#So not exactly a paragon of strength here

[avoidingdestiny]

Squatted my body weight today!

[randomness-is-my-order]

i was watching the founder of diabolism animation with my cousin (for the first time!) today and it just made me extremely emotional about this story once again. i’ve already talked about alot of motifs in mdzs which are close to my heart but one thing the animation reiterates so well is this whole seeming dichotomy between wei wuxian and lan zhan.

now, i have my gripes with the show, as is the case for all adaptations of canon but the way the colours, effects and even the opening lyrics are used to maximise the differences between wwx and lwj is very fascinating. i’m not one to really buy into the “oh they’re not black and white, but they’re grey” when it comes to the wwx-black and lwj-white representation because morally speaking, i don’t find that the “greyness” tracks.

the dichotomy is moreso appealing to me for what the story inevitably delivers: appearances are deceptive, rumours are deceptive, the surface hides the true depth underneath. you go into this animated show with your protagonist surrounded by a clear narrative of some kind of fall from grace, while the deuteragonist is painted in a virtuous light from the get-go. you don’t know how it’s going to happen but the narrative so far wants you to perceive the characters a certain way while still giving you just enough to make you doubt yourself. but here’s the thing: you do doubt yourself but not to the extent that you should. wei wuxian does become some sort of heretic path cultivator, apparently, but you know he’s a nice, chirpy teen and helpful in the future but surely, he embraces the darkness when his hand is forced. and surely, lan zhan only goes against him because his morals and rules demand it. surely, lan zhan’s hand is forced as well.

and while there is some truth to it, you don’t realise that morally, very objectively, and very harshly speaking, the fall from grace doesn’t happen from wei wuxian’s end but lan wangji’s and here the whole white/black, good/evil motifs become completely secondary because who exactly is devolving here? it never was wei wuxian and realising that in it of itself is a major part of mdzs’s storytelling.

i mostly bring this up because my cousin noticed something that i, as a novel reader & cql watcher can’t pick up–that during the punishment scene in cloud recesses, wwx internally muses about how he couldn’t have lwj’s resolve during his silence endurance of punishment and later he tells jc that he won’t try to dabble into demonic cultivation ever again. setting aside the fact that this doesn’t clarify the misnomer and that these are scenes which are slightly altered or completely new when compared to canonical material, it still maintains the essence of the earlier chapters, imo. in that, my cousin remarked that wwx himself says he doesn’t have the resolve and so he might end up practicing demonic cultivation anyway. (i was sorely tempted to reply with a thesis on why that is... wrong but what’s the fun in spoiling this journey for her?)

it’s just masterful how certain story beats paint this dilemma across the two characters, where you would think wwx is likely to have acted in a certain morally questionable way while putting more faith into lan zhan but as the past unfolds and you see beneath the surface of this young guy called wei wuxian, you realise just how much of his inner strength you have glossed over and that lan zhan’s resolve was always rooted in conflict with his rules vs his morals.

and i don’t mean this to be a way of propping wwx above lwj in some arbitrary moral olympics. it’s to simply to show how falsifying paragons and making the audience doubt wei wuxian is fundamental to experiencing mdzs in ANY format. the thoughts you have when you read/watch the first few chapters will have inevitably done a one-eighty after reading/seeing the conclusion. infact, the true black/white, good/evil, wrong/right debates aren’t even centred around wei wuxian and lan zhan but wei wuxian and the cultivation society as a whole.

and if i had to give an analogy for wei wuxian’s moral representation, then it wouldn’t be grey but––and all gay puns aside––it would be a ‘rainbow’ wherein the ‘white’ morality is very much a spectrum and leaves room for more questionable methods to ultimately reach an unequivocally good goal, without defaulting to the ‘grey’ area that is more often than not used as a backhanded way of representing wei wuxian’s moral complexity.

[folksaga-if]

“It is a long story, and it does no credit to anyone: there is murder in it, and trickery, lies and foolishness, seduction and pursuit.  Listen."

- Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

You are a human. A totally normal one.

Honestly.

You’re a human. You’re a bartender, which is a very normal job for a human to have, and when you walk down the winding streets of Akureyri you can blend seamlessly into any crowd of people which is, without question, only something that a human could do.

The fact that you came here two years ago with nothing but the clothing on your back doesn’t mean anything; you’re hardly northern Iceland’s first wayfaring soul. That you had no money to your name, no friends or family to speak of — that’s a fairly average human thing, too. And that little craving you have, that quiet urge to dig your teeth into any passing stranger’s throat? It's completely, entirely mundane.

It’s manageable. You’re managing.

Or you were, until someone — someone who's decidedly notas good at this human thing as you are — begins leaving a trail of dead bodies at your doorstep, and a trio of god-like siblings take a seat at your bar.

MAGNI THORSON .

No doubt the mightiest of his siblings, the eldest child of Thor is exactly the sort of person you would expect him to be: a giant (half-giant, in fact) asshole with a smoulder and a knife-sharp jawline to match. He’ll match your every word with a cocky grin and a joke that’s nowhere near as funny as he thinks, and he’ll look every inch the prince that he is all the while.

(Well, the prince that he was. Just don’t let him hear you say that.)

MODI THORSON .

For the supposed embodiment of his father’s wrath, the God of Thunder’s second son is surprisingly…not that. He’s no picnic, mind you — he’s broody, he’s secretive, and he's fucking intense, but that hardly equates to fury incarnate. You’re sure there’s something hiding under that moody surface; whether or not you want to uncover it is a different story entirely.

(Looks like even gods aren’t immune to middle-child syndrome. Who knew?)

THRÚD THORSDÓTTIR .

Valkyrie, seidhr,paragon of strength — with all of her mother’s best traits (and a few of her father’s worst), is it any wonder that Thor’s youngest child was also his favourite? Smarter than her half-brothers and more likeable by a longshot, you might find yourself forgetting how easily the fortune-telling goddess could break you in two. You might, but she’ll be happy to remind you if you do.

(Maybe a little too happy, in fact.)

KATLA B̶͍̏L̸̝͑O̵̟͠M̴̳̓Q̴̯̔V̵̺͆I̷̗͛S̵̠͒T̸̬̒ .

A fellow nomad and your coworker at Black Thunder, the first friend you made in Akureyri has remained your closest. Mischevious, magnetic, and often up to no small amount of trouble, there are times when you think you might know Katla better than you know yourself. You even know about her…well, you know that she…sorry, what were you talking about again?

(It's just that it’s nice, being close to someone who’s so very human.)

THE MARE .

There’s a voice in your head and a shadow in your dreams, and they’re telling you to run. You probably shouldn’t trust them.

(…Right?)

Customize your monster character. New life, new you! Choose your gender identity, change your name, cut your hair, and remember: if you’re starting to grow tired of running from your past, try on a new outfit and start running faster.

Play as one of three runway creatures from Norse mythology — a cunning keeper of the forest, a charming warden of the lake, or a formidable guardian of the mountains. Each has its quirks (would you prefer a hollowed-out tree for a back, or webbed fingers and forearms covered in scales?), but they all have two key things in common: they’ll killto protect their homes, and you’redefinitely not one of them.

Choose your own fate, out of the countless that are presented to you. Had oatmeal instead of skyr with your breakfast this morning? You might have just brought about Ragnarök 2.0. Nice one, asshole.

Multiple romance options, with each available to pursue regardless of your gender or background. Ever wanted to kiss a god under a starry sky? Now's your chance! Or maybe you’re through with immortal beings and desperate to ask the pretty server on a date? Go for it! She’s definitelya human too. Totally. You’d be able to tell if she wasn’t. Wouldn’t you?

Save the world — or don’t.It's your choice, and isn't that what true freedom is all about?

Folksaga is inspired by The Edda, Norse mythology, andTwin Peaks, with a bit of tweaking to the myths as needed for the sake of plot. MC backgrounds have been adjusted to fit for all players regardless of gender identity, and creative liberty has been taken with some smaller points for a smoother storytelling experience. All changes will be explained in an FAQ post (too be added in the links below ASAP!)

AS OF AUGUST 21 UPDATE: The current demo consists of the prologue (introductory lore + character creation), + chapter 1, about 70k words total.

I expect it to be somewhere in the range of 600,000 to 700,000 words, but this is subject to change (and likely will due to my propensity for rambling text. oops.).

I’ve written  short and long-form original fiction as well as a lot of fanfic (say hello @ pentaghastly on AO3, and @kendallroynsfw on tumblr!), but this is my first IF! Bugs and coding issues may appear in the demo; please let me know if any issues arise during your playthroughs.

Folksaga is a work in progress. I would love constructive feedback when the demo is posted, as well as any bugs or grammar issues to be brought to my attention if I've missed them :) I would also love patience, because I'm a full time health care worker who gets sleepy lots xoxo

A Swedish farmer named Sven Andersson was executed in 1691 for having intercourse with a mountain nymph, or bergsrå. I will neither confirm or deny if his Wikipedia article was the inspiration for this IF, except I will confirm it and it definitely was.

MC ORIGINS | RO INTROS | DEMO!!!!! | COG FORUMS | PATREON

[fantasyinvader]

Just thinking about Guan Yu’s death and how it feels like, I dunno, like the text is pushing Buddhism while criticizing Confucianism. I know it’s generally accepted that Rot3K is heavily based on Confucianism, but the way Guan Yu died just felt like the story was calling out some things despite Shu supposedly being the “moral�� faction.

The thing is, Guan Yu’s death references the chapter where Guan Yu crosses five passes and slays six generals, which didn’t happen in actual history. When Guan Yu dies, his spirit meets the Buddhist monk he encountered in that story. Guan Yu is upset that his head is missing, the monk points out how many people Guan Yu has killed. This humbles Guan Yu, who in his final chapters had become very arrogant in his old age, and he becomes a protective spirit for the area.

The thing is, the lead up to his execution comes across as the text being hypocritical when it comes to Shu vs. everyone else. Liu Bei enters a region, winning the hearts of the people so that they may support him when he takes over? Totally righteous, whereas Sun Quan winning the hearts of those he conquered is a dirty trick. Liu Bei betrays people and attacks his kinsman for territory? Still virtuous, whereas Sun Quan betraying people and using his sister to gain territory is wrong. Liu Bei declares himself Prince of Shu? Okay, it’s not like he’s Cao Cao having himself granted the title of Prince of Wei by the Emperor. And Liu Bei later declaring himself emperor when Cao Cao knew it was a bad idea? Cao Cao is still the bad guy. At the same time, Liu Bei strays from the path of virtue because virtue isn’t winning him this conflict. Liu Bei wouldn’t take a reward after helping someone because it would make him look like he did it for the reward but then expects to be rewarded by heaven for his virtue.

Yet Liu Bei has been made out to be a Confucian hero, his loss is meant to be a tragedy. But why? Is him saying he was trying to restore the Han dynasty supposed to justify his actions? I mean, the whole idea of “the empire once united must divide, long divided must unit” makes it clear that dynasty’s rising and falling is a natural cycle itself, and that the Han had been corrupt before Dong Zhuo took over. Extending the lifespan of the Han dynasty feels like it’s going against the natural order itself, and that for all his posturing Liu Bei was little different than the other warlords fighting Dong Zhuo for their own benefit.

But Guan Yu is the one who finds peace in his death through Buddhist wisdom. Hell, Guan Yu is seen as a bodhisvatta due to the story, becoming a protector of Buddhism in China due to converting after death. That the monk pointing out how many people he killed and humbling Guan Yu gave him such clarity that Guan Yu could have entered Nirvana, but instead he remained behind in order to protect the faith so that others may obtain enlightenment. And Guan Yu was a guy who believed that him stepping on the battlefield was a big deal, like he was Exodia, even when recovering from surgery and not at full strength while nearing 60.

I dunno, I feel like the addition of Buddhist elements through these fabricated events makes it feel like the novel is actually an endorsement of Buddhism whereas Confucian virtue just feels shallow in comparison. Whatever side wins is said to do so by the Will of Heaven recognizing their virtue, but when you have cases like Liu Bei and Cao Cao both claiming legitimacy and having Heaven on their side, it undermines the concept when the supposedly virtuous side loses.

I mean, I still like Liu Bei and his comrades but I'm not exactly seeing them as paragons here and that the 2014 series may have had a point in it's depiction of them. The fact that Rot3K is historical fiction and the real Liu Bei was a backstabber, albeit one who wouldn't massacre people and made attempts to win their support. There's a reason why people championed him for over a thousand years until Rot3K was written, meanwhile Cao Cao was known for his cruelty and eccentric nature when he was still alive.

[mdhwrites]

Why Can’t Clark Kent Control His Strength?

TL:DR: This Supes is only NOW starting to actually get used to his powers. He spent years fearing them and so when his nerves are high, he doesn’t have control because he used to be purely afraid of them. Afraid of what this other side of him can do and what it might do to others, despite his nature meaning that naturally he wouldn’t harm a fly which is a GREAT bit of characterization to go with the seemingly main theme of the show of “Who am I?” Who is Clark Kent, especially as he figures out who Superman is as well.

Spoilers for the first two episodes of My Adventures with Superman:

So this has been one of the topics I’ve seen thrown around about My Adventures with Superman (MAWS). In the first episode we get a couple cute and silly moments of Clark not quite controlling his strength and breaking something. He breaks his alarm clock when he wakes up, is practicing on his sink how to shake hands with Perry White before Jimmy yells at him, at which point he breaks it and then he also tears off the handle to a push door when he tries to pull on it.

However, the first scene of the show lets us know that probably around ten, and he’s probably in his early twenties during the current day, he gains his powers. That’s a LONG time to go without mastering your powers or at least being 98% in control. So what gives? Is this just a throwback to other superheroes? Just a cute gag? What?

Well first... He is 98% in control. Most of the time he doesn’t have any issues with his powers because when he’s not thinking about them or relaxed, they’re fine. In fact, in two episodes we’ve really only gotten this montage showing Clark not having control over his super strength... And only his super strength which actually makes a lot of sense, at least for Clark. Yes, he doesn’t want to be caught and superspeed would ruin his identity... But the strength hurts people.

And this Clark Kent doesn’t do that. Period. In fact, helping is so ingrained into his being that using his powers to help others is the most natural thing he can do. We see this with saving the cat, which he does fine, and we see it when at the end of the first episode, he has to rush out of nowhere to push Jimmy aside before a giant robot can kill him. Is Jimmy even hurt? Nope.

Because it’s natural to Clark. His body IS adapted to his powers, his mind just isn’t. So when he’s not thinking, not worried or doing what comes naturally to him, the powers don’t go out of control. They are perfectly fine for him and he can do what is necessary to help others.

And this actually makes a LOT of sense with how episode 2 begins. Episode 2 shows us that when he tried to get answers as a young boy, those answers almost hurt his parents. Not only that but scared the ever living shit out of him at the same time, reducing him to tears and never wanting to see the pod again, at least until as an adult he sees the true good, and potentially the necessity, of these powers. With that as context... Why the fuck would he have trained? Why would he be 100% with his powers? He has avoided using them as much as possible for over a DECADE.

So here comes one of the most important days of his life, he’s only just woken up, and he’s trying to calm himself. So he puts a little too much oomph in turning off his clock. When his buddy distracts, he yanks on the thing he was holding. When he forgets which way a door to a gas station opens, he accidentally puts too much strength into it. Buuuuut he doesn’t saving a cat because that’s how natural saving people is to him.

And this plays into the question posed three times in the first two episodes: “Who am I?” Clark doesn’t see these powers as an extension of himself yet. They are the scary specter that makes him abnormal. That makes him potentially hurt people if he messes up, or scare them with his oddity. Superman is not a part of who he is yet, even though who Clark Kent is is exactly why Superman exists at all as the paragon he normally is.

Could it just be for the gag? Absolutely. A good, lighthearted way to introduce Clark, and even have a parallel gag with Lois failing to turn off her alarm, while also implying that Clark is early in his powers and strength. That plays into the concept of the show and is charming. But I like that it can be read in a way that plays into the greater thesis and really emphasizes how this writing team is tackling early Superman.

And I think that’s super personally.

=======

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

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

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

[equinoxbloom]

Do Not Say Azem

[FFXIV Write 2024 | Day 28 | Deleterious]

Ysayle had been watching her for a while. Not in the way new participants in a thinly strung alliance watched one another, and watched their own backs. Ysayle had been watching her like she saw something kindred. It made her uncomfortable, and somehow more at ease a step behind the Azure Dragoon’s shoulder than near to this woman who should have been, by all rights, as deeply familiar to her as she seemed to be to Ysayle.

She had felt a little pull the same way she had with Minfilia - those burdened with the favor of a goddess, whether the paragon of their faiths or not, seemed to recognize one another, she supposed. But Ysayle had seen something more. Or, the elezen woman certainly thought she had.

It wasn’t the same, and it wasn’t the kind of thing the Warrior of Light particularly wanted to look at too closely. Careful introspection had not tended to serve her well, but she didn’t think she could be blamed for it. What good was there for a vessel to consider objectively its limited purpose? Out of the corner of her eyes, out of the corner of her mind, she could be holy. 

When Ysayle caught her alone by the campfire, sharing the evening watch, she wanted to swallow her own tongue before the conversation began.

“You and I are more alike than I first thought,” Ysayle started, the way she knew she would.

“My personal convictions rather pale in comparison to your own,” she said. A thin smile, and the vain hope Lady Iceheart would consider allowing the diversion. But then, she supposed she’d hardly have become Lady Iceheart if she could be pushed from her own course so simply.

“Does it tax you greatly to give yourself over to -”

“I give myself over to nothing.”

Ysayle inclined her head. She didn’t really want to know what, exactly, the silver-haired woman could see. More than she could see of herself, she supposed, and she didn’t care for it. 

“When I become the vessel of St. Shiva, I feel powerful,” Ysayle said. “And when I am only myself again, I am so small, and so weak, and so very exhausted.” She leaned back on her hands, fingers digging into the soft earth as she peered into the starry night. The Warrior of Light trained her gaze on the depths of the low-glowing fire. If Ysayle simply wished to give her own confessions, that was fine.

“Is it not the same for you?”

If she’d been the type to hand over all the parts of herself, to give up her secrets and her burdens, she’d not have made it this far. To be invested in her own emptiness had been one of the meditative strengths her home had left her. Diviner. Companion. Vessel.

“I am alive. And so I am always small and weak and exhausted.”  She threw another dry branch on the fire. “We are both here. You do not need to look for more than that.”

Ysayle did not press further and she wondered why she cared at all if the maiden of ice might be disappointed.

They sat in silence for a long time after that, until she found, impossibly, she felt compelled to offer anything else at all. “If I walk too far in any one direction, I’ve lost my place, and returning anywhere is not the same as the last.” She turned to look at Ysayle. “I think that there’s a great deal you have accomplished of your own power.”

Lady Iceheart smiled, gentle and understanding in a way that didn’t quite sit right. “‘Tis all my own power, in the end, and if I am changed, well… I do not think I mind it.”

She sighed and turned back to the fire. “I know very little of your Saint Shiva.”

When it was her turn to sleep, she dreamt of the golden eyes that watched her always, the face that was her and not her, the self she knew everything and nothing of, and when she woke she had the faint sense she’d stood on the precipice of losing just a little more of something she had no hope of retrieving.   

[inventors-fair]

Getting the Bant Back Together: Alara Contest Winners ~

Congratulations to @bread-into-toast, @izzet-always-r-versus-u, and @spooky-bard for winning this week's contest!

@bread-into-toast — Bant Paragon

Bant and Enlist are a match made in heaven, or wherever the angels of Bant live. The name is perfectly reasonable, not too much, perfectly descriptive enough, and surprising that it hasn't been used already. Triple enlist is absolutely a wakening slap, I'll say that much. What I love about this card is that you can enlist the butts off your creatures if you want to smack someone, but a single multicolored creature can get the job done. This is a uniquely decisive design that offers so much more than it seems at first glance. You'll have to invest a little in white, but perhaps the environment is more of a flavorful allowance than a precise measure of everyone-gets-mana-fixing.

Curiosity does drive me here, as does a little bit of nostalgia. Alara certainly had its pips, and it had some weird pips at that. Committing to double colors felt like a bit of a risky miracle. You absolutely could—triple pips if you so chose! But for a three-color environment? Risky, risky, risky. Double here ain't so bad, but you're still encouraged to branch out. So hybrid maybe? Who knows! Or the power here is simply asking for enlistment, white with a splash, a centering. The notion of this knight finding their allies while retaining their central strength is still powerful in its own emotional right, with the single attacker calling back to exalted naturally as well. Thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful choices were made here. Love this card as a limited tempo beater and a potential mono-white/hybrid aggro constructed card.

@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Tidehollow Salvage

I mean, hell, c'mon, it's pretty wonderful. I'll talk about the mechanics afterwards, but the flavor? I'll admit: I don't like the Phyrexians invading all the worlds at once. I didn't like the MOM story as much as I could've, I was a huge fan of the ONE world but not as much the invasion aspect, and having my poor baby plane of Alara infected with these guys wasn't my idea of a good time. Here, you've infused that nostalgic factor with a post-conflict eeriness and a grotesque emotional reality on top of a neat draw spell. Yeah, the perfection of Esper is steeped in inequality! Tezzeret was sympathetic for a while! He got really messed up! Etherium is scarce! It still kind of sucks underground here! I didn't know a lot about the Alara storyline when I started playing, but the feeling for the shards was always there. Bant's casts felt uncomfortable for their societal enforcement, but Esper's commodity-based world was uncomfortable in a different, desperate way. Man. This is cool.

Plus, putting the surveil on a separate paragraph? You gotta love it. I know it's a small detail, and it's just a design necessity, but it's the attention to that detail that I love about this card. I can imagine it as part of a cycle of alternate spells, like with a red creature that forces discard on ETB if black was spent to cast it, or a blue return spell that exiles something instead if white was spent to cast it, etc. We got possible multicolor but good draws otherwise, we have the cost of metal-scrapping, and... I mean, what else is there to say? This card's chops speak for themselves.

When I talk in my contests about elegant common design, this is exactly what I'm looking for. As a player, big splashy complex cards will slot in my decks. As a designer and storyteller, tightness is key.

@spooky-bard — Sigiled Construction

See what I mean? I'm only mildly irked that this doesn't have a quote from, like, a Vedalken designer who's learning how to venerate the designs of the angels, or a Bant paladin who for the first time is accepting the use of etherium as a means of fabricated glory. I can imagine both of those scenarios, but argh! At least this card's a pain in the ass. ... Hold on, I'm sounding more negative than I intend. What I mean is that someone's going to get three of these in their sealed pool, play UWX, slam a Thopter, and every turn thereafter is going to have a massive exalted attacker clock. Is it too powerful? Depends on the environment. Is it really cool from a lot of perspectives? Yes, absolutely, and I wanna talk about it.

In short, this card is one of THOSE commons—you know, first-pickable-over-rares sometimes kind of commons—and the chances of it doing nothing if something bigger comes along is also totally there. And that's okay! It's not oppressive, it's not unbalanced, it's not literally better than the mythics that would be appearing in this set. Just a plain old good card. And I do like the implication of how these shards would be coming together. I like how all three winning cards this week highlighted different possible aspects of Alaran unification. The first was a knight finding their way through a harrowing world, the second an emphasis on the underlying Alaran conflict, and this one is the coming-together of two strengths in a positive light. Whatever's happening here, I can still feel the wonder even while I'm whining for flavor text. Dangit, I can only whine so far... Heh. I'd love to play and see this card played.

Runners and more soon! @abelzumi

[dreamersscape]

Curiosity Killed the Cat: A Dreamersscape Story

Which doesn't seem quite fair, really, considering although I like cats a great deal, you still wouldn't call me a cat person.

Step #1: Love Kakashi Hatake far too much as a character.

Step #2: Scroll through his tumblr tag. Slowly start noticing that people often draw parallels between him and another character from the currently-running Jujutsu Kaisen manga and anime, Satoru Gojo.

Step #3: Think, "This is fine. It appears they're mostly just comparing their similar character designs and they both have unique things going on with their eyes. I'm not seeing anything that's really piquing my interest with this series; I'll just quickly look up if there's anything more to these comparisons beyond surface-level resemblances and that will be that."

Step #4: One of the next things you learn about Gojo is that a common clickbait-y way to frame discussion around parts of his personality is along the lines of, "Does Gojo have a God complex?"

Step #5: Think, "Ah, okay. That's likely an exaggeration, but probably Kakashi and Gojo can't be all that similar, or at least I likely wouldn't feel much the same about them as characters. Now I'm simply curious how far off Gojo actually is from having a God complex and then I'll be done."

Step #6: Did not back out of this rabbit hole at this juncture.

Step #7: Hard to recollect exactly the order of things from here, but learned that Gojo is the teacher for his own group of 3 fifteen-year-old students (and also previously taught older students since he's the head of first-year high school students at his very small school), learned back when Gojo was a student at this same school he had a very close friend who was instrumental in imbuing Gojo with his current moral principles and this friend is now dead, and learned that Gojo is the unequivocally strongest character within his universe's power system, and thus while he has a LOT of confidence in his own abilities and can be a bit cocky and a show-off, he definitely doesn't think of himself as godlike (anyone who's familiar with JJK and reading this--I'm aware of 'the honored one' thing, hang on a sec).

Step #8: Decide, "Alright then. Well, I am starting to get more intrigued by this series. Maybe I'll look up a little more about it and watch the first episode or two. It'll be fine. After all, I get now why people are reminded of Kakashi by Gojo and vice versa, but it certainly sounds like Gojo's personality is basically the opposite of someone who's convinced they're scum and is incredibly unassuming and humble and could honestly use a bit more self-worth so he at least possesses a modicum of self-preservation inclination. Gojo seems to have a lighthearted, goofy side that is partly used as a cover for his deeper emotions, and I might get attached to that based on other characters I've loved, but that still ought to be pretty safe. If I do wind up liking Gojo the most out of all the characters, there's no way he'll put me through the same heart-wrenching agony as seeing Kakashi being a paragon of strength of character and sheer goodness, while inwardly he can't see anything of value in himself."

The thing is, I wasn't wrong.

But clearly, I underestimated the pain I could still experience at the hands of a Kakashi-adjacent character.

(All I'm about to explain is completely non-spoilery, by the way. And by that I mean I'm not going to be ruining any major plot points or the "viewing experience" of watching the anime or reading the manga. Anything I reference that happens at any point beyond the first few chapters, I'll be as vague and opaque about it as possible, as well as very brief. And it will also all be basic background info/set up level stuff.)

Okay, so before I get to the real kicker, let's start with Gojo's dream.

In the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, the chakra equivalent is called cursed energy. However, cursed energy is not a life force. Cursed energy arises from people's negative emotions, and if the quantities of negative emotions emitted by the populace is large and concentrated enough, this creates cursed spirits of various sorts. For example, humanity's collective fear and pain experienced through natural disasters created a cursed spirit out of that resulting enormous amount of cursed energy. Cursed spirits usually aren't sentient, but almost unerringly they cause great harm and often death to humans. The number we're given at the start of the manga is around 10,000 unexplained deaths and missing persons per year in Japan are the result of curses.

Jujutsu sorcerers are the people who exorcize (or destroy, more like) cursed spirits to mitigate that as much as possible. They exorcize the curses with cursed energy-fueled techniques that are unique to each sorcerer. A sorcerer's innate cursed technique (CT) is said to comprise around 80% of their potential/talent as a fighter of curses. We're told that over the course of the last, I don't know, century or so (?) - the date at the start of the series is June 2018 - curse spirits have been increasing in strength and number. However, the incredibly rare combination of the Limitless cursed technique and the Six Eyes in-born trait Gojo was born with is so powerful that his birth alone swung the balance from being in the curses' favor back over to the side of the jujutsu sorcerers.

Details on Gojo's childhood are quite sparse, basically the only things we know about the Gojo family are it's one of the three big clans in jujutsu society and they're very wealthy. As far as I'm aware, Satoru is the only member of the clan we've ever met. So there's only supposition for what his home life was like up until he started at Jujutsu High, but we do know that because his possessing both the Six Eyes and Limitless was the first occurrence of such in 300-400 years, his existence was something of a spectacle and many sorcerers came to visit him just to see it for themselves, and too, he was the target of curse users (sorcerers who use jujutsu for evil and their own selfish gain) in pursuit of the over 100 million yen bounty placed on his head since he was very young.

It would be pretty reasonable to assume Gojo was subsequently rather sheltered and perhaps quite lonely as a child, but at the same time praised and lauded for how he was so naturally, prodigiously powerful. It only makes sense that Gojo has more than a little pride in his strength and puts so much stock in that. I'm sure he really enjoyed the attention and notoriety he received, and he never expresses resentment regarding any pressure that might have been put on him as a kid to be the infallible (future?) vanquisher of curses (although later I do think he places more and more pressure on himself to "take care" of everything and be responsible for the safety of everyone in the jujutsu world and beyond), and yet I do believe it's apparent he understands he didn't get to have a "normal" childhood. As a part of one of the big clans, he was surrounded and immersed in the political power plays and jockeying for prestige and influence by jujutsu society's elders/leaders/'higher ups' from the start (we don't know when or how it happened, but presumably because he's the strongest living Gojo, at the start of the story Satoru is the head of the clan), and these higher ups view Gojo in terms of how he can best be used for their own benefit. Outside of his high school best friend and later a few of his students, Gojo has very few people who have more than a cursory understanding of who he is as a person, who seem to want to know him, not the living embodiment of the title 'The Strongest', but just Satoru Gojo. Gojo likes being The Strongest, but when that's all everyone around him appears to care about, it leaves him feeling very isolated and alone.

As I mentioned before, though, Gojo never complains about this. He doesn't ever even imply "because I was treated this way, I want to prevent anyone else having to go through that." He does tell one of the people he's somewhat close to what his aim is and what the reason is behind it, but it's worded in a way where the person is confused by Gojo's explanation, and we as the reader can't even be sure he's referring to himself, since it could just as easily be in reference to his deceased friend.

It's informed by his experiences growing up certainly, but Gojo's fierce desire to give the kids he watches over the opportunity to fully and freely enjoy their youth is not about regretting what he missed out on; it's about what he can do for them, doing all he can to protect and preserve their childhood and making sure no one can take that away from them.

I realize I haven't exactly explained what precisely Gojo's 'dream' is and how it ties into all this, so I'll attempt to circle back to that now.

Jujutsu Kaisen begins with our main character, Yuji Itadori, accidentally stumbling his way into the jujutsu world by doing something very dangerous in order to be in what he thinks is a better position to help his friends out of a bad situation. He succeeds in helping his friends, but what he had to do to make that happen is an action that is punishable by death under jujutsu regulations. Naturally, Yuji was unaware of that, but it doesn't matter to the sorcerer higher ups. Gojo hears about the situation, intervenes, and is able to get the elders to suspend Yuji's execution for the time being. I'm glossing over a bunch of stuff but let's roll with that for now. While Gojo is explaining the whole situation to Yuji, the first thing he tells Yuji about the higher ups is that he thinks they're a bunch of cowards. And really, that's just the tip of the iceberg for how Gojo feels towards these leaders. He's not a fan of them by any stretch of the imagination. I said above Gojo never voices resentment directed at them over his lack of a carefree childhood, and that's true, however his dislike of the higher ups does seem to be partly personal. We just don't know the specifics other than that when he criticizes them (to their faces or a fellow colleague) he sticks to their wrongful actions on the whole, not how they've wronged him. A handful of episodes later, the higher ups pull something really awful and underhanded while Gojo is away on another mission, a scheme that is partially motivated by wanting to get back at Gojo for interfering with Yuji. Newly and deeply angered by this, Gojo delves further into the corruption at the top of the jujutsu world and then tells us about his dream:

A similar scene happens one year previous to this:

(Gojo doesn't use it anywhere near as frequently, but his saying 'what a pain' about many a situation still manages to give me Shikamaru feelings and I enjoy that.)

What stands out to me the most here is how much Gojo WANTS the students/his allies to be equal to or surpass him in strength. He's not at all concerned with keeping his position and accompanying power all to himself like the higher ups are. During one of the first chapters of the manga/show, to allay someone's uneasiness over potential danger, Gojo tells them, "Don't worry, I'm the strongest." It's only later that we learn when he was much younger he was originally quite happy to say, "Anyway, it should be okay. We're the strongest." I really think he would like nothing better than to be able to say that once again.

In an unusual turn of events for me, when I caught up to the JJK manga a few months ago, I actually had pretty good timing with what was currently going on, but now the story is starting to enter into its final stages and it seems like a lot of people in the fandom feel the narrative is very possibly leading to Gojo's death in some way that will better enable this brighter, less corrupt future for the jujutsu world and his students that he's been working towards this entire time. I don't think that would be a bad outcome, I'm not against noble sacrifices entirely, but I really, really, really don't want to see this happen. And here's where my unexpected Kakashi-adjacent feelings come into play. The reasons for why I'm so invested in seeing both Kakashi and Gojo live to be a part of the better world they helped create are pretty different. Yet, they're also not miles apart. I don't think Gojo has as many doubts as Kakashi that he has a place in the future of which he dreams, but from what I can tell his main focus is on that future existing for everyone else. Maybe he believes that is his purpose as The Strongest? Probably he does have every intention of being there with his fellows. I just want that for him so very much. For the few glimpses of kid!Gojo we got, who always looked so solemn; for the teenage Gojo with the biggest, goofiest smiles, who had so much connection ripped away prematurely; for Gojo the teacher, who works so hard to make every kid feel welcome and excited and to know they aren't alone. I'm aware of the kind of story I'm reading--Jujutsu Kaisen is unrelentingly brutal to its characters. It's a matter of course to have your heart mercilessly stomped on over and over reading JJK. It's not the sort of story where you can reasonably expect a happy ending. Unfortunately, I'm much too optimistic of a person for this manga and I'm far too attached to the story and characters and I'm in way, way too deep.

But let's ignore all that for now and get to the Kakashi-adjacent part of Gojo which clobbered me over the head with feels even worse than what I've already detailed!

@panharmonium, when you've reached this part of the post, I can't really guess what you're thinking about it all, but what if I told you that one of Gojo's students, Megumi Fushiguro, the Sasuke-adjacent one, was, along with his one-year-older step-sister Tsumiki, quasi-adopted/looked after/raised by Gojo from the time Megumi was six/in first grade and Gojo was just nineteen? By blood, Megumi is actually a member of the Zen'in clan, another of the three major clans in jujutsu society. Gojo, fresh out of high school and still newly, painfully estranged from his best friend, hears by chance that Megumi, who's on his own at this time apart from Tsumiki (also parentless), is about to be sold to the Zen'in because of the cursed technique he's just manifested, and although it has nothing to do with him, Gojo goes to Megumi and asks him if he wants to go live with the Zen'in. Upon learning if he chooses this, Tsumiki will be very unhappy (the Zen'in clan cares nothing for her and they are by-and-large super blatantly misogynistic), Megumi says no and Gojo's like, "Cool, that's great! I'll take care of everything and I'll make sure you two have everything you need. I want you to grow up strong!" And then there's a moment in the manga, where present-day Gojo is taking a nap and dreams of this first meeting between himself and Megumi and when he wakes up to his three students coming to see him he does this:

AND THE SECOND SEASON OF THE ANIME JUST STARTED AIRING A FEW WEEKS AGO AND THAT MEANS I'LL BE ABLE TO SEE THIS MOMENT ANIMATED POSSIBLY AS SOON AS AUGUST 3RD (DUB PROBABLY AUGUST 17TH) AND I'M GONNA DIE. HE LOVES THAT KID SO MUCH!!!!!

So obviously that's super sweet and all, but maybe you're thinking, "Okay, that's nice, but do they really have that Kakashi 'n' Sasuke vibe?" and to that I say, "CHECK OUT THIS SHORT VIDEO AND THEN HOPEFULLY I CAN REST MY CASE."

Also, it is now my most important goal in life to draw a Kakashi & Sasuke version of these panels so I can dedicate it to you (and padmerrie if she wants in on this):

Of course, I'm not saying Sasuke and Megumi are carbon copies of each other (or Kakashi and Gojo for that matter, as I've tried to delineate above). Megumi has a bit of a grumpy disposition, but he's also very polite; he always calls Gojo "Gojo-sensei" and he uses "-senpai" for all the upperclassmen (who he met previously to becoming a student at Jujutsu High). Megumi is the dog guy in JJK and Gojo's more reminiscent of a cat in some respects. Etc., etc., etc. But in general, I really hope you see the vision!

While I'm at it, I might as well show you the little Gojo & Yuji video that naturally gives me all the Kakashi & Naruto feelings:

Yuji's already got the jubilantly-tackle-hug-your-sensei part down! (Although, of course, Gojo's much less resistant.🥰)

It is admittedly much more of a stretch to say Nobara is Sakura-adjacent, but I have seen someone describe her as a 'gremlin child' and I love that about her! <3

Anyway, I totally get if none of this is up your alley for whatever reason or you don't have the time to get into JJK if this happens to persuade you or if you just want to prioritize other stuff right now. *I* didn't mean to get into it, after all! The plan for my looking into JJK was to be purely for enhancing my love for Kakashi, and I failed spectacularly at limiting myself to that. I just thought I would share to see if it would be a fun read for you. :)

[carnalapples]

THOUGHTS ON THE TRILOGY NOW THAT YOURE DONE!!!?? 🫂

AHH I loved it 😭 I was so emotional when I finished, and I had to take a deep breath and sit back and then play the Citadel party to stave off further Emotions. It didn't work.

I think that ME3 was my favorite game!! I think the atmosphere was amazing, in that it felt like wartime and the stakes felt so high for much of the game

I loved and hated how real it felt to keep losing friends and not be able to do anything to stop it

Plot-wise, I was not a huge fan of Cerberus as the secondary antagonist, I felt like it was a little messy and that the focus was lost

But Kaidan was back, which is excellent for morale, and the story missions, especially in the first half, were so, so good

On a more superficial note, some of the scenes/transitions really stuck with me, namely the very first one where the shot of a ship ends up being a kid playing with a toy. Also when Shepard, Liara, and Kaidan are on Mars, and the camera pans to Kaidan as they're talking about him, like ugh

I loved Tuchanka, loved the plot line with the genophage and Eve and her strength!! And Mordin, one of my favorite characters, being so committed to undoing his work but still defending what he did at the time in ME2—I just think he's so fascinating, how he defends all his decisions so quickly but it's almost like right underneath that, he's got some fear/regret. I was so sad to lose him, but I love how committed he was to the end. (And hearing his voice recordings in Citadel 🥺)

And then Rannoch! I was on the edge of my seat trying to negotiate between the geth and the quarians, and it wasn't until much later that I saw how easy it is for things to go wrong. But at the end, standing with Tali while she pictured exactly where her living room window will be: I thought it was such a beautiful moment, and I was definitely getting teary-eyed.

And of course, the Citadel coup: from the very beginning of the game, I loved the weird tension between Shepard and Kaidan, and seeing it come to a head here was just so perfect

I love that he or Ashley is one of the first people you see in the game because having that history is so good!!

I took Kaidan and Tali so many places once I could, which means I took them to the final battle, which means I am a little broken now 🥰

My biggest conclusion is that I should never be put in charge of saving the galaxy, because I had the ending slightly spoiled for me, and yet I STILL panicked when making a choice

Narratively, I like the idea of a very giving and Paragon Shepard choosing Destroy and having to live with the weight of that

Personally, I seem to be driven by fear! And the idea of being the consciousness of the Reapers forever actually sent chills down my spine, so props for that

I really think by the time I got the ending itself, I was a little numb at the idea that the games were over—I'm definitely having a fiction hangover with them, haha

I cannot believe that a year ago, I thought I wouldn't like Mass Effect!

[shina-moon-art]

Hi sorry about your screen problems you seemed eager to elaborate for my ask and to be honest I'm eager to hear your thoughts on the aftermath on Kuzan's part like I had this funny idea of Kuzan hearing about her working with Shanks and getting jealous or like if people talk shit about Ann in front of Kuzan he would freeze the area.

I even had the idea that he stops hitting on girls after Ann leaves like some try to hit on him after Ann left but he doesn't even bat an eye to them. Also do you think Nami knows about Ann? Like do you think Bell'mere would tell Nami about Ann? Wonder how Nami would react realizing Ann to be Bell mere's friend...

For Kuzan’s reaction I’ve answered that in a few asks already!! (I’m sure @justscrolling765 has as well so make sure to check their blog)

Here

And here

Honestly there’s probably more where I elaborated on it a bit more but yeah (I should honestly start a masterlist for my asks but generally if you have questions for a specific character and don’t know if I’ve answered that before you can look through their tag on my blog bec I tag everything lol)

As for if Nami knows about Ann? I personally think she does!! Bell’mere doesn’t seem the type to bring it up on her own but she’s not hiding it either. Nami and Nojiko are curious kids so I’m sure that they’ve asked about her having friends before. I think Bell’mere likes to shelter them a little from the harshness of the world but she can’t leave out the important stuff about Ann so Nami knows about Ann, the hardship, the fear, the strength. As much as Bell’mere is what Nami and Nojiko’s paragon of what a marine should be Ann also fits that because at the end of the day yes Ann was Bell’mere’s friend but she was her hero too.

(Can anyone pls tell me how writing blogs get their links into neat little lines 😭 like why does it look exactly the same as if I posted it into discord)

[itsthemattc]

First time doing something like this, but I figure it'll give me something to do between video editing sessions, plus I do want to get back into writing things, so here goes nothing.

-----------------------------------

As she walked up to the villain's warehouse, she considered her situation and the old hero that was walking alongside her. Even now, she knew this man better than she reasonably wished to know him. Her mother, father and younger brother were ambushed by a villain - an assassin in a strange three-piece suit, tattered scarf and bowler hat - when she was only six years old on that fateful evening in the quiet city streets. Said that they "knew too much" and that "Death's Shadow cannot allow you to know the truth" or something like that. The hero she was walking alongside with in present day did arrive on the scene quickly and with surprisingly little fanfare during that fateful day, but just as they had arrived...

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three gunshots from a pistol too big to be standard-issue calibre, and just like that, her family had been killed. Her mother, her father, her younger brother... they had all been killed by the villain. And this supposed paragon of justice stood by with a face of horror etched into his face, no less than 10 feet away from her, and watched it happen.

The villain had taken advantage of their collective shell-shocked states by activating some form of shadow-power to sink into the streets without a trace. Before long, all that was left was her, crying and screaming in her grief, and the hero who quickly snapped out of their stupor and used some form of special phone to warily call for an ambulance... and the coroner.

She learned the hero's name soon after the fact: Captain North Star. He was supposedly part of a government-run hero agency, the best in the country, in fact. Supposedly top of the line when it came to heroes and the world of heroics for this nation. The beacon, the gold standard to what today's generation of heroes should be.

As if that was ever true, she thought. All she saw that fateful day was a useless adult frozen up and unwilling to do anything as the killer of her entire family got away with it all. And after the fact, he probably got to go home to his own family as if the incident never happened.

It just wasn't fair.

If there was one thing she could give ol' North Star credit for, though, it was that he was the roundabout motivation for why she decided to become a hero herself, even if the man didn't know it. Sure, "Eternal Night" didn't exactly inspire hope to the masses, but fear to the criminal populace could just as easily suffice.

She had spent 20 years, being tested on with the government's specially-crafted substance to grant her superhuman strength, endurance and agility, as well as a unique ability in her specially-crafted armoured hero suit - in her case, shrouding herself head-to-toe in a dark reflector aura to block projectiles. It was apparently like this for all heroes going under that agency's wing. She spent much of the time waiting for an opportunity to go after the killer of her family.

She had been sent on minor assignments when she was first assigned to the government's top agency three months ago; stopping a midnight robbery, busting a dope ring linked to the local mafia, preventing a mugging... it all blended together after a while, and the wait for that golden chance was like an itch she couldn't quite scratch.

She had to admit, she wasn't much of a typical hero, with the jet black armoured suit and overall intimidating demeanour. But it got the job done, and the government didn't really seem to mind all that much for some reason.

Then, one day - the day before her 27th birthday, no less - they gave her that crucial major assignment that she had been waiting for.

They were finally sending her to get rid of that villain that had killed her family, all those years ago. Finally, justice could finally be brought upon them. It was interesting how similar Death's Shadow looked in the photo from that vivid memory, aside from the clear-cut aging of his facial features.

And speaking of vivid memories, a familiar-looking man walked into the meeting room where she was getting that assignment, flanked by two government officials. His suit hadn't changed at all - same blue body suit with a white star on the chest, and that stupid blue cape. His hair had greyed out since the last time they met, and he had seemingly grown a fairly developed beard of similar colour.

He was supposedly around the same age then as she was was now, meaning he had to be well in his 40's at this point - maybe even pushing his 50's. Time had definitely taken its toll on him, his best days clearly behind him.

She remembered asking her handler that all important question upon seeing him.

"What is he doing here?"

"Captain North Star was unable to apprehend Death's Shadow over 20 years ago, and the latter has remained at large ever since," he had explained. "Seeing as how we're sending you to deal with him once and for all, we figured it would be appropriate to send him along with you, given that he's reaching the end of his tenure. After all..." they had turned towards the older hero. "...he needs to make up for that crucial mistake at some point, don't you?"

He had said nothing, averting his gaze seemingly out of shame.

"We've traced his location to a warehouse near the wharf for some sort of operation he's planning to conduct, so he'll most likely be there within the next few hours. Head up there and take him down, and his reign of terror will be over by sunrise."

"...Is lethal force authorised?" she had remembered asking.

Her handler had a thin, almost knowing smile on their face at that question.

"We won't micromanage this one."

And so, they were prepared to move in on the warehouse of Death's Shadow. Two generations of heroes, there for two different reasons. She stopped before reaching the doors, causing Captain North Star to stop and turn to her.

"Do you remember them?" she asked. The implication was clear, as Captain North Star had recognised her when he was first brought into the briefing room.

"...Yes," he replied solemnly. "An incident like that... it's impossible for me to forget. His ruthlessness in the way he killed them... it was harrowing."

"You could have helped them. You should have helped them! You stood there and let them be killed!" Her voice had grown louder, bitter and vindictive as the memories flooded back.

"I know," the Captain mournfully whispered. "It should not gave ended the way it did. Even now, what I saw haunts me to this day, as it no doubt does for you. My only hope is that, one day, you'll be able to forgive me - but I will understand if you do not. All I know is that I cannot let Death's Shadow escape again - especially after I've learned just who he really is."

Uncaring towards that vague piece of information, she scowled at him before raising her fist, and with a swift turn, she punched a hole clean through the side of the warehouse, allowing the two to step through and confront the villain. She knew what needed to be done. She'd confront her family's killer. She'd even let the Captain help with taking him down.

But she wouldn't trust him.

The fight itself was a blur. Death's Shadow had supposedly made some grandiose speech about "the greater good" or some self-righteous crap like that and how she "didn't see the bigger picture", that she didn't know about the "deception" she was under. She had paid him little mind; there was only thought in her head.

Avenge my family.

So she fought, harder than she ever had done. Captain North Star pitched in with a few attempted blows at various points of the fight, but most of the work seemed to fall to her as he stood back and waited patiently for an opening that he never seemed to capitalise on.

Some things never change, she thought.

After some time fighting against the two heroes, Death's Shadow decided to bust out some sort of odd amulet to "amplify his powers". What a cliché. But it seemed to have the desired effect - her attacks were less effective, and she was struggling to deal with him effectively as she did prior. So she backed off and watched as Captain North Star tagged in to fight against him.

"Wanting to atone, Captain? Don't you think it's far too late to make amends?" he had laughed. All that did was make the old hero angry.

"It's never too late," he growled.

"Don't think I didn't see her looking at you like that. She despises you. In fact, if not for me, I'd think she'd want to kill you herself, for being an accessory to her family's murder."

She thought that over. It didn't seem entirely wrong.

"...I'm not about to let that incident be in vain, Death's Shadow. Now, or ever. I failed them once... and I'm not about to fail them again!"

"What trite," Death's Shadow concluded as he got into a battle ready stance with that large gun of his. "I guess you'll just have to learn the hard way..."

And learn the hard way he did. Even though he had to be a similar age to the villain, he completely struggled to deal with him efficiently as he landed blow after blow, barely dodging each gunshot as his superhero attire quickly fell to pieces and exposed the bruised, bloodied and scratched skin underneath. Before long, she had watched as the old hero fell to his knees, exhausted and battered. The villain took the opportunity to smash their fist into his face, knocking him flat on his back and exposing many of the injuries to the younger heroine who had been sent here with him.

"Oh, what a night I'm having..." he drawled as he stepped over to him, reloading his gun. She observed the bullets; had to at least be .50 cal. "It's nice to see history repeat itself to me - first, that family all those years ago, and you failing to stop their deaths... and now, that same girl that survived won't stop me from killing you. It all comes full circle, doesn't it?" As the villain laughed, Captain North Star looked up wearily towards Eternal Night. She stared on hatefully at him, arms crossed as she just stood there, no more than 10 feet away, impassive.

"Well?" Death's Shadow taunted the disgraced hero as he finished reloading his gun, pointing it to the man's head. "Don't you have any last words for her?"

Captain North Star paused, clearly thinking it over, before looking towards the woman he had entered here with. The woman who, at heart, was little more than the child whose family he failed, now set to further that cycle of hatred towards him for his role in preventing that tragedy.

Either she didn't know the weight of the situation at large, or she didn't care. The implication of what would happen soon after was almost suffocating to him. Even if she hated him, he didn't want what would likely happen to her after this was over.

"I'm... I'm sorry..." he finally said, wheezing for breath. "For more than just failing your family... for everything. The life of being fed hatred, contempt and the concept of vengeance... that isn't what you deserve. I wish I could have done things so much differently when it came to that day, all those years ago..."

"You think I'm suddenly going to soften up towards you by saying that? As if that'd bring them all back?!" she retorted.

"...Maybe not," he admitted. "You just want to see vengeance be brought out for your family... not just against him... but against me, too. But... you have to understand... there's something about all of this that you need to know - D-Death's Shadow, he's--"

BANG!

Before she could even comprehend it, Death's Shadow had blown Captain North Star's head open, killing him instantly and bringing his legacy to an unceremonious close. She was a little surprised - not at the act itself, but mainly just how abrupt it was. Soon, the villain drew himself back up to his full height as he stood over the fresh corpse of the old hero.

"One down... one to go..." he said tauntingly. "I hope seeing that was worthwhile. It's a shame you won't get long to comprehend it." And with that, he was pointing the gun at her, intent on doing the same thing to her what she did to the deceased Captain North Star. "Hope you say hi to your mom and dad for me!"

She smirked, a sudden plan having formed in her head.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she goaded him. "Why don't you find out?"

It was the perfect bait. As Death's Shadow fired his gun, she had activated her suit's reflector shield. The bullet bounced straight off of the shielding covering her head, piercing through not just the villain's chest, but the amulet around his neck. With its power drained, the confidence in the assassin suddenly turned to fear as he fell to the floor, clutching his chest to cover the bullet wound as she approached him.

"W-Wait...!" he pleaded desperately as she soon loomed over him. "I know things! L-lots and lots of things! So... maybe we can make a deal...?"

A superpowered fist to the face answered that question swiftly.

And just like that, it was over. Her family had been avenged - in the sense of the killer and the "hero" that let it happen.

She had called for an ambulance and the coroner, letting them know that it was safe to move in and secure whatever else he may have been stashing in the warehouse. She watched as the bleeding Death's Shadow was cuffed and placed in the back of an ambulance - an ambulance that would no doubt be joined by a police convoy soon enough. Either he'd rot in jail for the rest of his life, bleed out on the way to prison, or be placed on Death Row. Any of those options suited her just fine. She paid little mind to the agents fumbling around in his pockets and pulling some sort of small device out from the folds of his suit. It almost looked like a USB stick. Weird.

She then watched with a strange level of interest as a white sheet was placed over Captain North Star's body and placed in the back of the coroner's van. It wasn't his dead body that made her feel strange, it was the reaction - or lack thereof - of the hero agency's government-assigned agents watching on and assisting the medical personnel to load him in. As much as she hated him for his part in her family's death, she knew he had a big reputation as part of the "Golden Generation of Heroes" or something like that. She'd have thought they'd have more of a reaction to such a death than the stoic, almost impassive looks they were sporting.

She would have been all too willing to simply tell them that he had died against the villain and she avenged him if they had asked about it. It wouldn't have even been a complete lie, either.

A glint out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Looking down at the source, she saw a bloodied tie pin on the floor. Taking it into her hands, she examined it closely and saw a familiar logo with familiar words:

United States Government.

But before she could contemplate it further, she felt a tranquiliser dart hit her in the back of the neck, and her whole world went dark soon after.

When she came to, she was in some sort of high-tech cell - somewhat like a prison cell, except the bars were replaced by special force fields. Her first instinct was that she was imprisoned by another villain or left to the wolves by the hero's agency. But, as she got out of the bed she was lying in, her handler walked up to the cell with a smile on his face.

"Glad to see you're finally awake, Eternal Night," he spoke cordially. "Apologies for the method that we used to get you here, but we weren't ready to take any chances. We only wished to talk to you once you were calm and of sound mind."

"Where the hell am I?" she asked him grumpily.

"You're in one of the agency's specially-charted holding cells for the heroes placed under our wing," he explained. "It's usually just a precautionary measure for certain scenarios - after the Death's Shadow incident, we weren't sure what sort of state you were going to be in, so we simply decided to pacify you and bring you here. Do not be alarmed, by the way - this will hopefully not be permanent. You should be let out before long."

She wasn't sure she liked how calm her handler was right now.

"It's weird," she spoke up. "Given how it ended back at the wharf, I'd have thought you wouldn't be so... happy."

"Why wouldn't we be?" her handler asked. "Death's Shadow is unlikely to survive for too long, given the gunshot wound he received as well as the shards of amulet inside the wound - though not being able to recover said amulet was a pity--"

"And what about Captain North Star?" she asked, her unease starting to grow. "Doesn't his death... y'know... bother you at all?"

Her handler had paused at the question, as if contemplating what exactly to say, before regaining their composure.

"The Captain's demise was... unfortunate, yes," he explained carefully. "But, given his age and the fact that he was reaching the end of his hero career anyway, it was likely that he would have met with a terrible fate sooner or later."

Her eyebrow raised at that, and with that, she got up to walk towards the barrier separating her from her handler.

"You seem way too calm about all of this. Same with those agents back at the warehouse during the clean-up," she told him.

"I think we've all come to accept that his time as the Golden Boy of our line of heroes came to an end many moons ago. Either way, I hope you'll recover fully within the next few hours. We'll send some medics to check up on you and run some tests on your well-being. With any luck, you should be out by around 4PM." And with that, the handler turned to leave.

That sense of unease was continuing to gnaw at her, though. And it was at that point that she remembered just what she saw before she got hit by that dart - and what it implied.

"Death's Shadow was a former government agent, wasn't he?" she called out to her handler. He had stopped, turning back in confusion as he walked back to see her. "I found that tie pin before I was knocked out. It had blood on it. The pin belonged to him, didn't it?"

"...Well..." the handler suddenly looked awkward. "...Yes, I suppose that is the case. Although I'm not sure 'former' is the correct word to use for him..."

"...What...?" What on earth did he mean by that?

"Allow us to explain, Hawkins."

Before she could fully comprehend it, a man flanked by two burly guards came into view. He looked the very definition of the "sleazy politician" archetype; even down to the greying hair and multiple wrinkles slowly engulfing his face.

"Who is this guy?" she asked with an air of suspicion in her voice.

"The name's Alexander Grayson of the CIA," he introduced himself. "I'm the one who the government put in place to help keep tabs on the whole 'hero' business. Helped to relay information to and from the government to each of the agencies across the country." He peered at the heroine inside the cell as she stared incredulously back.

Of course she didn't see the bigger picture, he thought.

"The man you knew as Death's Shadow is--well, was, more in line of being a rogue agent," he explained to her. "We originally had him on to snuff out people who knew too much. Since he had an obsession with comic book characters and the like, we decided to let him play along with his little fantasy. Gave him the same sort of serum that we now use on heroes we sign on these days. Soon, he became Death's Shadow, the most infamous assassin in US history since John Wilkes Booth, and we simply pretended that he was a rogue criminal mastermind to help keep up that image while making it seem believable."

She had listened in on the explanation, but the fact that he mentioned people that knew too much unlocked that core memory two decades ago, when she first crossed paths with the villain in question. When Death's Shadow had said the exact same thing to her father.

And it suddenly clicked.

"So... you're trying to tell me... that..." she choked up on the realisation. "You were the ones who ordered the hit on my family...?" She looked horrified at the implication. Her handler, to his credit, also looked somewhat uneasy. Grayson, on the other hand, was impassive.

"It may well have been classed as a tragedy," he dismissively explained. "But it had to be done. Your father in particular was a piece of work in that regard; every dark secret the government held over the past 50 years was being slowly collected by him when he used to work under us; nuclear launch data, the darker actions of our soldiers fighting overseas, information gathered by our intelligence agencies over the Internet, and much more."

She gawked at this information - she'd vaguely remembered her father working an "important job" back before the event that took him away from her, but she didn't think it was government-level. Then again, it did explain the fact that they moved houses a lot in the time she knew them. They never stayed in one city for too long.

"We ended up finding out about it, and he realised we were onto him before we could apprehend him. He took the data he collected with him and fled from his job, making sure to hide himself and his family away where he felt we wouldn't follow him to. It was at that point that we realised that he was too dangerous to be left alive - not with that wealth of information he took with him. It would upend the United States as we know it and descend it into a second Civil War - or worse. And so we assigned Death's Shadow to take him down."

"He took... he took my mom away from me, too..." she whimpered, not looking much of the image of a hardened heroine at the moment as tears started to well in her eyes. "A-and my younger brother... he was no more than four, damn it...!"

"Well, sacrifices have to be made for a better tomorrow," he plainly responded with a dismissive wave of the hand, ignoring the hateful glares sent his way by Eternal Night. "It would take a while to fully recover every last thing your father stole from us inside that data packet, so Death's Shadow ultimately came up with a plan to help us save face. To make it seem like the perfect story of vengeance against a villain and a corrupt hero, he willingly spared you when he killed off your family in line of sight of Captain North Star. We made sure to filter you into the hero system to cater to your wishes, and made sure you were ready to take him down." At this point, a grin stretched onto his face. "And you certainly delivered, and then some. We recovered the data, which at this point has been destroyed, and all potential threats to the operation were dealt with, too."

Her eyes widened at that last remark.

"W-what do you mean by that...?" she asked timidly.

"Oh, please, did you really think we didn't know what happened?" Grayson replied haughtily. "Did you not think we were aware of you letting Captain North Star be killed off by Death's Shadow before delivering the required force to neutralise him, too?"

"...S-So... so you want me to confess to letting him be killed, is that what you want?" she suddenly found an urge to fight as she stared him down. "You want me to be your patsy and take the heat for you? To be thrown in jail now that I've outlived your usefulness?!"

Grayson laughed at the tirade.

"Why on earth would we want to do that?" he asked. "You've been such a great asset to us, dealing with the both of them so efficiently. So we're planning on making sure any potential case against you never makes it to court. We wouldn't want you wasting away in jail - not when we have bigger things planned for you."

Her anger subsided again, this time for confusion (not for the first time, she noticed).

"Wait... 'dealing with the both of them' how...?" She stared at him quizzingly. "I... I get that you didn't want Death's Shadow turning against you, but what beef did you have with Captain North Star...?"

"Well..." Grayson adjusted his tie. "On his off-time, he decided to do some research into the matter he was called to investigate regarding Death's Shadow and his hits. Poking his nose where it doesn't belong, as it were. He soon found out the truth about why your family was killed, seemingly for the reason it haunted him for all that time. He then recently found out the truth about Death's Shadow and his ties to the government, too, about one month before the assignment you've just been on. At that point, he simply knew too much as well, same as your father. So he had to be silenced. But we couldn't do that ourselves; otherwise, people would be asking questions. The right questions, at that. But you?" he laughed again. "You were the perfect antidote for our little problem."

Her eyes widened again in shock and horror at the realisation of just what he was saying. It... it couldn't be true, could it?

Grayson chuckled again at the look on her face, as if sensing what she was thinking at that moment in time.

"Oh, come on, Eternal Night. Did you really think it was some divine coincidence that he was assigned as your partner on that case? Some sort of sick and twisted joke at your expense?" He stepped a little closer to get a better look at her as he took in her facial expressions. "It was a slow but perfectly calculated move by us, nothing more and nothing less. We knew how you felt about him - you were very open about your feelings regarding him when you were being trained, after all - and we knew that you felt he had responsibility regarding your family's demise. And we simply knew you wanted to take him to task as much as you wanted to do the same for your family's killer. But we took one simple chance: that you would let Captain North Star die or kill him yourself, and for Death's Shadow to be brought down so that we could recover the data he took. And that chance paid off down to the very last cent. Granted, it's a shame we won't be able to use his services further... But why focus on him, when we'll soon have you?"

The truth, and all that entailed, was pushing down on her like a ton of bricks. Tears started to fall down her cheeks as she fell to her knees, still trying to comprehend just what she had learned.

"And I know it'll be tempting to break off from us," he continued, leaning down to look her in the eyes. "To try and tell the public about what really happened. But you won't do that. After all, we wouldn't want that cycle of vengeance to keep going and necessitate us getting rid of you, would we? No, we don't want something like that! Not with such a promising prospect like you. And just to sweeten the deal..." he made a pinching motion with his thumb and middle finger, rubbing them back and forth. "...We will multiply your current hero salary by six times the amount you're paid now. We don't make those sorts of deals lightly, young lady."

There was no response from the heroine on the other side of the barrier, no sign that she had acknowledged anything he had just said, as she stared blankly ahead of her in shock.

"I think she may need some time to process what's been told to her," her handler, Hawkins, spoke up as he faced the CIA agent. "I'm sure she'll come to an agreement somewhere down the line."

"I hope so," he replied. "I really hope so. The Golden Age is long over. The Future Age will soon be upon us. And heroes like her will be perfect for it..." And with that, he motioned to his guards to follow him as they left. Hawkins watched them leave before turning back to the woman in the cell.

"I hope you make a decision on your future soon, Eternal Night," he told her calmly. "For now, I'll leave you to process your thoughts." He turned to leave, before an expression adorned his face as if he just remembered something, before turning back to her and added, "...and happy birthday, by the way."

And before she knew it, he was gone, too. She was all alone with her thoughts as she knelt in her holding cell. And her thoughts were terrifying her.

Her mind was able to piece it together, bit by bit. Her life had been upended not just by a villain, but by the very government she was effectively working for now. Her family, killed off because her dad knew too much. The killer, a secret government agent willing to sacrifice themselves to keep the truth from ever being discovered by the public.

And soon, her mind drifted to the late Captain North Star.

The hero who she thought was so incompetent - or corrupt - that he was willing to stand idly by and let a family be killed off in front of him so that he wouldn't risk his own neck. The hero who she was assigned as a partner against her wishes. The hero who wanted to put an end to Death's Shadow and yet was as passive then as he was all those years ago.

The hero she had been manipulated into getting rid of.

The tears intensified at the memories combined with what she knew now. All the images she had projected onto him of being an incompetent blowhard that would let people die on his watch, and in the end, he was little more than an old man full of regret. She may have felt incensed before about his inaction that day, and on the night of his death... but she soon came to the conclusion that he was every bit a victim in this as she was. He had been trying to do the right thing for as much of the journey as he could, even standing his ground against her family's killer when it was almost certain he wouldn't win in his old age. And he had been repaid with scorn, hatred and an undignified death. One that she hadn't even cared about when she saw it unfold, even thinking it was justice at that point in time.

She had been wrong about him the whole time, and now she couldn't take it back, or forgive him, or say he was right, or apologise for being so awful to him, because he died--no, he had been killed by her own thirst for vengeance and unwillingness to believe his sincere grief over what had happened and his want to put things right. And it had all been planned in advance for knowing things that his handlers didn't want him to know.

Just like her father, all those years ago.

She felt a little dubious about her status as a "hero" back when she was new to the agency, but now? She definitely didn't feel like one at all. She felt herself as being little more than the government's weapon that ultimately brought Captain North Star and Death's Shadow to their graves, so that they could cover up horrible truths about their nation.

All that manipulation and the death of goodness knows how many innocent people. All just to save their own skins.

She continued to kneel there, tears openly flowing at the memory of her family and of the hero she let die by that same villain's hands, her grief and sadness aimed at her callous, vindictive behaviour towards him as one simple thought echoed in her head throughout the rest of the day and the days to come:

"What have I done...?"

As a child a hero stood by as your family was slaughtered, too afraid to intervene. Now as an adult you are a hero yourself. One day the government assigns you a partner to take down a villain, the exact one who killed your family and your partner is the hero who allowed it to happen.

[merryfortune]

glad you ran away

Written for the Rarest of Rare Pairs Fic-a-Thon Dreamwidth

Prompt: Any: Any/Any(/Any+) - runaway 

Title: glad you ran away

Ship: Kurode/Myunna

Fandom: Fragaria Memories

Word Count: 1,237

Rating: G

Warning: None

Tags: Fluff, Handholding, Dialogue Heavy, Declarations of Love

   Myunna listened intently to the story that Kurode spun.

   It had its highs and lows, tragedy and comedy, but it was all his. His story, his past. He wanted to share it with Myunna, the least he could do since they had become so close in such a short span of time. It would mean a lot to Kurode to get it all off his chest as he strove towards the confidence that he seeked so he could ask Lord Kuromi for her Accolade.

   Speaking of his older brother and his journey from the Red Continent to the Blue had Kurode trembling in his fingers. He was a private person, for the most part, so exposing himself like that was a bit nerve wracking. Though Myunna had done nothing but rightfully earn his trust, the vulnerability required spooked Kurode. 

   Regardless, what was that saying? That a burden shared is a burden halved. Perhaps it was possible for Kurode to learn something from airing out his own problems to a kind, listening ear such as Myunna’s.

   It was even possible that he might learn something from Myunna as Myunna had already earned Lord Cogimyuun’s Accolade - and Myunna was not exactly a shining beacon of courage. He was kind, yes, and talented with healing magic but he was not a paragonic knight like others that they had met. Instead, he was talented in his own unique and special way.

   Kurode envied that. He concluded that there was strength in variety and so, he hoped whatever made him weak, could make him strong, too. Just like with Myunna and his crybaby antics.

   As Kurode finished up his tale, already, he could feel his load lighten. His chest didn’t seem quite so constricted, his tongue not quite so tied now either since he had laid his past bare to Myunna who nodded along to the haphazard flow of events. The little things that had turned into a big thing with big consequences.

   “So. That’s it. That’s everything that happened to me prior to meeting you here in Kuromi’s kingdom.” Kurode said.

   He finished up awkwardly. Kurode rubbed the back of his neck and couldn’t look at Myunna for fear of disappointing him. Instead, he looked at his shoes, he flexed his toe so that his boot would bow. Anything to distract from how he worried that he would come across as a coward or some other creature to be pitied rather than as someone who deserved to be a squire. 

   It was a lot to take in but Kurode had no doubt that Myunna would be sympathetic as he processed. It was merely his nature to be worried, no matter how irrational. 

   “Wow…” Myunna breathed at last.

   “Yeah…” Kurode mumbled.

   “Myunna is surprised to learn that you are not from the Blue Continent at all… And yes, you fit in so well with everyone here as though you were born among us.” Myunna gasped and marvelled.

   Kurode shrugged. He didn’t have much explanation for that. The Red and Blue Continents were both home to people who were kind and outgoing, the sorts who welcomed anyone with open arms and welcomed them like they were long lost family. Sure, they had their quirks and differences in culture but for the most, it was a pleasant transition despite the turbulence that caused it.

   He couldn’t really pick one over the other in terms of favouritism. The My Melody Kingdom was always going to be his homeland but the Kuromi Kingdom had become Kurode’s heartland nonetheless as he endeavoured to swear himself to its lord. 

   “So, what do you think?” Kurode asked. “Any wisdom you want to share as a knight born and bred of the Blue Continent?”

   Then, without missing a beat, “Myunna is glad you ran away.” Myunna announced. 

   And all without a hint of patriotism, either. Myunna’s cadence was pure with care and compassion for Kurode. Even so, Kurode had not been expecting such a trumpetting from his dear companion.

   Kurode’s shoulders prickled and he straightened up. He sat slovenly on his bed, Myunna adjacent to him, perched on a chair at his desk. Myunna beamed as he met Kurode’s surprised expression.

   “You are?” Kurode asked, incredulous.

   “Mm, mm, Myunna is.” Myunna replied, sing-song. “It sounds to Myunna, you were not getting the care and support that you deserved. Your brother was taking all the sunlight and nutrients. How were you meant to compete with that, Kurode?”

   “Oh, I, uh guess.” Kurode mumbled.

   “It’s just like gardening! We all need some place we can thrive, where we can get all the ingredients we need to be nourished and Myunna is glad that the Blue Continent and Kuromi’s Kingdom can be that place for you.” Myunna explained, blithe. “Of course, Myunna is sad that running away to a whole new country is preferable to being in your brother’s shadow… and Myunna does hope Kurode can reconcile with his brother but… Until that day, Myunna is glad you ran away.”

   Kurode hazarded a smile and looked at Myunna. His fluffy blonde hair was haloed by the mid-afternoon sunlight coming through the translucent, purple curtains of his quarters. He looked cherubic in how kind and thoughtful he was, conveying himself how only he could - and so sweetly, too. Ever earnest and true. 

   Kurode felt his heart skip a beat, his hand moved to his pulse in his chest. He could feel it, on his fingertips. He was glad that he had run away as well now. 

   “Thank you, Myunna.” Kurode said.

   Myunna got up, his loose and frilly clothes flounced and bounced around him and he came closer. He took Kurode’s hands and held them. He played with them slightly as he tried to cheer Kurode up. The nervous tension had passed and for it, praise and consolation was needed - or so thought Myunna. Kurode didn’t mind. 

   It was exactly such affection that was further making him glad that he had run away, after all. Especially if it meant he would become all but destined to have met Myunna.

   “Myunna hopes you are able to find the confidence that you seek here in the Blue Continent.” Myunna wished him all the best with a shining smile.

   “Thank you, Myunna. I love it here - and I love it here with you, in particular.” Kurode replied.

   Myunna stiffened, as though shocked that Kurode could be as equally sweet with him as he could. He turned embarrassed, a fluster to his face and he looked away. Kurode chuckled at his expense and tightened his grip on Myunna’s hands, not letting him slip away in modesty.

   “I mean it.” Kurode insisted. “I love it here, with you, and Lord Kuromi, the trainees. It truly feels like home to me, more than the Red Continent ever did. You mean the world to me, Myunna, as the first to love me in any kingdom, any continent.”

   “Myu-Myuna is glad to hear it.” Myunna squeaked.

   Kurode smiled. That really was the word of the hour: glad, and how it entwined with his act of rebellion, of running away. For so long, it had felt like a cowardly retreat and betrayal of the realm which had reared him but not anymore. Not when it earned something akin to an accolade from his beloved Myunna whom he would never have met otherwise. 

   He truly did love Myunna - and the Blue Continent at large.

[folksaga-if]

“It is a long story, and it does no credit to anyone: there is murder in it, and trickery, lies and foolishness, seduction and pursuit.                                                                                           Listen."

                               - Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

You are a human. A totally normal one.

Honestly.

You’re a human. You’re a bartender, which is a very normal job for a human to have, and when you walk down the winding streets of Akureyri you can blend seamlessly into any crowd of people which is, without question, only something that a human could do.

The fact that you came here two years ago with nothing but the clothing on your back doesn’t mean anything; you’re hardly northern Iceland’s first wayfaring soul. That you had no money to your name, no friends or family to speak of — that’s a fairly average human thing, too. And that little craving you have, that quiet urge to dig your teeth into any passing stranger’s throat? It's completely, entirely mundane.

It’s manageable. You’re managing.

Or you were, until someone — someone who's decidedly not as good at this human thing as you are — begins leaving a trail of dead bodies at your doorstep, and a trio of god-like siblings take a seat at your bar.

(Ragnarök might have marked the end of the Norns, but that doesn't mean your fate died along with them.)

MAGNI THORSON .

No doubt the mightiest of his siblings, the eldest child of Thor is exactly the sort of person you would expect him to be: a giant (half-giant, in fact) asshole with a smoulder and a knife-sharp jawline to match. He’ll match your every word with a cocky grin and a joke that’s nowhere near as funny as he thinks, and he’ll look every inch the prince that he is all the while.

(Well, the prince that he was. Just don’t let him hear you say that.)

MODI THORSON .

For the supposed embodiment of his father’s wrath, the God of Thunder’s second son is surprisingly…not that. He’s no picnic, mind you — he’s broody, he’s secretive, and he's fucking intense, but that hardly equates to fury incarnate. You’re sure there’s something hiding under that moody surface; whether or not you want to uncover it is a different story entirely.

(Looks like even gods aren’t immune to middle-child syndrome. Who knew?)

THRÚD THORSDÓTTIR .

Valkyrie, seidhr, paragon of strength — with all of her mother’s best traits (and a few of her father’s worst), is it any wonder that Thor’s youngest child was also his favourite? Smarter than her half-brothers and more likeable by a longshot, you might find yourself forgetting how easily the fortune-telling goddess could break you in two. You might, but she’ll be happy to remind you if you do.

(Maybe a little too happy, in fact.)

KATLA B̶͍̏L̸̝͑O̵̟͠M̴̳̓Q̴̯̔V̵̺͆I̷̗͛S̵̠͒T̸̬̒ .

A fellow nomad and your coworker at Black Thunder, the first friend you made in Akureyri has remained your closest. Mischevious, magnetic, and often up to no small amount of trouble, there are times when you think you might know Katla better than you know yourself. You even know about her…well, you know that she…sorry, what were you talking about again?

(It's just that it’s nice, being close to someone who’s so very human.)

THE MARE .

There’s a voice in your head and a shadow in your dreams, and they’re telling you to run. You probably shouldn’t trust them.

(…Right?)

Customize your monster character. New life, new you! Choose your gender identity, change your name, cut your hair, and remember: if you’re starting to grow tired of running from your past, try on a new outfit and start running faster.

Play as one of three runway creatures from Norse mythology — a cunning keeper of the forest, a charming warden of the lake, or a formidable guardian of the mountains. Each has its quirks (would you prefer a hollowed-out tree for a back, or webbed fingers and forearms covered in scales?), but they all have two key things in common: they’ll kill to protect their homes, and you’re definitely not one of them.

Choose your own fate, out of the countless that are presented to you. Had oatmeal instead of skyr with your breakfast this morning? You might have just brought about Ragnarök 2.0. Nice one, asshole.

Multiple romance options, with each available to pursue regardless of your gender or background. Ever wanted to kiss a god under a starry sky? Now's your chance! Or maybe you’re through with immortal beings and desperate to ask the pretty server on a date? Go for it! She’s definitely a human too. Totally. You’d be able to tell if she wasn’t. Wouldn’t you?

Save the world — or don’t. It's your choice, and isn't that what true freedom is all about?

Folksaga is inspired by The Edda, Norse mythology, and Twin Peaks, with a bit of tweaking to the myths as needed for the sake of plot. MC backgrounds have been adjusted to fit for all players regardless of gender identity, and creative liberty has been taken with some smaller points for a smoother storytelling experience. All changes will be explained in an FAQ post (too be added in the links below ASAP!)

The current demo consists of the prologue (introductory lore + character creation), which is about 20k words. I plan to post it in the next few weeks, after some edits + the completion of chapter one!

I expect it to be somewhere in the range of 600,000 to 700,000 words, but this is subject to change (and likely will due to my propensity for rambling text. oops.).

I’ve written  short and long-form original fiction as well as a lot of fanfic (say hello @ pentaghastly on AO3, and @kendallroynsfw on tumblr!), but this is my first IF! Bugs and coding issues may appear in the demo; please let me know if any issues arise during your playthroughs.

Folksaga is a work in progress. I would love constructive feedback when the demo is posted, as well as any bugs or grammar issues to be brought to my attention if I've missed them :) I would also love patience, because I'm a full time health care worker who gets sleepy lots xoxo

A Swedish farmer named Sven Andersson was executed in 1691 for having intercourse with a mountain nymph, or bergsrå. I will neither confirm or deny if his Wikipedia article was the inspiration for this IF, except I will confirm it and it definitely was.

MC ORIGINS | RO INTROS | demo coming soon!

[bethanydelleman]

Don’t Read Pride and Prejudice Again (Try a Different Austen)

I have written promotions for the other novels, but no one needs encouragement to read P&P. So if the lessers must rise, the greatest must fall. So here is EVERYTHING WRONG with Pride & Prejudice. (To be clear, this is satire! I love P&P)

The proposal scenes are totally unbalanced. We get every single CRINGEWORTHY word of Mr. Collins’s terrible proposal, we get exactly one line of Darcy and then “he spoke well” but what did he SAY Miss Austen? Cruel authoress! and absolutely nothing from the cutest couple: Jane and Bingley. (Want the outpouring of the main character’s heart? Try Persuasion)

Too many coincidences! Unless Mr. Darcy is a Time Lord (love you, Doctor Who), there is no way he can always show up at exactly the right time. He arrives when Georgiana is about to elope, comes one day early so he can run into Elizabeth at Pemberley, and walks in THE VERY MOMENT when Elizabeth reads the letter from Jane about Wickham and Lydia. And I’m not even going to get into how very convenient it is that Elizabeth’s estranged cousin knows Darcy’s aunt. Try harder Jane Austen! (To read a book without coincidences, try Mansfield Park).

For a strong heroine, Elizabeth Bennet faces almost no real difficulties. Elinor Dashwood has to deal with her father’s death, but Mr. Bennet just goes on living. Fanny Price must stand strong after rejecting a proposal, but Elizabeth has her father and sister's support after rejecting Mr. Collins. Anne must wait 8 years to be reunited with her true love, Elizabeth waits like 5 weeks. Catherine Morland must travel alone all the way home and wait six months for Henry’s father to approve their marriagr, Elizabeth always travels accompanied and marries as soon as she wishes. Emma has to spend weeks convincing her father that marriage to Knightley is a good idea, Mr. Bennett consents before his daughter even talks to him. It’s easy to be strong when nothing bad ever happens to you, Elizabeth! (You want real strength, read Sense & Sensibility, Elinor is a paragon or Mansfield Park)

Darcy is the least likeable leading man in existence. He makes fun of the Bennets behind their backs, he’s arrogant, he’s snobby, he’s a know-it-all, and he thinks he has the right to make decisions about his friends’ love lives. He is so terrible at flirting that Elizabeth spends half of the book thinking that he hates her. Okay... even I can’t go this far when Rochester and Heathcliff exist. Let’s just say Darcy needs some serious work at the beginning. (If you want a really lovable leading man, try Northanger Abbey. Henry Tilney forever!)

Pride & Prejudice is not long or conclusive enough! I need far more pride and extended prejudice. Why can we not learn the fates of Georgiana, Kitty, and Mary? Why only two measly weddings at the end of the book? I know Jane Austen is capable of three! (For a longer book that leaves every single eligible character married, try Emma)

Good heroines are passe, anti-heroines is where it's really at! Elizabeth Bennet being nice and good is boring. (Try Lady Susan for delicious evil)

Pride & Prejudice, not as good as you thought!

Don’t forget Emma, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, and even Lady Susan.

[infomantis]

ok I've been thinking on this one for a day embarassingly and here's my rough conclusion: it all depends on four factors, which I'll get into in a moment. Let's say as a hypothetical scenario the prime minister bombs the shit out of Souboutei and then sends in the backup plan, which in this case is Goku instead of the military, some kids, and a bunch of volunteer freaks. I'm also gonna count the dragonballs out in this situation because having to use those to deal with a house would be embarrassing, and also that's less "Goku" and more "setting element" First factor is "How does Goku approach the situation", which is to say "is the house an enemy or a demolition project". Goku's not going to go full strength on an opponent that he has no idea what can do, while if it's just a house then yeah he'll hit it with an energy blast or two and probably cause major, horrific spoiler problems for reasons related to why the bombs didn't work, which would probably count as "losing" in terms of not actually completing the goal of Destroying Souboutei without everyone on the planet dying. Assuming he tries to figure out what the house's deal is, we'll move onto factor two. Second factor is "can he/would he ask for outside help by the rules", because Souboutei isn't exactly something most people could beat up by themselves. Goku's allies have a lot of spiritual, scientific, and other prowess between them, but also tend to tag along in person and will probably fall various levels of prey to the Horrors, which would likely devolve into a massive clusterfuck and generally very bad results if anyone that can fly fast enough/instant transmission gets the horrors. For the sake of argument I'm gonna say Goku's alone on this one, which is probably the best case scenario. Third factor is "Does Goku have trauma that can be exploited". This is kind of similar to the second one, except that it's more of a singular failure point. Dragonball's no stranger to brainwashing/bodyjacking plots by any means, but for obvious reasons a gag manga turned into a fighing manga tends to not touch that much on trauma, except for like, broly, so my limited-ish experience with dragonball of only reading Dragonball and Z leaves me guessing that the only major trauma he had that he didn't solve with a powerup is probably killing his adoptive grandfather by accident by turning into an ape, and even that's something he might have worked out by now. Assuming he doesn't cause if goku's got then it's over, we move to the fourth and funniest factor, which is Can Goku Beat Deido In A Fight More specifically, can Goku beat Deido in a fight or otherwise stop him from being able to make more paintings, and also destroy any that currently exist before or very quickly after that, and more specifically figure out that this is what's required to Destroy Souboutei. This is interesting because despite Deido's assortment of goofy ass powers not standing a chance against Goku in classic powerscaling fashion, just beating the shit out of him will in fact make the problems notably worse unless measures are taken. Unfortunately, the hero here is Goku, paragon of not thinking very hard about these things. Even if he makes it to this point, there's basically no way that he could destroy souboutei conventionally. ...which is to say, there's one unconventional way he could do this, and it's jumping into a painting mario wahoo style (or other method of locating it and then using instant transmission to get there), and blowing up the alien planet, then turning the mansion into a fine dust afterward. Make do with what you have, Goku. CONCLUSION: NOT LIKELY TBH BUT POSSIBLE, ALSO PROBABLY ONE OF THE BETTER OPTIONS SOMEHOW, SOUBOUTEI IS ROUGH AS HELL

I hold the strong opinion that asking the question "could X character beat Y game/scenario" is entirely different and radically more interesting than power scaling. goku sure couldn't beat infra but the mario brothers? lots of room for pondering there

could goku destroy souboutei

[theseerasures]

What are askboxes for if not for shamelessly enabling your friends so please do tell us about Winter's technician vs Weiss's performer

what’s so interesting about Winter and Weiss specifically wrt this trope is that it’s usually the performer who is the Prodigy while the technician is, idk, some hapless second banana who has to work twice as hard just to keep up and has to learn to Let Go and Have Fun or whatever the fuck

it's not that Winter DOESN'T need to learn those things, but the subtext is fairly overt in painting her as the prodigy out of the two of them. she's the oldest, the paragon, the chosen heiress (though in retrospect as the Heir and also Not the Boy she was probably the Unfavorite for both Willow and Jacques). her little tutoring session with Weiss in season 3 reads very much as "why isn't this coming naturally to you it did for me," and every scene she's in during that season paints her as "Weiss, but the Finished Version, who can make it look easy."

Weiss certainly sees (or...saw) her that way. even beyond incredibly obvious hints (mirror help me who am i--Winter!), it's amazing to return to episodes prior to Winter's introduction after we meet her, because only then does it become clear that her fingerprints are all over Weiss. remember i'm not perfect! not yet? or her first combat encounter: head up, shoulders back, right foot forward--not that forward--early Weiss placed so much importance on having the Exact Right Technique, Executing an Attack at the Right Moment, not a hair out of place, and now that we've gotten a fuller sense of Winter's fighting style...

we can see exactly where she got it from. (i made a gif y'all!)

this entire sequence lasts less than four seconds. Ironwood halts her Summon in its tracks, forcing both Winter and Oscar off; Winter pauses her momentum in midair by...idk, the power of anime, fires three icicles from a Glyph, simultaneously pushing off it so she lands before Oscar, even though Oscar DIDN'T stop for a counterattack, and then--without even looking--sends another Glyph to catch Oscar and propel him forward.

some of this bullshit you can definitely just attribute to Rule of Cool, but the point is that this is Winter at Her Best, the Winter that Weiss wanted to be: not a single second or gesture wasted, not a hair out of place. i've already waxed pretentious on why it's so significant that we only see her like this now where in every prior fight she's been ruffled and defensive, but it's relevant here too; Weiss wanted to believe that the Winter we see here is Pure Uncut Winter Schnee, but WE know that's not true.

this has nothing to do with talent. Winter definitely has that in spades, and who knows? maybe she IS more naturally gifted than Weiss, but the point is that she had to discipline it. Winter at her best is Winter honed to a sharp point (the point of a bullet, or the tip of a sword); streamlined and optimized and stripped of all excess, all maddening sloppy touches. she is above all controlled, but her control, as far as we can tell, extends (just like in out of combat situations) to one thing at a time. she is either attacking herself or helping others attack, and she does not give ground. every second is used to press the offense.

so it makes sense why she's dismissive of Weiss and her at least three strikes missed, but it also makes sense why Weiss a) had so much difficulty doing what Winter does and b) has since given up on it to pursue her own style. Weiss was never intended to be anything more than the spare, meant to generate press and money through her artsy performer gig. this was deeply damaging to her self-image, especially when she compared herself to Winter, but it also gave Weiss more room to be the unruly creative, and that's the part she ultimately chooses to nurture.

Weiss Schnee does not move laterally on the battlefield. she spins and pirouettes around in a FUCKING DRESS, she stabs and slashes her sword with relish (though one suspects Winter taught her that part, along with the yelling), and despite months of practice now her Summoning (in contrast to her sister, who once Summoned a Manticore while plummeting to her death) still takes time and a lot of Intense Posing. but she is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, because she's compensated for those flourishes, and then some. Winter controls the players, with herself as the principle; Weiss controls the entire stage. she creates environmental hazards. she obfuscates. she buffs her friends. she does a twirl before nuking Marrow with four fireballs at once, because she trusts her own ability--and that of her team--to keep the enemy occupied for the duration of the performance.

and at this point performing is a choice. if Weiss had wanted to keep emulating Winter, she could have done it, but at some point she decided not to. at some point she decided to turn what she'd thought was a weakness into a strength. at some point she decided to take the ways her family wounded her, the role they forced her into, and make it her own, and make it willfully, joyfully, into art.

Winter...hasn't allowed herself that luxury. for Winter, her Semblance--and the family, the name, that are inextricable from it--it cannot be anything more than a tool. to think of it as anything else would mean letting it control her, hurt her, but it is too valuable to discard entirely. the only thing she can do is put it to good use.

it's how she thinks about every part of her, in the end.