#a predetermined fate and long sealed title

[prlssprfctn]

[silentprincess17]

Sometimes Things Have To Get Worse Before They Get Better

This is essentially a darker, heavier alternate take on Memory #7 - Blades of the Yiga. I wanted to write a fic with a competent Yiga Clan. (Yes you read that right). It is very angsty in the beginning and then becomes fluffy (hence the title!)

Summary: Link and Zelda have returned from Vah Naboris with Urbosa and have spent the night in Kara Kara Bazaar Inn. Link wakes up and finds her missing.

Cue the angst.

This story is complete and I will post each chapter daily on here but you can read the whole thing on AO3

Rating: Mature (Graphic descriptions of violence) Pairing: Link/Zelda (Zelink) Characters: Link, Zelda, The Yiga Clan, Master Kohga

Chapter 1: Everything goes wrong when you don't have breakfast

Link was having a bad morning. He’d missed breakfast, a cardinal sin, and now he was anxiously darting around the Bazaar, weaving between the trees, in an attempt to see if he could spot a glimmer of blonde hair or a flash of a blue shirt.

She just had to run away. Again.

He sighed. It wasn’t that hard to understand why she constantly gave him the slip, even if he wished she didn’t. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to think such things, especially when he knew it wasn’t really him, she was running from, rather it the sword that was strapped to his back. It wasn’t him she was frustrated with, it was herself. And the sword symbolised how he was apparently fulfilling his destiny and his side of things, whilst she struggled endless with the stone-cold Hylia and had nothing to show for it. Essentially, the sword meant destiny and fate had already set out a predetermined plan for her, and she was currently set for failure. So yes, he could understand why she felt the need to escape what was surely a suffocating sight every day- the boy with the sword that has it all sorted, geared and ready to go, whilst she stumbled in the dark, Hylia’s Divine Blessing evading her.

If only she knew how much he struggled too. He didn’t just pull a sword out a rocky pedestal and boom morphed into Hyrule’s Saviour. He’d trained long and hard too. And frankly, he had felt compelled to draw the sword, it hadn’t been something that was in his control- if he had a choice, then he would also choose to just leave it be in the Lost Woods. It sounded naive and foolish now, but he hadn’t anticipated what the consequences would be when twelve-year-old Link had jumped up and wrapped his hands around that cursed mauve handle. Mostly, the thing he regretted the most about pulling the sword was that he’d effectively doomed them all. Did he want to be the one to basically foreshadow what was now surely coming? No. Another was that it had put a timer on the Princess to find her powers, and he didn’t want to cause her such anguish at being unable to unlock supposed birth-right sealing powers that she clearly didn’t have and didn’t know how to obtain. But… there had been a hidden consequence, one that he couldn’t for the life of him have predicted- when he released the sword from the pedestal, it didn’t just end with him now possessing the mythical legendary blade, oh no. He’d also obtained a whole wealth of memories, memories of past lives, past successes, past failures, and he’d lost whatever childish innocence he’d had then. And it crushed him, having this soul that apparently was doomed in this endless fight, and now he had to live up to them. He had to live up to these past Heroes and by Farore he had no idea if he’d be able to.

Every word that had come out of the Princess’s mouth at his blessing ceremony had cleaved him in two. All those past disastrous events that happened in Hyrule, and all the lengths his predecessors had gone to save the country… Adrift in time indeed. IN TIME. How was he supposed to do the same? And it made him fearful. And he was not easily frightened. He liked to think he was a little bit brave, he would run headfirst into any sort of challenge, be that eating rocks, defeating hordes of monsters, including Lynels, or even redirecting errant guardian laser beams but when he thought about what those Heroes had gone through… He certainty didn’t feel very brave when it came to imagining what exactly he’d have to do, what trials he would have to face, in line with theirs.

He finally finished strapping the sword properly to his back, he’d ran out as soon as he realised she was missing, and he tried to find any distinguishing patterns of her boots nearby. It was a useless venture, because sand shifted, constantly, and as a result any tracks were lost pretty much as soon as they formed. He sighed, deciding to do another very quick run through the Bazaar in case anyone else had spotted her, or she had come back from the baths maybe. He was clutching at straws, he knew it, and he felt that familiar churning feeling in his gut that something was wrong, but he decided to keep calm and check again just in case he’d missed something.

He sighed, even before Urbosa told him how the Princess’s behaviour was in fact coloured by the sword, he could have guessed. One of the biggest signs was that she always looked at it, instead of him. He only wished to tell her that he was just as lost as she was, because yeah sure, everyone Impa stated that he had the Sword that Seals The Darkness. Okay, but how did it do that? How does one go about killing darkness? Monsters he knew. Monsters he’d trained for. But darkness? And the thing that frightened him the most was that most of the past Heroes had fought a man. A power-obsessed, strong-willed and formidable opponent, but still, fundamentally, a man. None of them had fought this… Calamity equivalent that he seemed to be up against. Hence why he was uncertain, and fearful even, if the sword would be enough.

Not to mention how much it pained him that the arrogant idiot bird had managed to find his greatest insecurity, but that was neither here nor there.

But in truth, every time someone mentioned how he was their savour he wanted to cry. Perhaps she didn’t realise that whilst everyone had pinned her as a hopeless case and a lost cause, he’d been saddled with double the expectations to succeed. So much pressure, so many eyes, that he’d all but gone silent. Every word spoken could be misconstrued in some shape or form. Nothing he said was ever safe from scrutiny, so to continue to play the perfect, composed Hero that he was supposed to be, he decided to stop talking. What he wouldn’t give to explain to her that these praises that were lavished on him made him feel sick. Made him feel suffocated. Made him like a liar. Because really, he felt like a failure too- he had no plan other than maybe try and hit the darkness with the sword and hope that works. And the foreboding feeling he had that he hadn’t yet faced the supposedly impending huge trial that most of the other Heroes had, and they had all done said trial well before they obtained the Master Sword. He felt unworthy of it, somehow. All he’d done was train hard, fight and try to eradicate the plague of monsters in the land. He hadn’t travelled through time, he hadn’t transformed into a wolf, he hadn’t lost his sister, or his best friend. Hence why he was dreading meeting Ganon. There was a catch somewhere. He could feel it.

He exhaled heavily, sweat starting to build on his brow. This was why he wanted to tell Zelda that she wasn’t alone. That he knew what she was going through. They were a pair in destiny, fate… even souls after all. But she hated him, his very being, and probably wished he didn’t exist- no correction- she wished the sword didn’t exist, then he wouldn’t have pulled it and wouldn’t have become a direct comparator for her success. It all felt futile sometimes, and he wondered why exactly he was in such a melancholy mood this morning. Probably something to do with not eating.

She wasn’t in the Bazaar. He’d now checked over every stall twice. And Link felt rising trepidation. Of all the places for her to run away, she’d chosen the desert. She’d chosen where the main dissenters of the Royal Family lived. She chosen the one place where it was highly probable that there would be an assassination attempt on her. And he wasn’t there to protect her. Link could freely admit to himself he was scared. What if he didn’t find her in time, what if – No. He had to think positively. And then his eyes fell to his Champion’s tunic, embroidered, as it was, by her hand. Goddesses above, how would he present himself back the Castle if he’d actually lost her this time? And in such a worrisome place too. A stone settled in Link’s gut, as he desperately racked his brains, replaying last night’s events trying to remember if she’d dropped any hints as to where she was going.

He drew a big fat blank.

In the name of Din, where else could she have gone? She had been silent on the way back from Vah Naboris, probably reproachful that he’d managed to find her, yet again. And he had, admittedly, found it suspicious that she’d remained mum, accepted going to the Bazaar, and sleeping in the Inn, and leaving to head to Goron City the next day without a single word of dissent. He should have known that she was planning something.

And now, it was starting to get hot, as he quickly ran off towards the path, wondering if she’d gone back to Gerudo Town. But she’d already said her goodbyes to Urbosa last night... Link sighed, the heat already causing his tunic to stick to his back. It was a desert after all, one couldn’t expect it to get cold during the day, and he hadn’t had time to fill in their canteens, and oh for the love of Farore could he at least get a single sign as to where Her Highness had deigned to grace her presence at. He didn’t want to be beheaded for incompetence so soon.

He saw a small cloud of sand rise in the distance. At this point, it could be a mirage and he was seeing something that his mind had conjured in desperation at trying to find the missing Princess.

And then he saw a flash of red.

And his blood ran cold, despite the heat.

[noradarhks]

title: i was standing on my own but now i’m not alone

description: infinity war made me miss avengers and then i remembered the idea that what if the spear was like the cosmic cube so that it was first dibs on changing reality and like. this happened. land of the l*st whomst. the title is long because fuck you. i’ll post this to ao3 Eventually. for rip week day 3 aus but also day 2 because it’s about the Relationship between jax & rip. a little over 1.7k

The battle for the most important relic in all of time, space, and reality comes down to a simple game of keep away.

All the fragments of the Spear of Destiny are present on that battle field, but so are all the Legends, all the members of the Legion, and the bits of reality itself change hands so much that they all lose count.

No one side has the full spear yet, although the Legion does come the closest before losing it again, with Rip having held a piece in one hand, a blaster aimed at his former friends in another, Damien holding his own against the other side’s ex-Assassin while also holding a fragment, Malcolm with a third, and Snart heading to the last one, only to be blasted away by Firestorm, who offered only a halfhearted apology to his former teammate, and dove right in to retrieve the contested tip of the spear, starting the process of accumulating the pieces once more.

Eobard attacks when he can, getting blasted by the speedster gun or Firestorm and Atom a couple of times per minute. The Legends know that if Eobard stays at full strength the battle is lost, and work on a strategy of using confusion as deterrence, somewhat of a specialty of theirs. It frustrates the speedster, which then causes him to lose focus, lose track of each piece, and so keeping the other side’s strongest player down becomes a priority.

There does come a point however, a climax that is so poetic it seems predetermined, where destiny tips the scales in favor of the Legion—Eobard holds a piece, and Damien trusts his teammate enough to throw him the other two he’s snatched from Amaya and Sara, and Malcolm grudgingly launches his own, taking the gamble that ending the fight here and now is better for him than trying to get all the pieces himself.

Just as Eobard is about to let the spear become whole again, someone hits him at just the right angle with the bane of his existence, and he flies back, out of arm’s reach of the spear. At the same moment, Malcolm scores a lucky hit on Firestorm, knocking him back into two separate entities, Jax landing close enough to the spear that he knows exactly how long it will take for him to cover that distance.

The spear itself longs to be together and joins without prompting, before it even hits the floor, perfectly in the middle of the two men, drawing them closer. They both feel nothing but the urge to reach the spear, determination driving them forward, victory within sight.  

They both lunge for the spear, Eobard having the disadvantage of no speed, Jax having the advantage of having nothing left to lose. Eobard is a second away from grabbing the spear, changing reality, sealing their fate before Jax tackles him in a way that would make his old football team proud. He beats Eobard to the spear when he’s still disoriented and grabs onto the spear with both hands.

Time slows to a crawl for him, for the one either chosen by destiny or else its champion.

Reality itself is in his hands, and it asks him what he desires, in a voice that doesn’t exist for anyone else except him, in that moment, in that slice of time where nothing and yet everything exists loudly, pulling Jax in every different direction. He is no stranger to power, and yet even he feels overwhelmed by the raw energy that he holds before him. It is a power that exists only to be power, that had to be split into four parts because of the overwhelming temptation that anyone close enough can feel.

As Jax breathes, all the possible futures and pasts and all that was and could be flash before his eyes. He could have his dad back, he could be the champion he deserved to be, he could go to college and graduate and live a life that’s normal, that doesn’t involve destiny and time and having the power of gods and heroes. He could have a normal family and holiday dinners and cousin birthdays. He could have peace instead of turmoil, he could choose something else than the path he currently walks.

But, as he sees this future, Jax realizes he cannot chose this. Because Jax has a new family now, has a purpose, found himself on this journey, and it is not something he can lightly give up. There is no standard of measurement with which he can weigh the value of his own father to that of Martin, or the friendships he could have with the ones he has now. He loves his life, and as much as it pains him to have to once again choose not to save his father, he knows that’s not a choice he could have ever made.

The spear is undeterred, shows him what else he can have—all the things he could change for the better—but it’s on this thought of family that Jax knows what he needs to ask. He knows that despite everything he could stand to change, there’s only one thing that won them victory from defeat before, the piece of the puzzle that is missing from their ragtag team of misfits, the sole factor that can change the tide.

The one person who they lost and still have the chance to save. The one loss that made them scramble to find themselves, the one person who they could always count on to save them from themselves. The man who never wanted to care about them, told them they did not matter, and then finally, painfully let them into his life, helped Jax find a better purpose, and trusted him with the very ship he loved.

Jax wishes to bring Rip back to himself, to have him stand by the side of angels again, because Rip Hunter believed in him once, and Jax knows this is what can save them the say—for the team to be together once more.

And the universe complies.

There’s a rumbling in Jax’s ears, a sound which he could never put into words that nonetheless conveys reality is on his side, that the universe craves balance and stability and then—

It stops.

Jax is standing there, holding the spear, holding destiny. He doesn’t know where Rip is, doesn’t know if it worked or not, although there’s a feeling in his gut that things are going to be alright.

Jax looks around, sees Eobard, who regains his speed a second later and knocks Jax back, taking the spear for himself. Eobard holds it up, triumphantly, closes his eyes, as Jax watches with shock, fearing that they’ve all just lost and—

Nothing happens.

“No, no,” Eobard says, shaking his head. “No.” He tries again, holding tighter, wishing for something that is never going to happen. He looks down at the spear as he realizes he’s lost.

In seconds, he’s in front of Jax, anger radiating. It’s clear that if he can’t use the spear to change destiny, he might as well use it for its intended purpose as a weapon. Jax figures he’s got about two seconds to think of a plan so that he doesn’t get skewered by the universe’s newest useless relic, before there’s a flash of light and Eobard is knocked back a couple of feet.

Jax looks up, sees Rip looking a little worse for the wear, but whole again, with a light in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and Jax knows for certain that what he wished for came true. Rip extends a hand to Jax, who takes it, and then they’re both on their feet. Jax hugs Rip without thinking, and Rip waits only a moment before embracing him back, with a quiet “thank you” whispered into the air between them.

“Glad to have you back, Captain,” Jax says, with half a smile. They might have won the battle for the spear, but they still had a speedster to deal with, and his equally powerful allies.

Eobard yells in anger, approaching them. “You had reality and your fingertips, and you saved him,” he growls. His speed must still be dampened because he comes at them slowly, but Jax doesn’t doubt for a second that he’s just as dangerous.

“Oh, Eobard,” Rip says, and edge to his voice, “you really should have killed me when you had the chance.” He aims the gun at Eobard again, but before he can fire, Eobard’s eyes flash red with lightning, and no one is able to blink before he’s got Rip by the neck.

“I wouldn’t worry, Captain Hunter,” Eobard says, using his free hand to vibrate the speedster gun to pieces, “it’s not a mistake I intend to make again.”

Jax acts without thinking, grabbing the spear and driving it through Eobard’s side just like they did with Jesus. He thinks he might be going to hell for that one, but he doesn’t entirely care as long as it stops Rip from dying.

Eobard yells, drops Rip, holds a hand to the blood coming out from his side. He stumbles a few steps back before Rip clocks him with the second gun he had tucked into the back of his shirt. Eobard crumbles, down for the count, but not dead.

Malcolm, who is the closest and notices their “leader” go down and not get up, pauses his fight with Sara. “Wait, did we just lose?” He says, honestly perplexed by the chain of events.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Jax says, finally smiling. He goes to Stein, and makes sure his partner is whole, while Malcolm surrenders like the coward he is, hoping to keep his life, and Damien gets knocked out by a sneak attack by Amaya.

Rip lets out a breath, looking at the Spear of Destiny lying on the ground.

“We won,” he says, not mentioning what it cost, what they lost. He wants to thank Jax again, for making him whole, for freeing him from the control of the Legion, but he knows he’ll get the chance later, once all the pieces are picked up, once they return to their natural state of controlled chaos.

He knows they’ll be alright.

[aion-rsa]

The Devil All the Time Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/35NHAfn

This article contains The Devil All the Time spoilers. You can read the review here.

After so much bloodshed and tragedy, few could expect to find peace at the end of things. That includes Tom Holland’s taciturn Arvin Russell. Yet sitting in a Volkswagen next to a long-haired gentleman, one who appeared to be part of the vanguard for the next generation, the often hyper-observant Arvin is letting his guard down, and a sense of ease washes over him for the first time in probably his whole life. On the radio, President Lyndon B. Johnson is droning on about some type of troop build-up in Vietnam, but Arvin’s mind is on his past, and the bodies it left buried. Or perhaps it’s on his future too, as he mildly considers the prospect of joining the U.S. Army.

The truth is he doesn’t know. As author Donald Ray Pollock’s own voice narrates, “Grandma would tell him to pray on it, and he’d laugh at her, but maybe she knew something he didn’t? Right now he needed sleep and just felt lucky someone was giving him a ride.” This is a far cry from the Arvin who seemed to all but swear off religion after the horrors inflicted on him by his God-fearing father, as well as the young man who only days ago was able to deduce that smiling Carl Henderson (Jason Clarke) was hiding a gun in his pocket. But here he is now, open to the first time since boyhood to the concept of God and the kindness of strangers.

Should his innocence be reborn, and is this a happy or dark ending? By design it’s left ambiguous. As director Antonio Campos told Esquire, “I always struggle with happy endings. I like endings that leave you with the hope for something better but the chance for something else and you have to kind of pick your own version of it.”

But if that is the case, allow us to dig a little deeper by picking our own destiny for Arvin after he falls asleep, dreaming both of a better life and the violence wrecked on him by his parents’ own traumas.

If there is a point to The Devil All The Time, it would be how the culture of a place, and the people who occupy it, predetermine for us the outcome we do not want. While the presence of God is a nebulous thing in this backyard fried noir, ‘the Devil’ of the title is present to just about every character inhabiting Pollock and Campos’ fictional town of Knockemstiff, Ohio and its surrounding areas: It is the hell they make for themselves and their heirs by pretending to be better than they are while ignoring the pain underneath. Consider almost every narrative thread of The Devil All the Time ends in calamity for its protagonists, often after they delude themselves into thinking they’re making a noble gesture.

Take Holland’s Arvin. A quiet and skeptical boy after he saw his father’s piousness drive him to suicide, Arvin very much is the product of his father’s upbringing. His Dad Willard (Bill Skarsgård) came to this part of the world by accident. He was passing through after seeing the horrors of the South Pacific when he met the woman who would be Arvin’s mother, Charlotte (Haley Bennett). While the chance romance might have been coincidence, his fate was already sealed by what Arvin said was “the Devil all the time” in him. Arvin did not mean that his father was possessed by a supernatural spirit—Arvin is as close to an agnostic as we have in the plot. Rather there was something horrible eating at Willard’s mind from the war. And while Arvin never saw the flashback of the American G.I. Willard discovered crucified, we know this violence haunts Willard every time he stares at a cross.

For violence very much is the religion on which The Devil All the Time’s fatalism is built. Violence is the only thing Willard bequeaths his son. While Arvin as a boy is wary of praying before his father’s outdoor cross, he remembers well Willard’s lesson about beating the lecherous poachers they’d let escape after an earlier insult. Finding them scenes later and pummeling them to a pulp, Willard returns to his son and says, “You’ve just got to pick the right time.” This lesson of optimizing your anger and need to destroy was the happy part of Arvin’s childhood. The narration even confirms it was “the best day he ever spent with his father.”

That is all the more revealing when one realizes Arvin thinks this of the day he and Dada discover Mama has cancer. The slow-killing disease ruins what little innocence there is left in the lad. Before his mother is in the ground, Willard inflicts permanent psychic damage on Arvin by attempting to appease what he thinks must be an angry God via the ritualistic sacrifice of Arvin’s dog to their Maker. It doesn’t work, and after the mother is dead and buried, Willard soon follows her by his own hand.

Willard’s primitive reliance on violence as a form of salvation is of course backwoods craziness, but then everyone in this story believes violence will save them, and likely live to regret it in their dying breath. For if Arvin’s bitterness and irreligiosity was borne out of his father’s slaughtering of the family dog in the vain hope it would give him the power to save his mother, the piousness of his “sister” Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) is the fruit of similar delusions.

Read more

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The reason Arvin and Lenora became orphans in the same house is because her Born Again preacher pappy, Roy Laferty (Harry Melling), was also blinded by his lunatic ideas. Roy killed Lenora’s mother Helen (Mia Wasikowska) in the woods, under the fallacy that God would grant him the powers to resurrect her. Instead he just murdered his wife and ran for the state line, escaping far enough to never be seen again, and allowing Lenora to grow up with her own eventually self-destructive delusions about her father and his faith not being so warped. Thus Lenora attempting to replace the hole left by the violent act of her father by believing the silver-tongued lies of another fire and brimstone orator (Robert Pattinson), who for all his zealotry really only liked his flock when they were young, childlike, and suggestible.

Pattinson’s Preston may be the evilest character in the story besides Clarke’s serial killer Carl. For these are the only two men who lack any self-doubts about their hypocrisies or cruelties. Willard took his own life after he discovered devotion conjured neither gods nor devils; Roy Laferty was wondering if he’d really fly to Heaven before his last breath. Both left broken legacies to their children. A man like Preston, however, only takes what he wants and cares about nothing else, including the girlhood of Roy’s underage daughter Lenora.

The resulting pregnancy leads to Lenora’s semi-suicide (again with the second-guessing at the last minute that no one will know about), and to Arvin committing his only premeditated murder in the movie. While he would kill again, as with how he handled the bullies who attacked Lenora earlier, Arvin has already taken his father’s lessons of violence to heart when he claims his other birthright, a German Luger his father bought off another G.I. from the war, and annihilates Preston in cold blood.

Later in the movie, we learn that copper Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan) told Arvin as a child, “Some people were born just to be buried.” Whether this is the actual point-of-view of the movie is murky, but it’s an actual religious tenet Arvin can get behind, and the world of Knockemstiff quietly prays to.

Most of the characters of The Devil All the Time lead empty, fractured lives that they inherited from their folks. Lee Bodecker himself was saying this as a comfort to Arvin after the boy’s father committed suicide. Hence Lee recalling that he and his sister Sandy (Riley Keough) also grew up without a father since the old bastard abandoned them. The sentiment was meant to speak just of their fathers. Yet those traits seem inherited, with Lee becoming a corrupt lawman who commits and covers up murders as the years pass, and his blonde free-spirited sister falling in with her serial killer boyfriend, Carl.

The revelation late in the picture that Lee told Arvin some people exist to die creates a self-fulling prophecy to Arvin’s life. He is here to make good on that promise, as most of these broken people would be better off in the ground where they can’t hurt anyone. It begins with the calculated murder of the predatory Preston, but through a series of convoluted circumstances, he also winds up bumming a ride with Carl and Sandy, who’ve lived in their own separate little movie as mass murderers. The only killing we see in depth is how they slaughtered Lenora’s missing father, but they’ve been collecting “models” for 15 years by the time Arvin gets into their car.

Like their victim Roy Laferty, Sandy is having second thoughts about her life as a serial killer before she dies. She did it mostly just to please Carl. Years later though, she wanted out. She even daydreamed about running away with Arvin before the young man puts a bullet in her lover’s head. Soon she follows him across the bar, unaware the path she is on has been set for years—a cynic might say since the day her father walked out—and now all that’s left is the sudden surprise of oblivion.

And this brings us back to the ending where Arvin soon sends the man who told him some folks are just here to be buried to an early grave. He didn’t want to kill him, but Bodecker wanted revenge for his murderous sister. And after that showdown, all the people who an Old Testament God might say had it coming have met their fates. But Arvin doesn’t believe in God, per se, even if he returned to his childhood home to make peace with Him and the father who created a world in fear of spirits. Arvin buries the dog his father killed, plus the Luger, which is an obvious metaphor of him trying to bury the trauma his father imparted to him. With the dog given the rest he hoped his mother and father found, he’s free to leave this dark corner of America.

But is the rest of it any better? Sitting next to a proto-hippie as he falls asleep listening about escalation in Vietnam, Arvin can imagine a world where he breaks the cycle of violence he and everyone he knows lives on. He can find a girl and settle down without the trauma that manifested itself as the Devil in his papa. But he’s already embraced Willard’s inheritance for violence, hasn’t he? Sure, he buries Dad’s Luger in the final moments, but only after using it to kill four people, the first of which was not in self-defense.

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And then there are his own second thoughts about trying to find a peaceful life. It’s troubling he entertains the idea of signing up for the Vietnam War while thinking of a better tomorrow. And then he is also considering that maybe his grandmother (and father) could be right about prayer. Even outside of Knockemstiff, he is still in a vision of America that is violent, circular, uncaring, and doomed to repeat the sins of its fathers. One war has ended but another is begun. The narrator even says Arvin “wasn’t sure if he was going backwards or forwards.” His end is his beginning.

As his father went to a war that defined him, Arvin is already on the path to repeat that horror. Hell, he’s already haunted by visions of ‘Devils’ and dead bodies he left to be buried. The greater devil is the culture Arvin’s in, and as teased by the prospect of the Vietnam War, that culture extends beyond Knockemstiff’s town limits or that of its neighbors. It’s the American legacy and a predilection toward violence The Devil All the Time seems to suggest is inescapable. Arvin can have hesitations and hopes, but like those experienced by Sandy before he shot her, or Roy before her lover shot him, or Roy’s daughter Lenora before the rope around her neck tightened, they’re just illusions of escape. And the end of the line is fast approaching.

The post The Devil All the Time Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[itbeajen]

Agape [6] | Yuri Plisetsky | Witch!AU

Witch!AU

A wretched sob escapes your throat as you collapse to the floor in pure shock and horror. Your body is trembling and shivering, and although you have an inkling as to the sudden hit, the lack of vibrancy and life in your pendant confirms your suspicions.

I... really did lose someone.

Your eyes close as you feel tears well up despite not knowing who it is exactly you've lost. But you know there can only be five options: Yuratchka, Viktor, Yuuri, and Otabek.

If I..

You hesitated, your hand clutching your pendant desperately as you slowly stand back up,

If I just momentarily connect to the bonds again... I can probably feel it right away.

You gently pressed the pendant against your heart, a small murmur of a spell escaping your lips as you feel the bonds that filled your pendant with life allow you entrance. Oh, but you regret it so. Even with just a mere graze of contact, you can already feel the faint tinges of concern and panic coming from both Yuuri and Viktor. There is the confidence, yet hesitation coming from the ever trustworthy Ela. But what hurt you the most came from the two friends you were closest to.

There was a tidal wave of emotions emanating from the blonde Hunter. Anguish. Frustration. Sorrow. Confusion. And

guilt.

They all flooded into you, almost claiming you as though they were truly

your emotions

. But it wasn't yours, it was his. Yet regardless of knowing that, you struggled to separate your emotions from his, after all, despite years of separation, the two of you were inseparable. The bond between you and Yuri has been withstanding the test of time, with several lineages connecting you to him and him to you. You grimaced as you let his emotions settle down and you let out a breath you had been holding in.

I almost forgot how strong our bond was.. enough to almost pull me into its wake.

You shook your head, and felt the tears slowly trail down your cheek. You rubbed it away swiftly.

So it was Beka...

Otabek's bond wasn't as rapid and fast paced as Yuri's. In fact, it resembled a pillar of support as you felt it come in as gentle waves of nostalgia. You recall the time during your childhood, he had always been the caretaker, the keeper of both you and Yuri. He had made sure you two didn't do anything stupid, or if anything, to make sure to join in with the two of you to ensure your safeties. It reminded you of the days when you were allowed to laugh freely and be happy, of times when the only concern on your mind was what was for dinner and whether or not you'll get an extended play time with them. There was no worries of the destiny and fate that was already prewritten for you and Yuri. There was no concerns about whether you would ever get to see each other again. Your grip on your pendant turns loose as you cover your mouth to prevent yourself from sobbing. Tears streamed freely down your cheeks and in the end, you duck your head behind your hair as you let the emotions slowly ebb out of you. I could have prevented it... I could have been there... You shake your head firmly and softly mumbled, "I can do this. I've already figured out the secrets of the seal.. and I've covered my bases." I'll end this. I'll stop this madness. You boldly place your hand on the runes, and you can feel the magic flow between your hand to them, like ripples of the tide gently and slowly joining to make a wave. Your eyes open, arctic blue matching arctic blue and you softly muttered, "To think that this magic was one and the same with his... It's such a shame."

"Yuri," your voice was soft as you gently called him. He looks up from his work and he flashes you a bright smile, "[F/N]!" "Mama's making your favorite today, do you want to come over?" you asked, and Yuri's mouth drops in awe and he furiously nods his head, "Can I?!" "Mhm!" your smile was dazzling, and Yuri swears he'd do anything to see it again, and it would be better if it was only for himself. But Yuri frowns as he sees your petite figure slowly drifting further and further away. Your features blur, and he can only recognize the silver and the blue and he takes one step forward, his hand reaching out to you. He cries your name, but nothing is heard, and you turned to him. He can faintly see a sad smile on your face and- Wake up, we're here. Ela announced as he paced in place. Yuri groggily rubbed his eyes and muttered, "Where?" ...What? Kid, you okay? We're at the island, I know I had to slow down at some point, but I didn't take that long for you to take a nap on me. Now off, you're heavy. Ela sat down forcefully, making Yuri slightly jolt. The blonde grumbled something before getting off unsteadily. He fumbled and Ela laughed, What's wrong? Legs asleep? "Sh-Shut up," Yuri muttered as he stabilizes himself. His hand is placed against his forehead. That was... a dream? A memory? Ugh, all I know is that it was weird. His brows furrowed and he muttered, "[F/N]." Ela frowned and repeated, We're here. Ela practically shrinks into his smaller form as soon as he arrives at the mouth of the cave, causing Yuri to tumble forward into the snow. The young Hunter glared back at the wolf, but as soon as he finally refocused, the eerie silence and oppressive air that was being emitted from the cave made his entire body go rigid. Ela's tail swished back and forth and he asked, Are you scared? But Yuri doesn't respond. The blonde's grip on the sword handle at his belt and his gun holster on the other side tightened as he stared into the mouth of the cave. Can I really do this? You are marred with hatred. Ela commented, his gaze on Yuri was wary, as though he was prepared to take down the hunter then and there if there was any threat to your safety. Yuri glared at the wolf and growled, "Do you have any idea how much suffering the White Witch has put me through? Everywhere I've gone, I get looks of either pity or awe. They look at me like I'm some hero who's going to save them all!" Ela watched as Yuri began to slightly tremble, and he continued, "Me? A Hero? I couldn't save [F/N] all those years ago. I couldn't even save Beka and he was right there in front of me. And I'm supposed to be strong enough by now. Every where I go, this blasted Hunter destiny bullshit has been haunting me and plaguing me." And you think she's not affected by the Legends either? Ela growled in warning and Yuri flinched, "No, I'm sure she is. But you have no idea how it feels. You wouldn't understand. Both of us have the ridiculous weight of the legend on our shoulders; something that we never asked for but was born into." Ela watched as Yuri finally stopped trembling, his voice lowered, "I don't know about her, hell, I don't even know if I know her. But I know that I've already lost so many people important to me that I'm practically dead inside." A dry laugh escapes his lips and he shakes his head, "Do you have any idea how many lives have been lost at the cost of this bullshit? So many of us believed in the legend of the White Witch and her Hunter, yet how many years has it been? How many times have they been chosen only to fail over and over again? "I've lost Beka," Yuri whispered, "My parents. My grandfather. Even [F/N]. All of them. To that stupid blasted Legend." He lets out a shaky breath, "I've always hated her." Ela growled, but Yuri continued despite the hostility from the wolf, "But I hated myself too. I've lived my entire life knowing that I was some dog to her. 'Her Hunter' they'd call me, and they'd talk about it as though it was some title to be revered. A fate that was already predestined for me, something that I had no control of," Yuri spat out, "And that White Witch has done nothing but make me miserable. I joined the Hunters so I could defeat the Sorcerer without her, and yet no matter where I go, everyone tells me that I'll find her. That I'll be able to complete that stupid fucking prophecy." He glanced back at Ela and he admitted, "But I can't hate her completely. Something within me stops me from doing so. And even though I tell myself I don't need her, I can defeat the Sorcerer on my own, it's like the entire damn world goes against me and tells me I can't. And that I have to live out the life they've already predetermined for me." Ela made a soft whine, as though sick of hearing Yuri's rant, but asked anyways, So? What's your point? "My point is that.. even if I hate the path I was destined to walk on, I'm sure she does to," Yuri slowly admitted, and then he muttered, "I'm just hoping that the White Witch isn't my [F/N]." There was a pause, a moment of silence as Ela let that all sink in, and he barked, Quit saying her name like some lovesick child. Yuri flushed pink, "I am not lovesick." You're acting like you are, the wolf snarkily responded. Yuri looked around and muttered, "A-Anyways, this is where the Sorcerer was sealed?" Ela nods and he shivers slightly, I don't like the smell of this place. Yuri nodded, "I don't either... smells of spite, and hatred.. and a heavy curse." You can tell that much? Ela asked and then made a soft approving growl, Better than most hunters. You guys normally can't even tell the difference between an enchanted animal and a regular one. But you know, Ela pauses and trots over to Yuri, taking several whiffs of him and he yipped, Your scent is special. You have several layers of protection enhancements that aren't of your own or from the Hunters, and you also have a heavy curse laid down on you. Yuri's eyes widen at the first part and he parroted, "Protection enhancements?" Ela nodded, and with a flick of his ear explained, Protection of Being. That prevents other beings of magic from knowing exactly what you are. Your scent befuddles them, and unless we see you, we don't know what you are exactly. You also have a Protection from Being. Ela paused, and he muttered, I'm sure you don't need me to explain that. "No, actually," Yuri's voice is soft, almost hesitating and vulnerable, "Please do." Protection from Being protects you from whoever it is that cast that spell. Ela swishes his tail back and forth, It's normally a spell that's cast to prevent you from dying at their hands... but it comes at a very strong cost. Although I have no idea what that price is, I can't use spells like those anyways. And especially not on someone like you. Ela frowned, But now that I've figured it out... His ears flicked in irritation. I feel like Mistress is up to something and I'm powerless to stop her.. but perhaps.. Ela's gaze burned holes into the back of Yuri's head and he finally snapped, "What!?" Don't I at least get a thank you? Ela huffed, and Yuri's eyes widened before he hissed out a curt phrase of gratitude. Ela smiles, but it quickly drops, his ears slightly drooping and Yuri asked, "What is it now?" None of your concern, kiddo. Ela smirked at the way Yuri was so easily riled up. He curled into a ball and muttered, I'll be here waiting, so don't make me wait too long. I expect both of you back before the sun rises. Both of us... huh? Yuri looked away. Okay. So I guess I am saving someone... even if it's not [F/N], I'll save them. But please.. don't let the White Witch and [F/N] be the same... because I don't know if I'll be capable of forgiving her.

The deeper you traveled into the cavern the harder it became to breathe. But one thing was certain, it was much easier to feel the magic in the air. You took in a deep breath, and you frowned. So much magic is literally trapped down here, and it's all because of the Sorcerer.. and me. You shook your head. This isn't time for me to feel pity for my ancestors or even for myself. As you arrived at the small archway you gently stretched out your arm, holding your palm in front of you as though trying to grab something. As soon as your palm reaches the plane of magic, you can feel it rippling and you mumbled, "Libero sigillum1." You can feel the plane of magic slowly begin to crack and you can even hear it as it slowly shattered into dust. You closed your eyes and you felt your pendant slightly throb and you look down. You frowned as you gently stepped into the room. It was lit, albeit dimly, by enchanted fire. The flames flickered lavender and lilac and you could practically feel the years and years of pent up hatred and spite that the Sorcerer had for you. Laid at the very back of the room was a small rectangular altar, with four marble pillars at each corner. Each pillar sported a weave of ivy that wrapped itself around the pillars, clinging onto it as though it was their source of life, and atop them sat yet more enchanted flames. "What's this, a visitor?" a distorted voice called out and your eyes widened as a dark mass appears on the altar. It appears trapped though and you take a step backwards, and it chuckled, "What are you scared of, my sweet? After all..." You feel the room grow colder as the flames begin to flicker wildly. You immediately let go of your pendant, your eyes a dazzling arctic blue as you began to gather magic at the palms of your hand. "I have been waiting years for this day." Black magic reaches out for you, and you jump back before throwing an orb of light towards the center. You snap your finger and it explodes, disintegrating the monstrosity that erupted from the ground. With a quick glance, you noticed that patches of the ground were glowing white whereas others pulsed from purple to black, and you muttered, "So you want a fight, eh?" "But, of course," the voice responded. You can see the dark mass on the altar slowly taking shape to form a rather large figure in a black robe. The hems frayed with darkness and two bright red eyes stared back at you from the abyss of the hood. And although you can't see it, there must be a hint of a creepy smile as it chuckled, "After all.. you and I were once one and the same." You frowned and then dodged yet another spiral of darkness. You landed on the glowing patch and you felt all your fatigue and weariness immediately rejuvenated and the Sorcerer frowned, "Strange... I don't remember those being there.. perhaps it's because I'm not pure enough for them." You frowned and the Sorcerer shrugged, "Well, that means nothing to me. After all," he drawled, "There's always a way of corrupting you." You flinched and he softly muttered, "After all, you've already used all the protection magic on something else... didn't you?" You notice a tendril of darkness slowly edging towards the patch of light and you muttered, "What a pain." An emergence of thorns pierced through the ground as you swiftly dodged each one. It wasn't until you accidentally took one step out of the holy square that you felt it wrap around your ankle. You glanced back, your eyes widen in slight fear and suddenly you're dragged out of the protection of the patch. Slowly you scramble so you're no longer being dragged on your front, and flipped over to your back. You struggled to push the lone tendril off, but the more you fought against it, the tighter it became. You grit your teeth and immediately blast the nasty vine with your own magic, breaking it off of your ankle. You roll away and stumble to catch your bearings as the Sorcerer watched, clearly amused. He chuckled and drawled, "Oh.. but you weren't fast enough, love. Don't you see it... that lovely trail of darkness marring your fair skin?" You glanced down, and in horror you see where the vine was entangled around you. Shit, there must have been thorns or something... but I feel so... weak. You shuddered, whether it was fear or cold, you were no longer entirely sure and the Sorcerer laughed, "Ah, but your attempts were amusing. Thank you for your entertainment. But now..." His robed arms raise, and you feel yourself being lifted into the air before being dropped unceremoniously onto the pulsing magic circle right before him. You futilely struggled, and he chuckled, "Oh.. I can't wait to see your lovely face become tainted... by me."

Yuri took slow steps into the cavern, and it's not until he accidentally bumps into the wall in the dark that it lights up with a brilliant flash. He momentarily closes his eyes from the blinding light and then uncovers it slowly. Runes...? Yuri cautiously touched one, and he felt the magic flow into him with that short contact. His eyes widened and he frowned. I can make sense of some of these runes..? Yuri felt his head throb and he places a hand against the location of pain and muttered, "Stop." Not right now. These memories need to stop. "Hey [F/N]," Yuri looked at you and you glanced over to him. You weren't as blurry this time, he can actually make out how crisp and clear your eyes were. They were filled with warmth and love as they gazed adoringly onto him and he asked, "What does that say?" You leaned over to him, and made a small 'o' with your mouth and laughed, "Yuri! I taught you this yesterday!" He pouted, and muttered, "I forgot." You shook your head, silver locks swaying in the air, and you hummed, "No, don't feel bad! It's okay! Runes are hard to read and they all look similar if you don't study them all the time." "Here, Yuri, this one means-" "Faith," he softly muttered. He closed his eyes, and softly whispered, "Why am I suddenly remembering things from back then?" His gaze followed the winding runes that illuminated the dark corridor and he muttered, "If this is where it's leading me, then I'll follow it."

"So, close," the Sorcerer purred as he watched the darkness slowly engulf you. You winced. I can't... dispell it no matter how hard I try. You bite your lower lip, preventing a scream from leaving and you hear him tsk at you. "No, no, no," he cooed, "Let me hear it... that lovely scream of yours. It's been centuries since I've last I've last heard it... I wonder if you sound the same as back then?" His grip on you tightened, and immediately you screamed. From outside Yuri flinched and his eyes slowly widened. Fuck. He sprinted down the corridor as fast as he could. He approaches the arc way and upon looking into the room, your figure was chained to the four pillars in the altar. "So..leil?" he whispered, but when you weakly raised your head, the once vibrant purple he was so adjusted to was now heterochromatic, arctic blue and blood red. Your lips weakly opened and you whispered, "Yuri, run." "R-run?" Yuri hesitated, as he looked around, but he heard the distinct sound of cackling in the air, and from behind you, the Sorcerer's dark silhouette appears once more. "How unfortunate, he doesn't even remember you," he cooed and Yuri looked upon the sight in front of him in confusion. The mutt said that his Mistress, [F/N].. was here. But this is Soleil? The blonde furrowed his brows and you weakly repeated, "Please, escape. I can't hold him back any longer." You gasped as you felt the darkness choke you and Yuri took a step forward, only to have to make a side step as a tendril of darkness attempted to grab a hold of him. "Ooh, nimble, how fascinating," the Sorcerer purred. He roughly grabbed you by your chin and whispered, "I wonder how he'd react if I take you right here?" You defiantly glared back and the Sorcerer growled, "You already expended most of the magic I've slowly stored up over time.. I should just get rid of you right here and now." The Sorcerer chuckled and cooed, "Sleep well for now, Hunter." "Sor-" Yuri's voice cuts off there as he slumps to the ground. Your eyes widened and the Sorcerer chuckled, "Did you think it would be so easy? To defeat me? The curse I placed over us... You will never break it."

[creativesage]

(via Why We Should All Consider Taking a Midlife Gap Year)

By Kate Torgovnick May, at TED

When Caroline Harper suddenly found herself jobless in her mid-40s, she decided to step off the corporate ladder and travel to all the places she’d always wanted to go, from Antarctica to Egypt. Here’s how it changed her life — and her career.

Caroline Harper loved her work negotiating big contracts in the oil and gas industry. “I liked the almost Games of Thrones strategic feel of it,” she says. “You’d stay up for three nights in a row and do the difficult work at 3 AM on that last day. It was a stamina test, an intellectual sparring match with the other side. It was very exciting.”

But in February 2002, Harper’s company sold the part of the business that she’d built and run. “I was made redundant,” she says.

She was in her mid-40s and could have used her connections to find a similar role at a different company. Or, because she was lucky enough to receive a good severance package, she could have taken time off to sit on a beach. Instead, she did something less expected. “I’d worked all my life and never did a student gap year,” says Harper. “I thought, ‘I’m going to go see a bit of the world.’” But she planned to do her gap year in two parts: she’d travel for six months, return to the UK, work as a consultant for a while, and take off for another six months of adventures.

Harper had an extra motivation to seize the chance to travel. Both of her parents had passed away relatively young — her father at age 64 and her mother at 56. “They’d both hoped that when they retired, they’d go off into the world and do all these things. And they didn’t get there,” says Harper. “I had money and time — usually you have one or the other. So I thought, ‘I’ve got an opportunity to do it now, when I’m healthy and I don’t have any dependents. Why not?’”

The time spent traveling was transformative for Harper. In fact, it led to her leaving the corporate world altogether and joining a nonprofit, Sightsavers, which works to end preventable blindness around the world and promote the rights of people with visual impairment. Below are six reasons she believes, if circumstances permit, we should all consider a midlife gap year.

You’ll get to see all the places you always dreamed of.

It didn’t take Harper long to make her itinerary. She used a simple question to guide her: What places had sparked her imagination over the years? Her list tended toward natural wonders and archaeological treasures — Machu Picchu in Peru, a cruise down the Amazon, the Galápagos Islands, Egypt, a trip to China to see the Forbidden City in Beijing and the terra cotta warriors in Xi’an. Her favorite stop? Three weeks in Antarctica, retracing the path that explorer Ernest Shackleton had taken from 1914 to 1916. “It was just beautiful — the penguins, the seals, the whales. It’s just genuine wilderness,” says Harper. “There was a hurricane at one point, and we had to hide behind an iceberg. We were in this big research vessel with sonar and GPS, but even then, it was quite scary. I kept imagining, What was this like in a rowboat? What was it like to lead people through this?” It was a humbling experience that helped jolt her out of the status quo.

You’ll discover skills you never knew you had.

Harper knew what made her so good at her corporate job: her knowledge of physics and energy use, her ability to understand legalese, and her aptitude for high-pressure negotiations. In traveling, she began noticing softer skills she’d never thought much about before. “I discovered that I’m quite good with sorting out logistics when things go wrong,” she says. “I also discovered that I was fascinated by more things than I thought I was. My career had been entirely focused on the UK, which had never bothered me. But I realized then that my world was way too narrow. I wanted to be more international.” Harper found she was surprisingly good at connecting with people. “I could talk to villagers in the middle of Pakistan the way I could talk to presidents of companies,” she said. She wasn’t sure what all of this added up to, career-wise, but she knew she wanted to find something that could tap these newly identified skills.

You’ll see things that will make you want to take action.

Harper found further clarity in some of the most heartbreaking moments of her travels, such as seeing people with leprosy begging on the side of the road in China. “You see these things on documentaries, but it’s just not the same as seeing people there in front of you,” she says. “You realize what a large proportion of the world doesn’t live the way we do [in wealthy countries]. That had a big impact on me.” She realized she wanted to do something that would help people, and not just lead to bigger profits.

You’ll notice themes in your life you may not have recognized before.

After Harper’s father passed away, she had gone to the library to return books that he’d borrowed. When she opened them, she noticed the type was incredibly large — while she’d known he was losing his eyesight due to diabetes, his vision loss was worse than she thought. Her uncle had also experienced blindness — after taking a drug to treat arthritis when he was in his 50s, his retinas detached and he could no longer see. Harper saw how this affected both men. “With my father, it was a loss of independence that led to depression,” she says. “And I saw the impact it had on the marriage between my uncle and aunt — she turned from being a wife to being a caregiver. There just weren’t a lot of services available at the time. Many people back then assumed blindness was the end.”

Harper herself is very short-sighted and is fully reliant on glasses and contact lenses. “I can’t see the big letters on the top of the optometrist’s board without them,” she says. But she’d never actually connected the dots between all these experiences until she opened up The Sunday Times in late 2004 — toward the end of her two-part gap year — and saw that a UK-based nonprofit called Sightsavers was advertising for a new CEO. “When I saw the ad, I thought, That’s me,” she says. “I want to do that.”

You’ll open yourself up to taking other big changes.

Over the course of her travels, Harper had begun to suspect that she wanted to work at a nonprofit. She applied to a few such positions and reached out to headhunters she’d worked with in the past about finding this kind of role. They were not encouraging. “One even said, ‘You’re too old to make a career switch,’” Harper recalls.

But she decided to go ahead and apply for the CEO position at Sightsavers. She felt it was a role that would benefit from her business acumen and from her abilities to work with logistics and to talk to anyone. And it was exactly the kind of job she knew she wanted — international, purpose-driven, and related to a cause that she cared deeply about. After a series of interviews with trustees and with the outgoing CEO, Harper was offered the job. She started there in April 2005 and instantly loved it.

“When I first told people I was joining Sightsavers, the guys in the corporate world were all, ‘Oh my god, why are you going into the charity sector? It’s all sandal-wearers and people eating oats. You’ll hate it,’” Harper says. “But in the charity sector, it was, ‘Oh my god, how have they hired a corporate woman? She’ll be evil and money-grubbing.’” After making her career transition, she realized how wrong both sectors’ impressions of the other were. “Things are not as different as everybody says,” she says. “People are people in both sectors — they like to support one another and have success. The only difference is the end product: is it that you made profits, or that you restored people’s sight?”

You’ll realize that there’s no time limit on trying something new.

During her 13 years (and counting) as CEO at Sightsavers, Harper has focused on expanding the organization’s reach. Sightsavers now works in more than 30 countries, and among other goals, it has resolved to take on trachoma — an intensely debilitating but curable eye disease — with the support of TED’s The Audacious Project. Harper believes we can end trachoma, which has been blinding people for thousands of years, within our lifetimes.

Even though her gap year was well over a decade ago, those experiences may send her in new directions yet. When Harper was five years old, she remembers, she and her family went to see Tutankhamun’s treasures at the British Museum. “I queued for hours and hours to see them,” she says. “I was utterly blown away.” That led her to visit Egypt during her travels. “It still captures my imagination,” she adds. “I’m wondering, when I leave Sightsavers at some point in the future, whether I’ll go back and do a degree in archaeology.” Harper is no longer scared of making such a big change.

Perhaps that’s the most important reason for a midlife gap year if you can, Harper says — while you may think that your days of taking bold choices are behind you, you’ll see that it just isn’t true. “The personal situation has to fit, and that can be very difficult,” says Harper. “But the advice I give people is, ‘Don’t feel like your life has to follow a predetermined path.’ Employers don’t expect you to have a tram-line CV.”

Harper believes that her gap year helped her author her own fate rather than just react to what happened to her. “Taking it helped me not to rush decisions,” she says. “If I had rushed, I probably would have gone back into the private sector. I might have earned more money, but I just wouldn’t enjoy my life as much.”

Want to join Harper in ending preventable blindness? Become a champion of Sightsavers’ drive to end trachoma — one of the first ideas funded by TED’s The Audacious Project — and receive regular updates on how you can participate.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read the article at TED, and to view a video of Caroline Harper’s TED Talk.]

[entergamingxp]

Sakura Wars review – heartfelt, over-the-top anime romp • Eurogamer.net

Originally conceived back in 1996 as a way to offer an RPG franchise on the Sega Mega Drive, the original Sakura Wars series was a mix of visual novel, dating sim and round-based strategy combat. It follows an all-female theatre troupe based at Tokyo’s Imperial Theatre, putting on shows as the Flower Troupe to keep the spirits of the populace high, while also acting as the Imperial Combat Revue, a paramilitary operation tasked with defending the capital from monsters. To do so, they use mechs called Kobu, powered by the strength of their spirit.

Sakura Wars review

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out now on PS4

With its anime stylings and a cast of lovable protagonists, the franchise became a wild hit in Japan before its fate was sealed along with the Dreamcast. The west only saw the localisation of the last Sakura Wars game, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, its New York setting and all-new cast considered a good entry point into a series often deemed to be too Japanese.

This new Sakura Wars constitutes a soft reboot, set a decade after the events of the originals and using established gameplay but featuring a completely new cast. You take the role of Navy ensign Seijuro Kamiyama, who becomes the Flower Troupe’s new captain. It’s your job to help restore the Imperial Theatre to glory and keep Tokyo safe. In order to make a gaggle of women into a real team, you need to get to know them, help them overcome personal struggles and realise their true potential.

Kobu battles aren’t difficult, but winning is satisfying, especially during dramatic moments in the story.

As Seijuro, you spend your time either talking to these women or fighting demons in musou-style action combat. Sakura Wars’ dialogue is built around the series’ patented LIPS system: you get three dialogue choices, but only have a limited amount of time to pick an answer. The dialogue options themselves are recognisable if you’ve ever played another game with dialogue choice – you have a good option, a cautious option and a sleazy, impulsive one. There’s also ‘analogue LIPS’, a conversation option where what Sejiuro says is predetermined, and you only settle on the intensity with which you want to say it.

Just like in a visual novel, the answers you pick determine the other character’s opinion of you. Each of the women conform to established personality types – the bookish one, the short-tempered one and so forth – and you get to know them better the more you talk to each of them. If you gain a character’s trust, you can trigger a ‘trust event’. In this event, which uses first person POV, one of the women will have a personal chat with you that will end in some PG-13 touching. These situations can be deliberately naff – one character just wants to practise a romantic scene in a play – but they are, and this is important, fully consensual and do not reduce the young women only to their bodies, even while ogling is definitely going on. Context and nuance are very important here.

If you’ve played Fire Emblem Three Houses, you’re likely well familiar with staring at your favourite character up close like this.

Action combat is new for the series, and a step away from Sakura Wars’ more typical Fire Emblem-esque turn-based strategy. You can freely move your Kobu around, use light and strong attacks, and unleash a special attack once a spirit point meter has filled. Both in combat and in conversation, your actions influence your team’s opinion of you. Fighting quickly without getting hit raises team morale, which in turn has an effect on attack and defence. Making the girls like you outside of combat also determines your starting morale.

The story of the new Sakura Wars is quickly told: the old Combat Revue, including teams from other countries that appeared in previous Sakura Wars entries, died in a grand battle to seal away the powerful Archdemon, saving the world from certain destruction. Of course it turns out that the Archdemon threat is still very real, and reveals itself just when the Flower Troupe is participating in the Combat Revue World Games, a public battle event determining the reputation of several international combat troupes, because clearly saving the capital against monsters isn’t enough already.

Sakura Wars is firmly dating sim/visual novel first, combat second, as it belongs to a genre of games called ‘gal games’ – dating sims for heterosexual men. The player controls a male protagonist in a setting where they’re almost exclusively surrounded by young, beautiful women, and players may ‘pick’ their favourite. In Japan, gal games are part of the mainstream, so much so that dating sim elements are a natural part of many games you know – take the Fire Emblem or Persona franchises for example. While there are many gal games that take dating to misogynistic, demeaning extremes and borderline illegal territory (I drew the line at Tokyo Mirage Sessions, for advertising often misogynistic and borderline illegal practices in a real industry), Sakura Wars remains above board.

Sakura Wars comedy bits involves running gags like this, goofy and forgettable.

Sakura Wars does regularly dip into bouts of panty humour, having you find women’s underwear or ‘ending up’ in a women’s bathroom for comedic effect. This sort of humour might be immature to western audiences, but it’s a result of a culture that treats bodies in a very different way. I can’t laugh about it, but I understand why it exists. I’m split on the borderline creepy dialogue options, which include asking for a kiss or making sexually ambiguous jokes.

It’s important that, unlike other games which paint you as the hero no matter what you say, these options are always penalised – you’re explicitly encouraged to be a good person, and that expectation entails giving players an option to be bad. I do however need to point out that the creepy options are always played off for laughs, which is pretty jarring considering the overall respectful tone.

Sakura Wars’ real strength lies in the passion with which it delivers its story. Designed like a TV anime, complete with episode previews and title cards for ‘ad breaks’, it focuses on a different member of your troupe with each chapter, while also driving the overall story forward.

The plot doesn’t even remotely make sense and I didn’t mind in the slightest. Nothing about the game is smart, it even spoils its own plot several times with ‘clever’ foreshadowing and likes to fix problem using deus ex machina. “How is this possible?” a character says at one point about a surprising twist in their favour, only to receive the answer “I don’t know, but it is!”… Okay!

The plot is silly and the combat’s simple, but I loved spending time with the main characters and seeing what they have to say and how they react to the increasingly high-stakes plot developments. And boy, do they react. There are life and death situations, fisticuffs, and battles set to the triumphant title theme while characters discover their true strength thanks to the power for friendship. The passion all but incinerates your screen. What’s not to love? It may not make sense, but each episode has a clear dramatic arc that resolves satisfyingly.

Also, Sakura Wars just looks consistently great: each scene is presented from multiple camera angles and almost-static images and anime sequences offer further visual variety. The different environments, while little more than pretty backgrounds for conversations, are detailed and the design of each main character is memorable. I do miss the instantly recognisable style by Kosuke Fujishima, who has designed the characters for previous instalments -here, mangaka Tite Kubo of Bleach fame takes over. The designs of the new mechs however is a new favourite of mine, each coming with their own specialty like a giant hammer or an ice pistol. The demons don’t really get a chance to stand out in battle – if you look closely you can see them stumble and fall overdramatically like kaiju in old Japanese monster films. Everything about Sakura Wars is as over the top as an old monster film, but it’s that very cheesiness that had me enraptured.

They don’t make ’em like Sakura Wars anymore, probably with good reason, but this new incarnation, like the old games, is earnest, unapologetic anime nonsense and wish fulfilment at its best.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/sakura-wars-review-heartfelt-over-the-top-anime-romp-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sakura-wars-review-heartfelt-over-the-top-anime-romp-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net