#To a dragon - a being that can exist outside of the understood concept of time - matrimony seems a transient thing amongst humans.

[toasteaa]

Oh no...wedding thoughts on the dash this evening and making me think...

[reginrokkr]

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐕𝐈. Different uses to an equivalent of Aqua Doloris to introduce knowledge of the Abyss —Aqua Sapientiae—.

Last night in my review of Wriothesley's SQ I touched on the topic of the Aqua Doloris (water of pain) and its plausible connection to the poisonous Abyss and even Khaenri'ah (Khaenri'ahn language uses Latin and this here is outright Latin). After giving it some thought, I want to give that more depth and establish it as part of this blog's worldbuilding concerning a kingdom that was so grand but it also cast a large shadow.

It is known that the Abyss and everything that connects to it is intimately related to Forbidden Knowledge that, according to Rhukkadevata is:

«Forbidden knowledge» is a kind of knowledge that doesn’t belong to this world, and a form of “truth” that can’t be understood. It came from the very bottom of the Abyss. Even I could never understand it. The world is constantly rejecting it, leading to all kinds of phenomena. If we allow forbidden knowledge to pollute Irminsul, I’m afraid the entirety of Teyvat could fall apart. At that time, I knew I couldn’t repel the forbidden knowledge with my strength alone. Which is why I created a device that compiled human wisdom, and named it “the Akasha”.

But we know that after the last episode of Sumeru's main arc, all Forbidden Knowledge was erased from Irminsul with Rhukkadevata's erasure. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop the Abyss from continuing to be a source of truth that still lingers in Teyvat if we take into account the Sign of Apaosha phenomenon, or as per the Chinese transliteration: Burning Truth Weather Phenomenon. Before getting into this, I want to give another glimpse of truth tied to the Abyss, witnessed by Childe no less who spent three months there, three days in Teyvatan time.

There, he witnessed the endless possibilities of another ancient world.

As per what he says in the event of Labyrinth Warriors, it is highly possible that it happened nearby Irminsul, as he describes having fought in the fissures that lie between great tree roots.

No matter how negatively the Abyss is perceived (and how negative the knowledge it provides is, perhaps to Celestia as it reveals a certain truth that doesn't seem to be something they want to be known and yet the Abyss Order is sickened that common folk doesn't know and seek to shove it down their throats at the closest opportunity, however true or distorted their truth may be), it is clear that at the same time it is trying to introduce a censored truth as if it were someone from outside of Teyvat wanting to send warnings of some kind as it may or may not be interpreted through two description lines of Narwhal:

Realistically speaking, however, if a profound universe full of life exists, why hasn't any of that life made contact with Teyvat? Maybe the universe has been constantly trying to infiltrate Teyvat, or maybe a higher power created borders to protect this world.

Lastly, to conclude with the chain of indicators that point towards the Abyss being a different brand of source of truth, I want to return to the Sign of Apaosha. This celestial phenomenon is said to have appeared for the first time after the Cataclysm's apparition as a result of the constant build-up of defilement. According to Khaenri'ahn documents, it was also called Sign of Truth, as they believed that it reflected the "reality" beyond the skies of Teyvat.

Now, to jump onto Khaenri'ah, 「Caribert」 was bolder in revealing that part of the population had this belief that in controlling the Abyss, they would also be able to control the Heavenly Principles. And judging by Chlothar's status as a nobleman of the Alberich house, it stands to reason that this belief was spread among the gentry of the kingdom. As a small parenthesis, the devs also mentioned that all the time back since the conception of Field Tillers and other Ruin Guards there were people with certain obsessions, some of which can be reflected in their infatuation for dragons. Furthermore, it is also known that the Universitas Magistrorum, what could've possibly been an equivalent of Sumeru's Akademiya in Khaenri'ah, possessed great knowledge but they would also twist it to their own needs.

Their obsession for the Abyss didn't end there, however, as it is known that until relatively late years of Khaenri'ah's civilization leading to the looming Cataclysm within close years, Ley Line energy was being used as energy until they have decided to change to Abyss energy. This made them want to investigate this energy outside Khaenri'ah (namely in Sumeru) through a special unit of knights by the name of Schwanenritter at the orders of the Knight Marshal Anfortas (who would later become into a temporary regent due to King Irmin falling ill or passing away). One of the tasks of these knights was also of espionage.

So in view that they would reach as far as to be able to turn the Abyss power into energy for their own use and, no matter how twisted, Khaenri'ah was a nation rich in knowledge of all sorts, it is also possible that they used the Abyss power for other means similar to how the Aqua Doloris was. And by this I don't mean necessarily to inflict pain and control people, but for something different such as isolating knowledge in a substance instead of fear born from unpleasant memories in order to provide it or force it to people and have more join this twisted cause that even King Irmin wasn't above judging by the description of statuettes carved in the likeness of his person:

“See, my child. All that lies under the throne of heaven shall be destroyed by upheaval. The eternal peace of the pitch-dark void shall embrace us all.”

While I'm still a firm believer that there was a part of the Khaenri'ahn population that had nothing to do with the underlying darkness that permeated this kingdom (among which I think Dainsleif was, based on his pain when he talked about the civilization's fall), it is also possible that some people were abducted into a cult-like kind of belief and that manners of "drugs" were used to make these people believe what others, deep in their delusion, already believed blindly as the Aqua Doloris did.

[agentrouka-blog]

While I feel sad for Dany for her not having a true home, but I don't understood her sudden connection to westroes as her home. It didn't occur till viserys died as she still considered home at braavos as her home. It really contrast with Sansa building snow WF at eyrie. Even if WF had not been same as previous Sansa will rebuild it with help of starklings. On the other hand Dany responsible for destruction of other's homes in quest for her home.

While I hate defending Dany, I feel compelled to point out that she doesn't have a legitimate home, so any place she dreams of is going to be a fantasy. She was hunted as a child by an implacable king who wanted her dead for what her brother did. That's legitimately unfair, there was nothing she did to earn his wrath and nothing she could have done to appease it. Dreaming of home as a place where her family was in power is not an unreasonable fantasy, even later on.

Once Robert was dead, she would have been safe and free to choose her own home, in theory, but by then she had become fixated on the throne, and the idea of safety and home were wrapped up in the concept of ruling Westeros. And she had the dragons, so she never had to reconsider her plans, not truly.

It was too late.

The real and painful contradiction between home and power is going to be when home is, in theory, within reach outside of rulership. Aegon is about to take the place back, and he is her nephew. It would be safe to return. But Dany no longer wants to simply return, she will want to rule regardless. Given the choice between family and power, she will choose power.

The picture Tyrion paints here is not that of two Targaryens. (I'll leave you to imagine who fulfills this scenario. Hint: the girl who rebuilds Winterfell from Snow and the boy who has the name to match. They are the ones who care about family bonds.)

"I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar's murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. The girl who drowned the slaver cities in blood rather than leave strangers to their chains can scarcely abandon her own brother's son in his hour of peril. And when she reaches Westeros, and meets you for the first time, you will meet as equals, man and woman, not queen and supplicant. How can she help but love you then, I ask you?" (ADWD, Tyrion VI)

This bit following right behind is more like it:

Smiling, he seized his dragon, flew it across the board. "I hope Your Grace will pardon me. Your king is trapped. Death in four." (ADWD, Tyrion VI)

Even a marriage to Aegon would not sound attractive, given that nominal power would be his, and his temperament has shown us he is not easily cowed. The idea of Aegon being a "mummer's dragon", of NOT being her family, will be immensely attractive to Dany, because it will justify her claim to rulership in spite of his existence.

Because home to Dany the idea of power and ruling, not family or a place of safety.

[bring-it-all-down]

Much has been said about the Black Sails finale and its statement of the show’s themes, so I’d like to focus instead on the penultimate episode, specifically the following speech Jack gives as he’s headed back to Nassau with the goal of killing Flint:

The result ahead of us promises to be a victory of a different sort. A true victory. Freedom...in every sense of the word. How many men in the history of the world have ever known it? How remarkable a moment is this? How fortunate are we to be standing on the threshold of it?

I think this speech really gets to the heart of the show: it’s ultimately about what it means to be truly free. While this notion of freedom is discussed in Flint’s unparalleled final speech about dragons, it’s perhaps in 4.09 that we get the fullest exploration of freedom.

There has obviously been a lot written on the subject of freedom throughout human history, and rather than foolishly attempt to summarize thousands of years of philosophy, I’m going to refer to one of my favorite understandings, written by W.E.B. DuBois:

I dream of a world of infinitive and valuable variety; not in the laws of gravity or atomic weights, but in human variety in height and weight, color and skin, hair and nose and lip. But more especially and far above and beyond this, is a realm of true freedom: in thought and dream, fantasy and imagination; in gift, aptitude, and genius—all possible manner of difference, topped with freedom of soul to do and be, and freedom of thought to give to a world and build into it, all wealth of inborn individuality. Each effort to stop this freedom of being is a blow at democracy—that real democracy which is reservoir and opportunity” (The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History, pg. 165.)

DuBois here notes three central elements of freedom: the physical (“to do and be”), the mental (“thought and dream, fantasy and imagination”), and the generational (“give to a world and build into it”). The first two components of freedom are understood by much of Western political philosophy through the terms “negative liberty” and “positive liberty” (coined by Isaiah Berlin), freedom from external threats and freedom to engage in philosophic activity. To these conceptions, DuBois adds a third that all the white dudes who conceived of the other two wouldn’t be concerned with: central to achieving them is the recognition that every individual owes prior and future generations their efforts to maintain liberty, that liberty is not just a theoretical principle but an action.

Turning now to episode 4.09, I think we can begin to understand how each of these three types of freedom overlap.

To start, the conflict of the episode deals with negative liberty. Silver and Flint to some degree know that if one catches the other with the chest, there is a chance they will be killed, and Silver wants the chest to ensure that Woodes Rogers does not kill Madi. In short, they are fighting for their survival, their physical freedom.

Moving on to the flashbacks between Flint and Silver, we begin to see the connection between negative liberty and positive liberty. First, because Silver and Flint are equals without the same political obligations to each other as they have to the crew, the people who serve them and who they serve in turn, they can be honest with each other. Silver recognizes this in telling Flint: “The men...I have to manage how they see me...But for pride to be an issue between you and I, well, I think we’re playing past that by now.” Because they, at that point, have physical/negative liberty with each other, they are then allowed to pursue mental/positive liberty, that being the revelation of their true selves. 

However, Flint becomes aware that this physical liberty is an illusion because Silver is unwilling to meet him equally in their pursuit of positive liberty: 

You know my story. Thomas, Miranda, all of it. Know the role it played in motivating me to do the things that I've done, the things I will do. It has made me transparent to you. Not only that, but when I told you this story, you insinuated yourself into it. The latest in a line of ill-fated partners, situating yourself such that...were you and I ever to come to blows, I'd be forced to hesitate before doing you any harm.

Thus Silver actually has a physical advantage over Flint, negating any semblance of Flint’s physical liberty in their relationship. Through Silver’s attempts to kill Flint in this episode and in the finale, we see that without both physical/mental (or negative/positive) liberty present in any relationship, neither will exist; you cannot have one without the other.

This brings us to what I’ve decided to call generational freedom, though I suppose it could also be called communal freedom. In this episode, the concept of generational freedom is brought up in relation to both Jack and Madi. First, we see it in Jack’s conversation with the man he chose to navigate him to Skeleton Island:

Jack: You sailed with Avery.

Old man: Long time ago.

Jack: 20 years? More, even, maybe?

Old man: More, aye.

Jack: Mm-hmm. You do know where you're going, yes? No, seriously, I've got quite a lot riding on this.

Old man: One day, you'll leave the account. Take a wife, father children. See less and less of the sea until she becomes like a painting hanging on the wall, static and irrelevant to your daily existence. But she'll keep on calling you. And when she does, you'll step into that painting and feel the swell beneath your feet. It'll all come back as if it were like yesterday.

Jack: Is that so?

Old man: I've watched you and yours handle the account since I and mine left it. Accomplish things that no one I ever sailed with could dream of. From what I've overheard, if you reach Skeleton Island, might mean the end of the governor. Maybe keep the account alive a little while longer. Is that so?

Jack: That and more.

Old man: Then I'll take you to it. Hold on to this for as long as you can, for all of us who once had it...and walked away.

In this conversation, we see the generational connections within piracy. The old man sailed with Henry Avery, the person most responsible for establishing the current status of piracy in Nassau, and he is conversing with the person who will usher Nassau into a new era. He is careful to remind Jack of this link and of how unseverable it is; no matter how far away Jack gets from piracy, he will never be able to leave it fully behind. There is some sense of owing his existence in this world to Avery and all those who came before him, a debt he must repay with his actions (namely, removing Woodes Rogers and continuing the life of piracy in Nassau).

Immediately after this conversation, we get Woodes Rogers’ bargaining with Madi. He offers her an ultimatum: accept his treaty or he will kill Silver and all of Silver’s crew, which includes many of Madi’s people. Madi rejects his ultimatum with one of the most poignant speeches in the show:

The voice you hear in your head, I imagine I know who it sounds like, as I know Eleanor wanted those things. But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women and children who'd lost their lives to men like you. Men and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them and this war, their war, Flint's war, my war, it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight, to save John Silver's life or his men's or mine. And you believe what you will, but it was neither I nor Flint, nor the Spanish raider who killed your wife. That, you did.

Because of her existence as a former slave who had lived in hiding for most of her life, Madi most fully understands generational freedom. She knows that the supposed freedom Rogers’ treaty offers her and her people is not actual freedom because it fails to address the unfreedom of her ancestors, of the rest of the enslaved people in the Caribbean, because she knows that freedom will never be achieved on the terms of the oppressor. She knows that she owes this war to every victim of England’s empire and that it is the only way to achieve what DuBois calls the opportunity to “give to a world and build into it.” 

This episode thus introduces the idea that “freedom every sense of the word” depends on one recognizing one’s duty to one’s community that consists of not just its current members, but its past and future members. Complete freedom is achieved when one begins to fight to protect the freedom of those who do not yet exist. Madi understands this about freedom, as does Flint, but despite Silver’s insistence that he and Flint are true friends and equals, he is incapable of grasping the generational component of freedom and he therefore ensures that physical and mental freedom, too, will fall outside of his grasp.

[algernoninwonderland]

Miraculous is playing one big game of Calvinball with its magic/power system and it undermines the show quite a bit

TL;DR: Miraculous has, at first glance, a very basic power/magic system… Only whenever it tries to get more complicated than “Moon Prism Power, Make up!” it ends up being an unspeakable mess, due to poor creative decisions that don’t allow for the audience to truly understand what is going on and why, outside of “whatever the plot requires so that we can get to the next scene”. 

It may well be because the people making this show wanted to shift their attention to kwamis and their powers in the future seasons, but holding onto that for seventy-something episodes has done the show a disservice.

Longg isn’t the kwami of Perfection. Longg is the kwami of being a cool dragon. And sometimes, being a cool dragon is enough, you know? Instead of doing complex things poorly, you can tackle simple concepts really well and people won’t think any less of your creation, au contraire.

Throughout the history of the superhero genre, a pretty nifty thing most creators have understood is that you need to explain a bit of how and why the hero’s powers work. Superman is superpowered because it’s all a matter of gravity, a fact underlined in the very first issue of Action Comics, in the very first page of Superman ever. The X-Men are mutants. Sherlock Holmes was bitten by a radioactive detective.

Basically, what happens in most cases is, the creators come up with a set of rules to sort of explain the storyworld so that you know to manage your expectations, so that the storyworld feels more cohesive too. That’s what I call a neat way to allow your audience to suspend their disbelief and feel more involved in the story being told! Things happen and are allowed to happen a certain way for a reason in-universe, there is a kind of logic proper to the work of fiction being built that makes it easier for the audience to fully get into said work.

In Hunter X Hunter, Nen is a pretty cool concept that is well-defined, we see what it is at first with no explanations, and it’s hella intriguing, which makes you want to know more (and that’s deliberate) and then the manga explains it to you a few chapters later and for the most part, Togashi sticks to that definition. And now we understand what is going on and how. Cool, right?

What do we have here? Creative decisions that are often given justifications in-universe to make them more believable in the context of the story being told, even though they are ultimately arbitrary decisions which can be challenged (see how Superman’s powers changed over time, for instance). You can toy with these explanations and that makes for great comedic potential, just look at One Punch Man!

Magic can be a little murkier for sure, because magic doesn’t necessarily follow rational logic. I won’t be getting into the soft/hard magic talk here. Still, if you want your audience to understand what is going on and if you’re not a complete hack (looking at you Joanne Kathleen), you tend to set up some rules so that the audience can grasp what the hell is going on, understand why something is really impressive or really basic. Is it really such a big deal that a character is able to master that one spell? Why? Ursula Le Guin and Brandon Sanderson are really good at that, and manage a good balance of mystery and understandability.

Miraculous fumbles the bag pretty hard when it comes to how its magic/power system works. Which, after 70-something episodes, is not great. 

Part of it is due to the exposition style Miraculous has chosen for itself, which could be great but ultimately isn’t, and part of it is due to poor definition in the first place.

Miraculous hates exposition dumps most of the time, and I think it’s actually a good thing. No one wants to feel as though they’re sitting through a boring class instead of having fun. Well done, guys! Exposition dumps often make you all the more aware of the artificiality of a story. And so, Miraculous mostly relies on context cues as a means of introducing you to the world. They just show you the thing and trust you to understand and interpret it properly. And sometimes, it works really well!

I still sincerely believe that Stormy Weather is a fantastic first episode, and it does its job amazingly well. In 24 minutes, you learn the very basic outlines of how stuff works, relationships between the characters and superpowers. Yes, it’s very basic, but that’s fine, you can’t drop all that new information on your audience all at once. We understand that the power within the Miraculous, that of the kwami, allows for its wearer to transform. This comes with nifty perks, heightened agility, reflexes, amazing strength, magical accessories, and special quirks unique to each of the Miraculouses.

Are we good so far? See, if we stuck to that, it’d be fine. Not mind-blowing but pretty okay still. Doesn’t have to be too complicated to be enjoyable, just look at Sailor Moon!

And then Miraculous tried to spice things up and communicated its ideas so poorly that the arbitrary decisions taken by the writers are glaring, and seriously affect the audience’s suspension of disbelief and enjoyment. 

The kwamis aren’t just cutesy mascots, they’re gods. And yet their powers are very limited. Why? Well, the show doesn’t really bring that question up, we can only try and infer things. Now, what are these limitations, and why do they exist in the first place? I’ve got a vague answer to the first question (a time limit for transformation once the special power is being used).

The answer to that second question is very unsatisfactory, and that’s the only one I’ve got: “because the plot requires it if we want to do such and such thing”. Which is an answer that applies to absolutely all creative decisions in fiction, yes, but there’s usually more to it as well, in competently-made shows at least, it’s not so transparent. Why is Marinette able to wield so many Miraculouses at once? Well, it’d look cool and it’d make her look powerful, so why not! But Adrien can’t. Why? He just can’t. No explanations whatsoever. Just because. It’s magic. Shut up and watch the show.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve got fleeting remarks about being able to unlock kwami powers and maintaining a transformation for longer and whatnot. The problem is, they’re just that, fleeting remarks, and worse, they are so scattered across the show it’s really easy to forget about them in-between episodes, especially since the release schedule is absolute nonsense (it isn’t the creators’ fault, but it certainly has an impact on the way the audience engages with the show). So no, the show isn’t going down the “just roll with it” route, not entirely… And that makes the lack of proper explanation that much worse.

It feels as through the few rules there are in Miraculous are being made up on the fly and… Heh. That’s just not great.

It doesn’t help that the powers themselves are… Really something, huh?

Chat Noir’s power is the only one that really fits with what his kwami is meant to represent. Destruction. Easy to represent, right?

Creation is trickier, that requires being imaginative, and Miraculous isn’t terribly imaginative when it comes to its lucky charms. Hey kids, did you know that you could use a ladder to stop an ice-skater? How creative! I mean you could also use salt to melt the ice, or a baseball bat to smash his kneecaps, then… The point is, being convoluted isn’t the same thing as being creative, and while Chat Noir gets to decide what he destroys, Ladybug gets an item thrown at her and you better believe she’ll find an use to it… How is that creation exactly? Is the lucky charm popping out of thin air creation? That’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it?

Tikki represents convolution, Nooroo is the power of creating minor antagonists…

I had to check the Wiki to remember what concepts the other kwamis are meant to represent. There’s a disconnect between that and the way powers are represented on-screen. Pollen isn’t the kwami of Subjection. Pollen is the kwami of stabbing people with a stinger. How do I know that? I watched the show and nothing else.

If you want your audience to not be confused, if you don’t want your story to feel completely arbitrary to your audience (though it’ll always be just that), maybe take the time to explain things that are crucial for the understanding of the storyworld’s inner workings. You don’t have to give everything away in the first ten episodes, not at all, but you should explain them at some point, take the time to do so if these are more complex concepts that are crucial to your show. And if they aren’t key to your show, you don’t have to include them, and I promise no-one will notice.

[uniquelyaro]

Living a Lovely Loveless Life

I am a creature of contradictions.

I love swimming at the beach, but you couldn’t get me out in open water for love or money. If I can’t see land, if the ocean is so deep I can’t even imagine the bottom, I am terrified.

I admire the raw power of storms and adore the smell of rain, but I flinch when lightning flashes, because I’m petrified of the loud crack of thunder that always follows.

I love the cold, because it means I can wrap myself in the warmest clothes and take my showers boiling hot.

I am aromantic, and yet, I am in love.

I never expected to fall in love. I’ve never had anything against the concept, but I was fairly sure I wasn't capable of it. I'm still sure, actually. But, I'm also in love.

If that sounds confusing to you, don't worry, I'm confused too.

I’ve been confused for most of my life. I spent the first 21 years of my life confused about my feelings, and about why I never seemed to feel the way my friends did. I was confused why I never seemed to experience things the way the media and society told me I should. I stopped being as confused when I found the aromantic label and community. Finding a word to describe myself felt like coming home. For the first time I had people who understood me, who helped me understand myself.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for me to realise that in some ways I was still the odd one out. The aromantic community is simultaneously both very anti-romance and very pro-love. Contradictory and confusing as that as that sounds, it makes a certain kind of sense. We reject the expectations of romance that society forces on us, while simultaneously reminding people that love doesn’t have to mean romance. Aromantics aren’t heartless or cold. We can love just as intensely and deeply as anyone else.

Well, other aromantics can. Me? Kind of a different story.

I honestly believe that I have never felt an emotion I can comfortably point to and call love. Not romantic, not platonic, not even familial. It feels like such a terrible thing to say, that I don’t love even my family, but it’s true. I care for them, for people, and I often care deeply. But I'm not sure I love them. Most people seem to think that’s sad. Even other aromantics have told me how sorry they are for me, how difficult life must be without love, but I don’t know any different.

Instead, the difficult thing for me is seeing how much the aromantic community likes to focus on love. They reject romance, sure, but instead other forms of love, such as platonic and familial are placed on a (very high) pedestal. Queerplatonic relationships are a big thing in the aromantic community, and it's treated as the pinacle of aromantic relationships, the thing to strive for. It’s very common to see an aromantic say things like “love doesn’t mean romantic love/romance”, “aromantics still love their friends and family”, or even “saying aromantics can’t feel love is a harmful stereotype.”

These statements aren’t wrong. On their own, they are very important things to point out because the ‘heartless cold aromantic’ trope is a harmful stereotype, and should be combatted. However, all too often it comes at the expense of aromantics like myself, the aplatonics and ‘loveless’ aros. It feels much too similar to the old “asexuals can still feel romance” for me. As a stand alone statement, it’s not wrong. For some people it’s even an important argument to make. However, it’s usually coupled with the harmful implication of “see, we can feel X thing just like normal people do. There’s nothing wrong with us”. It just moves the goalposts of acceptable differences, at the cost of people like me. It's a different bus, but I’m still being thrown underneath it.

That isn’t the only way I feel like an outsider in my community however. While aromantics can be very focused on the idea of platonic, queerplatonic or familial love, they tend to push romance to the side. Even when they don’t outright hate it, romance isn’t usually seen in a positive light within the aromantic community. It’s understandable, because amatonormativity and the pedestal it places romance on is a problem. Society’s expectations and views of romance as the be all and end all of existence is damaging, and the main reason I thought I was broken for so long. But you can reject toxic romantic ideals without rejecting romance altogether, something it doesn’t alway seem like the aromantic community understands.

I don’t feel romance, but I don’t hate it. It’s the opposite actually, because I like romance. I enjoy dating people, as long as they are aware of and respect my identity. I like romantically coded actions, and I seek out emotional intimacy. I’m completely comfortable with people feeling romantically about me. Strangely, I had more romantic partners after coming out as aromantic than I did before, most lasting for at least a year or more. I was even engaged to be married last year, and I'm hoping to be engaged again in the near future.

In fact, my planned future follows some fairly traditional romantic goals. My partner and I plan on getting married, having some kids, and settling down to live our lives together, although not necessarily in that order. It’s the kind of life I thought I wouldn’t be able to have after I realised I was aromantic. I convinced myself it wasn’t what I wanted, both because I thought it wouldn’t be possible for me and because the aromantic community tends to be very focused on the rejection of traditional romantic scripts. I thought that because I was aromantic I should be smashing through amatonormative expectations, a shining beacon of why traditional romance was overrated and wrong, why it's expected goals are harmful.

My partner changed everything for me.

We met through our online Dungeons and Dragons game. A friend of mine invited me after I complained that I hadn’t played in years (also about my very poor social life). Turns out, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

At the time most people in my life (myself included) thought it was a risky one, for a multitude of reasons. I had previously had bad experiences with long distance relationships and he lived halfway across the country. I was already engaged and although I was polyamourous he had no experience with those kinds of relationships. His name started with J, and I already had (at least) 7 evil exes all starting with the same letter, two of which even shared his name. I was skirting close to 30, he was barely 21, and my previous (traumatic) long distance relationship had also been with a much younger partner. Each of those reasons alone should have been enough to give me pause. Combined, it very much felt like the odds were stacked against us.

Yet, we’re still together over a year later. Our relationship survived him moving here just three months into it, the first time we met in person. It survived the fact that he arrived just before the state borders closed and lockdown started properly, so we spent a lot of time unable to leave the house, stuck in each other’s company. It survived the breakdown (and breakup) of my engagement to my fiance, and the rocky transition as we learned to live as exes and housemates rather than partners. It survived the late nights, larger workload and infinitely more stress when I got promoted to a higher position at work. It survived, and more than that, it grew. It grew into something different than anything I have ever felt before, because in the middle of it all, I fell in love with him.

It wasn’t a sudden thing. There wasn’t one particular moment when it hit me, because I couldn’t even make sense of what I felt at first. I just knew I felt very strongly, and that it was a different feeling then I had ever had before.

Oftentimes when I ask alloromantic people what love feels like, the answer I get the most is “you just know”. Not the most helpful answer, but I don’t really blame them for it. Love is difficult to describe in a singular way. The truth is I could ask five people to describe love and get twelve different answers. Everyone has a different view on love, and it changes with each person you love. How you love them, why you love them, it changes from day to day. How could you ever properly describe the shifting nature of something that never stands still? Something that grows and changes with each action, each word and look and touch.

I don’t feel love, but I think I understand it. I sit on a very unique intersection of aromanticism and love, an experience not often seen and very seldom shared. I don’t feel love, but I’m also not romance repulsed. I don’t hate romance, or reject it. I participate in it, seek it out, even crave it. Now, I get to experience it.

Does my love feel the same as the love an alloromantic person would feel? I don’t know, and quite honestly, I don’t care. Love isn’t something that can be compared between people, because no one else can feel love the way I do, just as I can’t feel love the way someone else does. My love is as unique as I am, as unique as the person I love is. The love I feel right now will never be replicated, whether I never love again or I love a hundred thousand times.

What I do know is falling in love let me make peace with myself, and all my contradictions. I don’t have to feel love to surround myself with it, to give and receive care and affection and intimacy. I can hate amatonormativity and fight against it while also wanting traditional romantic goals for myself, because this time I chose them. I can feel at home in a community while simultaneously being an outsider, because sharing a label doesn’t mean we share all the same views, opinions and experiences. I learned about myself because of what we shared, but I also learned because of what we didn’t.

I am aromantic and I don’t feel love. I am aromantic and I am in love. Both statements are true at the same time, because humans are messy and confusing and full of contradictions. I embrace mine as part of who I am, what makes me, well, me. And there’s no one I’d rather be, than me.

[shythesheep]

The silvertounged fool and his golden hearted king

 Content warning: descriptive violence and angst, lots of it. Whump.

Summeary: Merlin has known that everything has prize in life, and only the people in power has the means to pay it. He isn't one those people. Gifted with magic and a destiny unknown to him, he is ripped from his mother by a warlord and sold to Cenred to be trained as a sorcerer for his war against the other kingdoms of Albion. There is always a prize to pay, and in a time of war Merlin is the means to tip the scale of power. Too bad no one is fighting for him.

Chapter 1

Humble beginnings

Every life has a humble beginning. Be it the willful seeds that will grow to a proud harvest or the humble acorn that with the caring hand of time will grow into a wise oak, that gives shelter to all the creatures of the forest. Even legends as the one that is about to unfold, started out humble. It started out with a woman. A woman from the village Ealdor in the young King Cenred’s kingdom. In this little hut of hers, she sat with the bundle of joy that she called son. This was a time in which the only pain she foresaw for her child, was the burden of being a bastard, but the universe has its ways, and this bastards of hers was going to bear a burden heavier than most. The child’s name was Merlin.

v•v•v

“Merlin!” his mother grabs his shoulder and hides him in her embrace as she pulls him into the backyard. She signals him to be quiet and with shaking hands she makes him hide in the wood stack that leans up against their hut. There is a small crack that he is precisely tiny enough to squeeze into quietly. From his hiding spot he can see nothing, but non from the outside can see him either, so only his mum and himself knows where he resides. He can hear the clip clop of hooves against the dirt roads in the villages, and from their heavy breathing Merlin can imagine their frantic eyes, waiting for their rider to guide them through the unfamiliar terrain.

Horses are always a bad omen, even at the mere age of seven winters, Merlin knows this. Only knights and Kanen’s men have horses. Horses only bring bad men that makes his mum cry and takes their rations. Merlin would love nothing more than to make Kanen fly away, with all his evil minions, and the knights too. But magic is not something to use, not when curious eyes and running mouths are present. His mum says that even the walls and trees have ears, which is silly and scary. There are always eyes on him, not just his mother’s loving gaze, but eyes that belongs to greedy souls of men that would love nothing more than to exploit his powers or sell him to highest bidder. Even at this age Merlin understood the concept of danger that the magic inside him brought with it.

Magic cannot exist in this world where it only brings his mother worries and missing fathers, he knows that that is what he should think. But when he is alone, sitting under the oak in the early spring, the magic inside of him only creates friends for the beautiful butterflies that flies around him in a playful dance of the seasons. In the moments of bliss, he feels the earth and moss under him vibrate with life. It’s not tangible, but it is there, in the roots that run from the trees and the air that lays heavy with the smell of bark and moist grass.

The forest and butterflies seem so far away now, with him squished in between wood pieces and the cold air of late autumn filling his lungs. His hands are red from the cold, but he dares not move, hence he should make a sound. The horse’s hooves are quiet, but their riders are not, and neither are the villagers of Ealdor. He can hear the arguing, but not the words. He knows one of the voices, Matthew, he is always nice to Merlin and Will, even when old Tom accuses them of stealing eggs from his chicken coop. They never actually took any eggs, but when an adult accuses you, you rarely get out of the situation without a scolding, but not when it is Matthew, he just reassures old Tom that nothing has been taken and smiles to them. He is a nice man. Not like Kanen.

Merlin has only seen his face once in passing, and it’s a face that can only belong to a man like him, with a rotten soul and violent temper. It’s a face that only suits the likes of a child’s nightmare. But Kanen was as real as any and not just a nightmare but a menace to the villages that lays in the outskirts of Cenred’s kingdom, and the young have never cared for the poor folks, as long as he still owns the land and it isn’t outside kingdoms’ men that attack, then he won’t do anything.

Merlin strains his ears and Matthews voice pierces through.

“We don’t have anything left Kanen, the profit from the harvest this year was meager, we will starve as it is.”

“Then you will starve, but I know you have more to give than this.”

“We have nothing, you’ve- “

“Huni- “

“No, Matthew quiet. We have nothing, you’ve taken everything Kanen.”

Merlin gasps. It is his mother speaking. Curious as any child, he crawls out of his hiding, to get a better look at the confrontation. He is still hidden partially, and he is certain non can see him if he just stays quiet.

His mother his standing with her chin up, her face dirty with sod and mud from working all day, her hands are tightly fisted at her side, and they aren’t shaking. Merlin looks with his mouth slightly agape, admiring his mother that he thinks resembles an angry dragon.

He puts too much weight on his front leg and his foot slips on the muddy ground. He grunts and pushes himself up to meet the eyes of his mother, that in an instant change from being filled with bravery to big and round with a look of terror painting her face. It’s not just the eyes of his mother that is weighen down on him.

Kanen gets down from his horse and sounders towards merlin with his sword drawn, Hunith chokes out a tearful scream, but a few of Kanen’s men are holding her and Matthew back.

Merlin doesn’t move as Kanen lifts his chin with the tip of the sword, pressing it dangerously rough against Merlin’s soft skin. A tickle of blood runs from where the blade meets skin.

“Hunith’s boy I assume.” Kanen smirks and turns to Hunith with a laughter. “Not so brave when your little boy is under the blade huh?”

“Leave him be! He is just a boy!” Hunith is crying. Her body hunched over as she fights against the heaves, her eyes never leave Merlin.

“Don’t worry I won’t hurt him.” Kanen crouches down, removes the sword from Merlin’s chin and clutches it with his strong hands instead. He turns Merlin’s head slowly back and forth, inspecting him as if he was a mouse and Kanen the cat toying with him before the deadly pounce. “After all, I can’t sell damaged merchandises.” This makes his men chuckle and laugh. Hunith on the other hand, tenses up and gets quiet. Her face grows cold and her eyes fills with storm clouds. As quick as any mother would be with their child in danger, she hits one of the men with a fist to the nose and dives for his sword. She manages to get a hold of it and charges at Kanen.

Kanen draws his sword and easily manages to block Hunith’s barbaric swing, he pushes her back when their blades clash and Merlin sits frozen as the scene unfolds. His mother screams so hard that the strain on her voice is clear. But Kanen smiles non the less before the angry mother. The fight is over just like that, with Hunith clutching her bleeding arm, and the sword laying discarded at the side. Kanen points the sword at her, but the finishing blow never comes. The sword’s shaft heats up until it glows, a sizzling of burning flesh can be heard as Kanen yells in pain and drops the sword. He looks angrily towards Hunith, then he follows her gaze to Merlin. He just barely sees the glowing of the boy’s eyes as he turns. A crooked smile mix with his painfilled grimace.

“You got magic boy. No wonder your mother hid you.”

“Please! I’m begging you, let him be! He is just a child Kanen!”

“A child with magic, which is something that would fetch a high prize from any interested party, but a prize too big for you to pay I am afraid.”

“Kane-“

“We’ll take the boy as compensation for the damage and missing payment.” He smiles and turns towards Merlin. Merlin looks to his mother and feels himself starting to heave and tears form in his eyes.

“RUN!” Her mother screeches.

And run he does. He dashes towards the forest with the yells of men not far behind him. Then he hears the horses. Horses are always a bad omen.

“ahhh!” he screams loudly as someone pulls him up by his shoulders, the sound of hooves and yelling floods his senses and everything is thrown into a chaotic jumble of his beating heart and fast flowing blood.

“Sit still or I’ll drop you and the horse will trample you to death.” It isn’t Kanen but one of his men that has pulled Merlin up onto his horse. He is holding Merlin close to his chest as he rides towards the others who are roaring in victory as if Merlin was their hunting prize.

It goes quickly after that. Merlin’s hands and legs are tied with rope, and a cloth bag is loosly tied over his head as to obscure his sight. He screams for his mother, for matthew, anyone to help him. His movements are frantic as he fights against the hands holding him stomach down on the saddle. He can’t hear his mother, only the turmoil of screams and roars, who is yelling what he doesn’t know.

“Let’s get going, I want to set up camp before we look for a buyer.” Says Kanen in an indifferent tone and a low rumble of agreement is heard from the man holding Merlin.

“And make his weeping stop, it is giving me a headache.”

[hamliet]

I can’t believe you’re reading 2ha too now! I started following u way back when you were posting tg and snk meta and it’s so weird in an amazing way how you started posting mdzs meta at the same time I started reading it! I’d like to ask you for your thoughts on 2ha so far? (Maybe on Nangong Si and Ye Wangxi’s relationship?) Thank you :)

Ahhhh hi Anon!!! Thank you for sticking with me through all my fandom phases! And hooray, my first 2ha ask!! My general thoughts on the story are that it is a highly enjoyable story with fantastic, compelling characters and genuine emotional beats, though it also was thematically contradictory. That said, I really enjoyed it, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the live action even if it’s going to be heavily censored! I love it and want to make more content for it.

But onto the meat of your ask: Ye Wangxi and Nangong Si, the ship that tears our hearts out. *art is from the audio drama* So 2ha's cultivation world is, like the worlds in MXTX’s novels, utterly hypocritical, corrupt, and filled with people desperate for a justice that does not exist; it's also much more cynical than MXTX's novels in its view of humanity. Nangong Si's and Ye Wangxi's arcs are wrapped up in this view of the world, in concepts such as corruption and justice and the like, so I'm going to open by talking a bit about this before delving into their arcs, and keep in mind I will have discuss spoilers from the manual translation.  

I don't think there's a better summary of what 2ha thinks about justice than what Xue Zhengyong says in this scene when a horribly abused child is on trial for terrible things the child, now grown, went on to do: 

Fate...

Some people were born rich. 

It's not fair.

When fate had poured injustice on those at the bottom, a mere price adjustment order could take the lives of the loved ones around them.

Where is justice?

They were all living people. How could they not hate him? How could they feel relieved?

Even if this child had missed it, even if he was not his blood kin, even if his fate played with him … Thinking of this, his heart still ached.

...

Xue raised his face and watched the clouds drift by."Okay, now that his sin has been repaid, he should at least repay the debt he owes this world." 

The wind was blowing .Xue Zheng Yong suddenly choked with sobs.

"But this world owes him … Did someone give it back to him... Has anyone returned it to him … " 

What about the crimes done to this person to make them that way? Does punishing this person bring any justice? How do we live in a world that is--perhaps irretrievably--broken? Every character explores this idea, and Ye Wangxi and Nangong Si are no exception. 

Nangong Si and Ye Wangxi are both obvious foils: they're children used by their parents, tools more than people. They also both--but especially Nangong Si--foil Shi Mei and Mo Ran in this, in terms of something horrible happening to their mother, something that scarred them for the rest of their lives. For example, Nangong Si's last words to his mother were: 

"I don't understand, I don't want to understand, I …I …” Nangong Si raised his tearful eyes and cried out to his mother, who was outside the forbidden spell, "I hate you! I don't have a mother like you! "

Mo Ran’s mother died and he had to drag her rotting corpse for two weeks to get to a place where he could bury her; Shi Mei’s mother was brutally eaten alive for her power. From these incidents, all three boys learn that the world is cruel in a distinct flavor that will influence everything they do from then on: Mo Ran learns no one will help him even if he begs for it, leading to him being both extremely clingy and extremely mistrustful; Nangong Si learns fate can be cruel and that he, too, can be cruel; Shi Mei learns that he can’t protect everyone and that his heritage puts him and his loved ones, all his people really, in huge danger--and that people will do evil things for power. Guess what he ends up doing. 

Ye Wangxi is also a Mo Ran foil: adopting a false persona and different role to please the people who took them in and were kind to them. Mo Ran pretends to be Xue Zhengyong and Madame Wang's nephew, when he really isn't; Ye Wangxi pretends to be a man to please the father who adopted her. That father is gray; I mean, technically he's morally repulsive, but he did genuinely care for Ye Wangxi. However, Ye Wangxi's willingness to sacrifice her life is not entirely a positive thing: clearly, Nangong Si will do whatever he has to in order to protect her, even marry Song Qiutong; his sacrifice there, likewise, leads to unhappiness for them both. 

Ye Wangxi and Song Qiutong are definitively foiled, and I'm going to sound as if I'm saying Ye Wangxi=good and Song Qiutong=bad, when, while that may be how the novel frames it, is certainly not what the novel actually says (it's an objective contradiction) nor is it what I interpreted. But they are distinct foils, which is why they are the two characters romantically linked to Nangong Si, representing to him the two paths he could choose to go down. Ye Wangxi will sacrifice herself to protect others, as seen in the sacrifice of her love for Nangong Si and her sacrifice of her identity and willingness to sacrifice her life.  

In contrast, Song Qiutong will throw others under the bus to save herself. For example, when she is accused of cheating on Nangong Si, she does not trust people to defend her and falsely accuses Ye Wangxi of rape--even though Ye Wangxi had previously risked her safety to save Song Qiutong from an auction. Now, I've an issue with how the novel frames Song Qiutong for this: I don't understand why Song Qiutong is condemned when (as far as we and Mo Ran himself know at the time) Mo Ran is himself a rapist and when she was entrapped into the situation (i.e. if many characters hadn't been put in certain situations, they wouldn't have done terrible things), especially given her past (constantly living under the threat of being killed or raped--let's be honest, if she was deemed at fault, do you really think they'd just let a Butterfly Bone Beauty go?) and given story otherwise stating that people shouldn't be faulted for wanting to live. Who has repaid her for the wrongs done for her? 

I digress. Still, the tl;dr is that Song Qiutong's way of surviving involves hurting others. Song Qiutong also directly foils Nangong Si. Nangong Si starts out as... well, also as a very self-centered person who didn’t care that Song Qiutong was about to meet a fate worse than death in the light of the inconvenience Ye Wangxi saving her caused him. Additionally, he takes his frustrations out on those around him:

However, even after his father is revealed to be like, the literal worst, Nangong Si cannot condemn his father. He could easily abandon him: in fact, in this cruel world, it might be perceived as more righteous for him to do so, but he doesn't. He gives his father a chance, and when they need a sacrifice and the most logical one is his mentally de-aged father: Nangong Si faces a choice: does he want to be like Song Qiutong? Or does he want to be like Ye Wangxi? He chooses to be like Ye Wangxi. This is not, however, a solely beautiful choice, because remember 2ha's world sucks and its suckery infects everything. The world itself is wrong, and so righteousness--true righteousness--is utterly impossible. Nangong Si sacrifices his life to save them all, but that leaves Ye Wangxi alone and many characters (and readers) grieving. It also could be read as highlighting, for Mo Ran at least, where he has yet to go: a few chapters earlier he almost sacrificed his reputation to warn everyone, but panicked and did not in the end. Mo Ran, of course, is related to Nangong Si by blood and could have sacrificed himself (I'm not saying he should have; the circumstances suck), so I suppose you could view it as Mo Ran still slowly developing (and his callous treatment of Rong Jiu and then entrapment of Song Qiutong as him slowly learning, but if so I wish it had been called out as a "well, I handled that hypocritically" moment later on). Or maybe that's reaching on my part. *shrugs* Ye Wangxi is a moral character, perhaps the most righteous in the story. She is the only one who stands by Mo Ran when he's put on trial to be tortured, declaring confidently:

Ye Wangxi fed him some warm water.

Mo Ran said in a low voice, "Why …."

"You helped A-Si." Ye Wangxi did not raise her head. "You helped me too."

"... On Mount Flood Dragon, if I was the one to die, Nangong will …" Ye Wangxi's hand paused slightly. She was trembling, but she still said in the end, "Everyone wants to live. I won't blame you just because you want to live."

"..."

"Drink it." She said, .”..you've been helping me and A-Si by risking our lives. Now, even if no one is willing to help you, I will still help you." Her expression was still dull, but it was firm. “I'm here." As she said 'here', she was indeed standing by the side of Mo Ran.

It's fitting, then, that Ye Wangxi's ending contrasts her with Shi Mei. She rescues refugees before the final battle and then travels the world with Nangong Si's wolf, because she will never forget the one she loves, and to presumably act justly and do righteousness, sow kindness into a world, rescue people despite how rescuing Song Qiutong actually endangered both her and Nangong Si. 

Shi Mei wanted to change the world, quite literally rewriting time, but only made it worse in the end. Ye Wangxi's way of change might be slower, might be less fantastical, but it's not going to hurt people in the meantime. (Side note: I wish the novel would have been more optimistic and come up with some kind of justice for the Butterfly Bone Beauty people, but it really doesn't as far as I understood (this may be wrong; the MTL of the last twenty or so chapters are confusing!))

[brooklynislandgirl]

It Gets You Coming and Going: Of all moral dilemmas, what's one that truly stumps you and why? {ginglymostoma cirratum}

Questionable Quotes || Accepting The question is posed in so very Anakin a way that it almost hurts for simply existing. There’s layers built up between the syllables that only someone who knows him well enough can pick out, and only the very rare amongst them that can tell you where they came from. The deepest is the bedrock of his anxiety, that deep down he believes himself so unworthy that it’s compressed down into the core of him and become the basic foundation of the rest of his personality. Closer to the surface is the silt of fear that he’s said the wrong thing and has reached the tether of her seemingly infinite patience with him. That she’s finally going to snap and savage him with tooth and claw, glutting on the softness of his emotional state until all that is left is something that once resembled the bones of his resolve. And she knows she’s mixing metaphors here but that’s how she conceptualises the things about Anakin she can’t pin to a board and press under glass. Not that she would ever do that, she finds it horrifying and cruel, especially when not that proverbially long ago collectors would do that to living specimens, murdering them with chloroform. Ether. She keeps from curling her lip.

And maybe for those few precious seconds when she can feel his gaze sliding off her and back to the edge of the water, so extremely uncomfortable in his own skin, she empathises with him. Finds it easier to make this about wanting to view himself through the prismatic lens he’s made of her, where every fractured splinter can be compared to the raw emptiness that sometimes fills his own mind and pushes everything out of the way. So he can lose himself in his perceptions ~and she can tell, so easily, when he is sinking in the stream of Time, which is almost always~ and escape for just a little while from the weight of everything resting on too fragile shoulders.

It’s entirely possible, too, and dangerously so that she interprets a good many of their conversations this way, focuses the spotlight on Anakin rather than herself because the idea of introspection makes her a little queasy. That she herself hides behind all the preconceived notions that people have of her that she twists and bends herself to fit into because without them she would be as shapeless as the infinite void of the darkness that lingers at the very edge of the Horizon in the deepest umbral reaches.

And of course she would also never admit to maybe spending too much time dwelling on the reasons why the question wounds her as a means of putting emotional distance and actual thought far out of the way ~out of sight, out of mine. Because it is not the easiest thing to answer. In fact she isn’t sure there’s one that would capture intent as much as interpretation.

The problem with morality as it would be defined by most people is that it is an arbitrary system. An socio-artificial construct that puts a distinction between right and wrong, or good and bad behaviour. And much like consensual reality, the guidelines of such behaviour are dictated by people. And all people are fallible. Even the Holy Father, though he’s not supposed to be.

There are other factors to consider as well. Does he mean specifically as the question relates to Sleepers? Does he mean as it relates to the Awakened as they, master and apprentice, are? If they are speaking about the masses, then are there certain cultural borders they’re straying across? What is good for one group of society is clearly not very often understood by others and so what might be wrong or atrocious in belief may have mitigating circumstances if viewed outside of one’s own group. Then of course there’s the difference between an individual's moral dilemmas and ethical ones, which are similar but still vastly different. Not unlike the Traditions versus the Technocratic Union. And this is obviously not what Anakin means because he’s never seen the heated debates that often took a twist at the dinner table between herself and her brothers.

She wants to tell him, that of course, there’s all of these factors to be taken into consideration. Wants to ask him what he means ~specifically~ in regards to whose morals are being questioned and she knows too that by doing so she will somehow manage to trample his self-worth because he’ll judge himself as not having spoken clearly enough, slowly or carefully enough. That he did not adequately set up the scenario and thus given her something incomplete to work with. There will come a stunning display of beautiful if heartbreaking physical manifestations of that internal grief and she might actually expire from the grief of it all. And she isn’t being nasty about it, she isn’t mocking him in that breath of silence as she considers all of this.  It is something that she’s come to experience in the almost year that they have spent bound together by practice and...funnily enough...tradition. And she likes to think she knows Anakin this well by now, that however hard he tries to hide it, she will see.

She reaches into the bucket beside her and takes a hold of another chunk of meat and tosses it out across the murky water. It lands with a specific and yet sad little plop before disappearing below the surface. She watches the way his cigarette smoke rises up to wreathe around his curls a little wild tousled today. It’s a little ironic that she could see him as a dragon, and maybe there’s some Mokolé blood in his family tree, as much as there is shark in hers. But he’s still reserved enough that he doesn’t stick his converse down over the side of the decrepit little dock they’re on. To be fair, his legs are far longer, far too close to the dark, algae choked surface. He’s never had his calf nearly torn right off the bone and probably doesn’t need that experience. Not with his hand in the state it’s in, the way cold and weariness make his bones and joints ache with nothing to compensate for it.

And that’s the point where she realises that now she’s just stalling, letting herself drift along the paths of thought, further and further away from the question asked. So she breathes out a sigh and allows a soft curve settle to her lips that is neither exactly a smile or even a smaller grin. It’s something along the lines of patience made manifest, her natural inclination toward indulging Anakin, and it’s also...tired. The kind of thing that appears when she’s worked herself to the bone and hasn’t slept for days but continues to push herself until she’s at the exact point of inevitable collapse. And how often does she do that more and more these days. Doesn’t even try to make it to her room when he’s just as comfortable as his bed and far warmer even if it’s a slightly unhealthy symptom of his body’s attempt to keep his extremities in life-giving blood. She leans back, wiggling her toes out in front of her, though her legs are still covered by the broom-skirt she’s wearing, arms bracing herself from behind, slick and red, sure to leave prints she’ll have to clean up before they leave.  “I don’ t’ink dis really a fair question, Anakin. I mean... dere’s factors. A precise synt’esis would define culture as a body of ideas; norms, rules, standards, values, an’ beliefs. So dat different cultures would derefore have different moral an’ et’ical impact. An’ mebbe even between one generation an’ anoddah, like dem boomers an’ millennials. I mean, you an’ me are kinda li’dat too, as technically I’m a millennial an’ you’re Gen Z. Between all people dere’s dis enforced, learned social norm dat are symbolically an’ practically reinforced an’ referenced in displays dat signal adherence to any specific system. Now, I know ya no talk story about all kine people, ya specifically aks me ‘bout my own issue an’ I guess...” She trails off trying to regather herself. When she speaks again she does that thing she does when she thinks something is important enough to give him the best chance of understanding her, but that slows her speech, gives it a brittle edge.

“Even as hapa ~being half Hawai’ian~ my mother taught me about kuleana. Loosely translated it means “responsibility”. It’s dis concept of reciprocal relationships between the person who is responsible, an’ the things or persons they are responsible for. As Hawai’ians, we have a kuleana to our ‘aina, our land. To care for it and to respect it, and in return... the land has the kuleana to feed, shelter and clothe us. Through that relationship we maintain balance within society and with the natural environment. But you look at the world and everything is for sale, raped by greed and the need to consume. To conform. This... this is a sign of what my uncle’s people call the Apocalypse, but not like in disaster movies. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about that.

“Another concept is...Pono. There’s no real translation for it, it’s a concept that incorporates many things. But many people use it to imply righteousness, but not like the way it’s used in society today. For us, anyway, it’s a very strong cultural and spiritual concept for a state of harmony and balance. So you can see how they relate? By accepting your kuleana and making sure you act on them in the right way, you are living pono. Living pono means to make a conscious decision to do the right thing in terms of self, others, and the environment. And we make no distinction between human and animal or plant, in that way.” She slants that hazel gaze toward him via one eye slitted open to make sure he’s following along.  “And I don’t mean that cutting down a tree is the same as say murder. But in a way, it is. You are killing something that was alive. You are taking its mana. If you do it with proper thanks and reverence, if you ensure that you are doing it sustainably, to feed yourself or build a shelter for your family, then you’re behaving within your kuleana. But clear-cutting an entire rain-forest so you can build a luxury golf-course and resort, displacing thousands and thousands of indigenous wild life and polluting the waters and destroying layers and layers of earth, not to mention the risk of exposing entire tribes of people who have no natural resistance to what are common, immunised illnesses? That is no different than slaughtering those very same lives in a far more expedient way. And I don’t know if you think I’m crazy, or if I am over-simplifying the tragedy that we as an entire world of people are creating and contributing to but you can see...the earth herself is restless. She is angry. And those throes of agony ~the global warming, the spirits crying out, the violence and disease...they are all symptoms of that anger, because people as a whole have lost their way. They trust too much in technology and in coping mechanisms that only breed more trouble...”

She’s momentarily lost in the weeds, but there’s no denying the passion in her voice as it trembles with pure and unbridled rage at society’s ills. And not just the ones that have landed on the Sleepers whom they are, in their own ways, charged with protecting, but the ones amongst their own kind and those of the others. “So I suppose, the dilemma I just cannot begin to understand is...with so much happening, and the world around us vanishing with every breath...why are we unable to reach an understanding. Why do we have to fight this war about whose mana is bigger, is better than someone else’s. And not just the Traditions ourselves. Our infighting is bad but we can typically talk things out. I specifically mean this war with the Technocrats. Their science isn’t doing much to improve lives these days and more and more people are looking for alternatives, for the Old Ways. Why not work with us instead of trying to kill or imprison us? Or why can’t some of us... Verbena and Dreamspeakers... some of you Euthanatos- why can’t we make a pact with the Wolfkin. Or the last of the lizard kings-” She glances askance at him a second time in a very playful and knowing fashion. Which is disturbing considering the nature of the remains in the ice chest she was tossing into the water just moments ago. “It isn’t like some of us hasn’t been busy keeping their kin fed. So I think just like the Traditions coming together, or the Technocrats forming their union, maybe it’s time we put political and spiritual beliefs to the side and just work together for the things we want. We’re all really trying to fight the same enemy, and I promise it isn’t you, and it isn’t me and it isn’t Bil..it isn’t any one person. There is evil out there. Real, terrifying evil. Take this guy. What he did to those kids...He was a disease. And like the healer I am and like...like the man you will some day become, we did what was right, for everyone.” Beth shudders then shakes her head.  “I don’t even know how to answer your question, or if I did. All I can say is...there’s no part of me that has any shame for the way I live my life, and therefore there’s no moral dilemma. But if one comes up, I promise you’ll be the first line of defense for my understanding and sanity.”

[bluepenguinstories]

Happiness Overload Chapter Fifty-Eight

There was a thought in me when those two got away that I had to descend further in order to realize my vision. Such thoughts weren’t new by any stretch of the imagination, but the imagination had to stretch in order for the thought to develop, as that was just how such thoughts operated.

Those two: Velvet and Coriander. Two names which may not have been their original names. To that, I could relate. It wasn’t the name that mattered, but the acts; in my case, they saw my actions as ‘evil’. As such, I may as well have played up the act.

No. Not an act. Performance, yes. But all genuine.

My name would have to change in order to suit the occasion, however, as I understood it, the name ‘Dr. Evil’ was already taken. Phooey. Guess I’d have to go back to the old drawing board. Lucky for me, there were many drawing boards in my mind. When one canvas got filled, there were several more that awaited me. Not to mention, being on my back gave me time to think. Something which I already knew was not always a good thing.

Indeed, it wasn’t the first time I had been called ‘evil’. Even the organization which went through many efforts to recruit me had deemed me wicked. What a contradiction! Weren’t they the ones who were also deemed ‘evil’ when they thought they were helping humanity? So then why was I the one excluded?

True, I set a couple people on fire once or twice. It wasn’t my first foray dealing in extremes. That first foray, though, had become lost on me...it must have been far into the Arts and Crafts room, when everything had grown to a point of consternation. Every request, fulfilled. Great things at my disposal. But the time between seeing another soul seemed like an eternity. Long ago, my friends at FU (Flashbulb University, in case it wasn’t obvious) left to join the Fine Arts Department. I had let them. All I asked was to have a room of my own. So I did. But in isolation, I grew to wish I had made a different decision. It was too late; my stubbornness wouldn’t allow me to have it any other way. So I sat, imagined myself in a burning building, and told myself, “this is fine.”

One last flashback. That was a promise: one last flashback...about The Flashbulb:

Late at night when my father was busy painting a commission of a great dragon, I by his side, refilling the ink pots.

Not long into the piece, he spilled a blot of ink all over the parchment, thus ruining it. He grumbled, then went to sleep.

I panicked.

There was NO way I was about to let the commission go unfinished! With all the mess around the house, dishes thrown every which way on the floor, nary a scratch of food. Hell, even if there were, between the two of us, we would have made a negative meal. Our bodies were made for art, but not the art of cooking! We HAD to get that commission money, so we could get good food, none of that ‘homemade’ crap!

I scrambled and paced, likely stepping on a few things in the process.

Then, I drew a breath, pulled out a fresh parchment, and recreated his piece from memory. Each detail added was one he would have in his own style. By the time dawn approached, I had finished, and I set the signature on the bottom, a forgery I grew to master many moons ago.

“Ah! I see I finished it in my sleep!” He got up and looked over. I looked up at him and smiled.

“Indeed! You never fail to impress!”

Of course, a lie. But there was an art in lies; not too harsh, not too delicate. Just as if it were a conversation.

In truth, he really was impressive. Made quite the name for himself. Several names, in fact. He was always seeking out a new medium and would take commissions for everything.

Yet, he was also lazy. Often starting a piece, then taking to the sheets. Really, though, who could blame him, when he started so late into dusk? That was why he had such a great assistant, able to finish anything he started. Because of that, was it any wonder that I managed to paint so fast?

I was about to lay down, myself, as I had deprived myself the luxury long enough. Such luxury would have to wait just a little longer, as we received knocks at our door. Father was kind enough to answer it for me, and I heard indecipherable chatter between my father and the solicitors. Then, father turned to me.

“They’re here for you.”

“What?” I sat up. “What for?”

“They say they have a job offer for you.”

I went over to the two at the door and asked them what business they had.

“We would like to offer you the chance to come with us and improve humanity.”

“What kind of cult is this?” I scowled, then slammed the door on them. My father looked shocked and asked me what I did that for.

“I don’t need humanity. All I need is you and the craft.”

“Maybe they had more to say. If they appear again, please hear them out.”

“If that is your request, then yes.”

Next morning, another knock; they appeared again. This time, I answered it.

“What?” I asked.

“We believe we made a mistake yesterday, so allow us to clarify: we are in need of a talented artist.”

“Why me? Why not my father?”

“Ah, well, you see...he’s a bit famous, and we’re looking for someone with a little less renown.”

“But you should consider him, not me. Because the only person I work with is him.”

“I see. We took the wrong approach. Dr. Monet, if you will.”

The one addressed as Dr. Monet stepped forward and showed me a rabbit in his hands.

“Yes. It’s a rabbit,” I didn’t see what the big deal was, to say the least.

“Actually,” one of them corrected. “It’s a needle felt.”

“What is that?” Those two words, ‘needle’ and ‘felt’ sounded unrelated. The only thing ever I felt from a needle was pain.

“It’s a form of art. There are several forms of art in the future which you may never learn about if you stay here. But if you come with us, the very concept of time won’t matter. Every potential form of art would be at your disposal with the potential to learn it all.”

“No. Time is important. Deadlines are important. Without it, I would never be able to measure my growth.”

“Very well; We will come by one last time, next morning, and if you still decline our offer, we won’t appear again.”

After I closed the door on them once more, I felt the presence of my father next to me with a pressure I couldn’t ignore.

“You should go with them,” he told me. “You may not get such an opportunity again.”

“No. They’re too suspicious.” If I had more awareness, I’d have placed why, and may have said, “they remind me of cultists,” but I didn’t think of that at all.

“That may be, but I could tell your excitement when you heard about new mediums to work with. Hasn’t the thought of ‘if only I had five, no, ten more years’ ever cross your mind just as it has crossed mine? If time weren’t a factor, imagine what you could do.”

“But what about us as a dynamic duo? It sounds like you want us to go our separate ways.”

“No. But yes,” he spoke, almost in a pious fashion. “Our styles are already drifting from one another – I’m leaning more toward nature. Birds, fish, rabbits. While your drawings of people are unparalleled. I know no other who can capture women so well as you.”

Ha. Capture women. If only that had stayed on the canvas and not bled into reality.

“At least think about it until tomorrow morning. Then if you tell them no again, that will be that.”

Then, that should have been that, right? But loathe as I was to admit, all the red flags that popped up when those people showed up excited me. The danger, the idea that it could all go south and I would be in peril, it was enticing. I didn’t even know why that was. Then, my thoughts drifted to its next logical conclusion: if I joined them, would I put others in danger as well?

At the time, I hated such a thought. I never wanted to put anyone else in danger. Plus, they spoke about improving humanity, not putting them in danger, right?

So, on the third morning, I said yes. I agreed to go with them. From then, there was Flashbulb University. There was the plan to integrate the Arts and Crafts and AV Club into the Fine Arts Department, and...there was my placement.

It didn’t take long for me to grow restless. Even with all the art supplies I requested fulfilled, it didn’t help. I’d create sculptures out of popsicle sticks. Dolls. But that wasn’t enough. Not even the assistants that I requested would be enough. I began to no longer see people as people, as the very idea of anyone else’s existence became absurd to me. All the echoed thoughts to keep me company, and in turn, the people who would come to support me became just like the supplies and food sent my way. Just props.

So then why did they get mad when I set one of their props on fire? I was only curious, that’s all. Earlier in my lifetime, I remembered witnessing houses set ablaze and wondering what it would be like had I been in the building. I only meant to find out what the experience was like, the sensation, through another. What about that was evil?

Without the ability to see outside my confines, finding inspiration grew difficult. To make matters worse, my past life, as an assistant, myself, had faded to such a degree that every memory held no environment. Just vague shapes and phrases. Left alone, of course I would grow desperate.

Enough. I lifted myself up. I was in enough pain, but the narrative needed to go on. Through secret panels, I stumbled through. Soon, Velvet and Coriander would meet me again. One of them weakened, the other a puppet. Then, they would meet each other.

“Looks like I must don my mustache and wizard cape and become Dr. Geppetto,” I shook my head and smiled. Those two may not have realized it, but I was prepared to help them in any way I knew how. That was what I said I would do and I refused to go back on my word.

One thing still perplexed me: if I was so evil in the eyes of my peers, why was I sealed away, rather than been disposed of? They could have sent a janitor to clean up the mess they made, but then I realized: isolating me was their clean up. Their damage control. As long as I wasn’t a threat to humanity, they saw no reason to paint me as a target.

Now, the question was, what decision would Velvet reach? I couldn’t wait to find out.

At the moment, I was dealing with some moving statues that were trying to smash me and tear me limb from limb. Then there was the imposing walls. Oh, and not to mention, there were little computer panels thrown about where I had to crack some codes in order for the walls to sink down and allow me passage through. Yes. You heard right. I couldn’t just punch through the walls.

Oh, but you’re probably wondering (hypothetical person) how I got into such a mess. To be honest, I was wondering the same thing. Hmm...ah! It was right after Dr. Fuckface put up a wall to separate Coriander and I. Due to such an unforgivable circumstance, I gave my not-official-girlfriend a free pass to beat the shit out of Dr. Art.

“I do hope she’ll be okay…” I paced about. That phrase repeated a few more times as I grew more and more anxious. “But what about me? I can’t just do nothing and wait my turn. I need to figure out a way to get back to her.”

As I began to walk back, a new wall shot up in front of me until I was trapped on both ends.

“Well isn’t this just grand!” I stomped my foot. Due to my attitude, it may have seemed like I was back at Full Velvet and my energy was restored. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I was just pissed.

To my side, the wall opened up to reveal a pathway.

“Oh, I see what’s going on!” I threw my hands up and trudged forward. It was just like in that “movie” she had me trapped in. No matter how many times we had the upper hand, we were just being pulled into another one of her traps with little room to find an exploit. I cupped my hands and yelled out, “I’ll have you know, I hate being railroaded!”

The passage didn’t go far; soon, it opened up and I found myself in a wide room, which at first seemed empty. Oh, how wrong I was.

Something shoved itself into me and knocked me onto the floor. I looked up to see a marble sculpture (or statue? Fuck. What’s the right terminology here? You know that one thing where there’s that clay guy with a tiny dick who stands around in a museum? Like, one of those things. Except the one I was face-to-face with didn’t really have any features. Like, I’m talkin’ none. Nada. No pussy out look, just a vague shape of a human with no face or nothin’) with arms in the air, and ready to smash.

I rolled out of the way, and once I got back to my feet, I ran for it.

There we go. Something like that was just what I needed to get myself back into gear, but then, another thought emerged. What if I stumbled into a dream again?

No. No thoughts like that!

Before I could get too far, a wall sprung up. Next to the wall also sprouted a computer panel. The obvious answer must have been to crack a code, so I began to get to work. From the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of statues run toward me.

Damn. How are they doing that?

So, I had to scramble to crack the code, but I was getting nowhere. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of things, the statues ganged up on me and both tried to punch me at the same time, but I ducked just in time, and they ended up punching each other instead and their heads rolled right off.

“Whew,” I wiped my forehead, but that relief was short lived, as another came charging in. That was when I had the bright idea to circle around the computer panel and have the statue and the panel collide with one another.

Spoilers: it worked. But also, it was a bad idea.

As the statue/sculpture (fuck it, it’s a statue) crashed into the computer, the combination resulted in an explosion which knocked me back. Once I got back up, I noticed that the wall in front of me had been demolished. Not only that, but something about the broken statue on the floor stood out to me: circuits and wires.

That explains it. They’re all robots. Or Terminators.

So now that all that background was out of the way, suffice to say, I went through a bit of trial and error with hordes of statues and walls appearing and disappearing, but it didn’t seem to end.

I began to huff and grow short on breath. I was beginning to wear down again and I knew that’s what she wanted, but I didn’t know what else I could do.

More came in greater numbers, surrounding me on all ends. I noticed a vent cover next to me that looked like I could fit in. Not seeing any other option, I ducked down and slipped through, closing the grate behind me. I crawled forward and upon emerging, found myself in another large room. This time, it was reminiscent of the initial room that we met Popsigirl in.

“All right. You probably had it planned that I would go through that, too!” I called out. That time, I got a response.

“Actually, I was planning on you cracking the code on one of the consoles, but it doesn’t matter what method you chose, because every path would have led you here!” She was a considerable distance away, and yet I could tell she was in the same room.

Like I said, I hated being railroaded.

“Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m on a platform next to the ceiling!” Was her response in an inappropriately chipper voice.

Dim spotlights started to shine down on the floor and that’s when I saw Coriander on the other end of the room, hunched over, head down.

“Hey! There you are!” I waved, and before I could get another word in, she flung herself forward and lunged at me. I moved out of the way, but I still felt my heart pound.

Did she lose control while facing Dr. Geppetto?

Coriander turned to the side and then swiped at me, and a wide cut etched its way onto my arm. I yelled out, but did not retaliate.

“Damn it,” I seethed. “That was a nasty cut.” The sting was still fresh, but she would not relent – she continued to swipe away in such awkward, jerking motions. I managed to avoid them that time.

She grunted and made sniffling sounds. I had a hard time distinguishing between whether she was in a frenzy or if she was in pain, but either way, I didn’t want her to stay in such a state.

“I know you’re in there somewhere! You can fight this!” I protested.

“Ugh! You idiot!” The words forced themselves out of her. That proves it: she’s definitely in pain. “I’m not being mind controlled! It’s my limbs!”

I froze. So that was it. My fists clenched, and all around, I shook.

“Dr. Lynch! Dr. Geppetto! I told you! That if you...if you…” That also shook. My voice. “I can’t forgive you! Do you hear me?”

“I’m okay with that! Kill me if you must! But first, you should worry about yourself.”

Coriander lunged once again with the knife. I jumped back, all the while, Dr. Geppetto provided commentary.

“You should have known that sooner or later, you’d have to make some hard decisions. Do you really expect to defeat The Flashbulb without anyone being killed? And if you do end up having to kill, what will you do with the bodies?”

While I tried to drown out her words, I failed to notice Coriander being pulled forward and the blade she held scratched me across my cheek. “I’m sorry!” She cried out after doing so and although I winced, I smiled.

“Why?” I covered my cheek with my hand. If I could avoid a few more hits, I would be golden. Two cuts, maybe a gash, that was enough. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Again, she swiped, but I leaned back and the blade missed me by about a good two inches or so.

“I fell for her trap! I became pulled along on these strings and forced to attack you! I can’t pull them off, I can’t break free!”

I continued to smile and nod. I’m sure both of us could tell that it was a forced smile, but I felt it as necessary a moment as any.

“It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. We both fell for her tricks.”

Her swipes grew more furious and to avoid them, I had to run. Not the ideal solution, but all I had to keep myself from being a bloody mess.

“Wow! Amazing! I thought you’d be worn out, but look at you go!”

“Please!” I retorted. “I’m running on adrenaline!”

Coriander was close behind me. I glanced over to see her gliding and floating.

“Go! Get to the exit! Leave me behind, or kill me if you have to, but just go!” Coriander pleaded.

I stopped in my tracks. She was about to strike down with the knife, but I grabbed her wrist.

“I’m not about to give up on you,” I grunted. “You can kill me if you want to, but I refuse to harm you.”

“I...I don’t want to!” She broke out in tears. “I have no choice! S-So, stop being foolish!” It must have been one of the strings, but she next tried to stomp her foot down on mine, but I caught on too quick and held her feet down with my own. She continued, “Defeating The Flashbulb is more important! So if I have to die, so be it! You need to see this through!”

I’m sure if it were any other protagonist, they’d probably accept that, deal the blow to their lover, and go on to save the day with a bittersweet feeling. But nah. That wasn’t it for me.

“Well sorry for being selfish, but I don’t want to defeat the big bad if you’re not next to me while I’m doing it!”

“Why?”

“Boring! I thought there’d be some stabbing, not a lovers’ quarrel! I wanted to see faces being ripped off!” Dr. Geppetto booed and hissed. Ignoring that, I kept my eyes on Coriander.

“Why? Because who ever said the day couldn’t be saved with you alive? Why should I have to choose when I can have both?” I leaned in, keeping my grip on her arm, and whispered in her ear, “hey, do you wanna break free?”

She mouthed the word ‘yes’, and that was all I needed. I gave her neck a peck and she got so flustered that she dropped the knife and I managed to catch it.

“Hey! Give it back!” Dr. Geppetto spat and used the strings to reach Coriander’s arms down to try to grab it from me, but I rolled away just in time, and once I got up, I cut loose the strings holding down one of Coriander’s arms. The rest was up to her.

She stretched her free arm a bit, rolled her fingers, then reached over to the arm that still wasn’t free and yanked down, causing Dr. Geppetto to fall down alongside the strings she must have been holding. The force and the height must have coupled together with such an intensity that once Dr. Geppetto hit the floor, a loud cracking sound was heard.

Coriander, now standing over the fallen artist, stared down and her breathing grew shorter, more hoarse.

“ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?! ARE YOU?!”

She wailed and repeated that phrase. I walked over to her, saw the body of the one who had caused us both torment, and hugged her from behind.

“It’s okay,” I leaned my head over her shoulder. “It’s okay.” She continued to sob and wail, but no more words. There wasn’t much else I could do but continue to hold her, and slowly, she calmed down, although still in tears.

It didn’t take us long to find the exit. Weary, I held on in order to figure out the code, and once I opened the door, we held each other up as we made our way out, into the light.

[duhragonball]

[FIC] Green Christmas (Luffa Annual 1)

Normal Brain: Write a Coffee Shop AU

Big Brain: With my own OC’s

Galaxy Brain: Set it in Japan to make it harder.

Cosmic Brain: Also, it’s a Christmas story.

Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.

Continuity Note: About 1000 years before the events of Dragon Ball Z.   This story is set on a Monday.

[December 23, 2019.   Kiyosu, Japan.]

There was a very light drizzle outside.   It didn't snow often in Kiyosu, and when it did, it usually happened in February, not December.  

"It's a shame, y'know?   This is a romantic time of year.    Just once, it'd be nice to have a White Christmas without having to head out to Shirakawago or someplace up north."

Yamcha was a regular at the Emerald Eye Cafe.   He liked to chat while he paid for his order.   Every year around Christmas, he would wax poetic about the lack of snowfall in the Aichi Prefecture, and speak idly about someday taking a trip to a ski resort in Hokkaido.   Zatte didn't know if he would ever make the trip.    She only knew that he visited her store nearly every day, and she suspected that he enjoyed talking about snow and travel than the actual experience.      He had a large iced milk coffee and a potato salad sandwich, which came to 1260 yen.  

Zatte never minded the lack of snow.   It meant one less obstacle to the day-to-day routine.   She didn't know how people got along in snowy parts of the world, and she wasn't terribly interested in finding out.    Christmas was Christmas whether it snowed or not.    The sound system in the cafe was playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the fourth time that day, and she had been selling Christmas cakes for the better part of the month.   Half of her customers spoke excitedly of their plans for the holiday, and the absence of snow didn't seem to discourage any of them.   And then there was her "favorite" tradition of the season.    

"... might call her up tonight and see if she wants to check out the lights downtown.   You know, keep it casual.    How about you?   You got any big plans for Christmas?"  

Zatte shook her head.    "Maybe," she said.   She had learned a long time ago that this was the best way to keep conversations short.    Yamcha might have had unlimited time to talk, but she needed to head back to the kitchen at some point.     Answering "no" only invited a polite argument.   "Come on... I'm sure a young lady like yourself must have something to do on Christmas!" and so on.    Answering "yes" was a lie, and it only invited the other person to press for details that didn't exist.    

"Maybe, huh?"   Yamcha replied.    He finally fished the money out of his wallet and laid it on the counter.    "Well, that's better than nothing, after all.    Hang in there."    

"Out of 1500 yen, 240 yen and your receipt," Zatte said, handing him a few coins and a slip of paper.    

"Radical.    Well, I'll get out of your hair," Yamcha said.   "Thanks!"

She relaxed a bit when he left the store.    Truthfully, he was one of the best customers--courteous, patient, and easy to please.   Outside of work, he was probably an okay person to hang out with, if you liked hanging out with middle-aged civil servants.       But in a customer service setting, life was all about getting the clients' orders filled and getting them on their way with as little fuss as possible.    Zatte didn't think of herself as an introvert, but working retail seemed to have a funny way of making her feel like one for a few hours.

She supposed that it would be kind of fun to be chummy with the regulars, but the fact was that she had too many responsibilities behind the counter.    She had to count the money later.   The tables would need to be wiped down.     Fresh muffins had to go on the display.    The cook would probably need help, sooner or later.    The customers saw this place as her home, and she was a hostess providing companionship in addition to food and a place to relax.    That was the business model, of course, but it was still a business.  

She chided herself for feeling grumpy, but decided that she had at least kept an even keel through the morning.  The key was to accept the bad moods when they came, so long as she put on a pleasant face for the customers.   They had their own lives and their own problems, after all.    It wasn't fair to them--or profitable for her-- to burden them with her own troubles.    

*******

Two hours later, she was reminded of one of those troubles.    

"You haven't seen Roshi at all today, have you?"  

A shiver ran down Zatte's spine at the name.   "Not today, why?"    

Krillin took his latte from her and shrugged slightly.    "Well, let's just say I need to talk to him about something," he said evenly.   Krillin was a police officer, which tended to inform statements like these, but he still felt a need to be as discreet as possible.    

"Did something happen?" Zatte asked.    

"Hey, you've gotten really good at making pictures with the foam," Krillin said.   He pointed at the surface of his drink.   "It looks just like that guy from One Piece."

"Thanks," Zatte said.   "I'm still trying to get the hang of it, but luckily he's not too tough to draw.   He's good practice."    

"I oughta watch that show sometime," Krillin said.    "Everyone at the station keeps saying I sound like the guy, but I don't even know anything about it.    What's his name?   'Luffa' or something.    No, hold on, that was the girl who used to be your cook, wasn't it?"  

"Uh, yeah," Zatte said.    She was sorely tempted to use "maybe", but that seemed kind of pointless here.    Luffa was something of a legend at the Emerald Eye.    Even if Krillin hadn't remembered her name, he would still know her reputation, so there was no point pretending she didn't exist.    

"Whatever happened to her, anyway?" Krillin asked.    He took a sip of his latte and added: "Nothing against the new guy, but she made the best danishes.   And that egg salad!    Boy, I could go for some of that right about now."  

"Would you like me to get you--?" Zatte started to ask, but Krillin shook his head.    

"Nah, it just wouldn't be the same," he said.    "Something about the spices.   Paprika, I think.    Better to live with the memories."    

"Understood," Zatte said, though she really didn't understand at all.  

"Anyway, I'll be around for a little while, but if you see Roshi later, let me know, all right?   And... don't tell him I said anything."  

"Of course," Zatte said.   As Krillin turned and went to his usual seat, Zatte wondered what sort of trouble that man had gotten into this time.    It was always something with him.   She wanted to believe that this time would be different, but somehow he always managed to get away with his bad behavior.    

Later, as luck would have it, Roshi did stumble into the cafe.   "Well hell-oooooooo, nurse!" he crooned as he staggered to the counter.    The stench of alcohol on his breath was unmistakable.    Public drinking was legal in Japan, though Roshi seemed to consider this license to make an ass of himself whenever he pleased.  

"Can I help you?" Zatte said, struggling to maintain her composure.  

"Well, you see," Roshi said with a mischievous grin, "It's my nose.    It's awfully cold this time of year, and I was hoping I could... heh-heh-heh... warm it up."

Zatte looked toward Krillin's seat, ready and eager to call out to him.    But it was empty.    Had he already left?  

"Now I know this is a coffee shop and all, but I don't think hot beverages will do the trick here.    No, sir.   I was thinking more along the lines of..." He held up his hands to pantomime the act of shoving his face into a pair of large breasts.   Then he started smiling, like he had just suggested the most brilliant idea, ever.

Zatte wasn't sure that what she felt for this man qualified as hate, or pity, or revulsion.    She only knew that he was a pathetic old man, who seemed to think his crudeness was quaint, or charming in some way.   He was sorely mistaken, and she wanted him out of the store, permanently.    Did that mean she wanted him dead?    The thought of this worried Zatte, more for her own sake than for his.    

"Sir, if you want something, you'll need to place an order," she said through clenched teeth.   Below the countertop, her right hand clenched into a fist.

"Oh, well in that case," Roshi said, "I'd like to buy a pair of... heh-heh-heh... panties please!   Used ones, of course!"    

Zatte wanted him dead.   If that reflected negatively on her character, then so be it.    If Roshi had a heart attack and died right in front of her, she was sure she would feel relieved instead of sad.   It wasn't even the harassment so much as the fact that he used the same five or six lines every time he came into the store.   He wants to "puff-puff", he wants someone's panties, he wants to have coffee in the ladies' restroom, he wants to take showers with any woman in the store, and so on.   Roshi embodied the absolute worst qualities of customers.   He seemed to thrive on the power of going into shops and forcing cashiers and waitstaff to listen to his crude and pointless jabber, precisely because they had little choice but to put up with it.  

And then, just as Roshi was telling the one about putting his grimy hands on someone's buttocks, Krillin stepped out of the men's room.    "Oh, there you are," he said as he noticed Roshi at the counter.    

"Eh?   Krillin?    What are you doing here?" Roshi asked.    His jovial tone was suddenly gone.  He almost sounded sober.    Almost.

"We got another complaint about you," Krillin said with a sigh.   "That maid cafe you keep messing around with."

"Th-that was just a joke!" Roshi protested.    "Can't an old man have a bit of harmless fun anymore?"

"That girl you were picking on didn't think it was so harmless," Krillin grumbled.   "Look, I have to take you down to the station."

"What?   You can't do that!"   He tried to run out the door, but Krillin caught up to him before he could get there.  

"Just settle down," Krillin said.     "Don't make this any more difficult than it already is."

This only made Roshi even more difficult than he already was.    Eventually, Krillin managed to get the handcuffs on him, and he frog-marched Roshi out the door.   By the time they left, everyone in the shop was staring.     With Krillin and Roshi now gone, that left them no one to look at but Zatte.    

"Uh, sorry for the disturbance," she said awkwardly.    She wasn't sure how to feel about what had just happened, but she hoped that this meant Roshi wouldn't be back for a long time.   That should have made her feel more at ease, but somehow she felt more tense than before.

*******

More than anything, Zatte just wanted some normal customers.    She was starting to miss Yamcha, but then Tien entered the store, and she felt a sense of relief.    Of all of her regulars, he was one of the easiest to deal with.    

"Hello," he said evenly.  

"How can I help you, sir?"  she asked pleasantly.    

He gestured to the smaller man who had followed him into the store.   Zatte had never seen a little person before, but she was pretty sure this man was small enough to qualify as one.    

"This is my brother, Chiaotzu," he explained.   "I've been showing him around while he's in town."  

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," she said with a slight bow.  

Chiaotzu did not move.    

"I get my coffee here after work," Tien said to him.    "Black, please.    No sugar."

"Of course," Zatte said.    "And for your brother?"

"Ice cream cafe au lait," Chiaotzu said after a pregnant pause.   He never blinked.   He just stared at Zatte as though gazing into her soul.    

"Certainly.   Your total is 1140 yen."

They paid and she brought the drinks to their table a few minutes later.    Zatte forgot about them after that, until she happened to look up while counting the money in the register.   Chiaotzu was still staring at her.   His expression was completely neutral.    

What made it even stranger was how normally Tien behaved by contrast.    He was facing away from Zatte, but he was moving his head and arms like anyone having a normal conversation.    If he even noticed Chiaotzu staring past him, he didn't seem to care.  

She tried to ignore him, but this proved more difficult than she imagined.    Every time she happened to glance in his direction, there he was, still staring, never moving.    The cup in front of him was already empty.    At some point he must have drank his au lait, but Zatte had no idea when that could have happened.    

What was it about his eyes?   Those bottomless, pitiless eyes?   Looking at them just made her realize how pale his complexion was, like one of those stories about a vampire secretly living among humans.   She was grateful for the next few customers who came in, as they gave her something else to think about, if only for a few minutes at a time.    

She turned away from the counter to tidy up her workspace, and when she looked around again, he was suddenly standing there, glaring at her through the display glass.  

"Orange cranberry muffins," Chiaotzu said.  

"Huh?" Zatte said, trying to hide how much he had startled her.  

He pressed his face up to the glass.   By this time of day, the display case was nearly empty, as the demand for baked goods was too low to justify making more.  "Do you still sell them?   Or did you just run out?"  Chiaotzu asked.    

"Um, we stopped selling them," Zatte said.    "We, uh, changed cooks a while ago.    So we changed the menu.   I'm sorry."

Chiaotzu never took his eyes off her, and after a long pause, he finally uttered: "Oh.   That's too bad."

"There you are," Tien said as he walked up to the counter.    "Come on, Chiaotzu, we need to get going."

Chiaotzu turned and followed him out the door, and Zatte was never so grateful to see the back of someone's head.    He was bald, so she half expected a second pair of eyes to be there waiting for her.   Instead, he turned back toward her, just as he stepped through the door.  

"Thanks for the coffee," he said, though his expression looked more like he should be accusing Zatte of desecrating his own empty grave.

When he was finally gone, she glanced down at the display case.    Luffa used to restock it herself, multiple times a day.    It was a welcome distraction from the rigors of the day, even though she only popped out of the kitchen for a minute or two.   She would have whispered something like "Get a load of that guy," to her, and they would have shared a quiet chuckle over it.  

But Luffa was gone, and the new cook was fine, even if he wasn't quite as good, or fast, or popular with the customers.    It made the workday slower, but Zatte was determined not to let that get in her way.    She considered herself a survivor, someone who could adapt and endure anything life threw at her.    All that mattered was getting through the day and closing up the shop, and then getting through tomorrow, and the day after, and so on.    She didn't need Luffa, or anyone else to do that.  

At least, that was what she told herself.  

*******

Keda usually got home from school by 3:45 P.M.   Today, she returned an hour early.    Zatte wanted to know why, but there were too many customers for her to ask, and Keda walked straight through the swinging gate at the counter, and into the door that led to the upstairs apartment where they lived.  

Ten minutes later, she came back down, having swapped her school uniform for a blue "Emerald Eye" apron.   Under that, she wore one of her collection of T-shirts commemorating various professional wrestlers.   This one said "NIGHTMARE ANGELS" in English, with the words "KNEE THE ELITE" in smaller text.    Zatte was grateful that the apron kept the customers from seeing the entire shirt, and she hoped most of them didn't know enough English to be able to read it and wonder what it meant.    She was pretty sure Keda would try to explain it if someone asked, but no one did, and Zatte was grateful for this as well.    

"Need some help?" Keda asked.  

"Why are you out of school so early?" Zatte asked as she finished handing someone their change.    

"They let us out early," Keda said.   "It's the Emperor's Birthday."  

"Not anymore," Zatte said.   "The Emperor abdicated, remember?   The new Emperor's birthday won't be until February."

"Well, we convinced the school that it wasn't fair," Keda said with a shrug.   "I mean, December 23rd is a good place for a holiday, isn't it?    Right before Christmas.    The new Emperor can't help being born in February, but it's not right that we don't have an Emperor's Birthday holiday in 2019.   It just seems disrespectful, doesn't it?   So the student council talked it over with the faculty, and we agreed to let out two hours early as a compromise."

"Why can't you just say you cut classes like all the other kids?" Zatte grumbled.  

"Because that's not what happened," Keda said.   "Can I help it if the President of the Student Council likes my ideas?    Can I help it if the faculty is really open to suggestions?"  

She picked up a small cup and put less than fifty milliliters of hazelnut coffee in it from the dispenser behind the cash register.   Keda smelled it, but decided it was too hot to drink.    This was part of her after-school ritual.  

"I wish you'd stop doing that," Zatte said.    

"Everyone says it's an acquired taste," Keda said.    "I'm almost twelve, Zatte.   In a few years, boys are gonna want to take me to coffee shops.    I mean, not this one, that'd be kind of awkward.   Getting waited on by your own sister.    But a coffee shop, and I need to be ready to drink coffee by then."  

"Now if only I could get you to put that kind of dedication into your schoolwork," Zatte said.    

"Oh, I've got that under control," Keda said.    "You see my grades, right?   I've got a high school picked out and everything.    But none of that matters if a boy buys me a coffee and I start gagging at the first sip."

As she said this, Keda decided her drink was cool enough, and she carefully raised it to her lips.    She winced, but managed to swallow it, though the face she made indicated that it was an unpleasant achievement.    "Ugh.   Okay... okay... I'm getting there."

"Why would you want to go on a coffee date anyway?" Zatte asked.   "Just tell a boy that you work at a cafe and you'd rather see a movie instead."  

"That's the beauty of it!" Keda explained.   "If he takes me to a coffee shop, it's like I'm on my own turf.    It gives me the advantage.   I can say all sorts of things during the date, like how they get the caffeine out of decaf, or how the cappuccino machine works.    They'll think I'm super-sophisticated that way.   If I'm at a movie I'm totally out of my element.   You really need to read more  Sun Tzu, Zatte."  

"Sun Tzu?"   Zatte asked, bewildered.   "Are you trying to date a boy or kill him?"

"Never mind me," Keda said.    "I'll bet you're excited today."  

"About what?" Zatte asked.  

"About Luffa, dummy," Keda said.  

"Luffa who?" Zatte grumbled.   "You mean our ex-cook who walked out on us and barely ever stops by?"

"Oh, come on," Keda said.    "You know how busy she is, and she's on the road constantly."    

"And now that she just happens to be in the area, I'm supposed to be giddy about it?"    Zatte asked.    "It's not like she's coming to see me, Keda.   You're her biggest fan."  

"Come on, you miss her too," Keda said.   "She's your best friend."

"No, she's not," Zatte said.   "I mean, of course she's my friend, but not like... Don't you have homework to do?"

"Nope," Keda said.    

"Then shouldn't you be watching your show?"   Zatte asked.    

"It doesn't start until five," Keda said.  

"All right then, go bus some tables," Zatte said, and then tossed a washcloth at her.   Keda nodded with a shrug and then headed off to begin her assignment.

*******

Exactly two hours and fifteen minutes later, Keda had vanished from the shop.    Zatte was never sure if she was doing a good job raising her little sister.   It often felt like Keda was raising herself, and acting out just enough to make Zatte feel like she was involved in the process.    The girl was extremely smart for her age, and she helped out with the cafe, so it seemed unfair to criticize her for being nosy or presumptuous.   It was hard to tell whether she was being too strict on Keda or not strict enough.  

No, Keda wasn't what had her on edge.    It was Luffa.  Zatte did miss her, but not in a way she particularly cared to admit to anyone else.   And with Luffa away from the cafe, essentially out of their lives, it seemed pointless to admit anything now.   Better to go on like it hadn't mattered.   Better to be strong and independent, and hope that everyone accepted the image of Zatte as an independent, responsible shopkeeper.   It wasn't always a satisfying life, but at least it was her own, and it couldn't be taken away by someone when they moved on to other things.  

As much as she appreciated the new cook, she had to suppress a certain resentment towards him.   It wasn't his fault that he didn't have the same level of culinary talent.    Or that he didn't have that same wild look in his eye.    Or that the apron didn't frame the small of his back the right way.   Or (let's face it) that he was a 'he.'   So Zatte was never sure if she was too hard on the guy, or if she was too easy on him because she was trying not to be too hard on him.   Now that she thought about it, she had the same trouble with Luffa back in the day, for completely opposite reasons.  

It was distracting and depressing, and she wasn't sure how she would feel about it, and she just wanted some work to do so she could think about something else.  

*******

Gradually, more customers came into the store as offices started to close for the evening.   It always struck Zatte as odd that people would want coffee so late in the day, but she supposed that they were all trying to fight off the tiredness from the workday, even if it cost them a few hours of sleep later in the night.  

By 8:00 P.M., Zatte had convinced herself that she had nearly forgotten about whats-her-name, and she had settled into a steady routine of taking orders, making change, and handing out drinks.    Then a middle-aged couple threw off the entire rhythm.  The wife had been very concise with her order, but her husband was holding up the line while he tried to decide what he wanted.  

"Now, lemme see here," he said as he looked at the menu and thoughtfully rubbed his chin with his thumb.   "Oh, you've got pork fillet cutlets?   I'll take two of them, and.... the egg sandwich... and... hmmm.   Wow, you've got chili dogs?   That's awesome!   Three chili dogs, please!"

"Um... will there be anything else?"   Zatte asked, unsure if she really wanted to know.   His wife seemed to feel the same way.  

"Goku, you'll never be able to eat all of that," she groaned.  

"Sure I will!" he insisted.   "I had a light lunch today, so..."

The look on his wife's face suggested that this was not even remotely true.     Zatte decided it was better to just ring them up and get their money before she could talk him out of it.  

"It will take some time to prepare all of this, you understand," Zatte said to Goku.  

"Aw, don't worry about that," Goku said.    "Take as long as you need.   Me 'n' Chi-Chi will be so busy playing with the rabbits that we probably won't even notice!"

"Rabbits?" Zatte asked.    

"Where do ya keep those guys, anyway?" Goku asked.    He began looking around in every direction, which made all of the cowlicks in his hair that much harder to ignore.   "Oh, crap, we forgot to order lettuce so we'd have somethin' to feed 'em!"

Chi-Chi's face began to turn red, and Zatte finally began to understand what he was talking about.

"Sir," Zatte said, "This isn't a rabbit cafe."

"It's not?" Goku asked.   "Well, you've at least got a cat or something, right?"

"No, we just serve coffee and food."

"Goku, we talked about this on the way here..." Chi-Chi grumbled.

Goku crossed his arms and lowered his head, and it was hard to tell if he was pouting or contemplating his predicament.   "Darn.   Well, you still got chili dogs.   I guess that'll just have to do."

"I... apologize for the inconvenience," Zatte said.   She had never meant that sentence less than she did in this moment.  

*******

Ten minutes later, Keda was downstairs in the shop again, sitting at one of the booths and scribbling notes while she read from a textbook.    When asked, she would insist that this wasn't homework that had been assigned, and she was simply working ahead in anticipation of future assignments.   Zatte was too exasperated with this explanation to dispute it.   By now, business had slowed down considerably, with only a few stragglers coming in for quick to-go orders.    At one of the tables, Goku was still finishing the feast he had ordered while his wife played a game on her phone and tried not to look too embarrassed.  Finally, the couple got up to leave, and as they did, the doors swung open, and someone else entered the shop.

"Luffa!" Keda shouted.    She practically jumped out of the booth and ran up to meet her.  

"Hey, kid!" Luffa replied.   She had been holding a gym bag, but dropped it so she could return Keda's embrace.    

Zatte had been unloading the dishwasher when Luffa entered, and she looked over to see her.   Luffa was wearing a pair of zubaz--baggy gym pants with a zebra-striped pattern--and a satin jacket with a steakhouse logo printed on the front.    There was a smear of green around her lips, and even her teeth had a green stain on them.    Once, Luffa had worn her hair long, but now it was cut very short and seemed to stand on end.    And she had colored it an unnatural shade of yellow, far more vivid than blonde.  

"You beat Ribrianne!"  Keda said excitedly.    "That puts your score up to 10 points!"

"Hey, don't sound so surprised," Luffa said.  

"I thought she had you near the end," Keda said.   "You looked like you were nearly out of it, and then you reversed that suplex into a head-scissors... how did you do that?"

Luffa puffed out her chest and jabbed her sternum with her thumb.    "What do you mean how?    I'm the Golden Ace, aren't I?"

"Well yeah," Keda said, "but you lost to Hop last week."

Luffa grimaced like she had accidentally swallowed a bug.   "She cheated.    That doesn't count."

"Well, the tournament rules say it does count, but now that you've got ten points, you've got a strong chance of winning.   There's still some tiebreaker scenarios to consider, but personally I like your chances."

"Ugh," Luffa said.   "I'm glad you can make sense of the scores.   You know, these round-robin tournaments are great, right until you have to figure out whether you're winning or losing.   Is Kale still in the running, or did she get eliminated?"

Keda pointed to a group of armchairs at one corner of the cafe.    "Come on," she said, "I'll walk you through the scenarios."  

Luffa followed her, waving to Zatte as she passed by.   As she did this, she nearly bumped into Goku as he and his wife were on their way to the door.   They exchanged a look, and for a split second, Zatte was worried that it might become awkward.   Luffa almost looked like she was sizing him up for a fight.    She couldn't read Goku at all, but she assumed he was mostly intrigued by her loud costume.    

For some reason, the sound system in the store was playing a metal cover of "Carol of the Bells".    Zatte didn't know how that had gotten added to the holiday playlist.  

"Cool hair!" Goku finally said.  

"Hey, thanks," Luffa said.    

And then they went their separate ways.    

The music system abruptly switched to "Here Comes Santa Claus," perhaps the most tension-free Christmas song of all.

"Now then," Luffa said to Keda as she collapsed into one of the armchairs.    "Let's get down to business."

Keda was tapping a notepad with a pen, looking more like Luffa's accountant than a young fan.    "Right, well, obviously, if you can win all of your next matches, you'll be a shoo-in to win the tournament.   But even if you lose two more, there's still a chance of squeaking by.    The only thing I'm worried about is you tying with Hop."

"She cheated," Luffa grumbled.    

"It doesn't matter," Keda said.  "If you both tie on points, she wins the tiebreaker, since she has a win over you.   But if Ribrianne beats her, that'll set up a possible four-way tie with Videl.   Then you'd win, because you'd have the best record among the four of you."

"Sounds like I should just win the rest of my matches," Luffa said after digesting what Keda had said.  

"Just promise me you'll stay in the ring when you face Sorrel," Keda pleaded.   "She always tricks her opponents into getting counted out, and I know how much you like to fight in the crowd."

"What I like," Luffa said with a sadistic grin, "is having the referee out of my way.    If Sorrel thinks a twenty-count will save her from me, then she's already lost."

"But if you get counted out, you could lose the tournament!" Keda protested.    "Then you won't get a shot at the All-Pacific Championship!"

"Hah!   If someone like Sorrel can beat me," Luffa said, "then I don't deserve the title.    It's that simple.   Besides, she's not the only one with a trick up her sleeve."   She pointed at her mouth, which had smears of green dye around it.    

"When are you gonna teach me how to do the poison mist?" Keda asked.  

"I keep telling you, kid," Luffa said, "it's a sacred technique.    I can't just teach it to anybody."

Zatte approached them and cleared her throat to get their attention.    "Sorry to interrupt this strategy conference, but I thought the 'Golden Ace' might be hungry."     She held up a chicken salad sandwich and a to-go cup of coffee, which Luffa accepted with relish.  

"You're a lifesaver," Luffa said with a smile.  "I haven't eaten since before the show started."

"You'd think SPARKING! could afford catering for their events," Zatte said.    

"They do," Luffa said as she unwrapped the sandwich.   "I just don't like to eat so close to bell time.     Makes me nervous.   Too many stories out there about guys pooping their pants during matches."  

"Ewwww!" Keda said.  "Really?"  

"I've never run into it myself," Luffa said, "but you hear about it.    I almost threw up during a match, so I believe it."

"Was it because you swallowed posion mist?" Keda asked.  

"Huh?  Oh, no way," Luffa said with her mouth full.    "I... well, I built up an immunity to that a long time ago."

Keda began scratching her chin thoughtfully.   "Immunity... so that's it."

"What do I owe you?" Luffa asked Zatte.    

"It's on the house," Zatte replied.    

"Oh, come on," Luffa said, "I'm making halfway decent money these days."  

Zatte pointed at Luffa's yellow-and-black striped pants.     "Then why are you dressed like you're doing your laundry?"  

"Hey, these are high fashion in my line of work," Luffa said with a smile.    She propped her black boots on the ottoman in front of the armchair.    There was an image of a playing card printed on the sides of each boot.     "Check it out," she said.    "They liked my match in Osaka so much that they paid me a little extra, and I used it to get these babies.    I can afford to live it up at the Emerald Eye Cafe."

"Don't worry about it.   Half my regulars keep asking if you'll ever come back to the kitchen," Zatte said.    "You did such a good job while you were here that I'm still making money off of it now."    

"How's the new guy working out?" Luffa asked, glancing toward the general direction of the kitchen.

"He's fine," Zatte said.   "He's not as good as you, but who could be?"

"You know, that's what I think about you," Luffa said as she took a swig of her coffee.    "I mean, there's a cafe near the dojo.   It's just not the same."

"Right."  

"Yeah."  

There was a long silence, and then Keda nudged Luffa in the arm.    "Hey, do you really think you can beat Kale next Saturday?" she asked.    

"Are you saying I can't?"   Luffa asked in a haughty tone.    

"I'm just saying you can't take her lightly," Keda said.    "That running knee she does is nothing to sneeze at."  

"Running knee," Luffa scoffed.   "Let me tell you what I'll do about that running knee..."

"I need to get back to the register," Zatte said, though she doubted anyone was listening.    

*******

Closing time at the Emerald Eye wasn't for another hour, but the kitchen shut down at nine.   The cook was saying his goodbyes to Zatte before leaving, when he happened to notice Luffa and Keda chatting.    

"Is she some kind of celebrity?" he asked.  

"Huh?  No, that's Luffa," Zatte said.    

"Oh.  What's with the hair?" he asked.    "She looks like a pop idol."

"She's a professional wrestler," Zatte explained.   "She quit working here to go work for the SPARKING! promotion.   They did a show tonight in Okazaki, so she came by to visit."

"Huh.   I thought she became a famous chef or something like that."

"No, as good a cook as she is, she only worked her to make ends meet until she could break into the business," Zatte said.   "And she's done pretty well.   I read on the internet that they're planning to make her the next All-Pacific Champion."

"I thought you have to win the championship in a match," he said.  

Zatte turned and gave him a dirty look.   "It's fake," she said.   "They decide who wins and loses ahead of time."

"Oh!   Right," he said.   "I guess it's like getting a promotion at an office job, then.   You must be happy for her."

"I don't know that it matters," Zatte said.    "This is the first time she's come back since she left.    If Keda wasn't such a big fan of this stuff, she probably wouldn't even bother.   She's moved on.   I heard she's dating some referee there.    She's got a whole new life on the road now."

"Well, I'd go over and pay my respects, but my parents are pretty upset that I haven't called home in a while, so..."  

Zatte nodded and waved.  "Yeah, sure.   See you tomorrow, Trunks."

Less than five seconds after he had walked out the door, a man walked in and asked for Christmas cake.    Zatte stifled a groan and explained that the kitchen was closed for the night.    This was spelled out on the cafe's front door, but no one ever really read that as they walked in.    

*******

At 10 P.M. Zatte switched the sign in the window to "CLOSED", and began turning off several of the lights in the store, until only the section above the armchairs was illuminated.    The Christmas lights on the trees outside were easier to see this way, and they lent a pinkish, purplish tint to the inside of the cafe.    Finally, Zatte walked over to Luffa's chair and took a bottle of soda out of her apron.    She slung the apron over the chair opposite Luffa's, then collapsed into it with a heavy sigh.    

"Long day?" Luffa asked.   It wasn't until she saw her up close that Zatte noticed how tired Luffa looked.   Keda had gone to bed a half-hour earlier, leaving Luffa by herself.   She looked like she wanted to fall asleep in the chair, but was too excited from the day's events.

"I've had worse," Zatte said, "but that was back when I had you on the staff."    

"Well, I'm off for a few days," Luffa said.    "I could give you guys a hand."

"Tempting," Zatte said.   "Keda would be thrilled, but I couldn't impose on you like that.     You've probably got plans for Christmas Eve."

"Not really," Luffa said.   "That's why I came here.    I've been touring for so long that I'm not really sure what to do with this much free time."

There was a hiss as Zatte opened the bottle on her soda, and she raised an eyebrow at Luffa's words.    "I thought you and that referee..."

Luffa looked confused for a moment, then she threw back her head and laughed.    "No, no, no," she finally said.    "That was an angle.   Part of a storyline to make people think I had an unfair advantage.    It was kind of dumb, but sometimes you gotta do what the office wants to show 'em you're a team player."

"Oh," Zatte said, somewhat embarrassed.   "Well, it looked so convincing..."

"Well that's the idea," Luffa said.   "Wait, have you been watching my matches?   I thought you didn't go for that stuff."

"Well, Keda watches them all the time anyway," Zatte explained.    "And she's got that subscription to the on-demand service on the internet.    It's about the only time we get to see you anymore, you know?   Even if it's while you're spitting green stuff all over people."

"Keda asked me to teach her how to do the poison mist," Luffa said.   "I told her I couldn't, because the recipe for the poison is too dangerous.  Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," Zatte said.   She glanced around at the walls, imagining what they would look like with green food coloring on every surface.  "When are you gonna tell her the truth about all that stuff, anyway?"

"What, that it's fake?" Luffa asked with a smile.   "I dunno, she's still pretty young.   I'll tell her next year."

"That's what you said last year," Zatte said.   "I'd do it myself, but she wouldn't believe me.    She's a smart kid, you know.   Sooner or later, she'll figure it out on her own, and that might be kind of awkward for you."

Luffa settled back in her chair and looked down at the empty cup in her hands.    "I don't know, it's cool to have someone I know who believes it's all real," she said.   "I'll have to give that up eventually, but it's tough to let go.    You saw how excited she was when I came in."

"Yeah..." Zatte said.   She took a swig from her soda and propped her feet up on the ottoman that lay between their chairs, so that their ankles alternated in an orderly row across the cushion.

"So are you really winning the title?"  Zatte asked after a long pause.   In spite of Luffa's exhaustion, her eyes lit up at the question.

"Keep it under your hat," Luffa said, lowering her voice as though worried someone might overhear, "but maybe.    That show's six weeks out, and a lot could change before then.    If someone gets injured or something, they might have to call an audible and change the card around.    But they definitely want to put the title on me at some point."   She held up both hands and crossed her fingers for emphasis.

"That's great," Zatte said.   "I mean, it is, right?   If the matches are predetermined, does the championship even matter?"

"Oh, it's a big honor," Luffa said, visibly excited at the chance to explain it.  "I mean, it's a secondary belt, and SPARKING! isn't that big a promotion, but still.   It's kind of like an actor winning an award.    The people in charge are saying they think I'm good enough to deserve that spot on the show.    I mean, two years ago I was still helping the crew put the ring together.    I still can't believe it."

"I can," Zatte said.   "You always put everything you have into whatever you do.   I always saw it when you worked here, so it doesn't shock me that other people can see it in you now."

"I've missed this place,"  Luffa said wistfully.    "That's the only trouble with being on tour so much.    I don't get to cook as often.     I saw a place selling Christmas cakes on the way here and you've probably been selling them all month without me..."

"Well, if you really want to," Zatte said, "you could give us a hand in the kitchen tomorrow.   I mean, if you really didn't have any other plans for Christmas Eve..."

"Nope, I got nothing," Luffa said.    "What about you?   Keda and I could keep an eye on the place so you can leave early."  

"We're closing early anyway," Zatte said.   "Business usually drops off pretty sharply on Christmas Eve night, so we might as well.   Besides, I can't have you waiting tables with that crazy hair.    You'd scare the customers."

"Huh?   Oh, right," Luffa said.   "You know, I've been wearing it like this for so long I'd gotten used to it.    You don't like my look?"

"It's just... very bright," Zatte said.    "It's not so bad up close, when I can see your face better, but it almost doesn't look like real hair.    It looks rough, like hay."

"It's really not," Luffa said.   She tugged on some of it to demonstrate.   "I don't even put much stuff in it to make it stick up like it does.     Here, feel this."  

Zatte shrugged and moved to the seat beside Luffa's, where she reached for the same part of her hair that Luffa was holding.   Their fingers brushed against each other, and neither of them seemed entirely sure how to react to the sensation.  

"Huh..." Zatte said as she gently touched Luffa's head.    "That's not at all what I expected."  

"Yeah," Luffa said, somewhat awkwardly.   "It's not so different from that red streak you've got in your hair, I bet."

She reached out for the side of Zatte's bob, and rubbed a strand of it between her fingers.   "Why are you blushing?" Luffa asked.    

"Oh... uh, I probably stood up too quickly," Zatte said.    

"Oh..."

They heard someone outside walking past the storefront, and suddenly became very self-conscious of holding onto each other's hair, so they quickly let go, and looked away from each other.    

"So uh..." Luffa said.    "If you're not doing anything tomorrow night..."

"I mean, I've got a reservation at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but that's it, really," Zatte said.    "Keda talked me into it.    Said I ought to do something, even if I was alone.   But if you wanted to come along..."

"Sure," Luffa said.    "I haven't had KFC in ages.    And you know, it'd give me a chance to see the lights around town."    

"They've got a new thing at the mall," Zatte said.    "Well, not new new.   It was there last year, but you wouldn't have seen it then."

"That sounds fine," Luffa said.   "Yeah."

*******

Behind the front counter, Keda observed her sister and Luffa through the glass of the display case.    It wasn't an ideal vantage, and she could barely hear what they were saying, but it was enough for her to get the gist of things, and so far things looked promising.  

There were still a lot of things that could go wrong.   Long distance relationships were always a challenge, and the professional wrestling business wasn't exactly known for fidelity, but these were factors Keda couldn't control,  and at some point it would be up to the two of them to make things work as best they could.    It was enough that Keda had gotten them to this point-- studying Luffa's tour schedule, playing the eager fan, and providing Luffa a useful excuse to visit right before a romantic holiday.    Really, the only thing she had been worried about was that the two women would have seen through Keda's "wrestling-is-real" act, but they were grown-ups, and they didn't know an eleven-year-old from an seven-year-old, not when you really got down to it.

Keda noticed Zatte reaching for Luffa's hair a second time, and decided that was her cue to withdraw.   She was playing matchmaker, not spying on them, after all.     Besides, Keda would have to rest up for tomorrow so she could help out in the store tomorrow, in order to make sure neither of them were too tired for their date.    

Quietly, Keda made her way back to the door that led to their second-story apartment.     As she  ascended the stair, she imagined how great things would be next Christmas, with a SPARKING! All-Pacific Champion in the family.    Maybe then, finally, Luffa would teach her how to spit Poison Mist.

[THE END]  

[tokupedia]

Costume Ideas for Halloween 2018: Super Sentai

We did Power Rangers, now it is time to focus on the eastern progenitor of that franchise to seek ideas for Halloween costumes.

Yakuu Sentai V-Leaguer  (MLB Team edition)

October isn’t just a time for tricks and treats, but it also signifies the end of baseball season here in the USA with the World Series games airing throughout the week leading to Halloween and sometimes goes until November. So my first choice for a costume idea goes out to you diehard sports fans.

In the 1980s, when Kagaku Sentai Dynaman was being planned out, it was originally going for a baseball theme and went by the name Yakuu Sentai V-Leaguer. Ultimately, this idea was scrapped by Toei as marketing dudes thought that totally gnarly and rad 1980s kids would think baseball was a lame concept and they needed something “cooler”. Remnants of this idea, such as the Dynaman having their helmets sculpted to look like they have baseball caps in them, are seen in the suit designs and the Dyna Rod sidearm looks somewhat like a baseball bat.

For this idea, there are many avenues to choose from. You can either do a full Dynaman suit with patches you bought online of your favorite team and emblems painted on the helmet, go for a budget “casual” approach and wear a team shirt, custom Dynaman helmet and baseball uniform pants and cleats. Or you can do a full custom V-Leaguer approach, with the team’s name proudly on your chest, adorned in the team’s colors and the number of one of your favorite players on the back (or make your own number with your name on it)! 

I think the most amusing one would be for Texas baseball fans, as they would have literal Texas Rangers cheering on their team! XD Also, for more amusement if you are at a game, hold up a sign while in costume that says #DigitalWatches, fans will get the joke.

The Original Battle Fever J

This concept art drawn by Shuuhou Itahashi and Yuuji Kaida, was created to pitch the concept of Battle Fever to Marvel Comics. The two emulated the art style of John Byrne’s era of X-Men comics, and it shows despite being great Bronze Age-style designs. These feel more in line with America’s superheroes than Super Sentai and thus changes were made along the way to make the look more appealing to a Japanese audience.

Some of these even look a little familiar to those of Marvel Fandom, Battle Kenya is channeling a bit of Black Panther, Miss America’s leotard is modeled after Captain America’s costume and Battle Japan has a bit of X-Men’s Sunfire in his look.

Now sadly, this is the only image of the original concept on the web right now, so improvisation is needed a bit when going into the costume design. But that actually works to your advantage, with only a base template, you are free to tweak the look however you want!  All you really need to keep in are the colors of the flags somewhere to keep the nationality theme. I imagine original Battle Kenya and Miss America will be the most popular of the bunch based on how popular their inspirations are thanks to the MCU.

Battle Cossack would have to be updated, since one, the Soviet Union no longer exists and thus dates it quite a bit and two, fur underpants mixed with spandex are a really weird combination (and probably very itchy). 

Maskman (Orignal Fiveman Prototype Concept Designs)

Maskman was a game changer in terms of helmet and costume design as well as venturing outside the storytelling realm of sci-fi and incorporating new mystical ideas into its elements, heralding a sneak peek at what Super Sentai would be in the coming decades. But for a brief period, Maskman was on the verge of being a throwback in design when it was known conceptually as Fiveman, which of course became the name of another Sentai team.

The original suit designs incorporated what came before, most notably Battle Fever J.  X1 Mask, the one-off sixth member of Maskman, is the only “living” remnant of what could have been.

You will need LED lights and circuitboards, cosplay costume material, a custom stencil for creating the black “5″ chest emblem out of the fabric and if you can, find 3D modeling software for aiding in creating the helmets. The female Ranger helmets have a bit of sculpted helmet “hair” kind of like AkibaYellow and Blue, though you can skip that part if you don’t want 100% accuracy to save time. You will also need material to create the costume belts and pouches.

Fake KyoryuRed

One of the pitfalls of being a Super Sentai fan is that a few members of the fandom are quick to gossip and sometimes resort to elaborate pranks to get attention, like most fandoms. One cruel tactic that was put up with is the fake designs of an upcoming Red Ranger. This has recently died down thanks to stronger connections to official sources, but still is a problem that persists as even Kyuranger got the Fake Red treatment last year. In 2013, a rumor spread that this image above was the Red Ranger of the then trademarked Kyoryuger. 

Despite being immediately debunked as fake, it isn’t a bad design, harkening back to Zyuranger with the dino themed helmets that in clearer images had a jagged “teeth” like pattern on the red parts sculpted above the mouthpiece. It also had Dekaranger-like suit patterns with the represented dino covering a portion of the bodysuit in black silhouette with white outlines, “fossil teeth” shoulder pads and a metallic segmented belt with a gun holster and sword holster. 

Commander Hilltop’s “Robocop” crazy outfit

In Episode 31 of LupPat, a Gangler tries to negotiate a plea deal with the police. In a comical attempt of Good Cop, Bad Cop the Patrangers make their boss wear....whatever this is, to make the Gangler uncomfortable (and reference Robocop). It is really bizarre and doesn’t work.

What you will need: a soup/spaghetti pot on your head, metal bowls on your shoulders, a black body suit, oven mitts, 2 grill spatulas, a toy gun, white and orange rain boots, large forks, a pot lid, grill grates or small baking cooling racks and a metal cookie sheet on your back. In other words, raid your kitchen for parts!

Devil Gun from JAKQ Dengekitai

A crook made out of guns, self explanatory. His head is a gun, his chest has 3 cannons, his arms have cannons and more guns are in his fingers, he is a gunstavaganza! You will need a lot of gunmetal gray paint and a lot of patience. If you examine closely, you can see where the eye holes are for the costume. 

Ways to make it really impressive is to replicate the firing effects for the head gun with liquid fog juice, lights and sound effects. Just be careful though, in these troubling times we live in, seeing and hearing guns can make people jittery.

Zeek Jeanne from the GoGo V movie

In an alternate universe, when GoGoV was adapted into Lightspeed Rescue, I like to believe Ms. Angela Fairweather got into the fight wearing this suit instead of PLEX creating a new Ranger from scratch. (*nudges Boom! Studios*) Though the Titanium Ranger is awesome, so it balances out.

Demon Hunter Zeek bestowed his powers to GoGoV ally Kyoko Hase to become Zeek Jeanne before she ultimately lost them to give GoGoV the power to destroy the movie’s villain. One thing I never understood is why the protective face visor just vanished when the suit equipped onto a female hero.

So you have options of face visor on or face visor off. Unlike most Ranger cosplays, your field of vision will be a little better than wearing a Ranger helmet given the large face visor if you do some minor alterations.

GekiBlack

(an unnamed Livedoor artist’s photoshop render of “Super GekiBlack”)

Rio, the main baddie of Gekiranger, eventually learned he was being manipulated by Long and allied with the GekiRangers. Jan dubbed him “GekiBlack” and his partner Mele as “GekiGreen” if they became friends later on. Sadly, it was not meant to be as Long turned into his dragon form and made bite-sized snacks out of both Rio and Mele.

Many fans often wonder what would have happened if Rio had lived and instead of reusing old monster suits, PLEX and Rainbow Zoukei crafted a brand new Gekiranger outfit for him. Most fans know the rules of conceiving such a notion: he must be black in color with gold accents in the suit, and his helmet must be sculpted to resemble a lion’s mane or have lions in it.

What You Need: A GekiRed base template of some kind, black and gold paint and costume cloth, Gekiranger symbol, concept sketches to plan out an idea of what to tweak. Rio’s Kaijin form can also be used as a template. The most difficult part would be choosing a morpher, either make a custom one or make a stylized version of the GekiChangers. For the Super Version, just emulate the base Super Gekirangers but with black and gold added to the white in the bodysuit or just do the ‘shop image above. 

If you have a special someone who wants to Ranger up too, you can be nice and make him/her a GekiGreen outfit and celebrate Halloween as two fated lovers!

[lord-dusk]

Jurassic Emblem-Chapter 10

Scales are quite tricky to draw. Anyhow, there’s the second boss of the game!

 Nifl was a cold, desolate land of snow,bones,ice,and blood. Frozen blood. It wasn’t quite the Kirby-esque happy place you’d thought it would be, after the Nifl-Muspell incident where Askran forces killed off warped versions of video-game protagonists and The elder Nifl princess Guunthra being roasted alive like some yummy Barbie-Cute pork. And the situation got particularly better when the sun-dragon Helios was frozen solid, condemning the whole area into everlasting night.

At least the stars and moon looked very charming and exquisite, white stellar bodies illuminating the aqua-blue sky.

Blue and Lucina were marching through the snow, huddling each other for thermal radiation. Blue, having grown up on a tropical island for much of her life, had borrowed Lucina’s scarf and cape for extra warmth(don’t get into that frappucino debate on feathers please). Lucina, having grown up in a desert country with enough rainfall to sustain a 15m-tall scythe-wielding flesh golem, found it rather uncomfortable trekking through the snow. Ryukami the mosasaurus had stayed behind at the ice-floes to catch up on some Nisioisin novels.

The raptors were marching onwards to the north of Nifl, sometimes passing by some shrubs and frost-covered rocks. Just when Lucina thought things were getting rather monotonous, she saw something rustle out of the bushes. Blue took notice as well and saw what appeared to be a penguin-like bird with white spots on its face waddling in a panicked manner before a fox-squirrel thing pounced on it and tore apart its head from its socket, crimson blood and pieces of esophagus and vocal cord spilling out unto the snow and dying it red. Blue and Lucina were eyeing the fox-squirrel as it dug heavy mitten-like foreclaws into the bird’s torso and stringy pink intestines splooged out. Lucina decided to look away and went on her way. Blue paid no attention to the carnage after that as well.

“That was a Repenomamus devouring a Great Auk,” Blue explained. “The world where I from, InGen didn’t simply revived dinosaurs, they brought back Paleozoic and Cenozoic fauna as well. Although if I were you, I wouldn’t dare pet a reppy.”

“Why? Are they dangerous?” Lucina asked. Blue can easily tell right off the bat that humans like Lucina had a profound desire to prod and hold small,furry mammals.

“Oh yes. Reppies are one mammal you do NOT want to pet; despite looking like a Pomeranian with mole-claws, they WILL try to eviscerate you; for a mammal from the Mesozoic they are quite big enough to eat small dinosaurs.”

“Hmm? I assumed mammals evolved after the demise of the giant lizards.”

“Actually, they co-existed with the dinosaurs, though they were bit characters in a world dominated by reptiles bursting with presence and charisma. Repenomamus was the biggest furry during its time, but most of its kin were barely any bigger than an Amiibo figure.”

“And that penguin-looking bird?”

“Uh-huh. That great auk was NOT a penguin-it’s actually more closely related to puffins than to the famous diving birds south of the Equator. Although, it was the the only auk that converted its flight power to swimming power completely, and those damn humans wiped its existence off the face of the Earth.”

“You know quite a lot about animals before the dawn of man, don’t you?” Lucina commented.

“I’m a creature from before man myself, though I wouldn’t be too surprised if InGen resurrected species routed by humanity, like the dodo and the gastric mouth-brooding frog.” Blue replied.

“Come to think of it, isn’t it harder to clone a mammal than say, a reptile or a fish?”

“Yes, Henry Wu of InGen has cloned mammals occasionally, but found it quite tedious because mammalian red cells do not have nuclei, where the DNA are located. You would need to find white cells, which are much less common than their red counterparts in a ratio of 2 to 12.”

“Reptiles and birds, on the other hand, have nuclei within their red blood cells, and Henry Wu is a genius when it comes to manipulating DNA.” Blue explained, frowning.

“Who is this Henry Wu that you speak of ?”

“Why, as a human being, Dr.Henry Wu is a tacky SOB who creates red-eyed, mangled-toothed fatherfuckers and is considered a most dangerous man with the most dangerous technology in the sad history of humanity. He attempted to use my blood to create a line of Indoraptors to sell off for military purposes.”

Seems Wu sounds a LOT like that sperm-slurper Validar, Lucina grimly thought.

 The two of them chatted like this for the entirely of their walk until they reached Nifl Castle.

                                              *********

 Blue and Lucina had arrived at the castle of Nifl, but they were no guards to greet them. Well they were guards present-but they were frozen solid, and clusters of repenomamuses were busily gnawing away at the frozen body cavities.

 I guess a species changes its behavior accordingly to the environment, Blue though as she and her partner pushed the gates open. They went inside the interior and up the stairs.

“Something tells me the weather outside isn’t the reason those soldiers were icicles,” Lucina said, walking behind Blue.”Would it be a bad idea to go into the kitchen wing and grab some potions for the upcoming boss fight?”

The charcoal velociraptor sniffed the solid,icy air. It stinged her nose. “I don’t see why not,” she answered. “though if you see some ANY creature, reppy or not, attacking you, don’t hesitate to knock their heads off.”

Blue waited at the second floor while Lucina brisky walked to the the kitchen downstairs. A few minutes later, she was back.

“Are you ready for certain? During the boss-fight there will be no pee-pee breaks, and no daddy in white shining armor with a shotgun and a motorbike crashing through the windows to save either of us. Understood?” Blue interviewed.

“No need for any of that,” Lucina replied. “Let’s get this over with. I feel as though my body is becoming a gelato cone.”

 “Good. If my nose knows, she is just around the corner. Follow me.” the raptors headed to the corridor on the right and came across a door that read “Hrid’s Room: Out for Lunch”. They entered.

“Ugh. That was the fifth time someone has stepped in without my consent,” an icy voice hissed. “Do any of you thin-telligent organisms register the concept of knocking?”

 A woman was lounging on an oblong bed spotted with various books. But not a regular woman. Her lower half was that of a boa’s, turquoise-green with purple stripes, and covered with icicles.Her hair-piece were icicles as well, and her Victorian-style corset colored electric blue and black made the entire “cool” effect perfect,considering her expressions suggested otherwise.

“What do you bipeds want?” The snake woman demanded. “Did you interrupt my inspirational reading just so you can become like those popsicles outside?”

“We just want to talk,” Lucina answered.

The snake snorted. “Don’t be honest with me, be honest with you. What you really came here for is my bloody limp body that you can use to nail onto this country’s gates like a crooked Christmas decoration. Is that it, O Exalted Princess?

“Why did you freeze the sun-god? Do you recognize the biblical effects the entire world will face?” Blue questioned, her face contorting in defense for her friend.

“Let me tell you this,” the Victorian boa began. “I am the future best-selling novelist Basilice, and I sincerely have no desire to kill you. But my mistress Sha’Rad Yuwi denied my request and forced to to sacrifice my writing skills for combative means. My writing may be on hold, but my mind is certainly not. Exalted Princess, have you ever actually considered the misery of your foes that killed them because you desired to make “everyone happy”?”

“.....You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,” Lucina replied.

“ ‘I want everyone to be happy,’ ‘let’s end all suffering in the world,’ those are lines that make me want to vomit out the Niflites I ate yesterday. Those are the shallow,one-dimensional philosophies of idiotic eukaryotes who do not face reality.” Basilice sputtered out. “The light is full of lies, lies! People willingly bask in the glory of light so they never again have to experience the truth of the darkness below! Light is harmful, harmful! And not just the fact that overdosing on UV light promotes cancer on light skin. Do any of you bipeds know anything at all about plants other than the vascular system in high-school?”

“When plants grow, they break down soil to suit their roots for sufficient nutrient intake,” Blue raised her hand in reply.

“Precisely! Around 400 million years ago, during the Devonian period, mosses and ferns were starting to grow onto rocks near the coastlines, and inevitably, these early pioneers of the new world crumbled the rock into fine soil which washed out into the sea over thousand of years, and do you know what happened? Vertebrates started choking! Fishes here and there had no idea how to cope with this influx of mud particles from the land, their gills clogged with minerals. This, combined with volcanic eruptions, consumed all the available oxygen in the water and there were massive, massive, casualties everywhere! Because fishes and run-off from terrestrial photosynthesis do not go well together! This catastrophe makes your petty carnage across Jurassic Park and Fire Emblem look like a squabble between toddlers in comparison. And you little humans use the opportunity to view more serious issues as a excuse to lounge in your chairs eating chicken nuggets.”

“So I killed him! I killed that sick son of a bitch Helios because he’s a major liar, and I’m going to teach everyone that people deserve bad endings, everyone!” Basilice took out her Dragonstone. “And if you girls are truly good character down to the nRNA sequence, you might be spared and see everyone in the world smothered in the darkness that is free of any lies! No more pain, no more sadness!”

Blue and Lucina prepared their weapons. “Let’s fight!” 

[moonmythology]

What it Feels Like to Be Human -- Chapter 4: A Wolf in the Distance

Synopsis: Athdhea Lavellan always wanted to find out what it means to be human. Becoming the Herald of Andraste taught her to be careful of what one wishes for. So far away from home, she finds herself drawn towards her Commander, despite their differences, and a mysterious elf, who has always been in her dreams. CullenxLavellanxSolas.

Chapter Overview: Solas grapples with his growing feelings for Athdhea--a girl he once saved, a woman who now bears his mark. While he hated this new world that he created, his burgeoning feelings for her is starting to make this world suddenly somewhat beautiful.

This has been posted on fanfiction.net and will be updated on AO3. 

He woke to a world where the dreams he knew did not exist.

His people had lost their cities and their villages. Humans treat them like stray animals. Worst of all, they had lost their dreams and clung to the very chains that he sought to break.

Once, walking in a human city, he was chased away as soon as its inhabitants realized that he had magic. For many people in this world, magic was a sin.

Like walking in a world of Tranquil, this world had nothing but death. So he sought to change it again.

And then he met her.

The first time he saw her was in a long dream. In his long slumber, he led this child and her baby sister through the Veil towards a mirror, one that led them near safety towards a nearby Dalish clan.

On the second time, he sought her out. At first, he did not know it was her. He merely wanted to find the mage with the mark who was found in the Conclave.

She was Dalish, and she probably grew up despising him. The words that he would use to describe her was: young, beautiful and dying. Her battle with death was hopeless because none but he could bear the mark and live. Poor thing, he thought. It was his orb that caused it, along with the deaths of so many others. True, he had caused the deaths of so many. One does not get to survive wars, lead rebellions and fight for freedom without some sacrifice, so he never understood why he didn't want her blood on his hands.

For days, she slept. He often wondered what the color of her eyes was. So he followed her in her dreams.

It was there that he recognized that little girl he once walked with. They walked alongside the same mirrors that walked through years ago, while she peppered him with questions: Is it more useful to have intelligence, common sense or wisdom? Can people's natures actually change? Is it possible to live lives without prejudice? What is power? What does freedom mean anyway? Whenever she asked about him or who he was, he always found a way to distract her. One time, he even introduced her to Wisdom. Both had lengthy conversations that he knew that she most likely would not remember, but would linger in that space between dreaming and waking.

And then, she woke up.

He guided her hand to close one rift.

And then she did it again on her own. And again.

With a gesture of her hand, she continually silenced ghosts and ushered lost spirits to where they belong. If such a person could carry the mark, a burden that he thought that only he could carry, everything he knew, everything he thought possible could change.

Her spirit was indomitable.

The version he met of her in this world was much different from the one he's met in her dreams. While the one he met previously was a little more open and carefree, the person he met in the world outside the Fade is slightly more reserved, more guarded. But then, he concluded that maybe because she had to live in the world of humans. Still, in those times when she is relatively at ease, that carefree side of hers would show. Because he wanted to see more of that person in her dreams, he became her friend in the waking world too.

It is simply wonderful to be liked for who one is. Not as Fen'Harel, but Solas. For a while, he realized that he had forgotten what friendship and affection felt like.

To live in this world with such a person, he thought, maybe this world can be beautiful. That thought frightened him more than anything.

"Solas!" she called, marching out of the Haven's open-air dance floor towards him. "By the Dread Wolf! What are you doing sulking over there?"

He snickered at her choice of expletives. Normally he was unnerved whenever anyone else said them, but there was always some sweet irony whenever she said them.

Her eyebrows lifted. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he snickered. "But this is how I like to enjoy such fleeting celebrations such as these. Distance just makes things easier given certain inevitabilities."

"You mean the Elder One?"

He nodded. "You have now interfered with his plans twice. Once at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and now again at Redcliffe. A being who aspires to godhood is unlikely to ignore such an affront. You should prepare yourself."

"And this is how I prepare myself." Her arms stretched out to the sky, the cold air became visible as she exhaled. "I breathe a bit."

"Time is not a luxury that everyone has."

"True. But not everyone has managed to time travel, and be given a chance to save the future."

"Are you certain you experienced time travel? Could it have been an illusion, a trick of the Fade?"

"I've been to the Fade," she said firmly. "I'd know it."

"Point taken," he agreed. "It is vital the Inquisition succeed to avoid the future you witnessed."

"I am surprised you are not more interested in your own future," she posited.

In truth, he had seen it in her dreams. The vision she saw of him was one who was weak and desperate, someone who could only rely on her to remedy his own failures. "I know enough. If that future happened then I—and Cassandra, Cullen and the rest—failed to stop this Elder One."

"This time we will not fail," she stated with much certainty that he almost believed her.

The music by the bonfire continued, but for a while they sat in silence, simply breathing. Her eyes turned to examine him, and he prepared for another onslaught of questions. She never did run out of questions.

But this time, it wasn't a question. "You know sometimes, Solas, when you look at me, it's as if you look beyond me—it is as if I seem like a ghost to you like I'm someone dying."

"Are you not the least bit afraid of dying?" he asked.

"Maybe," she admitted. "But we're all going there anyway. That makes living so much more precious. Hearing Cassandra's bellowing every single day, Sera's sniggering…Those times that drive me insane when I can't seem to wrap my head around what our Commander is thinking, or times like these when I just get to sit with you. To me, these are all precious."

He remembered similar words from Varric, in those conversations they had about the dwarven kingdoms and that story he told about the fisherman. Everything you build, it tears down, the Stone Child said. Everything you've got, it takes—and it's gone forever. The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going…That's as close to beating the world as anyone gets. All of them—these people who knew they were dying—seem to talk about struggling, about striving. Then he understood that it's all the effort that made life for them so precious. It's a concept that still seemed alien to him.

So he changed the subject. "Did you find the person you were looking for at Redcliffe?"

It was, of course, a loaded question. He knew that she was looking for him, and there's always that part of him that thought that maybe she knew that he's always been there for her. This time, he only looked like a person she knew.

"No," was the abrupt reply. "But I will find him. I don't care how long it takes. Because I know, everything he did for me, they all happened. Even if it was all in the Fade, even if everyone else tells me he's not real, he was real to me."

He opened his mouth to say something in reply, but the sound of battle horns interrupted him.

After that, everything went by so fast, but small moments slowed down in his eyes—the terror in her eyes as she first glimpsed the so-called Elder One and his army, the mages' battle cries, the whirring of the trebuchets, the race towards the Chantry as dragon fire consumed Haven's feeble structures of wood and hay, the Commander's stern pleading against what she had set out to do, the last look that she gave the Commander before the Chantry doors closed, the push to the last trebuchet, the way her voice cracked when she ordered them to leave, the snowy mountain falling down around them, and the Commander ordering everyone to move out while he begged the man to send out a search party.

She was alive. He was sure of it. He would have felt his own magic leave her if she did. His consciousness reached out to the Fade for recent memories. At first, all he could see was chaos. Spirits fled the confusion, and numerous deaths ruptured the Veil. And then he glimpsed her form standing as steadfastly as she could against the dragon and its master. Defiantly, she flung the last shot that shook the mountains, before falling to the depths below. The small spark that lit her hand was still there, fighting, enduring but slowly fading.

He couldn't lose her. That was the only thought on his mind as he slipped away from the weary caravan of survivors, and into the cold. With just a little bit of magic, his hands changed into paws. It was a form that he had not used for some time—a form that he did not want her to see. But time was of the essence. He needed to find her. So he pulled his nose down and sniffed.

Athdhea peered through the blizzard. There was no way one could tell which direction one should go.

A sharp pain continually shot through her arm and through her spine. She just narrowly escaped a darkspawn magister and an avalanche. The mark on her hand bore through every nerve in her body. As if it had a will of its own, it triggered an explosion decimating demons in the cave that she fled minutes ago. Theoretically, she knew that generating fire magic could keep her warm, but the explosion exhausted a lot of her physical and spiritual energy. Now it seems that the cold is harder to outrun.

Her steps slowed. Even as she tried to move forward, the snow was lulling her to sleep. Her body tumbled onto the snow.

It is said that in death, one's life flashes by in an instant. That was how her life appeared to her that led to that moment: the boots that Keeper Deshanna bestowed upon her as a parting gift before she left the Clan-Samahl's tears as she said goodbye-Cassandra bursting through the prison doors minutes after she woke with a mysterious glow on her left hand—the first time Solas guided her hand to close her first rift—the moment she placed her hand on Cassandra's tome as she swore her allegiance to the Inquisition—that time Cullen blushed when she touched his forehead—that release she felt that morning after the end of her long nightmare—that memory of that dream where she walked with an old friend—that promise that she spoke as Cullen stared earnestly at her—and that relief she felt as she saw Cullen's flare up in the sky.

He was safe. They were all safe, at least. She wouldn't have minded dying. Only, she regretted that last moment she saw Cullen because there was still more to say. He was an ignorant human ex-Templar. He hurt her pride once when he vehemently told her that he wasn't interested in her. Of course, she wasn't interested in him, but it hurt her pride nonetheless. She almost always had an opinion, something to say to people, but with him, sometimes she ran out of words. They often disagreed, and their worlds were completely different. Yet she found that she disliked his disapproval more than anything. A part of what he said was right. Mages have been oppressed for ages, but in some ways so are Templars because of the broken systems that allow all of these to happen. Because she did not act quickly enough, she could not save them both. So when the chance came, she was glad that she could fulfill her promise.

The wind was strong, and it tore through every layer of clothing she had down to her bones. Yet if this cruel wind could carry her to where Cullen was, she would have thought herself content. Or if she was nearing death, maybe in her dreams, her old friend would come for her, like he always did in the loneliest moments of her life. Because dying alone is such a sad thing.

Then, as if the Creators heard her plea, she felt a wet nose sniffing through her hair. Looking up, her eyes came face to face with a large black wolf with three pairs of grey eyes staring down at her.

But instead of devouring her, it gingerly nudged her arm with its nose. The creature carefully sank its teeth on her sleeve, in an attempt to drag her on her feet. Why?

Perhaps in answer to her question, the creature stood erect and slowly transformed into that person she wanted to find.

"A Friend," she smiled, tenderly reaching for his wolf mask. "I knew I would find you again." At least now, she wasn't dying alone. And she found him.

"Get up!" he said. "Your allies are nearby. If you move now, you could still catch up to them."

"Is this a dream?"

"No," he replied firmly. "The snow is real. The cold piercing through your bones is real. You will die if you stay here. Take my hand."

When she reached out, his hand felt so warm, so familiar, and so real. She was not dreaming, and they were both real. He was in her world.

"You are real," she joyfully whispered, getting up on her feet. "You're real! I knew it!"

"Now is not the time for this!" he argued. She felt his frustration as he let go of her hand. "Follow me, lethallan."

"It's too cold."

"If I answer three questions, would you follow me then?"

"Just three?"

"Just three."

"So stingy."

They trudged through the snow for a while. Even with his coldness, she noted his care. Her body was still a bit weak, and while he kept his distance, he made it a point to slow down his steps for her.

"So how does your magic work? I mean, I've met you a few times now, and as far as I can tell, you don't seem to age much. And you seem to easily walk between the Fade and then here."

"It is the same with all magic. It all comes from the Fade. But unlike you, my people have a special connection to the Fade."

"Who are your people exactly?"

He stopped. For a moment, he turned his face to her but she could not see under his mask. Then he continued on his way.

"You promised an answer."

"They lie asleep. Awaiting to wake from their dreams."

"That's not an answer."

"Please ask about something else."

She sighed. "Very well then. How do you always find me in situations such as these?"

"I just do."

"That's not an answer either."

"Quiet!" he cautioned. "Listen, they've come."

Before she could ask anything else, he transformed once again into a wolf and scrambled away. The moment he disappeared, the warmth left her body, and it suddenly grew cold again.

"Fenedhis!" she mumbled. "You are so unfair! Whoever you are."

The snow got less deep as she plodded forwards into a snowy gorge. Fatigue and the cold started taking over her body again, but she pushed onwards. Her friend gave her this chance, and she was not going to waste it.

She managed to glimpse some light from afar. Though her sight started to fade in and out, she tried to focus on the light. But her feet gave way, and her knees sunk into the snow.

"There!" a familiar voice sounded out. "It's her!"

"Thank the Maker!" uttered another familiar voice.

Moments later, she felt the rush of armor and moving bodies surrounding her. Someone's arms were around her. They were warm. They smelled like elderflower and oakmoss. Cullen, she thought. A smile formed on her lips. For a moment, she felt the brush of lips on her forehead before sleep finally took her.

Finding her was not a difficult task. He simply followed her scent, and his own power calling to him. When he found her, she was on the ground, slowly getting buried under the falling snow. Noticing the look of terror in her eyes as she woke up and glanced at the wolf, he changed into a form that was dear to her.

Predictably, the easiest way to get her to move was to make her ask questions. Even weakened by the cold, her questions were sharp, and he did his best to answer them without giving away too much information.

The moment he heard a search party coming, he took the opportunity to leave. Of course, they would come for her, even if at first they seemed hesitant. From a distance, he noted the way the Commander held her, it was as if he found something precious that he had lost. The way she smiled peacefully as she nestled on his neck—he had not seen that smile before.

As they laid her to rest, the medic indicated that she had a fever. For days, she moved in and out of consciousness. The people around her at times could hear her whisper in her sleep, "Please don't hurt the wolf. He means no harm…A Friend…you didn't really answer my questions. You are so…unfair." She searched for him in her dreams, but he dared not show himself. He chided himself for being such a coward, but then every time he appeared to her always had a risk of exposure. He loved and hated that in this dance with her.

When her fever broke, and she finally came to, she wasted no time in meeting her advisors, who all argued endlessly about the next course of action. Their angry voices echoed across the encampment. But as soon as she appeared out of her tent, all of Haven's survivors gathered around her, singing a song of hope that resounded far into the dark night. A smile played on his lips while he pressed his staff and watched. Only she could have inspired this.

After the scene ended, he approached her quietly and led her to the outskirts of the camp. There, as her friend Solas, he confided in her that the orb that Corypheus was elven. Unlike that other friendly version of himself that often appeared in her dreams, at least Solas can feign some ignorance, allowing him to evade further questions.

The next day, through her, he advised the survivors to move Northwards. Again, they plodded through across snowy mountains, but this time, as Solas and Athdhea. He took comfort in how slowly, their relationship in both the land of dreams and this world was starting to become more similar. On their long walk, she confided in him how she somehow managed to defend herself against demons with only the Anchor, and how that ability drained so much of her spiritual energy. He theorized, and she debated with questions. He realized he could listen endlessly to her voice and not tire of it.

They did not stop until Sera voiced out, "Hey, weirdies! We've been listening to your magical blah blah for hours. How much farther do we still have to walk?!"

It did not take long for a scout to spy Tarasyl'an Te'las. It was a place that he had not visited for some time, not since after creating the Veil or his long slumber. Much had changed—it contained traces of humans, dwarves and other elves and their dreams. The humans started calling it Skyhold. The name slowly caught on.

As soon as Haven's survivors settled into it, they began rebuilding parts of it that fell into disrepair. Only mere days later, Andrastian pilgrims started visiting, hoping to catch a glimpse of the one who survived the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and faced the darkspawn magister and his archdemon. These devotees also helped tend the wounded and the dying.

The day came when both pilgrims and refugees assembled into the courtyard. She ascended up the Keep's long staircase and lifted a sword, vowing to everyone present how she, as an elf, would stand for all of Thedas. "The Inquisition," she proclaimed, "is for all!"

This was welcomed with cheers from the crowd below.

And just like that, she became the Inquisitor.

Already, she was shaping the remnants of his world into something better. As he admired from the windows of his old tower, he fancied that in this place, their worlds could possibly meet after all.

A/N: Finally all three are here. Writing using Solas’ POV was challenging, but it was compelling. I had to replay Trespasser over and over again for this.

Now that people have probably seen Athdhea with both Cullen and Solas, and we now know how those two think, I now wonder what you guys think about their interactions. I obviously have my biases, but which relationship do you think is better?

[explosionofpaper]

The Philip’s Best Things of the Year 2017 List

“But Philip, it’s March! Why are you doing your best of 2017 list now?”   Well that’s because it sometimes takes me a while to get around to things, and hey, at least it isn’t April.

Anyway, I had a pretty good time in 2017. There were some really important changes in my life, some great people and events, and a whole heap of good media.

Presented below are some of my favourite medias of 2017. This is stuff I experienced for the first time in 2017, not necessarily stuff which came out in 2017. Also the things aren’t ordered within their sections.

Books

Strange Practise by Vivian Shaw

This was one of those books which I picked up in Waterstones entirely on a whim, and I’m incredibly happy I did (as should be obvious with it being on this list). It explores one of my favourite concepts, that of how the fantastical actually operates in the real world. The main character, Dr. Greta van Helsing (descendent of the usual van Helsing) is a doctor to the supernatural, and through her presence causes the monsters who make up her clientele to feel much more grounded and real than they would otherwise.

The book also makes really good use of public domain characters, placing them in the world such that they feel they belong there, without their public domain status being the spotlight. Another thing the book does well is conveying emotions; in particular it does a fantastic job of conveying emotional vulnerability without it being a synonym for weakness.

Dune by Frank Herbert

You know what Dune is. I don’t need to explain it.

Dune has been haunting my reading list and bookshelf for an awful long time. Every time I would pick out a new book to read, Dune would be there, waving it’s pages to catch my attention and calling “Hey! It’s me, Dune! I’m a classic of the genre. I’m beloved for good reason. You’re not having read me causes you to miss out on many references, and you’re well aware of this. I can explain to you what the Gom Jabbar is. Read me!” And every time I would glance at Dune, think about how long and revered it is, avoid eye contact, and pretend that I hadn’t heard or seen it.

Well this year I finally put that right. It felt good to finally have it stop taunting me, but it felt even better to actually read it, because it turns out that Dune is really fucking good.

The way that the world is built, the interactions between the characters, the way things grow and develop in the book, all of it is just so damn good. It’s Dune, go read it.

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Miracles was a fantastic end to a trilogy which I’ve loved. Tying up the major loose ends, answering the major unanswered questions, and taking the world and themes to a wonderful ending point.

The trilogy as a whole did some really nice stuff with the perspective and pacing. Each book has a different main character (though they’re each always important), and they’re set many years apart, decades even. This results in the world feeling and characters feeling very alive and functional in that they’re doing stuff even if we’re not seeing it. The books focus on the three major Divine events since the Blink (incidentally, I’m a big fan of this type of post-big-event setting), and just lets us know that stuff happened during the time between.

The book also contains a bit I adore, in which exposition is explicitly and dramatically avoided in a way which ties perfectly into the characters in the scene.

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

I’d fallen a bit behind on Cosmere stuff recently, so I spent a bit of this year catching up. They were all good, but The Bands of Mourning really stood out to me as excellent, and some of Sanderson’s best work. Something I loved in particular about this book was the way in which it managed reader emotions. I don’t want away too much, so I’ll just say that the reader’s feelings are directed in such a way that it maximises impact and catharsis, and really elevates the later parts of the book.

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan

The first of the Lady Trent books was good, but it really came into its own with The Tropic of Serpents. The way that these books approach dragons, from the perspective of a natural historian viewing them in a scientific manner, is incredibly refreshing; it’s so nice to see Dragons actually fitting in a Victorian era (I think, I get all the eras named after monarchs mixed up) world, and the characters treating them like they belong.

Even leaving the dragons aside, the handling of the era is really good. It deals really well with the struggle of science in the face of politics, as well as the struggles of women and the lower class within the scientific communities.

The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

I love the Johannes Cabal books. Cabal is a real bastard, and that makes him a joy to read about. He’s not evil mind you, he’s certainly not a pinnacle of virtue either, but he’s mostly kind of a good guy. Any shitty things he does are in service of a greater goal, but he’s still a bastard. It brings a texture to his internal conflicts which you don’t really see often.

He’s a great character, but having his brother around elevates him even further. The two of them are fantastic comparisons and foils for each other.

The way in which the Cabal books handle the supernatural is also great. It feels functional and integrated into the world, yet still unmistakably outside of the normal.

Kill All Angels by Robert Brockway

Much like City of Miracles, this was a fantastic end to a trilogy.

The Vicious Circle books are fascinating and notable for a variety of reasons: there’s the way in which they keep two timelines going throughout the whole trilogy; there’s the way it showcases cosmic horror on a human level, as well as placing the horror on that level; there’s the way it handles the idea of humanity, and what it means to loose it; and there’s also the way in which it takes the question “Why is Mario Lopez so weird?” and builds it out into one of my favourite horror series.

I rather not say any more about the series, just know that I really recommend it.

Also when I said “Mario Lopez”, I actually meant to say “A character similar to, but legally distinct from Mario Lopez”.

Games

Doki Doki Literature Club

This game hits like a ton of bricks, and good bricks at that. At this point I think that most everyone knows the deal with DDLC, but I’m still going to avoid big spoilers.

DDLC is one of those games which catches you by surprise, and isn’t what you first expect. It’s got a big old twist, shocks the hell out of you at some moments, and does some terrific integration of mental illness into the plot and characters. All of that is done fantastically, but the thing which really makes DDLC stick out to me is just how good the core game itself is.

The first part of DDLC, before stuff hits the wall, is the best dating sim visual novel I’ve played. That’s super important for setting up and enabling the later stuff, but it’s also just great. If Team Salvato announced that they were doing a pure dating sim, I would be well up for that.

West of Loathing

Considering the amount of time I’ve put into Kingdom of Loathing over the years (spoiler: a lot), it’s should be no surprise that I love this game. However I will say that I was a tad surprised with just how much I loved it.

KoL has always been a game driven mostly by it’s writing and concepts, and this game capitalises on both of those. There’s an awful lot of writing in the game, and all of it is good. Everywhere where there can be a joke, there’s a good joke, and everywhere where there isn’t a joke, there’s some damn good writing which would have had its impact lessened by a joke (to be clear: all of the joke writing is also good; I mean just that there’s always a good reason for jokes being absent).

The story the game tells, and the way it does it, are both incredible; and there’s a real elegance to the game’s art style.

Super Mario Odyssey

This game is a true delight. I’m famously bad at sticking it all the way through games, but this one kept hold of me and I finished it in a weekend. Not that I’ve 100%ed it mark you, but I also didn’t exactly rush through the campaign, I took my time, did a bit of sightseeing and all that.

The game’s also kept me coming back. I keep on finding myself popping back in to pick up a few more moons.

It’s just so joyous, so lovely, so utterly delightful. There’s just so much in the game, and it’s all just so good.

Just Dance 2017

Yeah that’s right, Just Dance. I’d never really played Just Dance before this year, but I have now and I love it. It’s just a whole heap of fun to play, and a nice alternative to going for a run if I want to exercise but don’t want to leave the flat.

I specify 2017 because that’s the one I’ve played.

Monument Valley 2

The first Monument Valley is one of my favourite games, so there was a bit of a worry that the sequel wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Thankfully those worries were unfounded, and I’d put MV2 right up there with the first. It plays like the first, but with twists on the mechanics to keep it feeling fresh. Similarly, it explores the same themes, but from a different perspective. The looks are just as stunning as the first, and go even further in many points, really exploring what the graphic style can do.

Ultimately the game is more Monument Valley, and that’s exactly what I wanted it to be.

Linelight

Linelight was a nice little puzzle game with straightforward, easily understood mechanics and a delightful, simple aesthetic. It managed to excel due to the excellence in puzzle design, and the way in which it conveyed ideas and meaning.

Put simply, if Thomas Was Alone didn’t exist, then these would be the strongest emotions a game has made me feel about such simple shapes. This game however didn’t have a narrator, instead it used just the mechanics to make me attached to some of my companion lines, and did so in a sublime way.

TV Shows

Girls’ Last Tour

I’ll be honest with you; I picked up this show because they dab in the OP. It turned out that was actually a good decision, as it led me to one of my all time favourite shows.

Girls’ Last Tour is a slow paced, intimate show. It’s an exploration of the two main characters travelling through a dead world, and just trying to survive. The world feels empty in a way which few other post-apocalypse things manage, mostly due to the fact that there are so few characters. In the 12 episode run, only 2 supporting human characters are encountered, and each is around for only one episode. This means you really get to know the main characters, and to truly see how their time in this dead world is affecting them.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

It’s no secret that I love Jojo, and Diamond is Unbreakable is without a doubt my favourite part so far.

I loved Stardust Crusaders, but I had several issues with it. Diamond is Unbreakable fixes damn near all of them, and it really feels like Mr JoJo learnt some lessons from SC and applied them here. The characters are great and you really get to know them, the fights are cool and satisfying, and all the Stands feel unique and interesting.

Then there’s the actual presentation of the show, which is absolutely stunning. The unusual colour palette gives the world a whole new depth, and the soundtrack is just incredible. In particular there’s a certain use of a certain theme, which results in one of my all time favourite moments in a tv show.

Cromartie High School

Cromartie’s really damn funny, though it’s hard to put into words exactly why. I think a large part of it is the show’s absolute commitment to inconsistency. It’s committed to the extent that not even the show’s inconsistency is consistent. Things are forgotten, the forgetting is lampshaded, but then some characters will remember things whilst others won’t. Storylines will just stop, but then they might suddenly restart at a later date as if they had been going all along. It’s a show where nothing is ever really forgotten, but nothing is ever really remembered either.

It’s art is what I’m trying to say. Pure art.

My Brother, My Brother and Me

That’s right, this one isn’t an anime. It is a spin-off from a podcast though, so it’s a pretty nice lead in to the next section.

Do you like the MBMBaM podcast? If yes, then you’ll love the show. If no, then there’s a good chance you’ll still love the show. The podcast is used as the basis for it, but it’s built up into something even greater. It’s not just that it has editing and a budget, it also shows us new layers to the relationship between the brothers, and puts them in the real world as opposed to the podcast void which they normally live in. Everything in the show is so funny, and so good. I really do love it.

Podcasts

Wonderful

Wonderful is an aptly named podcast; it’s a true joy to listen to.

In the podcast, husband and wife, Griffin and Rachel Mcelroy, talk about the things they like. That’s the entire premise, and it makes for a truly wonderful podcast because it’s just so positive and sweet and lovely. There are no rules on the kinds of things they talk about, so they could be as general as a genre of film, or as specific as a sequence of notes in a particular song.

This podcast is the second iteration of Rose Buddies, which was a Bachelor fancast, and shares the same podcast feed, so watch out for that if you pick it up. Not that Rose Buddies wasn’t also a great podcast, but it was of a different style. The fact that I picked up Rose Buddies in 2016 does make the podcast’s place on this list a touch more dubious, but I’m the one making up the rules here, so I’m saying it’s fine.

Pretend Friends

This podcast is a delight. It’s an RPG podcast with the Continue? guys, and I have a history of finding them funny, so it makes sense I like this podcast. But what really elevates it is the game that they’re playing, that being Space Kings. Space Kings is notable in several ways, one of those ways being that it isn’t actually out yet. The GM of the podcast is one of the devs of the game, and the podcast is a bit of a beta test for it. That’s a nice novelty, but the thing which is really great about Space Kings is how it’s built around making a good collaborative story and having a laugh, rather than being built around firm mechanics.

It’s a podcast of a bunch of friends trying to make each other laugh, succeeding, and telling a story about a bunch of friends travelling around in space and getting up to some good hijinks. At one point a cat cuts a spaceship in half, at another a mop fires a gun. It’s a good time.

The Worst Idea of All Time

You know how I said that Wonderful’s place on this list was a tad dubious? Well TWIoAT is even more dubious due to the fact that I’ve been listening to it for years. The reason I’ve put it here is that it ended this year. TWIoAT was a fantastic ride the whole way through. If you’ve ever wanted to listen to a pair of skill Kiwi comedians lose their minds over a few years, then this is the show for you. Whilst I’m sad to see it go, I’m happy that the two of them can start the road to recovery now.

Web Shows

Super Beard Bros - Dark Souls 3

Beard Bros is a long time favourite of mine, and I think that this might well be one of their best series. Brett is just such a fantastic addition to the crew, and allows the other two to shift into slightly different roles. All of them are on utterly top form in this series, and it leads to a fantastic atmosphere, and lovely series.

The core of it is how wonderfully positive it is. Alex gets frustrated at times, but never really angry and seems to be having a great time with the game. Brett’s a fantastically encouraging person, and a true delight to listen to. And it’s so nice to get to hear Jirard chilled out, and finally having the time to make the wrap of the day.

Press Buttons ‘n’ Talk - Phoenix Wright 2

I discovered PB’n’T late last last year (2016) with their playthrough of Phoenix Wright 1. From there I worked my way through the rest of their stuff and caught up in PW2, which was a pleasing symmetry.

The channel is always great to watch, but the Phoenix Wright games are where they really excel. The voices given to the characters really bring the games to life, and they’re off high enough quality, and consistently enough applied that they’re now firmly in my head as the cannon voices for the characters. Even Phoenix himself, who’s handed back and forth between the two of them, feels consistent and has a real identity in his voice.

It’s a good series.