#Thou... this kind of quest would be really cool...

[fa113nm00n]

My brain decided to come up with the outline of a quest/questline related to this... XD The WoL hears a small whisper from their Azem Crystal. A voice begging for oblivion. Moments later, the WoL gets engulfed in light and when they come to, they at first don't understand what happened. However, it doesn't take long for them to realize they're in another world. A world just like their own, but with a difference... they aren't this world's Warrior of Light. Not knowing what else to do, the WoL gets in contact with the Scions of this world. Hoping they would be willing to help. And lucky for WoL, they are. So they start to try figuring out why WoL came to this parallel world and how to send them back to their own. But as the WoL continues to interract with the Scions, they realize something... Something horrible had happened to this world's Warrior of Light. With time, WoL learns that this world's WoL had become a primal and were currently sealed away where the Mothercrystal used to be. Something WoL couldn't ignore. So getting back home was no longer as important. Now WoL tried to learn as much as possible about the WoL Primal. In the process coming face to face with a Avatar of Light and a Avatar of Darkness. Born from the WoL Primal's Reaper Avatar. After bringing those 2 down, the WoL, together with the Scions, faces the WoL Primal, who broke free of the seal. (I have ideas for the fight as well... but I'll leave that for another time) At the end of the fight, everything became engulfed in light, in which they can hear the former WoL thanking them. The Primal dissipates with a peaceful expression. Yet the victory felt hollow. For they knew it was for the better that all forgot about the former WoL. After the fight, the Azem Crystal starts to glow, ready to send the WoL back to their own world. The Scions gets to bid goodbye, smiles on their lips yet with heavy hearts. Making WoL promise that they would do anything in their power to avoid giving their own companions the same experience. WoL returns to their own world, glad that they still remember the parallel world and tells the Scions of their world about it. The Scions reassuring that they would never let it happen. That WoL burdens were for them all to carry.

Bad endings? Bad endings anyone?

What if they got consumed by the light? What if they became a primal? Any and all bad endings!

I think mine most likely would've become a lightwarden because she didn't get to Emet-Selch fast enough. "Obsession" would be its name, due to the fact it would be obsessed with the idea of saving others and changing the world, probably leading to either the Scions killing her or to her consuming the First in Light.

.

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

First Impressions (will be adding as I play)

DOMESTIC ZELINK THEH ARE SO FUCKING CUTE (like PLS he is such a gentleman and is still a short king, we stan— and Zelda always worried about him 🥺)

Link lost an arm to protect Zelda. My guy sets a HIGH BAR

Once I fully understand zonai devices it’s over for you bitches

Rauru my main man gets a love interest. What a dude

NOOOO NOT THE WAY THE MASTER SWORD GOES TO ZELDY IN THE PAST IM SO AHSJKDJSBAHSJZ I MISS FI SO MUCH

yo Hyrule be lookin DIFFERENTT AND OMG EVERYONE IS LOOKING FOR ZELDA AND LINK

Fucking SHOOT ME IT WOULD BE LESS PAINFUL THAN SEEING HOW MUCH EVERYONE CARES ABOUT THEM LIKE ????? GODDDDDD

DID A TREE JUST FUCKING ATTACK ME WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF SHIT IS THIS those scrubs really upped themselves ig

TULIN MY CHILD IVE NEVER BEEN SO EXCITED THAT IS MY SON!!!!!! THATS MY BOY!!!!! lol I love that the game points you towards Rito first bc no matter what the game wanted me to do, I was going to Rito village first bc I wanted to see all my CHILDRENN

Where the FUCK is Kass.

Not me avoiding both the entire East portion of the map in preference of going to Gerudo to see Riju

YOOOOO GIBDOS????? Need the suns song

OH LIGHTNINGGGGGG interesting I am DIGGING THIS and we get to go into Gerudo without disguise???? BANGERRRRRRR

I want my HORSE 🥲 silence my trusty white stallion where art thou

I’ve made it to Hateno and I’m fucking sick of these Koroks, like get up you lazy tree spirit are you fucking KIDDING me

ZELDA’S HOUSE!!!!! IS!!! THE!!!! HATENO!!!! HOUSE!!!! THEY LIVED TOGETHER!!! We been knew but OH MY GOD ITS SO FUCKING OBVIOUS WITH ALL THESE IMPLICATIONS. HIS HAIR TIE. THENEW TUNIC. THE KIDS DRAWING OF ZELDA. I AM GOING FERAL THEY ARE SO GODDAMN DOMESTIC

Yo where the FUCK is Kass.

Okay okay I’m having a time with paragliding so I’m just going to do Rito Village’s thing so I can get Tulin’s power

Lmao they’re not gunna kill off the babies like they did with the last champions…. Right?

LOL OKAY OKAY COOL THEY WONT CRISIS AVERTED but MAN I’ve fucked myself bc it is nearly 5a and my sister is coming over at 8a 💀

my HORSEEEE I HAVE MY HORSE BACK yo that is TRULY the best thing I missed my horse so much

Okay now I’m going to do the tears of the dragon quest bc WOOOOOHWEEEEE I miss Zelda

This was a fucking mistake it is 3am and I have to be up in four hours for work and I’m SOBBING bc ZELDA HAS SACRIFICED SO FUCKING MUCH I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS LIKE WHAT THE FUCK NINTENDO

At least I have the sword 🥲

I’m loving everyone sending asks and talking to me about this game I love each of you SO MUCH… not as much as I love Tulin and Riju but still LOL

Yo I’m so fucking sad bc of Zelda rn I think I’m just gunna get a shit ton of shrines and explore the depths

THE DEPTHS ARE SO FUN AND COOL!!! I also think I found a temple in eldin ???? COOOOOOOOLLLLL !!!!!

What’s not cool? Yunobo being all macho macho man bruh when that is not the sensitive little Goron I know and love. Marbled rock roast? Sureeee Cuz that’s not suspicious.

Okay I’m going to avoid Zora’s domain and head to the great plateau…. Why the fuck is the Old Man’s Cabin inhabited by the Sheikah what the fuck is this

Okay so the Yiga are just camped out in Akkala too??? Bitches. Next thing you know Kohga is alive and in the depths LMAO

Now I’m going to Zora’s Domain bc it’s my last pit stop before I actually continue the story LOL… scratch that Imma head to Tarrey Town and see how the fam is doin! And !!! Hudson has a daughter!! Guess that answers my question as to how long it’s been between games lmao

I keep procrastinating Zora’s Domain OOOOFT but I’ll go there now for reals—Sidon is engaged??? Man was like “Omg bestie it’s been forevs btw this is my fiancé” like damn okay how long has it been since Link went to Zora’s domain

I’ve been searching for Kass and I’m having major doubt atp 🥲 I want my beloved songbird back

OKAY DUNGEON TIMEEEEE Imma do Yunobo and while I know it wants me to save Riju for last I simply cannot stay away for long so I’ll go there next!

Yo these temples are fire I got majorly concerned with the Wind Temple but it genuinely makes sense to have a more familiar groundwork for players to begin with that’s just different enough that you notice so it prepares you for the more complex classic Zelda dungeon twist the rest of them have

I’m annoyed all of their abilities require me like ‘asking’ their spirits rather than having a function button to summon it at will

Except for tulin bc he is my child and all is forgiven. And Riju bc she’s pretty and I love her

DID I FUCKING MANIFEST KOHGA BEING ALIVE AND IN THE DEPTHS?????? BITTTTCCCCHHHHHH I thought these people be straight up loyal but nah he ain’t dead, just chillin in the depths

Yo I thought I was at the end of the game but nope I find out that the Zelda I’ve been chasing is a puppet WOW who would have guessed 🙃

BUT THE WAY GANONDORF WAS LIKE “using her made it so easy to lure you into traps” like my man KNOWS

Okay okay fifth Sage down and now I’m going to the Hyrule castle chasm

Was no one going to tell me this might be difficult bc I’m just tryna sneak through but that ain’t happening LOL

I’m going to shower and eat dinner and THEN I’ll beat the game

Oh my god we back at the place we started I LOVE FULL CIRCLES

I’m going to fucking sob this has been such a good fight!!! Getting to use the master sword the entire time >>>>>

(Even though i legitimately used a lynel bow and bombs to deal most of my damage to Ganondorf… don’t judge me I am ✨strategic✨ and I only managed fo do real damage if I did arrows, arrows, dodge dodge dodge, flurry rush, backpedal it up)

ZELDA BEING MY HOMIE IN THIS DRAGON FIGHT WE LOVE TO SEE IT !!! She makes me so happy she went straight for Link to save him bc that’s simply instinct

🥹🥹🥹🥹IM SOBBING THIS IS SO FUCKINNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG THIS IS SO GOOD I LOVE HER AND I LOVE THAT WE GET TO DIVE AFTER HER AND ACTUALLY CATCH HER 🥹🥹🥹

Lifting her out of the water… Zelda waking up to the feeling of a warm loving embrace… telling Link “I’m home” and that she has “so much to tell” him… I’m going to need another box of tissues bc I be EMOTIONAL

Awe all the sages pledging themselves to Zelda

Link just being a silent supportive boyfriend bc homeslice can and will do everything to protect Zelda (and okay he already did a ceremony for this but let me have my shipper goggles on)

I’m just going to say it. This might be my favorite game. And I’m a diehard Majora’s Mask fan. Like that’s been my favorite for a WHILE. I miss the simplicity for some of the game mechanics but thoroughly enjoy the new creations we can make. I also understand zonai devices now so when Kass comes in the DLC it’s over for y’all

Anyway botw/totk zelink is canon and no one can change my mind

[alelathedragon]

Connected Worlds (Crackship Fanfiction)

In a world of Monsters and creatures known as Pokemon… There were many kinds of people; --Profound Hunters: hunters that still hang on to the olden days of all magical creatures being their enemy and hunting everything with little to no other thoughts about it. They're not heartless but it'd take a lot to convince them to change --Buddy Hunters: Hunters that were moved after the Black Blight events and have opened up to the idea of having pokemon or even monster friends. They can even have some of their own that they don't just take on hunts but care for like their family. --The Scriveners: reaserchers that are VERY good at their job, they can make recipes for downing monsters or pokemon of different types based on their knowledge. They know about the land and wish to record everything possible. They're really smart and can range from acceptance of monsters and pkmn to not. --Pokèpals: they were moved by the events of the Blight but could only open they're heart to the pokemon. They respect their riders but they just can't bring themselves to love monsters the same as a pokemon. --Riders: they love Monsters and pokemon equally, sometimes they can have a bit of a bias towards their monsties however they typically have at least one pokemon on them and love nature. They do what they think is right for everyone though sometimes this can lead to chaos.

👍This is a fanfiction about a crackship I made, including Reverto from monster hunter stories and Guzma from pokemon.

If you don't enjoy crackships, that is completley fine but please don't haras me over it. You harrassing me isn't going to stop me from publishing more.

~Reverto: One morning deep in the Jungles of Unovaria was a man slugging his way through the woods, he had golden yellow hair that was so fluffy you could mistake it for the sun with how warm it looked, a Tgrex longsword hitched in it's satchel on his back, armour glazed one arm and his legs… Sighing a long exaggerated sigh the man groaned as he once again had to push his way through some foliage. " Man like… This isn't cool you know Popola… We could have taken any quest on the board but you just HAD to teach me a lesson for taking a DAY off…"

A cat popped up from seemingly nowhere on the man's back, hopping up to his shoulders and bouncing angerly " Damn right Popola had to teach you a lesson mew lazy bum!! All mew do is eat,sleep,cook,sleep,and eat! That's hardly enough to pawy for our house!! "

The man got a less then pleased expression " Did we really have to hunt a Ariados thou dude…."

" YES REVERTO!! If mew won't keep up on the bills then Popola will pick your purrrfect missions for you! " Great ✨ Thought Reverto as he went through more forest- Popola was giving him the earful but he'd hoped that if he went slow enough the spider would move on to somewhere else that it wouldn't cause issue- Thou to his dismay up ahead he heard rustling, grabbing the hilt of his sword he drew his weapon ready for battle when suddenly -

" YEAH! GOLISOPOD USE LIQUIDATION " Was suddenly yelled from ahead, someone is in trouble!? The Buddy Hunter quickened his pace to go through the trees and only have greet his eyes a giant Ariados having its head slammed into the ground by a girthy Golisopod-- oof! That looked like it hurt, the spiders head squished into the ground as it was brutally forced deeper into the dirt below it before the golisopod flipped off landing perfectly on their feet. Thou the thing that caught his attention next startled him, it looked like there was someone under the spider!! Pokemon or no pokemon with them they looked like they were in trouble so he started to run out with speed- but halted when the spider suddenly moved, it's legs were flailing trying to get a grip on the ground but the person under the spider- was fucking lifting it. " HRRRRRRRRRUP!! " They suddenly tossed the thing up! What a feet, thou Reverto could do it too but he didn't expect the stranger to be so strong! With help from the golisopod suddenly using pin missile the spider was turned and the stranger had jumped up to grab onto the spider and utterly suplex it into the ground with style. Knocking out the Ariados instantly.. Now, man half wanted to clap as the stranger got up but there were two very big problems that lead him to be silent- One: that was his hunt and if he didn't take it home he would be cooked for dinner. Two: Reverto is terrified of bugs- friendly or not that golisopod noticed him and was staring at him with a certified death glare and the man was horrified. Popola however jumped up " WOW! They're probably just as strong as mew Reverto! That was amazing! "

But when the stranger got up to look their way and the body of the Ariados flinched Reverto shrieked. "I CAN'T DO IT ANYMORE MAN!! "

And ran away from the scene- " What's 'iz problem…" Muttered the stranger.

Part 1

Part 2 when i feel like it

[ambermistwing]

When I first watch the playthrough of the first and second gargoyle's quest, I loved everything about it, the music, the graphics, the gamelan and the story, how firebrand is a red gargoyle demon (Red Arremer) and a respected warrior and friend, and how he cares for his village and the other ghouls, seeing his allies die as they were giving him messages and his village being destroyed was heart breaking, and as he goes to help his people and fight the evil as the prophecized hero of the ghoul realm known as the Red Blaze I was engaged. Even the music was fantastic, like for example Hell Field, despite the name it is the most beautiful and peaceful music in the game, and so many different covers on YouTube.

There were so many moments that I loved from Gargoyles quest, some I would call wholesome, like when one of the ghouls offered to test Firebrand's strength and congratulates him at the end of the game. One of my most favorite wholesome parts was when firebrand, after learning that he is the decendent of the oringinal Red Blaze and gains the eternal candle from Rushifell, he hears a voice in his head saying "You are our son. Show us your real power and defeat the king of destruction." It really warmed my heart reading that, hearing his parent(s) encouraging him.

Gargoyle's quest II is chronologically and canonically the first game with the original Red Blaze (who was also conveniently called Firebrand), it's almost the same as the first one but had new graphics and colorful design, even new characters that help him, it was fun and interesting and new areas were fun, it was sad for him to have witnessed his entire village and king dying in front of him but he was able to overcome the evil in the end and be the warrior he always wanted to be (I could say more but I'm not as good with describing as others are, but I also don't want to make it too long for you guys) These two games were different from other games at that time because of how a demon was portrayed as a hero, instead of a human just fighting monsters, it had good monsters as well as bad monsters (it can also be said for the demon's crest npcs that weren't enemies) because usually in games we only see it from the humans perspective or we just play as a monster killing people, it is unique for me though I realize probably not for some of you, yes there are the tmnt who save humans, but I mean like from firebrand in ghouls and goblins he was seen as a boss you had to defeat, but in these games we get a look at how his kind views him and from his perspective.

Demon's crest was a different response for me, cause while the story was interesting but the gameplay was a little eh for me (I'm not dissing it, this is just my opinion of it, it doesn't mean it's bad, peopleactuallysay it'sgood so go watch or play it and form your own opinions) the story starts with firebrand fighting to obtain the elemental crests on them to end the Civil War in the demon realm or to discover 'true power' but as he was wounded he was attacked with a cheap shot by Phalanx, who set the realm on fire and blames him for it, he took everything from him except his will. The design of the game was good but reminded me of those games you would play at an arcade ( like the game Skull was playing in the movie monster house 'thou art dead', or other games like that which i think they were trying to base it off of) which to me was weird cause I was used to the first two games designs, the character design was cool (the head was weird for me) and I liked that he could change forms with every stone you gain, the music was great and I loved how you would fly from place to place in the overworld, but this would lead to some people going out of order or just go to the final boss, which would lead to one of the four endings (bad, neutral, good, and best ending) the time stone was confusing for me. But I loved still love that game and if you want to check it out, consider getting the game or watch the playthrough on YouTube.

If you wish to learn more about him then check out the wiki or just play the games and watch the playthrough https://ghostsngoblins.fandom.com/wiki/Firebrand

All in all I really love it but I fear that these games is super underrated and so is firebrand, he's amazing but feel like there is so much potential for him and the Fandom, but there's hardly any mention of him and no fanfiction about him or gargoyle's quest or demon's crest at all, or even any x reader fanfics of him (don't judge) one day I hope he gets his own game again in the future, maybe him going to the human realm in his perspective, and maybe different then just king Arthur's realm in ghost and goblins. Or most likely a fanfic of him meeting the Disney gargoyles (I think it would be an interesting story, also funny if they ask "why is this gargoyle naked, also he does kinda look like my man Brooklyn)

[greekbros]

"greek-Bros": From beyond

Ares: *sleeping on his bed*

Apollo, Hephaestus and Hermes: *sneaking next to Ares*

Hephaestus: *quietly sets up a fan next to Ares and turns it on*

Apollo: *whispers* I don't understand Hephaestus what are doing with Ares?

Hephaestus: *whispers* what I should have done long ago....I'm going to purpose suggestions through Ares's current state of REM sleep, his mind is now vulnerable to what any possible information we shall present to him...

Hermes: *whispers* In a nut shell, we're going to convince him to build a jacuzzi for us.

Apollo: *whispers* we can do that right now.

Hephaestus: *whispers* dear halfbrother, why would we waste our energy into building something ourselves when we can just make Ares do it for us?

Apollo: *whispers* this is unethical coming from you Hephaestus, sorry Hermes but I would say I expected better but this is generally something you'd probably do.

Hermes: *snickers a little* here we go. *Turns on the fan and speaks through it* ~Areeeees, Arrreeessss.....this is your great grandfather.....ugh... Ouranus speaking from beyond the ~~~beyoooooond~~~~.

Ares: *smirks half awake* wut? ~° da fuk? Great grand dad?

Hermes: *continuing* ~ yessss tis I. You've done me prrrooouuud my boy....I am sending you on a ~~~quessst~~~.

Apollo: *shocked this could actually be working*

Ares: *getting almost back to sleep but still listening* uuuuggghhh....does dad know about *yawn* this?

Hephaestus: *takes the fan* ~nooooo, be does not, but your quest....is to build a mighty "Jacuzzi of the Gods"....it must be done as.... Efficiently....as possible. You shall build it by hand, with no assistance....

Apollo: *mouths to himself in disbelief* what the actual fuk?

Ares: uuugghh...~° ok.

Hermes: *takes the fan back* ~it should have cup holders and a massage function tooo~~~

Ares: ~~mmm..k. *goes to back to sleep*

Hephaestus:*whispers* ok on my mark we hide under the bed.

Apollo: what no I'm not standing for this.

Hephaestus: *takes the fan back and decides to shout*THOU SHALL BUILD IT NOW!

Ares: *now fully wakes up* AH! OK OK IM UP! *Looks around and sees no one* .....what the fuk....oh shit that quest stuff....ugh....*gets up to find tools*

Apollo: *gets out from under Ares bed* what on earth?!? That really shouldn't have worked.

Hephaestus: hehehehehe we shall see the full extent of our little experiment.

Hermes: aaaaand I finally get to have that Jacuzzi I wanted.

Apollo: ...I can give you that now!

Hermes: I know, but what about a jacuzzi you can get for free?

Apollo: WE'RE GODS WE DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING!

*later in the week after several more sleep suggestions*

Zeus: hmm....Hera, my spring chickadee.

Hera: *sighs* yes Zeus?

Zeus: ....why is there Jacuzzi in the main hall....and.... several other items? *Is seeing what looks like a fair amount of requested items and crudely made statues of Apollo, Hephaestus and Hermes all made by Ares* ....

Hera: Hmm... I'm not sure, but at least our son is finally getting into something more productive than war.

Zeus: hmm....*walks around and sees that there's a tikihut themed deck with a full bar and another Jacuzzi with Apollo, Hephaestus and Hermes in it.*......what is the meaning of this?

Apollo: *drinking a margarita* oh hello father! Would you like to join us?

Hermes: yah come on i-

Zeus: where is Ares?

Hephaestus: *drinking brandy* ....hmm..Im not sure...oh wait he's out getting us lunch.

Hermes: oh right he's getting takeout.

Zeus: *knowing damn well Ares doesn't do this kind of shit out the kindness of his own heart*....... alright, confess right now boys....what did you three do?

Apollo: .... ugh...

Hermes: Oh he's just doing stuff for us cus he like... really cool about it.

Ares: *came back from gods knows where* hey guys, so I'm not sure how Ouranus knows what you guys like but here's your order. Also seriously which one of you ordered a pizza with ham, olives, banana peppers and eggs that's shits fucking vile sounding.

Zeus: OURANUS?!?!? By the cosmic powers of the ether are talking about?!

Ares: oh yeah great grandpa Ouranus told me to do a bunch of stuff like build this hottub and shit...not sure why he's asking me but if he's calling me from *air quotes* "Beyond the Beyond" then it's probably important....I guess.

Zeus: *glairs at Hermes, Apollo and Hephaestus*.......and how is Ouranus communicating with you Ares?

Ares: ugh... through my sleep....

Zeus: *turns around dramatically* ...I knew it! Hypnos is responsible for this! Hera! Bring me my scroll and my quill! I have a very irate letter to write to Nyx!

Hera: *from the other room* do you want your angry letter quill with the speckles on it or you want the you write for administrative letters?

Zeus: THE REALLY ANGRY ONE! *leaves the room*

Ares: ...ugh wut? I did all this for nothing? *Kinda disappointed he didn't actually get a very important message from beyond the grave by Ouranus*

Apollo: ...oh that's very terrible....*turns to Hermes* You need to stop this.

Hermes: ..ugh...I'll send an apology letter to Hypnos later this week...*just enjoying his Jacuzzi*

Hephaestus: *now knows the lengths and extent of using a fan while Ares sleeps* hehe...oh don't worry, I'm sure someone will tell the truth some our w-

Ares: oh by the way the weirdest shit happened to me this morning, I woke up and I found this fan in my room and shit, and I just fukn wrecked the hell out on cus I thought it was someone watching me in my sleep.

Hephaestus: *forgot he accidentally let the fan behind* damnit

Apollo: oh that's so strange I wonder who would do such a thing. *Looks at Hephaestus knowing damn well what he did*

Hermes: ah what the fuk Heph you forgot the fan?

Ares: WHAT.

Hephaestus, Hermes and Apollo: NOTHING.

[the-modern-typewriter]

Hiii I love your blog, I love your writing! (Especially the unseelie one) I’m a baby writer who just started writing this month, and I’m just curious to know, where do you get your ideas? (I know, I know, the infamous question thou shalt not ask writers but,,, a little insight into things would be appreciated??) Hope you have a nice day!❤️

So, the answer I typically give to this is ‘brain mulch’. E.g, my ideas are a swirling combination of other stories I’ve consumed and want to make changes to, or update or expand on, the product of conversations I’ve had, or ideas and themes I’m interested in. However, while that is 100% true, in terms of writing advice it’s not very helpful. 

Similarly, I could tell you that you can be inspired by prompts, or images, or songs, but that again wouldn’t necessarily help you either because all of those answers miss the step between ‘idea’ and ‘story’. 

I am therefore going to unpack a bit. I won’t do all of the things I’ve mentioned, because that would make this an exceptionally long post.

I’ll start with ‘image’, just because they can be a good example of how the process works, because at a basic level despite the saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ pictures really do not do the writing legwork for you. 

IDEAS FROM IMAGE

Above is a typewriter. A typewriter is an object, it does not in itself tell a story. So, I have to start thinking about what kind of story might involve a typewriter. Ergo

Who, What, Where, When, Why

A failed writer, Lana (who) finds the typewriter (what) in an antique shop   (where) (and when, would come into setting as you expand a story, I am going to assume contemporary here). Now we need why. Why is ‘why is the story happening, what do the characters want, what is their goal). She decides to try out the typewriter because she thinks they’re vintage and cool, only to find that the typewriter is possessed by the spirit of Sally, an murdered female author from the 1800s whose husband took the credit for all of her work. In order to get the spirit out of her head, Lana must work with Sally to solve the mystery of her death and give credit where credit is due so that Sally can move on and Lana can live in peace. 

This is a rough story premise. It does not cover emotional arcs - what do Lana and Sally learn through working together? What changes by the end of the story. What obstacles do they face in their quest? However, you have the beginnings of a story which you can extrapolate and expand on as you plug in the gaps and questions that rise until voila, you started with a typewriter and now you have a story. 

You can apply this general method to basically anything. The story may not always be brilliant, but it will always give you a story idea. As you get better at writing, doing this becomes second nature and you get better at selecting ideas that are interesting to you and your audience. 

IDEAS FROM SUGGESTIONS/PROMPTS

A lot of what I write on this blog is in response to requests that people make. That makes coming up with ideas easier, because it narrows down the possibilities so I do not have to sift through literally everything in my head to decide what I want to do. 

Let’s take the most recent story I did on this blog.

Can you do a scene where the hero laying with the villain behind them and the hero is injured and in pain after a fight and the villain is just reading a book to them? (Given by @laurenonwheels)

So. We have who (hero and villain) and a general picture of a scene that raises questions.

What was the fight about?

Why is the villain just reading a book?

Where is this taking place within the larger implied context of whatever is happening?

What are the villain and hero’s larger goals?

In this case, my where informed my story. I picked a palace. Why would there be a fight in a palace? The villain has led enemy forces into a hostile takeover. The villain is likely a general or opposing leader or scheming courtier. The hero must be someone with stakes in this to have been fighting, and someone important enough to the villain to still be alive - so they must be either royal/a leader themselves, or someone else who works in the palace who has a connection to the villain. 

I picked a guard, because I have written a lot about princes and princesses recently and wanted something different. A guard also has an obvious reason for being in a fight/injured, and at the very least a professional wound in failure.

 Why is the villain just reading? Because they know they have already won, otherwise they would still be fighting or scheming. This means that a) they are arrogant and about to get the shock of their life when someone comes to fight them (we would usually expect the hero, or a friend of the hero) or b) the hero who would typically fight the villain is unable to do so, as the prompt suggestions, as otherwise they would not just be laying on a character who in writing shorthand utterly opposes them. 

The hero wants to escape. Conflict, they’re too injured to. A fight has just happened. Typically, in a story, after a period of intense action is a period of reflection.

What changes by the end of the scene? 

The hero realises internally that they have lost (emotional/mini character arcs!) and the external battle is lost, doubling this.

WRITING FROM ADAPTATION

I promised to myself not to let this go too long, so last one. Writing from adaptation. 

So many things are adaptations - A Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller is based/adapted quite directly from the Iliad/Battle of Troy, the TV Show Once Upon A Time is adapted from a number of popular fairytales and re-worked in a new and more indirect way, etc etc. Everyone has seen something that is an adaptation, and everything draws inspiration from something else, and if you have ever written a fanfiction you have practiced a lot of these story/idea finding skills. So. 

Fanfics. What do they normally do? Because that covers the basic of adaptation/story idea finding. Fanfictions will often 

explore an relationship that the writer feels is under-depicted. So, for example, I could write a story based on Lydia Bennet’s feelings and narratives in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Or a version of Bridget Jones Diary where Bridget picks the other guy. 

fix something (the real thing was sad, and I want to find a way to resolve everything in a nice way that doesn’t make me cry or feel utterly disappointing to the existing character arcs set up.) In fanfic, you can start from whatever point you want, but if you’re doing something closer to an ‘original novel’ (there’s crossover) you might think hmm, it really pissed me off that Victor and Eli in V.E Schwab’s ‘Vicious/Vengeful’ barely talked to each other despite their supposed close connection. Why does this happen so often in stories about heroes and villains? This drives a lot of my work as you might have noticed, but Vicious in particular is what made me want to write The God Key. The God Key is nothing like Vicious because it ended up in an entirely different place by the time I finished working on it that was very different to the initial idea I had, but that’s why I ended up writing about two people with powers who have history and mashing that with other concepts I wanted to write about.

Change the gender/identity of the characters. Everyone you read is white and straight and it’s irritating you. Okay. I’m going to write a classic tale from an identity that hasn’t been explored/represented as much. How does this impact/change the existing story? Hey, wow. What if Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice was actually Edward. But wait...this fundamentally changes the story, because now Edward Bennet has different social expectations than Elizabeth Bennett and everything single interaction changes because of this, and Edward also must be in want of a wife but oh no...he’s falling for this Darcy guy despite a lot of misconceptions and initially thinking he’s a pillock. The end result is probably absolutely nothing like pride and prejudice. But what can we say about being prideful and prejudiced from a male perspective? We have a different story, but you can see where the idea comes from. 

Okay. Think I’m done. I hope that helped!

[yostresswritinggirl]

Exiled States the Obvious Pt. 1

Warning: May contain spoilers, may not be 100% accurate, sick ramblings, may break your heart upon debunking common theories

Some canon notes I've noticed and analyzed, this will be placed here not just for safekeeping but for other writers to be known of them too :DD

From Venti's story I; it is said that as a loophole to being refused to be served alcohol because of his appearance, he 'drinks on the job', performing while drinking alcohol the audience gives him instead of Mora (his own suggestion)

Story IV offers some interesting details from Venti's story quest: First, Decarabian truly loved his people and believed that he had done good for them. Second is that Venti was supposed to gift his friend an eagle's feather but wasn't able to do so because he died.

Venti knows how to forge Rex Lapis' signature. Venti knows how to FORGE REX LAPIS' SIGNATURE.

It confuses me how Venti and Diluc doesn't have some kind of estranged relationship knowing how aristocracy/monarchy damaged freedom in Mondstadt.

Venti has been to Celestia and it apparently fucking sucks. That or Venessa told him about it, but it still SUCKS.

The Anemo Archon can and will strip you just to protect his identity/secrets/past. Ask Mona.

Albedo and Klee in his trailer, we can consider this canon: Babysitting Klee includes fucking battles. Best big brother.

The way Venti talks about Albedo speaks of [How Earth is a thing in Space] [Creation of Human Life through Earth] which are direct points to God's (biblical) creation of the universe and humans. With the dialogue, Venti recognizes Albedo has Godly powers that can create such miracles, take this line with a pinch of salt tho.

A connection: The real reason Zhongli does not carry nor care about prices is because of his trailer, THE FUNERAL PARLOR LITERALLY CARRIES ALL HIS EXPENSES

Hu Tao's existence proves that Xiao has a sense of humor and it is MORE THAN LIKELY that the adepti knows and can casually smile or laugh.

This piece of work exists: "Sigils of Permission were once created by Rex Lapis and infused with adeptal power. During the Archon War, such talismans were used by mortals to channel divine power. Now, most of its power has worn off, but adepti will still refrain from harming its holder."

Xiao is actually less hostile/asshole-y in the Chinese version than the English one and should be taken as canon since, well, Mihoyo is a Chinese company. Lots of dialogues or voiceline connotations are lost in translation.

Zhongli's retirement scenario does NOT mean that the adepti will not be needed or will also retire (looking at you Keqing) because as proven by the fight, the adepti are still in need of protecting mankind.

The Qixing and Adepti all know he is not dead, stating he gave hints that he hasn't really died to them.

A huge possibility that Zhongli recites this line whenever he finishes or fulfills a contract: "The contract is fulfilled. That which thou seeketh is now bestowed unto thee, for my promise is solid as stone."

If his words from the cool trailer is to be taken into heart, then Zhongli had long since cared for and protected humans, during the archon war.

Zhongli is not a MORTAL FUNERAL man, he is an ADEPTI FUNERAL man.

This broke God has the AUDACITY to go to operas, and not just any operas no no, "operas by the most celebrated performers."

He does not know shit about poverty because he doesn't know what it's like to be poor. He doesn't need to eat.

Besides the usual, he has more titles, some which are pretty funny: God of History, God of Stove. Liyueans(?) call him Rex Lapis, outside of his nation everyone calls him Morax. And in operas and children, he's more known as the War God.

Zhongli is very likely to cause divine intervention or sightings because a lot of stories and tales in Liyue about him are actually first-hand experience of accounts seeing the God himself.

Wrath of the Rock does not only mean Zhongli smacking asses with a laddle: Qixing of Liyue are officially responsible of punishing contract breakers.

Ningguang's role holds the big bad book of laws, with a whooping page count of 279.

This infomation is mostly for me to clarify Rex Lapis standing in the Seven: He is the first to ascend into Archon-hood, the one out of two remaining of the original Seven (Barbatos is second longest) and that besides him and Venti, the original Seven would also gather for wine in Liyue until they all left Archon-hood.

Zhongli really fuckin did a pest termination arc.

I repeat, ZHONGLI DOES NOT HATE SEAFOOD. To clarify, he hates TENTACLED seafood/cuisines. He can eat seafood tofu, happily.

It's so funny how the concept of "equivalent exchange" exists and is exercised in contracts, but not in a more dangerous aspect such as a l c h e m y.

The reason Jean is working as an Acting Grand Master is because the actual Grand Master is out on an expedition.

It is not normal for the Harbingers to be like Childe.

While battles and sparring is one of Childe's most usual traits, a lot of his character lines point to the fact that he's not outright looking for beating people up 24/7 and that his thirst can also be quenched by thrill or excitement.

General ones:

The other five archons do not uphold/focus on the duty of leading humanity, which was the prior responsibility of the original Seven.

I just realized the Archon War was literally about fighting to get a seat on the Seven. The way Archons are chosen are a mystery, just look at how Venti got his Archon-hood smh.

A pattern that we should consider but may be debunked in the future: A playable character MUST posses a visible Vision. So bye Scaramouche banner :')) pls debunk this Mihoyo

With Morax being unable to make Mora, economy is gonna be wack in Teyvat. In essence, every piece of Mora is valuable and will need to be circulated. Nations may fight to hold the most Mora and the one leading and already found a work around on this is actually the Tsaritsa, who has long since focused on economic power. This may not be coincidence.

Characters who are CANONICALLY good with children, to an extent: Ningguang, Beidou, Xiangling, Baizhu, Albedo, Jean, Childe, Ganyu, Xiao, Lisa. Italicized ones are the to an extent ones.

The Fatui has connections with Mondstadt, mainly the Ordo Favonius.

200 years ago sure is an oddly specific duration in Lisa's story and this might be expanded in the Sumeru chapter.

A clarification to a subtly known fact : It is the combined power of all the adepti that revived Qiqi, not just Xiao.

WILD CARD

Almond Tofu is NOT made of tofu. And in original Chinese recipes, it's not even fuckin Almond, it's goddamn Apricot seeds. But in Genshin it is canon Almond.

Tag lists for my homies that I want to share this with. Tagging other authors or lore enthusiasts are also greatly appreciated:

@heiayen @dandelion-dreams @karemelle @jrnightingale @galassyalex @boxofteenageideas @chels-void @starconch @worldsfool

PS I'm sorry for suddenly tagging you guys, I just thought it would be nice to share these with some authors that I know or have seen me, please tell me if you want to be removed, s-sorry in advance 👉👈

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

Cyberpunk 2077 Literary Analysis Pt 7: Leave me Alone, Hemingway, You’re Supposed to be Dead

Surprise bitch I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.

Cyberpunk spoilers ahead!

Cyberpunk meta literary analysis masterpost here 

Okay, so I thought I would be done with this, but it kinda feels like Hemingway has me by the left asscheek and won’t let me go as of late. So here we are: Cyberpunk literature meta-analysis part 7: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway comes up a few times in Cyberpunk, too many times to ignore. It’s not surprising, really. We know that Johnny is actually a pretty well-read guy from some of his passing comments, and if I had to guess, he’d probably really connect to Hemingway. In fact, if you play Johnny’s ending with Rogue, the final quest is called “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (which is also cool since it keeps the theme of all the missions being song titles, as this is also a Metallica song). But for once, this analysis isn’t entirely about Johnny or V. Hopefully this rings a bell (pun intended), as we’re very explicitly told who else really connected to Hemingway.  

Jackie Wells.

During the quest Heroes, Mama Wells will ask you to go through Jackie’s garage to find something for the ofrenda. One option is a book, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Earnest Hemingway. Misty will comment that he used to read it before a big job, and that it was important to him. If you choose to bring the book for the ofrenda, V will “read from the book” (I put this in quotes because the passage they read has actually been misattributed, it is a Hemingway quote, but not from FWTBT, rather from another of his works titled “Men at War”):

“When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.”

The majority of our main characters start out as The Fool, naive and feeling like they’re on top of the world, the kind of hubris that can only come with youth. Yet, like Hemingway says, it takes a bullet to give one a dose of reality.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a story of war. Our protagonist, Robert Jordan (I’d be really interested to know if Johnny’s birth name, Robert John Linder, was inspired by this), leaves his cushy job as a college instructor in the United States to join the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Robert begins the novel fairly bland; he has no real friends, no real family, and he feels completely disconnected from the world. In all honesty, he’s boring. Like, if wet cardboard were a person. He doesn’t really care if he lives or dies, not because he’s a badass, but because he really doesn’t have anything to lose. No passion, no connections, nothing he loves that ties him to this earth despite the fact that he is a man of such strong convictions that he willingly joins this war. Robert is tasked with destroying a bridge, meeting comrades of varying philosophies along the way, who become a kind of found family to him. Despite going out of his way to avoid making connections, he falls in love, not just with the love interest Maria, but with his friends, finally giving him something worth fighting for, something connecting him to this life. The novel concludes as the group finally blow up the bridge (a task done in vain, since the Republican side has ultimately sustained more losses than the Fascists), and Robert is injured. He convinces the others to leave him behind so he can buy them time to escape. The novel ends just as it begins; our protagonist lying in wait in a forest, gun in hand, “heart to the ground,” on a bed of pine needles. (For more on cycles/mirrors/reflections, see here).

While there’s a much larger political message here that could parallel the themes of Cyberpunk, I want to focus more on the philosophical side, as it ties in with my previous analysis much more coherently. The biggest theme of this novel is about how interpersonal relationships are what matter most in this life, which is summarized very nicely by the poem by John Donne which not only lends the novel it’s name, but serves as it’s opening epitaph:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

This poem and the overall meaning of the book work on two levels. The most obvious is that we all die one day, that mortality is fleeting. But on another level, No man is an island. Our identity is tied within our communities, those that love us, and those we live for. “Therefore, send not to know/For whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee.” Each time a person dies, a piece of all those who loved them dies with them. Funerals are not just for the deceased, but for us, a chance to bury the pieces of ourselves that died with them. “Each is a piece of the continent/Apart of the main/If a clod be washed away by the sea/Europe is the less.”

Johnny is incredibly similar to Robert Jordan. Despite knowing a lot of people and having a lot of connections, Johnny is not particularly loved, and that feeling is mutual. He even tells V that they are the only person who knows him that that doesn’t hate his guts. Both Robert and Johnny are men who base their morals and identity solely on principal and ideals; standing up for what is right, fighting against oppression, rebellion, but that passion is not borne from interpersonal relationships and connections. It is made of hate of the world, not love of their fellow man. This leads to one of Johnny’s fatal flaws; he did not fear death, because he did not feel as if he had anything to lose. He was consumed and driven by hate, not love, leading to all of his failed relationships. Had Johnny something to lose, he may not have taken all of the stupid the risks he did, acting as if he did not care about his own life.

V, in many ways, parallels Maria, Robert’s love interest in the novel. While Robert salvation lies in the love he has for all of his newfound friends, the main focus is on the love interest, Maria. Here’s an interesting bit of dialogue between Maria and Robert:

"Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And I love thee, oh, I love thee so. Are you not truly one? Canst thou not feel it?"

"Yes," he said, "it is true."

"And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine."

"Nor any other legs, nor feet, nor of the body."

"But we are different," she said. "I would have us exactly the same."

"You do not mean that." (20.66-71)

In this moment, Robert and Maria are talking about how they feel as if they have fused into the same person, as if they share a body. Yet there is a key difference in how they view their relationship: Maria wishes that they were exactly the same, while Robert states that she doesn’t mean that. Similarly, while Johnny seems to enjoy the growth he and V provide one another, his greatest fear is V/himself being changed into something they are not. Hmmmm….

Johnny and V are very different people by the end of Cyberpunk, finding meaning in relationships just as Robert has. For V, this means Judy, River, Panem, Kerry, Misty, Vik, etc. And for Johnny, this means V, and by extension, all of the people who make up V’s identity through their love and friendship. Despite dying and rising again as lines of code, V is able to finally show Johnny what it means to be human. His journey, I believe, can be accurate summed up by this quote from the novel:

“This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which could be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work.”

In addition, Robert’s final conversation with Maria as he is convincing the others to leave him behind so he can buy them time to escape is nearly identical to Johnny and V’s final conversation:

"Listen to this well, rabbit," he said. He knew there was a great hurry and he was sweating very much, but this had to be said and understood. "Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us. Do you understand?" (43.319)

Here, Robert is telling Maria that because they are the same, only one of them needs to survive in order for them both to live. Compare that to what Johnny tells V:

V: For fucks sake, defend yourself! You’re not even trying!

Johnny: Hmm…sounds kind of familiar. We know that attitude. See, V? Stayin’ with you whether you like it or not.”

This scene is further paralleled by the fact that V crosses a bridge to reach Mikoshi, which is set to be destroyed, just as Robert was tasked with destroying the bridge. Furthermore, in the Suicide ending, the overall theme is about how V “never realized just how many friends they had.” Friends who, in all other endings, were willing to die for V, as losing them meant a piece of themselves dying with them. Similarly, Robert considers killing himself as his friends escape, as the pain of his injury becomes too much to bear. However, he is comforted knowing that his sacrifice will mean that they live, telling himself, "I don't mind this at all now they are away.” Despite now having something to live for, like Johnny, they are still able to brave their deaths as now they have been given meaning. And not just any meaning; love. No longer hate, or rage, or blind idealism. Love. 

This is the overall message of Cyberpunk: maybe you won’t change the world. Maybe you won’t win the war. Maybe your sacrifice isn’t going to change history. Maybe, in the grand scheme of the universe, you don’t matter, and you won’t ever be a legend. But you do matter to the people in your life. No man is an island. We were made to be in each other’s lives, to love one another, to change one another for the better. And that’s what life is all about.

[rabbiteclair]

The Fight Saga of Three-Wolves Book 6: The Curséd Fightzone of Superhell 5

the bar was the darkest and most wretched in all the land. wicked pirates sat in the dark corners drinking their pirate swill. wicked actuaries sat in different dark corners drinking their actuary swill. every eye turned toward the front door as a lone stranger walked in, but there were less eyes than you would normally expect, due to the pirates and their eyepatches. call it a 1.7:1 ratio

"barkeep," the stranger said, growling from three separate throats, "i am looking for information"

the barkeep didn't look up from cleaning blood off the counter, which was basically a full-time job in this kind of bar. he tapped the sign next to him. "there's a two drink minimum for quest leads"

"yeah well i don't give a fuck" the stranger stabbed a knife into the counter. then to really make his point, he also pulled out a giant axe and stabbed that into the counter by chopping the counter in half

"avast!!" the pirates avasted

"holy shit!!" the barkeep yelped

"that isn't covered by your insurance policy!!" the actuaries also yelped. they didn't yelp because they were surprised, they yelped because they were cool hyena people. there are furries in this setting btw

"yeah that's right" the stranger leaned on the bar, which looked very uncomfortable since it was a pile of splinters. "you can keep that axe though, because it sucks. so anyway i am looking for a man"

"well there's like a bajillion mans. i'm gonna need more detail than that."

"yeah but this one's a romanceable npc."

"so is he like a human or what"

"his name is Bibarel, and he is... a bibarelf"

before the barkeep could answer, another dude stood up in one of the dark corners. he had a hood on, but unlike everybody else's stylish rogue hoods this was a creepy and bad hood, which is called a cowl. also he had a big staff with a skull on top of it, which is never a good sign. "traveler!!" he said, with the kind of voice that definitely belonged to some kind of fucked up wizard. "dost ye seekest thy doom?"

"no I'm looking for this elf called Bibarel. i literally just said"

"oh yes, i know of your bibarelf. but dost thou thinkest thyself man enough to rescueth him from his fayyt?" fate was spelled super old-timey because he was that kind of evil wizard

"is he in like a dungeon? i'm pretty good at dungeons"

"oh, it is no mere dungeon!!" the old man cackled and leaned closer. "it be the Dread Temple of Gr'th'nguny'thnur'grk"

"that isn't a real name. you just made that up"

"fool!! it's totally real name. and soon your bibarelf shall'st be sacrificed so that our god may walk this land again! and also roller skate this land again, because he needs his cardio. and none may stoppest it!!"

"i mean I may stoppest it. that's like my job. i will stoppest it by killing you."

the stranger pulled out six swords and also a couple of axes, which he could do because he had like nine extra wolf legs for holding shit, and also two wolf mouths that were on sword duty today.

"i see that ye carryest that most wicked of blades, Sliceo The Goblin Fuckler," sneered the wizard

"oh yeah that one's pretty cool. i guess i'll kill you with it"

but the evil wizard wasn't scared, which is pretty messed up if you think about it. "ye showeth bravery, fool. come to the temple if ye dare!! we go through blood by the shitload and you look like you've got tons"

the stranger tried to slice the evil wizard with like three swords, but they went right through him. not in the cool way that swords normally go through evil wizards, but in the boring way where no blood comes out. the evil wizard cackled again and slammed his staff into the ground. there was a big cloud of green smoke and he disappeared while still cackling, which is definitely the evilest way to disappear

"well that was fucked up." the barkeep was still cleaning up blood, and secretly he was pretty glad that there wasn't evil wizard blood to clean up too. "are you gonna fix my bar though or what"

"i need to go kill an evil wizard and stuff. send me an invoice."

"yeah but you're like three separate wolves, so how am i gonna send you an invoice?"

"make it out to..." the man looked off into the distance, resting his many wolf paws on the handles of his many axes. "Three-Wolves."

To be continued??

[loopyhoopywrites]

Novel Prep Tag Game

Thanks @paula-writes for the tag! Long post, so some of it’s under the cut.

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch).

Prince Cedrix reluctantly attempts to rescue a damsel in distress, but fortunately finds neither damsel, nor distress. Together, Cedrix and the not-a-damsel set off on a Quest to track down the last remaining copy of The Hermits Guide to Friendship (Volume 4) in order to figure out what ‘dating’ is.

2. How long do you plan your novel to be?

The first draft is looking like it’ll be around 50K, but I know I’ll end up expanding it when I edit.

3. What’s your novel’s aesthetic?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail meets Galavant meets BBCs Merlin, except way more queer. Or alternatively, ‘Douglas Adams writes fantasy’.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The whole novel was inspired by that one scene in MP’s Holy Grail where one of the knights goes to rescue a princess, and is horrified to discover a prince instead. My queer brain was like, hmm, what if he was pleased to find a prince, and voila. 

I was also inspired by the lack of stories featuring queer characters that weren’t stories about being queer. Like, I want to read about non-binary characters without having to read about being non-binary. I get enough of that in my daily life.

5. Share 3+ images that give the feel of your novel.

Yeah I don’t really have any. Sorry.

6. Who is your protagonist?

I consider the whole Dumbass Squad my protagonists, but I suppose my main dude would be Prince Cedrix. He’s simultaneously incredibly capable and dumb as a box of rocks, and I love him.

7. Who is their closest ally?

That would be the rest of the Dumbass Squad; Sir Swordasome, If-Thou-Dost-Not-Repent-Thou-Wilst-Be-Eternally-Damned, and Tim. 

8. Who is their enemy?

Out of everyone in the novel, Moonshine Looseleaf III probably comes closest to being an ‘enemy’. He’s a lawyer, need I say more?

9. What do they want more than anything?

Tim.

10. Why can’t they have it?

I mean it’s pretty much love at first sight, so...

The issue isn’t so much that he can’t have Tim, it’s just that sweet sweet slow burn whilst they figure out their relationship and get to know each other.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Probably that he’s above everyone else. He kind of has this hard to explain mindset where he doesn’t think he’s better than other people, just that he’s above them. He is a prince, so you can kind of see where he might get that idea.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

Here’s Tim and Cedrix :)

13. What is the internal conflict?

That delicious, tropey as heck slow burn romance. Heck yeah.

14. What is the external conflict?

Tracking down that gosh-darned book.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Anything bad happening to Tim. Or his kingdom. But this is a happy story so nothing even remotely bad is going to happen.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

Um, nothing? Unless you count Tiff tattling to her father that cousin Cedrix is dating a wizard.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yep! No spoilers, but it’s definitely a Happy Ever After.

18. What is the theme?

Who knows  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

19. What is a recurring symbol?

Not so much a symbol but a] people not recognising Cedrix and b] Tim forgetting he has magic and/or losing his wand despite it always being up his sleeve.

20. Where is the story set?

Faux Medieval Britain, roughly seven locations across three kingdoms. A tower, two bookshops, an island, a nightclub, and two palaces.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your head already?

I have pretty much the entire novel planned out, and half of it written. The only bit I still need to figure out is the scene with Moonshine, but that’s because I have no idea how to write a furious hermit lawyer.

22. What excited you about this story?

So much! I’m excited about my OCs, and about including so many queer characters. I’m excited about playing around with tropes and fairy tale elements, and putting my own spin on them. I’m excited because writing comedy is so much fun, and because other people actually seem to find it funny? And I’m excited because for the first time I can actually see myself finishing a full length novel, which is pretty cool.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

I tend to write by hand, because a] it stops me from being a perfectionist and helps me focus on just getting words down, no matter how rubbish, and b] adhd + laptop = far too many distractions. Then I’ll edit as I type, so the version on my laptop usually ends up quite different from what’s in my [many] notebooks.

[blessuswithblogs]

Katsura Hashino is a Big Fat Creep and Other Observations

(for the record all uses of the word “queer” in this post are meant in the academic sense as shorthand for a wide umbrella group of gender and sexual minorities and not as a slur i hope that is evident from my past history and status as Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls but let it never be said i don’t cover my ass)

A few weeks ago, Catherine: Full Body Edition or whatever gross subtitle it got was released. Catherine has had a very checkered history as one of those games that is just kind of slimy, though it has endured with a cult following and a surprisingly successful competitive community by way of the game's multiplayer mode where you compete to see who can climb The Dream Sex Tower the best. Honestly, I don't know that much about Catherine because it is difficult to think of a game that repulses me more on a visceral level, but I want to do my due diligence and not talk out my ass. One of Catherine's initial claims to fame was that it was by Atlus Japan, specifically the same people who made the much beloved Persona games. This is evident in the game's art, music, overall style of delivery, and being basically hate speech.

The original Catherine was a greasy, misogynistic mess with some really vile politics about trans people in particular. Deadnaming your own fictional character in the credits is some next level petty malice. Full Body returns with, stupendously, a double down on this ideology that is actually kind of comical in how convoluted it gets in trying to decry the Degenerate Queer Lifestyle. The game adds a scene with Rin, who is apparently a gay crossdresser from space(???????), getting slapped away and running away crying from their love interest after he learns The Terrible Truth. In another game, with a different writing team, this could have been a teachable moment about the destructive consequences of taking too narrow a view of human sexuality and gender expression, but as it stands it's just another tiresome example of Trans Panic with a sheepish admonishment from the other characters that gosh maybe slapping their hand away was a mean thing to do.

So we're already firing on all cylinders here, but the best is yet to come. The bulk of the outcry comes from the addition of a weird "true ending" cutscene where Catherine, who is also from space, goes back in time to make everybody's life better. Or something. This is already pretty stupid on the face of it because its Fucking Time Travel Out of Nowhere, but the scene then depicts a pre-transition Erica, the game's trans character who got deadnamed in the credits the last time. There has been a lot of exceptionally tedious discussion about exactly when this scene takes place in the game's chronology and what it means for Erica, and some brain geniuses have tied their thinkmeats into pretzel shapes to prove definitively that all this means is that she delayed her transition in this Better Timeline, that might not actually be better, because Catherine is weird and selfish, maybe. And. Fine. Sure. Okay. Let's accept that for now. Given the game's previous track record, and continuing insistence on using Erica's pretransition name in the credits even in the rerelease, it is meanspirited at best to show her before her transition at all (many real life trans people would be utterly mortified for such a thing to happen to them) and overall just in poor taste and pretty lousy writing at that because it's so unclear what any of this actually means. Since the game has not yet received an official english localization, the context of this scene is to begin with muddled by amateur translators on the internet all with slightly conflicting interpretations of the scene. It's a fucking mess, by and large.

So I would disagree that this is a fake controversy manufactured by those damnable essjaydubyas. Even with the most charitable interpretation possible, it's still just really sketchy and gross. Erica's english voice actress, who seems to be very fond of the character, has been vocal about her dissatisfaction with the new scenes on twitter and has recently come out to say that the localization team is going to try and take some steps to make things less blatantly hateful. Between this and Jennifer Hale's recent tweet about it being time to grab our pitchforks in response to Activision-Blizzard's mass layoffs, I'm starting to think that voice actresses are pretty cool. I mean honestly I always thought that but we're getting off topic. One of the top competitive Catherine players, who was by all accounts really hyped for the release of Full Body, just straight up said on twitter that he was quitting the game because he couldn't support something like that in good conscience. I don't know if he's remained consistent on this position since, but it was a bold statement, to say the least.

Now, whenever an incident like this happens, the inevitable string of More-Progressive-Than-Thou white boys who watched an anime once and thought the bouncing titties were a little much appears to start pontificating about the cause of such untoward elements in media. And it's basically all just a bunch of Orientalist bullshit. Every time. For whatever reason, people still really love to be racist towards Japanese people because it's still sort of socially acceptable when couched in the language of "oh japan!!! ecks dee" and so the neverending procession of softboi neckbeards declared with confidence that Atlus's continual inclusion of Actual Hate Speech towards LGBTQ+ people was the result of the inscrutable Japanese Mind and its Mysterious, Antiquated Culture. Many mentions of the philosophy of Wa, wherein the nail that stands out gets pounded down, and lots of very lovely psuedointellectual claptrap. Evidently, people just seem to think that queer people don't live in Japan, or that they don't fight just as hard as we do for equal rights and protections under the law. They do live there, and they do fight as hard as we do. Obviously. You fucking imbeciles.

In their quest to clearly illustrate their moral and intellectual superiority to the backward, collectivist Asiatic Peoples, these highly reasonable and enlightened manboys forsook a very important logical principle: Occam's Razor. Sure, you could blame jApAnEsE cUlTuRe for Atlus's impropieties and just conveniently ignore all of the fantastic queer media it has produced in recent years like My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, Horou Muskou, Nier Automata, etc. Or you could go for the simpler and more logically consistent option: Katsura Hashino is a big fat creep. Who is Hashino, you ask? He is the director of every Persona game since 3, as well as Catherine, and all of these games' gross shit and self-contradictory themes of self-acceptance and rebellion against an unust society (unless you're gay, ew) can probably be traced to him and his gaggle of accomplices. In addition to the fact that Atlus games not by Hashino's team tend to just. not have these problems to nearly as large a degree or even at all, Hashino himself has gone on record saying some really kind of hilariously backwards shit. Most infamously, when asked why in Persona 3 literally all of your social links with girls ended up with Hot Makeout Sessions regardless of like. Previously Committed to Relationships. Hashino simply said he couldn't imagine friendships between boys and girls. So that's where his brain is at. Since subsequent games in the series graciously allowed the player the option to not be a Huge Cheating Bastard, one can assume either his moral development has progressed past early puberty or somebody on the team convinced him this wasn't actually a normal thing to think. Given the man's output, I would say it's probably the latter.

It is because of this man's decisions and behavior that so many people are simply unwilling to give Full Body the benefit of the doubt. The game's director is, quite simply, a well known louse, and not in the endearing, Roger Smith way. Once again, it requires far fewer leaps in logic to assume that Hashino is just being a bigoted creep again than to go through some fuckin galaxy brain Kingdom Hearts-esque dot-connecting to justify it as just a LITTLE BIT bigoted not REALLY SUPER bigoted, or simply blaming the whole ordeal on some strange ineffable property of the Japanese Character. He's a gremlin! An overgrown manchild with a warped view of human interaction and society put in charge of games about exploring those concepts for.... reasons. My bet is that his dad knew somebody and then Persona 3 was successful enough for the rest of Atlus to just go "alright fine let him do it while we do mainline games". Unfortunately, Persona became so popular that the mainline games sort of switched places and became side-projects, at least in the eyes of the Western consumer base (which let's be real is the only perspective that any of these Serious Online Commentators even pretend to care about).

So I would once again caution everyone against just assuming that Japan is some sort of quaint anachronistic country of weird gameshows and backwards social mores. This is both a gross oversimplification of an entire culture and the struggles of their own subgroups and minorities and simply a grand display of lacking self-awareness. Like have you fucking seen the guys in the White House? The preposterous media that gets routinely greenlit on prime time TV, theaters, and digitally? Don't make me laugh. The West has no claim to any sort of progressive superiority to anybody else. The white cishet bubble of comfortable middle class affluence might distort what you see of the rest of the world, but believe me: we got problems too. Big ones. Even the presupposed bastions of Demsoc Virtue like Sweden have an awful track record of discrimination and eugenics. But Dazzlyn that's different, you cry! All of these groups and forces don't represent the entirety of Western culture! Yes. Exactly. Oppression is not culturally bound like cuisine or art. It is a nasty, universal thing that worms its way into everything, and it will use any excuse it can find to murder and exploit. It's against Christian values! It represents a genetic defect that must be purged! It's ostentatious and immature! The list goes on. And every time you giggle and go "oh those silly japanese" you're just being another expression of the same vile ideas.

I'm going to relate some of my own personal experiences, because as a noted Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls, I feel like maybe I have some authority on the matter? Just a little? Enough that if I make a well reasoned argument it can't be dismissed out of hand? Let's hope. So, what's the gayest game I've ever played? Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn. Look yeah I know I'm talking about it again but come back this is important. Final Fantasy is a series that has had a lot of LGBTQ+ undertones pretty much since forever, and while they have largely been in keeping with the times in terms of tact and representation (the Crossdressing Cloud debacle is a deeply bizarre, uncomfortable sequence in a lot of ways but there's also some genuine Good Gay Shit in 7 like Cloud's surprisingly cute and genuine date with Barret. I think. It's... it's been a while.), by God, it was at least there, and 13 had honest to god Lesbians, Harold in Fang and Vanille. I don't want to say it has pedigree, but the series has dabbled. XIV continues on the tradition with a vibrant world that's actually got a lot of characters and NPCs that are just incidentally there and kind of gay. The adventurer couple that befriended the Tonberries in Wanderer's Palace, a vendor that appeared in the Rising cosplaying as Minfilia at her wife's behest, a miqote lady bathing in the oasis that lets on she wouldn't mind having cute girls stare at her instead of grabby boys, every horny Elezen in Ishgard, Samson and Guydelot (shoutouts to Lulumi Lumi), and probably more that I've missed. More than that, though, is that because FFXIV is an MMO, it is by necessity a social space, and in my experience it has been one that has gone out of its way to be inclusive to everybody, from the GMs handling reports of abusive behavior right up to the top decision makers who made same sex player marriages a thing just immediately on its implementation and letting boys wear the gold saucer bunny costume too (albeit after quite a bit of pleading). The game's got a huge queer community of which I am kind of part of sort of. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to it. Hell, they've recently partnered with a pride group in Australia to have an FFXIV float in a parade. I usually turn my nose up at such things as meaningless corporate grandstanding, but it does seem to be more meaningful than two boy pastas getting married or rainbow colored oreos because like. Cheesy as it sounds, it's more than just a brand to a lot of people, it's a place, sometimes the only place, they can go to feel safe and accepted in a community. Having official, vocal support from the dev team means genuinely a lot, I think.

Now, there is one quality about this game of which I am speaking that might strike you as noteworthy: it is Japanese. It's made by Japanese people, in Japan, under a Japanese company. A middle aged Japanese man goes up on stage in Gunbreaker cosplay to speak in Japanese about the upcoming expansion, while a meme obsessed gremlin translates for him. It's not perfect, there are problems, etcetera, why do I even need to qualify that in 2019, when everything sucks, god. But it's better than most things. I hope that it serves as an example to people that even in the supposedly regressive countries of the world, queer communities are still living, fighting, and sometimes even being heard, and that the only thing you're enriching by dismissing them wholesale as socially backwards is your own internet penis. And nobody fucking cares about that you simpleton. I expect 5.0 to be gayer than ever before because they're taming up with Yoko Taro to do a Nier themed raid and by the 12 Warrior of Light Dazzyn Reed is going to kiss 2B or an equivalent model right on the robot lips.

[osmw1]

Poison-Wielding Fugitive   Chapter 24

“Payment? It’s not like that was a quest or anything.” “We’ve gotta draw a line in the sand. You try tellin’ others that you did all this for free and you’re gonna find yourself in a heap of trouble.”

Oh, okay. I had no choice but to follow along. Arleaf’s father also understands the concerns Veno had.

“At any rate, this village ain’t exactly wealthy... we don’t even have the lump sum for the knowledge you’ve given us. Even if I were to use my store as collateral.” “Umm, you can pay me with whatever you’re comfortable with.” “And as I’ve said already, if I take advantage of you here, you’ll be in deep.” “But…”

That’s true. If we stick out too much, it’d be dangerous for us. We can’t forget that there are still people after us. There are even wanted posters posted in the tavern.

“Father, don’t shout at Yukihisa.”

Arleaf stands up for me. Nice. You’re my breath of fresh air. And she’s been looking up to me ever since the whole Bloodflower thing too. Damn, that feels good. Mm. Whoops. I’ve been subconsciously ogling her. Gotta stay cool and collected.

“… ugh. The whole village—and of course our family—is grateful to you. That’s why we can’t have you work for free. To take advantage of people is the beginning of corruption. So be considerate of us and make your demands. Don’t take us merchants lightly either.”

Arleaf’s dad annoyedly grumbles.

“So… what should I ask for?” “Ah. There’s nothing we can give you that could ever make up for the knowledge you’ve given us. But what we can do is…”

He brings out a sack of coins and puts it on the counter.

“This is the money we’ve collected from selling the cure, plus donations from the villagers. That and you’ll have my Arleaf to make up for the rest that we owe you. Don’t go too crazy on her now. Think of it as a favor for me.” “Huh?”

What did Arleaf’s father say just now?” I got the money part. But I’m not too sure about the next bit. What about Arleaf now?

‘He shall use Arleaf to cover the rest of thy remuneration is what he said. Thou can use her to satisfy thy lust to thy heart’s content. How fortunate for thee.’

Oh, no, no, no, no. Dumbfounded, I look over to Arleaf, who then blushes and casts her gaze downwards. What the hell? You can’t just sell your daughter!

‘Think carefully. Thou may seem like a simpleton, but thou have the knowledge to cure Bloodflower. They must know they can milk thee for other secrets. Hence why he is entrapping thee with his own daughter. It is a dirty trick often used by humans.’

Maybe, but still… What happened to drawing a line?!

‘Perhaps these are separate matters. They likely have the money they owe you. How cunning of them.’

I’ve just refused the proprietress’ offer for her niece. What am I going to do about this?

“Blasts…”

Arleaf’s father frustratedly curses under his breath, while Arleaf’s mother… peeps on us from the door. What is this, some kind of movie? Was Arleaf’s dad ordered by his wife to sell their daughter and so he reluctantly offers her to me?

“Don’t get me wrong, boy! What I meant was don’t go crazy and working her to the bone! Don’t you lay a hand on her!” “Father!” “Uhh, working, like have her help me out to pay off the debt kind of thing?”

Oh, I get it. Yeah. That’s totally what he meant. Man, was I surprised. But it seems like her mom is still pushing for marriage. Still, that could be convenient for me.

What am I saying though? I’m a wanted man. If she’s affiliated with me, she’ll probably be wanted for being an accessory. I can’t marry her. Plus, what’ll happen when Veno learns how to undo the spell? Do I return back to Japan? Or do I stay here in this world forever?

I can’t say so for sure right now. So it wouldn’t be fair to Arleaf.

‘That is surprisingly virtuous of thee. Especially knowing thy… fantasies and delusions of her.’

Shut up, Veno. That’s a whole different thing. Yes, I’ve thought of us adventuring together, but that’s not even close to what you’re suggesting.

“That’s right!”

Arleaf’s dad agrees with an exclamation. It’s convenient for us both, I see. I’ll take the negotiation tactics I’ve learned from working in a black company and use it on him.

“That said, though… I’m an adventurer and I don’t stay anywhere for too long. I wouldn’t want to impose upon Arleaf.” “I-I know you’re an impressive adventurer, Yukihisa! I’m prepared to follow you to the ends of the world. So, please, take me in.” “Mu?”

New party member? Hey, are we getting a new party member? ... is what the gleam in Muu’s eyes seems to mean, but I want to say no.

“Uhh… well, while I’m still here in this village, you’d really help me out…”

“Only for the time being,” is what I implicitly said. Arleaf looks gutted while her dad has a beaming smile on his face. Talk about jealous. Sheesh.

“I’ll follow you wherever you go, Yukihisa, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Arleaf shows how obstinate and zealous she is. I’m not even that strong or anything!

“Well, uhh… for the time being then, let’s do our best together.” “For sure!”

While it’s true that I’m trying to make a living in this village, more often than not, the quests I do are from you guys anyway… The payment I’ve received for the cure did thicken my wallet quite a bit, so I’ve still got money to stay for a while. The problem is the cost of maintaining our weapons. The crossbow and armor I have equipped are quite the specialty items, so I’d like to think the maintenance on it is on the expensive side. If worse comes to worst, then we’ve gotta find out where we can get new equipment that’s easy to use. And the biggest problem is when I really have to escape, I’ve got to part from Arleaf so that she’s safe too.

“Don’t you even think of laying your hand on my daughter, y’hear?”

Calm down, old man! I never said that I would!

“Hmph. Should be alright then. You’ll find out how scary she can be too, Cohgray.”

Arleaf’s dad muttered smugly, but what does that even mean? Arleaf herself trembles with anger, showing her bloodlust for her father again.

“By the way, Cohgray, you feelin’ peckish at all? Why don’t you stay for dinner?” “… Father, you’re just—” “What? You can’t hide it from him forever. You might as well show him now.” “You’re the worst.” “You can’t back out of this one. This ain’t only for Cohgray, but for you too, Arleaf.”

Umm… I haven’t had a say in this at all. Aren’t you guys getting carried away? I look over to the back of the shop and see Arleaf’s mother visibly sigh. What? I don’t understand at all what’s happening.

“A showcase of our daughter’s finest home cooking. You’re excited too, eh?”

He presses me with a threatening look.

“Oh. Yes.”

For whatever mysterious reason, I guess Arleaf’s family is treating me to dinner tonight.

“Thank you very much for saving my life. I apologize for not having an earlier moment to thank you directly.”

Arleaf’s mother politely bows and greets me before showing me to the back of their store.

“Oh, not at all. I’ve only done what I ought to. How have you been feeling since then?” “I would even say better than before.” “That’s really good to hear. I’m glad the proprietress is feeling better too.”

I break the ice with the proprietress and her huge change.

“I am doing no worse than her for sure, haha.”

Hmm… I don’t think Arleaf’s mom changed nearly as much as the proprietress did. I think she’d be better off not to, actually. She’s swelling up like a balloon… any more would be bad.

“Mu.” “But Mr. Cohgray, it seems you are quite adept at alchemy as well. What a clever boy you have.”

Arleaf’s mom pets Muu as she speaks. With Muu around, I seem so much more skilled at medicine than I actually am. In reality, Muu’s just a weird chemical reaction that I’m using as my adventuring buddy.

“Good grief… my husband and him barking orders sure brings us trouble though. Arleaf, too, for my husband’s sake…”

For your husband’s sake… what? Could you perhaps give me a proper answer?

“Like I said! Keepin’ it a secret won’t do nobody no good. You get it, don’tcha?”

Ah. Arleaf’s mom stares daggers at her husband. What is happening? I thought Arleaf was just cooking for us.

‘They must be scheming to poison thee. Well, not that it would be effective.’

Surely that can’t be it, Veno. Their expressions don’t match up. And Arleaf herself seems to be bothered too. It just seems like her dad’s going nowhere with that.

‘Aye… but something is up. Consider my curiosity piqued.’

Seems like Arleaf’s in the kitchen and caught up in cooking.

“Cohgray, come check over these ingredients here!” “Father!”

While Arleaf is distracted by her dad, I look over the ingredients. Veno’s knowledge kicks in. I’ve been to various taverns and inns for meals since I’ve come to this world. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t know of about.

There’s meat that I’ve cooked with, veggies that I’ve had at the tavern, some regular-looking ingredients, and a loaf of crusty bread. Nothing’s unfamiliar.

Yep. Nothing special about this at all. Seeing that I’ve finished looking, Arleaf’s dad nods at me, clueing me to look at her cooking. While displeased at this situation, she starts cooking as she’s been told. She looks like she knows what she’s doing.

“Goodness… it’s embarrassing how you cling onto your daughter.”

Arleaf’s mom begins to chastise her husband.

“It’s the truth. But don’t go pokin’ the bear.”

Arleaf’s mom lets out a big sigh, seemingly like this is a long-standing problem.

“Let’s do this later instead. So, Mr. Cohgray, where did you learn medicine? Perhaps… you come from a prestigious family?”

As expected, they keep inquisitively prying. They’re essentially handing their daughter off to me, so it’s only fair they’re concerned.

“Umm… I had someone who knows lots about this subject. He taught me everything. I’m just from an average family.”

Not a single word of that was a lie. That’s a life pro-tip I’ve learned from working in that sweatshop. Hide your secrets amongst truths. Like how a job opening would advertise how cozy and spirited the workplace is, you’ve got to make your shortcomings look like your strengths.

While it’s true how the veterans would be all friendly with each other, the newbies often get ostracized and get forced with more work. Create a façade of truths while glossing over what you want hidden. You’ll have more people believe you than you’d think.

As long as there are suckers, there will be people tricking suckers. In this case, the someone who knows lots about this subject is Veno, but I don’t have to say whether or not he’s human. I’ll mislead them to think that I’ve learned all this beforehand, while the truth is that Veno had just been teaching me each step of the process one by one. They don’t need to learn the whole truth. At any rate, I can talk my way out of this. Plus, they’re normal people so this whole thing is a piece of cake.

‘One would say thou possess quite the silver tongue. Thou seem quite excited to cheat them too.”

I want to refute him. Is Japan really better than this world? I can’t say… There might be a sword hanging above my head, but I’m starting to think this isn’t all bad. At any rate, it’s great that I don’t have to work overtime and that I sleep well.

“Is that right? You must have had a great mentor then.” “It’s all thanks to him that we could eradicate this illness…” ‘I would love to give him our thanks then.”

For some reason, I sense Veno all puffed up with pride.

‘How dost thou like mine knowledge now?’

Yeah, yeah. You saved the day, but don’t forget I’ve been dragged into this by you. So, please, be quiet. If they pry any more than this, it’s gonna get a little dicey.

previously: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /ch013/ /ch014/ /ch015/ /ch016/ /ch017/ /ch018/ /ch019/ /ch020/ /ch021/ /ch022/ /ch023/ /ch024/ /next/ (full list of translated chapters) (discussion thread on Novel Updates) (please support me on Patreon or Paypal)

[ainchase]

Bluhen’s Journey

Let’sssssssssss dive into what Bluhen’s quest description says...

It’s nothing surprising or “whoa where did that come from” because we all kind of knew that he would choose the path of “I want to stay with the El Search Party even if I can’t be with them forever” but let’s just take a moment to appreciate

Bluhen’s, Erbluhen Emotion’s Lofty: Anpassen’s Ainchase’s journey

to this point

and what he went through to finally come to this resolution. When Ain was given his mission by the Goddess Ishmael and first arrived in Elrios to, now, say it with me, restore the energy to the unstable El, this was him:

Hear me, O creations of Ishmael: I was nothing but a single mass of light, before the will of God had reached me. Divine were the words that granted my form, and sacred was the mission my eyes opened to: “Thou shalt bestow energy on the weakened El.” To be born in the realm of God is to live by the words of God; I shall heed the call and accept the mission, to fulfill my purpose and return to the heavenly realm. I say again, By the sacred mission I have descended upon this land; My will is God’s will, and my existence is God’s wish.

Basically he’s saying

“Im getting the fuck out of here as soon as I do my job, which, the Goddess herself has given me, ehem, okay?”

And this mentality rings clear throughout the early stages of the Epic Quest in Ruben and Elder. Ain is eager to restore the shattered El and just get this shit done with as soon as possible. At first Ain couldn’t really understand why the ESP was helping the ungrateful human so much, and why they bother going through the trouble instead of focusing only on the objectives: restoring the El. Much to his dismay, everyone is a little too slow with the El Restoration business, and he’s beyond frustrated. 

Executor basically noped the fuck out of the party because they are too slow and he couldn’t stand human’s humanness (greed/incompetence/stupidity), Wanderer had a breakdown from all the lack of progress they were making with the mission. But Anpassen stayed, perhaps because he was fascinated by why and more importantly, how the El Search Party was finding the reason to do  things for others without expecting anything in return. 

What he discovered was altruism.

Ain becoming Lofty: Anpassen wasn’t because he was like “Oh cool so this is what human emotion is” or Lofty: Anpassen becoming Erbluhen Emotion wasn’t “I totally get human emotions now; so this is anger and this is happiness”

If you read his job descriptions carefully, you’ll learn that Ain was able to manifest El’s energy with something else; it wasn’t simply “human emotion” but compassion. Anpassen and Erbluhen is the product of Ain feeling compassion for his friends. The more he saw them helping each other even in times of hardship, he felt something within him. He was beginning to understand what it’s like to help someone and not expect anything for it. For Erbluhen, the ESP was in trouble and Anpassen desperately wanted to save them. It was something he never felt before. With his sincere desire to help his friends, he gained ability to control Eids even more effectively. So his entire character concept revolves around positive human social interactions like compassion, camaraderie, friendship, and such. It’s not “Oh yay I learned what sadness is today, I am so strong now.”

Now if this is a bit confusing from the way KoG throws around the word “emotion,” I understand. Sometimes I get the feeling they don’t know what they’re saying. This isn’t me saying I know their character more than them; I’m saying they blurred the line between compassion and “emotion” that it now all sounds really confusing and really what the f

I’m guessing they’re trying to say compassion and altruism are something only humans experience so a Celestial being such as Ain feeling altruistic is truly very “human” of him but we all know that’s not true; even animals can be altruistic and feel compassion for others. (See Elephants and Dolphins)

And they do try to draw a very distinct difference between Arme who loses even more “emotion” when he becomes Richter (reminiscent of Harnier losing herself as she becomes part of the El; Illuminos phenomenon, I guess it’s an effect of becoming more “God/Celestial”-like and less human), and Erbluhen Emotion becomes even more “emotional” when he becomes Bluhen. I guess being emotionally invested in others and helping each other is the concept KoG was trying to grasp. But simply saying “Emotion is Bluhen’s source of power” is really dodgy and confusing because malevolence and feeling murderous are also emotion...

So

Ain: I am going to finish my job and go back home to where I used to be a ball of light because humans are stinky

Anpassen: I don’t know why they’re wasting time; this is amusing. I wonder what motivates them to go out of their way to help each other. Oh hey what are these things they’re kind of cool; how do I use them???

Erbluhen Emotion: I am unsure exactly why but I want to help the party when they’re in trouble. I can control Eids however I want to and I can use them to make sure everyone in the party is safe... I want to be with them...? But they will forget me once I complete my mission and disappear. What’s the point of my existence, I wonder... Was I not created to fulfill an important mission? Am I allowed to care about my own well-being? For my own sake? I’ll leave my fate up to Elsword.

Bluhen: I thought I was going to disappear forever but I have been given another chance by the grace of Elia. I had fears and doubts about my future, as Henir’s influence weakened me. But my friends have not only saved me but also helped me find out who I am and what kind of future I want for myself. I want to be with the party as long as I could, even if the only thing left for me is regret because the times I have shared with them and will share with them is more important than the fear for my future.

I have skipped over a lot of Epic Quest existential crisis because I think we’ve all seen it before but... Man, Ain has come a loooooooooong way. I can’t wait to see how angsty Apostasia 3rd story is going to be.

[isroselalondebisexual]

hiya!! i'm doing a trollswap kinda thing, and i'd really appreciate some analysis on the beta kids i've chosen! rose makara, dave peixes, john leijon, and jade captor! i understand if you're busy with other kidswap-related asks, so take as much time as you need to respond!! ^^

((Rose being Gamzee’s shade of purple is my hc for what she would be if she were a troll!))

(Also I know “indigo” is the canon description for Zahhak’s color however. Indigo is fucking purple-blue and I will die with my honor Hussie is WRONG)

Rose raised in a society that would expect her to act very high and mighty and violently would absolutely 100% end up “holier than thou” snobbish and drop-of-a-hat violent. I hate to say it but Rose would not end up anything like Gamzee in canon she would be a MENACE she would be society’s expectations for a indigo/purpleblood to a t. Having a Seagoatmom that’s never really around to give her any kind of emotional support or make her feel loved would only make her feel more angry at the world and feed into her violence. Like this is a girl who as a HUMAN with a mom who loved her, just was drunk, stuck NEEDLES INTO AN OGRE’S EYES AND RODE IT DOWN A WATERFALL like Rose as a troll of this caste would be HORRIFYING. She’s rich, nobody ever tells her no, there’s a cult that appeals to her because it’s that weird sort of horrifying Rose is into and also it’s something meant for her (Rose would probably favor the more violent aspects of it, that Gamzee didn’t really pay attention to). The kind of person who would MUCH rather pick a fight with someone who is wrong, than educate someone about what is actually right. Very stuck up kind of smarts, and she IS smart. She’s brilliant in every pursuit she takes. She’s just very privileged and buys into the rhetoric that tells her that she’s special, that she’s important, primarily because it fits well with what she wants but also because having a lusus that has abandoned her makes her desperate to find that validation that she IS important anyway and any place she can. Hot mess of a girl, surprising no one. As Seer of Rage, her quest is about her learning that there are CONSEQUENCES to her actions. And it is an ugly, messy personal journey that she does not want to have to deal with. Her fury, her destruction, her violence, her willingness to tear down the world if it does not suit her own wants and needs, those are admirable qualities, sure, when used PROPERLY. And Rose has been using them for malice. She’s been cruel. And now she has to see the results of her actions and emotions laid out in plain and it sucks. No one really likes being confronted with the things about themselves that aren’t good. But she must learn how to use her Rage for good purposes, and she must see the results of her fury, should she act on it. Visions of friends, hurt by her own hands, flashes of the future showing that she is WRONG, they’re not fun, but they’re useful, and she learns how to better herself. How to become someone who can balance her own nature with things like love and compassion, which takes the help of her friends, of course, but also holding herself accountable. John likely helps out with that, quite a lot. 

Dave Peixes, local hipster rich kid who likes hip new trends like “being nice to people” and “not killing each other.” He’s a giant weenie he probably doesn’t have designs on the throne, but he also very likely doesn’t do the shit we see Trizza do where he actually, like, RULES anybody. He defo has like 50000 social media platforms and lots of people follow him bc, wow, fuchsia blood, and he thrives off the attention bc yesssssss he IS cool and tyrian and important pay attention to him! There is no force on this earth or the next that is gonna stop that boy from wanting people to pay attention to him and being rich and extremely important and the only person in his entire blood caste is not going to put ANY brakes on that particular operation. Catch him taking selfies and using “alternative” paints on his nails. Like and reblog his cool scenic underwater photos and shore-side panoramas. Having a horrorterror as a lusus is nice, on one hand, because the giant writhing ball of noise and otherworldly fright loves him, but on the other hand he’s a soft dumb boy and he would REALLY hate having to feed her! Dave does not want to interact with things that are dangerous/deadly/sharp he doesn’t like that! He’d be very effected by having to kill things in order to take care of her, it’d affect his psyche very poorly. As Knight of Life, he’d be probably quite excited about being able to protect the living instead of having to kill things for his lusus. The prospect would also probably be pretty daunting, though, because he’s not used to that? He doesn’t know how? What is he doing. Having actual, legitimate responsibilities would be new for this very spoiled boy, and scary at first, but he’d get better and grow into it well. Being a swimmer, he’d end up very physically strong, and living in the deep waters of the Alternian ocean, he would have pretty quick reflexes, and if you know anything about me you know I like sea dwellers with big ol’ earfins and lots of freckles so please picture that and think about how cute he would be.

John Leijon would probably start out in a cave, get real depressed and lonely there, and move into a city, which would be a big culture shock and Catdad would probably take some adjustment ((”no you cannot eat the neighbor’s birdlusus I don’t care if it would be tasty, you Can’t.”)) but ultimately it would be for the best. His lusus loves him dearly and encourages him to always do his best, and growing up around a bunch of other trolls in a hivestem and being on the lower edge of middle class would be pretty pleasant, as far as Alternian pleasantries can go. Gets along with other trolls REALLY well! John’s got a pretty inborn social intelligence, even if he can seem dense sometimes, but this social smarts is a HIGHLY valuable commodity amongst trolls, who are raised to be far more close to the chest with their friendliness and emotions. John might start out seeming like a trick, and to be fair he does like practical jokes, but eventually he becomes the hivestem’s “This is John. He’s a little bit of an idiot but we love him and if anything happens to him literally every single member of this hivestem WILL kill you” and John just laughs and waves in the background bc wow, his neighbors are so theatrical! What a fun group. It’s so nice living in the city now. As Heir of Heart, his role is to literally embody emotions and the soul. People are not wrong when they say John Leijon has a lot of soul, that he’s got a big heart, he’s a loving boy who leaps at the opportunity to show that love. Ngl he probably has a crush on Dave in this. Just sayin. JohnRose is also a thing that I am thinking definitely happens in this. 

Jade Captor! Lower-class, but on the upper edge, could definitely die but isn’t LIKELY to. Probably has a sorta fatalistic sense of humor where she’s like “I’m gonna do the thing” “That could go wrong” “Then I’ll die :D” Probably gets really angry about the hemospectrum and how it doesn’t even make SENSE. Grrrrr!!!!!!!!! >:( She lives in a hivestem around bunches of other people LIKE SHE DESERVES!!! Maybe she and John even live in the same hivestem later on :D That would be so fun! They could be besties, like Aradia and Tavros were, but like they’d live in the same area so they could see each other every night :D She probably has a lot of close encounters with her own death and laughs them off because living in a hell society builds up that kind of casual PTSD. She gets very good at navigating danger though, because she’s an energetic girl with a short fuse and a loving but not particularly inclined to discipline lusus, and she can’t really keep herself out of trouble. Turns out to be a pretty useful life skill as the Witch of Doom, where her whole thing is navigating death and fate and misery and stuff. According to the canon extended zodiac quiz page, Doom is about empathetic sharing of misery, which would make Jade more of a listener, not a fixer, which, yeah, I can see her ending up that way. Life on Alternia sucks ass my dudes, and as someone in a lower caste there wouldn’t be a whole lot she could actually do to change anything, but by god she resents it, and she’s 100% willing to listen to you if you wanna talk about your problems. Probably resents the Aspect of Doom at first until she realizes that Witches are people who can change their Aspect, and then probably gets more into it. Because I am a sucker for Life/Death motifs, she and Dave are definitely very close friends, I’m gonna say moirails

[dachi-chan25]

Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 3 Pt. 1

I actually have the time to write this so here I go.

WARNINGS: SPOIIIiLERS; not a D@€nerys fan so y'all know I’ll be actually critical about her actions; JonSa shipper so of course I have a little bias.

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

1.- We start at Dragonstone, where Jon Snow and Dadvos are just arriving, the welcome comitee looks pleasant enough (if you don’t mind the Dothrakis and the Unsullied intimidating you that is) Tyrion and Jon immediatly take quips at each other and are buddy-buddy, Missandei says it’s so cool they’re taking so much trouble for Quiin D’s sake (LMAO not everyone is in Love with her like y'all honey, it’s not even for her but whatever helps you both sleep at night) and asks them to leave their weapons.

Right, so I would say she ask them this as a trust act and stuff,and it would be so if they were on a neutral spot and she went unarmed (without Dragons and guards) but it’s NOT really what FUCKING difference does it make if Jon has Longclaw??? He didn’t bring a frigging army and he sure as hell can’t fight them all (specially the magical fire lizards) so why??? Well this is the first of many acts of petty dominance on Dane-ñys part we’ll see this episode.

They even take the motherfucking boat (who is looking threatening now?) and Jon makes this face like he regreats his moronic decision of leaving WF

All those steps tho!!! (Stannis must have been real fit guys) So Dadvos tries to test the waters and asks something about her homeland to Missandei, she is polite but clearly distant and Dadvos whispers to Jon things have surely changed in DS.

Tyrion asks about Sansa (not Lady Sansa or your sister, hmmmm???) Jon says she is well, and that would have been a pretty normal conversation if not for the fact that Tyrion chooses to make a joke asking if Sansa has missed him, and guys believe me I tried to take off my shipper googles for tonight’s episode but holy fuck!! Jon looks like he wants to punch Tyrion, and he gets so nervous and uncomfortable he all but blurts that their marriage was a sham and unconsummated, Jon snaps that he didn’t ask.

I don’t know y'all but if someone talked to me about my big brother’s sex life I would be like ewww and make a cringey face, because I don’t give a damn, but Jon’s reactions are wierd he gets angry, also why talk about a sexual part of Sansa’s life everytime Jon meets her past suitors?? I mean we could argue that Jon meeting Tyrion again was inevitable, as well as seeing Theon next ep (cuz they are both with the D) or even the Hound because he and the Bannerless Brotherhood are heading North to fight with the WW… But what about LF? Jon was about to leave, he had no need to know about LF’s intentions and that threat in Hulk mode was just too innecesary as was Tyrion’s comment, or the Joffrey thing back on 7x01??? I don’t wanna be overly optimistic but things are still looking good for J/S.

Yeah so we have a Danonino is petty again moment by sending her Dragons to scare Jon, and OK I really like Missandei (I Love seeing girls who once were abused be confident and empowered, and I Love lenguages as well and it’s so cool she speaks so many!!) but her pleased holier than thou expression pissed me off, you don’t do that to guests miss! It’s rude and totally uncalled for to do this to someone that has been nothing but accomodating and polite.

Also I have another issue here, Missandei was crucial to Danita’s conquest of Meeren and Astapor because she was her translator, she understood how things moved there (masters and slaves) and she was loyal to D unconditionaly, but why bring her to Westeros??? She doesn’t need a translator anymore and just like Danonino Missandei doesn’t know squat about westerosi politics… Wild idea, but wouldn’t it have been better and a hella lot more meaningful if Missandei had stayed as Lady Regent in Mereen (I mean a girl raised as a slave leading people like her, it makes sense to me) but I guess D needed a cool break up gift for Daario.

2.-Melissandre is watching them from a Cliff, and Varys is like if you say they so great why didn’t you greet them?? She is vague af but basically says she and Team Snow are not so cool with each other because she made a mistake (that’s how we calling sweet Shireen’s awfull murder?? Fuck you red woman) and says she is gonna go to Volantis to chill before the war, and Varys is like good and don’t ever come back you trick ass bih, but Meli is like y'all need me and my destiny is to die in this foreing land… Like you (is it me or does this remind y'all of Danss threat last ep??)

3.-They finally reach the castle, Jon is kind of adorable cuz he is so uncomfortable and fidgety, and Danee is petty again, sitting on yet another fugly throne (Aegon honey I know you were all about conquering but you have a hella lot of obsidian lying around and it would have made an awesome and elegant throne instead of that thing you have there) and Missandei annoys me once again by proudly parroting every goddamn title of Dañy, and she looks ridiculous once Davos humbly introduces Jon (I actually laughed because it’s more aparent than ever to me that all their parallels were to make'em foils of each other).

Jon and Davos say she could take KL very easily and that if she hasn’t done so yet it’s because, and I quote’ “You’re better than Cersei at the very least” I mean you’re not exactly wrong Jon, but like Tyrion was the one to say ‘Hey how about we don’t kill anyone pls’ so there’s that.

Jon proves once again he is a hella lot more polite and grown up than her adressing her as Your Grace and Daññy is a petty toddler calling him Lord Snow, but my Dadvos is having none of that shit and he corrects her which leads to D@€-D@€ to prove her ignorance once again saying the last KitN bent the knee to grand pops Aegon in exchange of his and the rest of the northerns lives (yes honey and you think that was good or fair? Using violence to get your way?) and that it was for everzzzz cuz even though my shitty ancestors bullied everyone to give up their claims to them they became super best friends and had eternal perfect peace (I read World of I&F and her history knowledge is biased or plain shitty, I mean Targaryens were awful and had massive weapons of destruction nobody was going against them for fear not loyalty you entitled brat!!) so kneel!! And he was like LOL no, your crazy dad burned my grandad and my uncle if anything your family broke the alliance, and we have a D is a big fat hypocrite moment when she asks Jon not to condemn her for her father’s sins, Jon is not impressed and retorts that then he can’t be held to his ancestor’s promise (I’m so proud of my son) and LMAO she gets sooooo angry and snaps that why did he came here if not to postrate his unworthy self before her (cuz she believes everything is about her it seems) Jon proceeds to explain the threat of the WW (ily Jon but you need to explain things better) Tyrion and D are reasonably disbelieving (I would have expected them have more of an open mind, I mean they have motherfucking Dragons ffs!! But I can understand an army of the dead sounds pretty crazy to be fair) and we get the summary of Danee’s arc and how she got this far by believing in herself (I’m more inclined to say it was the Dragons and sheer luck in having powerful resourceful advisors coming to you but ok).

Now I know I said I Love girls who empower themselves after being abused, so how come I dislike D@ne so if she is exactly that? Well I didn’t at first, I loved her and was rooting so hard for her 'till she decided that she was better than everyone else and became a conqueror and entitled to a boot, not a breaker of chains. She took the Unsullied for herself because she didn’t want the Dothrakis to pilliage and rape their way through Astapor, good! But why the need to take Astapor and then Mereen? If she were a hero (which I don’t think she is) she would have liberated the slaves without declaring herself ruler, she would have let them decide who they wanted to rule among themselves and would have helped them to come up with a new government, forming a friendly alliance maybe then they even would have helped her in her quest to go back to Westeros, instead of violently taking the power (and no I’m not defending the masters at all, but I do think the mereenese people deserved to have a say in how they wanted to be ruled now that they were free) Since I was little I was taught the spanish took my country with fire and blood, weapons my people couldn’t defend themselves against, they took away their culture, religion and their names. They were forced to work with no pay, murdered, raped (our last tlatoani/leader/king Cuahutemoc got his feet burned when the spanish were interrogating him about aztec gold) and tortured for 300 years, and in my 6yo heart I hated it, of course I don’t hate nor recent the Spanish people for their (and also mine because I have spanish blood as well as aztec and egyptian) ancestor’s deeds, but I hated that people thought they were better than other people, and that they felt entitled to take lands that were not theirs, I hated to imagine the suffering of my people, I hated to know we could never fully understand all the amazing culture and knowledge the mesoamerican cultures had because they decided their way was better and burned or buried most of it, and D@€ny reminds me of all that, and it doesn’t let me enjoy her even as a Villian or Fallen Hero.

(excuse my rant and feel totally free to ignore it)

Dadvos just can’t with her bullshit and he says Jon has done a lot of similar things but without Dragons. Honestly the best way to explain it is with the 'but did you die?’ gif, and supports Jon’s testimony about the WW.

And D@€ny is like yeah but the throne is MINE and if you don’t agree you are against me (lovely way to make more enemies,yup be antagonistic pls) Jon loses it and says she and all the Lords and Ladies of Westeros are FUCKING children fighting for a chair when a real threat is just around the corner and they aren’t going to care who is the rightful anything.

She is so ofended its hillarious xD, she asks Tyrion what she is supposed to do since he refuses to acknowledge her as Qinn of the 7 realms, and he called her a child (well Dañy what did you expect when you have only acted as such?) and Tyrion is like well he said we were ALL children tbh in a very non-commital way.

Jon and Davos are dismissed, and my baby asks if he is her priosioner, 'not yet’ she says, and hold me because Imma knock some sense into her.

———-

Tis too long, I’ll continue in part 2.

[sage-nebula]

Something Like a Modern Fantasy

Notes: So, six years ago, I wrote a thing.

Specifically, I wrote this thing, and I know it was six years ago because I posted it to Facebook and it showed up in the “On This Day” app. And here’s the thing about this thing: This original fic resulted in one of the worst drags I’ve ever experienced, one that honest-to-god almost broke me as a writer.

Let me explain.

Six years ago, I took an advanced fiction workshop for the first time. See, I was a creative writing major in undergrad, and so we were required to take at least one advanced creative writing course (I took two over the course of my time---fiction and playwriting---but that’s not the point right now.) The first time I tried to take the advanced fiction workshop, however, I didn’t finish it. The reason why I didn’t finish it---the reason why I ended up dropping out---was because I submitted this story when it was my turn to submit something for our class of 25 to read . . .

. . . and the professor . . . raked me over the coals for it.

Now, again, our class had twenty-five students in it. But my professor hated this story so much that he went off about how much he hated it, in front of all twenty-four of the other students. He also said, and I’ll never forget this, “There’s so much wrong with this I don’t have time to tell you how to fix it.” Apparently it was the least funny, most horribly written thing he had ever read. I’m all about constructive criticism, but literally nothing he said was constructive. All insults, and no instruction on how to fix it. As a result, I was so completely ashamed and humiliated that I just stopped showing up to the class and took my failing grade, feeling that I deserved it.

Anyway, I ended up taking an advanced fiction workshop with the other professor who taught it a year or two later (because while I could have just given up on writing forever, that’s . . . not really my style), and I worked my ass off and passed that one with flying colors, so it all worked out in the end. The first workshop was a disaster, and the second one was a success. But the point of this post is that I’m going to share with you that fateful story that was so bad that I couldn’t show my face in that first advanced fiction workshop again, because, hey . . . even if (though?) it’s garbage, if nothing else, it just shows how far I’ve come.

So, here’s this.

- - -

Most people go through their lives without anything exciting happening to them. Oh, sure, they go to school, go to work, maybe win a contest or two, participate in some sports tournaments, attend a few concerts . . . but nothing truly exciting happens to them. They live ordinary, boring lives, even if their lives don't seem boring all the time. Most people, through the course of living these ordinary, boring lives, indulge in fiction as a way to break up the monotony. They read books. They watch movies. They watch television, listen to music, and play video games. They let themselves escape to a more exciting, interesting place for short intervals of time, as a way of pretending that living their ordinary, boring lives doesn't bother them. This gets them through until they die, at which point it no longer matters how boring and ordinary their lives are, because they're dead and there's nothing they can do about it.

But still, some of these people wonder, what if life wasn't so boring and uninteresting? What if they woke up one day, and life was suddenly exciting, interesting, and all-around like every fictional book and every fictional movie they'd ever dreamed of living in?

For some people, such a thing sounds like a dream come true. For others, it sounds terrifying.

And for others, well, they really don't have much of a choice in the matter.

- -

The adventure always kicks off differently in each story. For some, they get a letter summoning them to a magical school. For others, they get told that they must take a magical MacGuffin off to some faraway place, all the while avoiding others that try and take it away from them. Still others simply happen upon the wrong place at the wrong time and then spend the rest of their adventure constantly running from those that want to kill them. Actually, all of the people in the above scenarios, at one point or another, run away from people who want to kill them. It seems to a staple of the interesting, exciting life. Well, that, and conveniently being an orphan. You'd be amazed at how many main characters in various fictional scenarios just don't have parents for some reason or another, because parents — above all else — seem to not approve of their children going off on magical, life-threatening adventures.

As for me, well, I'm not an orphan, but I'm not a child, either. I don't even live with my parents anymore. Not that I'm exactly an adult; I don't want to be an adult, and so long as I'm still in college I can pretend that I'm not while still reaping all the benefits of one, such as getting to do whatever I want in my on-campus apartment while not having to pay rent or mortgage bills. Anyway, so I'm not an orphan, and my adventure doesn't kick off with a letter of summons, a "but thou must" quest, or stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time and triggering a series of unfortunate events.

Instead, it starts with me opening my front door and hitting a zombie in the face with a baseball bat. And let me clarify: this is an actual zombie, not someone pretending to be a zombie, or my drunk neighbor stumbling home at three in the morning, so piss drunk out of her mind that she looks and acts like a zombie. No, this is an actual zombie, of the eat-your-flesh-and-brains for breakfast variety. It'd actually be kind of cool, if it didn't reek of dead flesh, and ooze all over my welcome mat.

At least I wasn't too attached to that mat.

But anyway, that's how the whole thing started. In case you're wondering, I was holding the bat because I was getting ready to go to batting practice. Not that I'm on the baseball team or anything, but sometimes I like to just go down the batting cages and hit a few rounds. It's good for getting out anger, you know, without actually hitting someone in the face. Besides the zombie, I mean. But if a zombie was standing outside your front door, moaning and probably about to gnaw your face off, and you just so happened to be holding a baseball bat, you'd hit it in the face, too.

But there we have it — the "just so happened," the convenient coincidence that goes along with every sort of story like this. Well, I guess we had to have it somewhere.

Anyway, so that's how it all began. I was on my way to batting practice, I opened my front door, saw a zombie, and hit the zombie in the face with the bat. I didn't even really think — I just swung. And I guess all those years of batting practice have paid off, because the zombie went down pretty hard, fluids oozing out of its face where proper blood should be. It didn't die — blunt force trauma won't kill anything that quick, and anyway, aren't zombies undead anyway? Can't kill what's undead. At least, I don't think you can. I didn't stay long enough to check. It was stupid of me, but I just hopped over the zombie, didn't even bother to close my door, and took off running to see if the rest of the campus was overrun. What? I was excited! It's not every day that you open your door, see a zombie, hit the zombie, and then get a chance to jump over it and check out the rest of campus. And with a campus this small and this mundane, completely boring and not exciting in the slightest, the chance of a zombie apocalypse is a pretty big deal. It's something to get excited over.

But there was no zombie apocalypse. When I went down the stairs and got to ground level, everything and everyone looked normal. There were no more zombies, no lumbering corpses, no moans or odors of dead flesh — nothing. Just me, holding my goo-covered baseball bat, a zombie twitching in front of my open front door upstairs. Good way to start the morning, I guess, but for some reason I didn't even really panic. I just stood there, looking at the rest of the ordinary, still-alive people around me, holding the bat and probably looking like an idiot.

Well, at that point, I had two options. I could either, A) go back up and check on the zombie (who, incidentally, turned out to be my roommate; I felt kind of bad for hitting him in the face when I found that out, but since he was already a zombie, there wasn't much I could do for him; a band-aid wouldn't fix it, and anyway, since I left the door open he could get into the apartment just fine, so I don't think what I did was that terrible) , or B) leave. So of course, I did what any reasonable human being would do in that situation.

I left.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I lost all choice in the matter. Because if you're faced with a zombie upon opening your front door, and you happen to be holding a bat, chances are you're going to swing the bat to hit the zombie. And at that point — or maybe the point after you check to see if the rest of your campus is infested with flesh-and-brain-eating corpses — you have two options. You can either go back to your life as normal, and have the adventure end there, or you can leave, and thereby get contracted into going on an adventure.

I left, and so I was contracted into going on an adventure. It's really as simple as that. Once I turned away from the stairs and went off in search of finding out why there was a zombie in front of my door (or really just doing something about it, because the why wasn't as important as the can you please take this away it really smells rank and it's getting ooze all over the place as far as I was concerned), I was roped into whatever would happen next, whether I liked it or not. It would have been that way no matter what I did, so long as what I did didn't involve going back up to my apartment, going inside, shutting the door, locking it, and then going back to bed.

But since that's the case, I really wish I would have done something other than go to public safety for help.

- -

In my defense, I didn't know what else to do. I guess I could have called the Help Desk, but what could they have done, filed an incident report to public safety to get them to take care of the zombie? Yeah, as if. I figured I'd cut out the middle man and just go to public safety myself.

I should have known better, all things considered.

"Uh, excuse me?" No response. The woman behind the little window just kept typing on her computer, completely oblivious to my presence. You'd think the fact that I was holding a baseball bat might've got her attention. I mean, I had no intention of bashing her skull in, but I could have, and usually that makes all the difference in any and all situations pertaining to weapons. "Excuse me?" Still no response. Maybe I should have brought a box of Krispy Kremes with me. "Excuse me!"

"What?" Finally. Even if the response was less than friendly, it was still a response. I tried to make my voice polite again, but I wasn't too sure I succeeded.

"There's a zombie in front of my apartment. Can you send someone over to do something about it?"

"What?" The woman's voice still wasn't friendly, but now it wa a little less angry, and a little more confused. I tried again.

"There's a zombie in front of my apartment. I opened my door, and it was standing there, so I hit it with my bat." I held up the bat and she looked at it, frowning because of the goo that was still on it, I guess. "I think that knocked it out, or at least stunned it or something, because it went down pretty hard and didn't move aside from twitching after that. But anyway, I guess it's probably still there, and I want someone to go take care of it. Or at least make sure that it's not still there, I don't want to get mauled the next time I go back."

The woman stared at me, and I stared back. For a few minutes, there was no sound except for that which the other public safety "officers" made behind her, filing reports or whatever it is they do. Mostly all they ever do is issue parking tickets, so I guess maybe they were filing those into the system. Finally, the woman asked, "Do you think this is a joke?"

"What?" It was my turn to be confused. "Uh, no, a zombie in front of my apartment is pretty serious business." I didn't want to think about what ResLife would fine me for zombie stains on the carpet inside.

"Here at public safety, we work tirelessly to ensure the safety of the students, staff, and faculty on this campus," she continued, and I guess I should have seen where it was going then, but part of my mind got distracted wondering how they factored frequent trips to McD's as "working tirelessly to ensure the safety of the students, staff, and faculty" on the campus. "We do our best to respond in a timely manner to every report, to make sure that every safety regulation is followed, to investigate each matter as seriously and swiftly as possible."

"Great. Then you're going to send someone to deal with the zombie, right?"

"That means," the woman continued, and her voice was rising at this point, so I really should have gotten the message that this wasn't going to end well, "that when we get fake reports — when we get little practical jokes by students, we take those seriously as well. They are not appreciated. They are not amusing. If we had the same power as the police department, I can assure you that you would be arrested for this insubordination!"

"Uh."

"Please leave. Do not come back here again unless you have a serious problem."

"I do have a serious problem. There's a zombie in front of my—"

"Leave!"

Well, in all honesty, I wasn't that surprised. Put-out, I guess, because this was the one time in which public safety could actually be useful, and they'd failed me. But surprised? Nah, not really. Like I said, they were never really useful despite that woman's speech about how they worked tirelessly to blah, blah, blah, and so I hadn't really expected much from them, especially since I'm pretty sure they were not prepared for a zombie apocalypse. For a mass onslaught of parking violations? Definitely. For zombies? No.

Of course, that gave me the idea that maybe I should say someone was parked illegally in front of my apartment building, and then just drag the public safety officers up to my apartment once they got there. But then, if there was someone parked illegally by some chance, the officers would be too distracted in writing their tickets, so that was a lost cause, anyway.

At that point, I was at a loss for what to do. I figured that I could go back to my apartment, but by this point the zombie would probably be awake, and I didn't want to get mauled. There was still the option of calling the Help Desk, but again, what could an incident report do for me now? And then I could always go to the university center, but I didn't see what they could do, either, except maybe make me a new ID card for the zombie. Out of all the resources on campus, that only left ResLife, Health Services, and the Academic Advising/Resource Center. ResLife would just fine me for zombie stains, Health Services was only ever useful for hounding people for vaccination records, and the Academic Advising/Resource Center was just useful for administering tests and telling you to take classes that you didn't need while never offering you any real help when it came to registering for the classes that you did need.

So all in all, my options were pretty slim. Given that I didn't want to go back to my apartment (at least not alone), and given that I also couldn't make use of any of the available "resources" on campus, I did the only thing that made sense at that point.

I went to go see my best friend Kyle.

- -

"A zombie?"

"A zombie."

"In front of your apartment?"

"Yep."

"And you hit it with your bat?"

"Uh-huh."

". . . No fucking way." I knew he'd react like that. But see, the thing about Kyle is, while he says "no fucking way" right off instead of giving some long-winded speech about how I should only talk about serious things and not joke around, he doesn't mean that he doesn't believe me. He just means that he thinks there's no fucking way there could have been a zombie in front of my apartment. And despite how it sounds, that's not the same thing. "You've gotta show me this shit."

"I will, if you'll move your ass and come with me." I walked away from his apartment, only pausing at the top of the stairs to let him shut his door and lock it. Not that he has anything worth stealing in there except his laptop, but you know. "It might not still be there, though. I didn't kill it."

"Of course you didn't kill it, it's a zombie. It's already dead. Undead. Whatever. But you're just saying that now because there wasn't an actual zombie, so nothing's going to be there when we get there."

"Like hell, dude. There's zombie ooze all over my welcome mat."

"Sure there is."

"You'll see."

Kyle's on-campus apartment was across campus from mine, but the campus was so small that it only took about five minutes to get from his place to mine, even taking into account the fact that we had to dodge kids on scooters and weave our way through the parking lots. When we got back to my apartment, the zombie had moved as I predicted, but it didn't go far. Not only was the ooze still all over the place, but it made a trail through my open door, leading right to the zombie, who was rolling around on the carpet.

ResLife will have a field day with those zombie ooze fines, I swear to Christ.

"Holy shit dude," Kyle said, and I glanced over to see that his jaw was dropped. Well, that's a decent reaction, at least.

"Told you so."

"No, seriously, holy fuck." Kyle walked into my apartment, which I thought was pretty batshit stupid considering it was a fucking zombie that was rolling around (moaning, too — seriously, was it getting some strange, freaky, orgasmic reaction to the cheap carpeting or something?), and leaned forward a bit to get a closer look at the zombie. "I think that's your roommate."

"My what?"

"Your roommate. Ryan. Isn't that Ryan?"

I walked up to join Kyle in the doorway, standing a bit behind him even though I was the one with the weapon, and leaned forward to get a closer look. In case you were wondering, yeah, this was when I found out that my roommate was the one I bashed in the face upon opening my door to find that there was a zombie there. Again, he was already a zombie. There wasn't much I could do. And from the way he was taking pleasure in rolling around on my carpet, I really don't think he cared too much. "Yeah, I guess that's him. Kind of hard to tell, since there's a gaping mouth where his face should be."

"I'm positive that's him. Dude, your roommate's a zombie. That's pretty fucked up. Think they'll give you a roommate transfer if you ask for one?"

"Well, considering public safety thought I was bullshitting them when I told them about the zombie in the first place, probably not."

"You went to public safety? Man, that's so weak."

"Shut up, I didn't know what else to do."

"Point taken."

The zombie — or Ryan, I guess — kept rolling around on the floor, pausing every few moments, yet then going right back to it. He kind of reminded me of my dog. She'd do that sometimes, too. After a minute, I asked, "So, what do you think I should do?"

"Ask for a roommate transfer."

"I mean besides that."

"Dude, I don't know." Kyle shrugged. "I've never had a zombie roommate before."

Well, there went all my options. I had no resources on campus, my best friend didn't know what to do, and my roommate was a zombie that was currently rolling around on my carpet and showing no signs of stopping. There was really only one thing I could think of to do at that moment, and if my fate to go on some quest hadn't been sealed before that moment, it was definitely sealed right then.

"Well, I guess I can just go home for the weekend."

- - 

Okay, so maybe going home for the weekend wasn't the best solution to my problem, either. I still couldn't go into my apartment, because even if he was just rolling around like my dog after eating kibble, there was still a chance that zombie-Ryan could jump up and maul my face at any given moment. That, and going home wouldn't exactly solve the zombie-Ryan problem. All it would do was postpone the fact that I had to deal with it until I got back, unless my drunk-ass neighbor happened to look in my open door at one point and see zombie-Ryan rolling around on the floor. Granted, I doubted anyone would believe my drunk-ass neighbor any more than they ever believed me, especially since she was drunk all the time, but hey. I could try.

Anyway, so going home wouldn't really solve the zombie problem, but it was all I could think of to do in that moment. I guess in a way I was panicking, but not in the screaming fit way of panicking. More of the I just did whatever came to mind first brand of panicking, and since that panicking allowed me to drive home without crashing the car, I figured that was a good thing.

Home was about three hours away, so even though I left at eleven AM, I got there at about two-thirty, which was fine. It was a Saturday, which meant my parents would either be at home or playing golf or something, and they'd be happy to see me home for the weekend. Probably, anyway. It was hard to tell with them sometimes. Anyway, I fully expected them to be home, because as mentioned before, I am not conveniently an orphan. That's not how this story is going to work. No way, no how.

But I guess stories can't function if the main character can just run home whenever they want, either. And I guess that having parents there sort of induces that "run home" feeling. And I guess since I lost all choice in the matter the second I decided to leave my zombie roommate rolling around on the floor, some divine forces from above were going to step in and make sure that I couldn't get all comfy-cozy at home, ignoring my destiny or whatever the hell it was that caused my roommate to turn into a zombie and then roll around in the living room.

That was the best reason I could come up with, anyway, for why — when I used my key to get in the front door and walked into my living room — a middle-aged couple that was not made up of either my mother or my father was sitting there, watching television, the house filled with furniture that I didn't recognize.

"Uh." It was my default response for when my brain was too broken to think of anything else, okay? And for the record, the middle-aged couple that wasn't made up of either my father or my mother seemed to have brains as equally as broken as mine.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in here?" the man asked, standing up from his reclining chair. I held up my key by way of explanation.

"I live here. Or I kind of live here, anyway. This is my parents' house. Speaking of which, where are they, and who are you?"

"This is our house," the man said, indicating himself and who I assumed to be his wife. "We've lived here for thirty years, and we don't have any children."

"Then explain to me why my key works," I said, holding out the key. He didn't take it. "I'm positive that this is my parents' house. I grew up here. We never lived anywhere else. I was just here two weeks ago to do laundry." Hey, don't judge me, you never really need to do laundry until you run out of underwear. "Seriously, what the hell is going on?"

The woman looked somewhat scandalized, either by my presence or my language. Hey, it wasn't nearly as bad as what I could have said, but then, I guessed they might be one of those couples that's traumatized by everything "our nation's young people" do. There are some older couples like that out there.

"Look," the man said, apparently doing all the talking for him and his wife. "I don't know where you got that key or what you're playing at, but if you don't leave right now, I'm calling the police."

"Leave and go where?" I asked, and I don't even know why I bothered. "I can't go back to school, there's a zombie in my apartment. And I would go to my parents' house, except this is my parents' house, even though it's apparently not now." The man seemed to have no sympathy for me, and his wife still looked scandalized, so I sighed. "Fine, fine. I'm going."

And go I did. I walked out, but I made sure to check the number on the mailbox and the outside of the house. There was no mistaking it. It was my parents' house, the house I was raised in, the house I'd just done my laundry at two weeks ago.

Only, apparently it was no longer my parents house, but instead the house of some middle-aged couple that I didn't even recognize. And when I tried calling my parents on my cell phone, all I got was a "this number has been disconnected" message.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty sure that I'm not conveniently an orphan, but again, if nothing before had sealed my "you're set to go on an adventure now" fate, this did it.

And to be honest, it kind of sucked.