living memory they're considered to be in the public domain; but Fortnite itself is not in the public domain, even though it's so inescapable that even I have a pretty good idea of what it looks and plays like despite having made a pretty determined effort to not find out anything about it. It's "public culture" in that sense, and it includes public culture within it, but both game and imagery are privately owned and aggressively policed (suing teenage hackers, etc). What does it mean for art to emerge from an ever more privatized sense of public life?

In 2007 the RPG Maker game Super Columbine Massacre RPG was added to, then removed from, the Slamdance festival following complaints; it was a minor cause celebre at the time following concerns about censorship and the lack of protections for expression in the videogame format specifically following the Jack Thompson media crusade in the United States. In 2019 the same festival retrospectively changed their reasoning: now the game had no longer been removed on the basis of questionable taste, but on the basis of questionable compliance with copyright law, since it included music from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins without paying for licensing fees (and also because the author generally "hadn’t created several of its elements" - asset flips!!!). There's some humour in the fact that a benign-sounding concern with "artist's rights" could just be swapped in as a more respectable-sounding surrogate for general prudery with exactly the same result. But also, in this instance, what does it mean about the game? As facile as SCMR is, the bootleg use of graphics and music was its most interesting element: the game was a bricolage of American pop culture at a specific point in time, as were the killers, as are we. The nearness and recognisability of that culture, the sense of not being able to get enough distance from it to properly fictionalise or think about what happened, is what stands out. An "ethical" version of the same game which used original music - Nirvanalikes, some tastefully copyright-adjacent Marilyn Manson clones - would not just be diminished, it would be actively insulting in the false distance it implied.

I don't mean this at all as a request for more edgelord-ism. But it's worth remembering that videogames themselves are not ethical; are, in fact, colonized materials assembled with exploitative labour and dumped aimlessly into public life by electronics corporations looking to make a buck. The bizarre and haphazard ways this long dump of poor decisions has manifested, warped, been adjusted into culture is part of what's worth attending to about the format – I think it's worth looking closer into all these pools of murkiness, before ethical  landlords can come drape a tarp over them as part of the process of divvying up the property.

(image credits: youkai douchuuki, quiz nanairo dreams, trauma center: under the knife, espial)

[golddustinourhands]

Why They Call Me “Pidge”

So This is my first jump into the Voltron Legendary Defender fandom. Here is the first plot bunny that popped into my head!

Kathryn Columba Holt. That's my given name, the name my parents decided to give me when they found I was a girl. The name I hated all through my childhood as my mom took me to debutante balls and beauty pageants that I never won or even placed in. They would always use my full name. Kathryn.

Kathryn Columba Holt. Every time my full name came out of the announcer’s mouth I would cringe. Who would subject their second child to such a terrible name?! Maybe they had used all of their naming skills on the beautiful name that my brother had been given.

Matthew Orion Holt. Such a beautiful line of poetry in just three names. Such a free spirited beautiful brother that got to chase my father around performing all of the experiments in the backyard, and learning all the science, and seeing the beautiful machinery at work while I was kept on the sidelines, learning how to cook (see: Burn), and sing (see: woodchipper), and dance (see: trip and fall).

The nickname Pidge was the best thing he ever gave to me, quickly followed by his textbooks when he started school and the sciences.

That night was the night that everything changed.

My cheeks were stained with dark black tears, the stupid fluffy pageant dress rumpled around my ankles as I threw myself onto my pristine pink comforter, hoping it would stain everything. I had lost again to Ruthie Mayer, Janie Brinds, and Delilah Majorino, and no matter how much I begged my mother to let me stop, let me do something else, go with Matt and Dad to launch bottle rockets in the backyard, she made me persist, saying I would appreciate it when I was older.

I expected my mother to come in and tell me to stop crying, probably something along the lines of “if your face scrunches you'll get premature wrinkles”, but it wasn't her.

“Katie girl!” Matt’s voice exclaimed from the doorway. “You’re missing the fireworks outside. Why the tears?”

I looked up from my self pity, the smile instantly creasing my cheeks. Matt and I had a special bond that neither of us could name, inside jokes at the dinner table, reading fairytales after we were supposed to be in bed, the best parts of my childhood, and my toddlerhood to that point.

“There's that smile, Katie girl!” He said, his smile matching mine as he joined me in my room and sat next to me on the bed. “Did that little jerk Annabelle steal your crown again?” He asked, wiping a tear from my cheeks and smudging the dark line against his white shirt.

“I'm not meant to be a beauty queen!” I cried out, and it felt good to say it outloud, to say it to someone who wasn't my mother. I knew i couldn't disappoint her like that. My dad had Matt and my mom had me, even though I could never impress her with skills I didn't have. “I don't want to be Kathryn Columba Holt!” I pouted. “I wanna go with you and dad to the base and see space and design things for space!”

Matt laughed. “They allow girls in Galaxy Garrison now,” he said. “When you get old enough you can go too and impress them.”

Matt was the first one who believed in me and that made all the difference.

But back then, girls in Galaxy Garrison was a joke. It was still a beauty pageant. Who filled out the uniform the best, whose hair stayed perfect, even under the simulation helmets, who could get the best treatment from the garrison commander if they cried fake tears.

But I still looked forward to it.

“If you don't want to be Kathryn then who do you want to be?” Matt asked.

“I don't know,” I answered. “Someone better,” I sniffled.

“Me?” He asked with a goofy face, and I laughed and shook my head.

“Someone who can do science and math and not have to wear a stupid frilly dress and be disappointed,” I said. Even at five, I knew what I wanted.

“Did you know that mom wanted your first name to be Columba?” Matt asked. I'm sure I made a face, the Columba was my least favorite part. “It's the Dove constellation, and mom loved it every time it was in the sky. That's why dad calls mom Dove.” I still thought it was a stupid name. “Dad convinced her to go with Kathryn for you, after his great grandmother.”

I didn't need to know the origin of my name, I already hated it enough.

Matt laughed. “Mon calls Dad Eagle One,” he said. “I think he likes the power.”

Our parents were sickeningly sweet. “What does Dad call you?” I asked. Mom had never called me anything but Kathryn. Dad and Matt called me Katie.

“Duckling,” Matt answered. “Dad called me that as soon as I started following him around.” It all sounded so interesting. “So what kind of bird would you be?” He asked.

I made a face. “I'm a pigeon,” I said, crossing my arms in defense and trying not to cry, but I did anyway. I couldn't dance, I couldn't smile on command and walk like a lady, surrounded by all of the swans in the pageant. I couldn't impress mom, or anyone. “I’m an ugly trash bird!” I cried out.

He laughed again. “I like it,” he said. I stared at him. It was terrible.  “If you really don't like Katie, would you like to be called Pidge?”

Anything was better than Kathryn Columba Holt. I nodded. “Pidge doesn't have to do the stupid beauty pageants or debutante balls!” I decided. “She can do science and learn all about space and the Stars, and she's the best galaxy garrison pilot even though she's a girl!”

Matt laughed. “What do you say Pidge,” he said and it felt natural, “Want to go launch a bottle rocket with dad?”

From there, things got better. I was Katie when I needed to be, but Pidge in secret, picking up all of the science and math and learning all about technology when I could.

-----

The day dad and Matt left for Kerberos, I couldn't be more excited for them. Mom and I saw them off, and were the last to see them before they got on the ship. Matt hugged me hard and whispered to me as Mom and Dad embraced hard, Dad leaving always scared her.

“I'll see you up there soon, Little Pidge,” Matt said with a smile in his voice.

“I'll be your commander someday,” I answered, squeezing him back.

Then everything changed for the worst.

-----

The last time I was kicked out of Galaxy Garrison, as Katie Holt, I knew I had to do something drastic. Not only were my dreams of getting into Galaxy Garrison dashed, but all hope of finding my dad and brother were dashed too.

I knew I had to get back in whatever means possible.

I lay in bed for days, trying to come up with the solution, and then as I trudged down the hall for another dinner with my mother, just as drained as I was, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was prepubescent, as flat as a rail, and looking at the picture of me and Matt in the hallway, the answer came like a bolt of lightning. If I cut off all of my hair and borrowed a pair of his glasses, tucked everything in, I could pass for him. Prepubescence had blessed me with a low voice, and if I lowered it, I could pass for a boy.

Pidge.  

But Pidge Holt would be too noticeable, especially after the tragedy.

Major Harabim Gunderson was a comic my brother and I used to read long after our parents expected us to be asleep. He was a no nonsense general that didn't negotiate with terrorists and didn't take no for an answer.

That night, after my mother went to bed, I cut off all of my hair, rooted through my brother’s closet, and left for Galaxy Garrison as Pidge Gunderson, a young boy with dreams of the stars and answers.

I left a note for my mother, explaining the best I could, but she still probably doesn't know where I am.

I am Pidge Gunderson, Kathryn Columba Holt.

I am going to find my answers.

Also Posted to Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12414707/1/