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i-did · 4 years ago

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HELLO 👋 I WAS SENT HERE BY PALMETT-HOES. What are your thoughts on the foxes + tattoos?? Originally it was Neil + tattoos but if you have thoughts of the other foxes too I'd love to hear them if you want to share 🥺

Okay, so I actually might try to become a tattoo artist and love tattoo culture. I also have already about 30 tattoos, some the size of my whole hand and some the size of a quarter, a lot of mixed and matched stuff. I also always try to think of the foxes in their timeline, so 2006-2007 era, and when I think said foxes would get tattoos in their life and why.

NEIL

First off: I personally HC Neil has keloid scarring and a lot of scarring so tattooing is hard on his skin. I have a friend who has more scars than I've ever seen on anyone else IRL before and we both love tattoos but even with him trying to prep the artist, unless they were a scar micropigmentation expert, they usually underestimated how hard it was going to be to tattoo on his skin. It's uneven and dense and doesn’t hold ink well. His non-scarred skin faired a lot better but his skin was something artists just weren't prepared for. I might get some micropigmentation on some skin grafts I got to even out the coloring and make it look more “natural” but I’m waiting to see if the pigment will settle and heal more first.

I personally don't see Neil ever getting a tattoo, and this bums a lot of people out lmao. I think his scars are too thick and too raised and it's too cosmetic and aesthetic centric for it to be something on his radar. On his skin that isn't touched by scars I think he would want to leave as be mostly out of neutrality. I don't see Neil as the type of sentimental tattooer, I see him thinking “well if it matters to me I remember it” sort of and him wanting to keep the really deep stuff personal just for himself and even another person putting it on him is someone else there. I think if he were ever to get a tattoo, he would be like… idk it would be the kind that says “yes I got shot, stop asking” over a bullet hole scar or like that one guy whos missing his leg and above it there's a tattoo that says “one foot in the grave” that's the only type of tattoo I can see Neil doing and even still I'm not convinced he would do it.

ANDREW

I don't ever see Andrew covering up his scars with tattoos either. I think he likes how the armbands can come on and off and be fully covered to not at all. He's not ashamed of them but he's private, and I think the tattoos could seem like he's trying to hide them when he's not-it's just nobody's business. I think if he were to get anything it would be American-traditional, it ages well, its classic, and doesn't really go out of style. Before the…. Let's say 80s, there weren't the different tattoo “styles” like there are today. It was just… tattoos in America. There was Japanese-style tattooing and then American-style tattooing, and since tattooing started curating its underground culture in the ’50s in America… those circles did not blend. They do now, but they sure as hell didn't then. So I could see Andrew with American-traditional because it's classic and I could see it appealing to him, but I could also see Russian prison tattoo style black-work something that appeals to him too. Get him some gulag tats. However if he had those, and since I currently HC him as white and with a buzzed or grown-out messy buzzed head, he would deadass look like a fuckin skinhead so... yeah lmao. Overall I don't see Andrew getting tattoos really, but if he would, American-traditional seems fitting.

KEVIN

Okay, so Kevin out here looking like a MF SoundCloud rapper with his single face tat and nothing else going on. I know it might be OOC but since his mom is Irish and I HC his dad as Maori (even tho in the canon Wymack likely has 90s new age tribalism, which is a complicated issue but instead I choose culturally significant tattoos over the tattoo trend that was largely popularized by a movie lmao anyways-).

So I think Kevin is the only one who dives into tattoo culture and bonds over it with his dad. If he just has the chess piece, it still feels like a branding, like a mark so distinct against the rest of him, but one full sleeve of Celtic knots and symbols and the other arm full of Maori's distinct tattoos of swirls and symbols could be a cool way for him to reclaim his own skin and have it not be something he did just to cover something up, but make tattooing something connecting him to his cultures and family.

NICKY

Nicky is the guy who got like, fierce, or pride, or something like that tattooed if he got a tattoo. I see Nicky getting a pride tattoo of some kind maybe and it being calligraphy or like if Nicky/Erik is a bear then he gets a bear paw. I could also see him getting his and Erik’s wedding date tattooed somewhere. I also don't see him as the type who didn't know how much research and shit goes into finding the artist for you, and kinda assumes you can go to just anyone and just walk in and then was like “wait what” when he couldn’t (or couldn't if he wanted to get exactly what he had in mind) so he probably got/gets tattooed by some non-homophobic apprentice, maybe even that apprentices first tattoo, and also since Nicky is Mexican and darker-skinned I doubt he thinks to put on sunscreen and the sun makes his ink lines bleed and so it doesn't age the best (it be like that).

ALLISON

Got a trendy tramp stamp to like, really stick it to her parents. Right on her lower back I bet it's the classic 2000s swirls and a butterfly and some of those stars, idk what they're called. If she was a young 20-year-old now tho she totally would have gotten a fine line tattoo, like not a tight three, a real 1 needle tattoo. They were seen as really nice back then and “so Cali” and like I could see /maybe/ her getting it done before she's 30 but they were not that common yet and like micro-realism is so new we still kinda don't know how it's going to age at all since tattoos before it have been designed they way they have for aging. Again if she got a micro-realism/single needle tattoo tho it would be something kinda basic like a butterfly or like a lion. I swear I've seen the same google image lion tattooed on a lotta people and like IDC it's your skin. But yeah, she gets the classic 2000s swirl butterfly and stars tattoo above her crack one night, maybe after a really bad phone call with her parents and she got drunk and pissed off. Maybe someone said she couldn't take the pain. (which btw, tattoos don’t hurt as much as they make them out to be in shows and shit, they can hurt tho)

DAN

I HC Dan as very dark-skinned, she's 75% black and 25% Sioux and grew up in a very very white area when outside her home on the res. Tattoo culture is still really sexist and really colorist, and at this point in history I think if she ever did want a tattoo, she maybe asked vaguely about it and they flat out said “I don't know how to tattoo on black skin” or “it doesn't go with my art” which… are shithole excuses and I think she thought, “well fuck u too” and never thought about it much since then.

RENEE

I HC as Renee as darker-skinned than Dan, and like the only places she could possibly get tattooed are maybe her palms, the bottoms of her feet, or her inner mouth probably. Some people genuinely are so dark that tattooing is hard, because it's based on the concept of black ink on a lighter surface, which is why scarification catches on in cultures where the skin is too dark to pigment with ink effectively. However, the idea of fuckin, 15-year-old Renee who is still Natalie with “PU$$Y” tattooed in her mouth kinda sends me. I think lil kid Renee thought she was gangster, and tbh she was, and I could see her getting some “fuck you/in your face” tattoo, especially if she was a lesbian in such a homophobic world, getting that tattooed is even better. We also know she got her back tatted in the EC with angel wings that look almost closer to dragon wings, so I imagine they show up as almost raised dark lines like scars from the untrained tattoo artist going way too deep, making it a cross between a tattoo and scarification, even if accidental. (also white ink really wasn't a thing yet and even now is still kinda hard to tell how it will heal, so that's why I don't think she gets any white ink tats)

MATT

He's a rich boy from NYC, he could really get like… whatever he wants. Once he's famous he can afford it that's for sure, but even before then he could with his allowance similar to Allison (even if on a completely different level). However, I doubt he gets anything lol. He's not particularly religious in my HC and doesn't have the same sense of being lost like I feel Kevin does with his own parents (I mean Kevin was raised like an orphan, kinda so it makes sense). I need to develop Matt’s background further on what it means to him personally to be a Filipino-American. I have several ideas about how his parents met in the Philippines and then came here but I would need to flesh out locations and then local cultures and then his parents said opinions on tattoos and then how matt would react to said opinions. I could see him possibly getting something for dan or his kids tattooed on. Which really makes me want to have him get his first kid's name tattooed really big or intricate somewhere like on his chest over his heart and then his kid comes out as trans and he's like “...fuck” lmao and gets it removed maybe and then redone or something. I see him viewing tattoos are personal and symbolic, and if he would get something it would probably be family-oriented, possibly Dan's portrait or like his baby's footprint which I've seen before.

AARON & SETH

Stick and pokes were not nearly as common then as they are now, and I feel like people kinda have to remember how taboo tattooing was then and still is now in a lot of cultures. My family is Not happy lmaoo. But it is what it is. Stick and Pokes were not a thing bored white middle-class teens did like I see them doing now. It was seen as super sketchy and I know someone who was 16 getting tattooed in a garage by someone who was both drunk and just out of prison for the first time, and that was seen as sketchy as stick and pokes at the time. I could imagine either Seth or Aaron having a failed and fucked up stick and poke tattoo, and out of the two of them, Seth seems like the drunk tat guy. Maybe once he got drunk and mad as fuck after Allison and him broke up and she said he didn't seem serious enough so he got her name drunkenly tattooed on his arm or something and then she was even more pissed because it was spelled wrong “YOU FORGOT THE SECOND L OMFG SETH.” (I can also imagine his future girlfriends don't love it lmao). I also love the idea of Seth just having Marvin the Martian or the Tasmanian Devil tattooed on his ass.

Anyways sorry for the lack of pictures but I didn't want to do that... so I didn't. I didn't go into niche tattoo culture and history like I was expecting myself to but this also got fuckin long. Might not be what you were hoping for at all but it is my current opinion on the foxes and tattoos. (This is also surprisingly free of my own personal aesthetic opinions on tattoos and that I'm kinda proud of ngl, since my preference is none of these, but also I grew up in a very different tattoo time than them)

#aftg #all for the game #ask #mailob #fig writes

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fimflamfilosophy · 5 years ago

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Characters Akimbo, and How to Create Them

A long time ago, I wrote an article called “OCs Akimbo and How to Make Them”. This was in the golden age of the internet when people still owned their own websites and we walked uphill, through the snow, both ways because it was good for our glutes. We didn’t need to be fed a constant stream of memes produced by bots in Malaysia because we were not yet living in a post-ironic, dystopian future where many are forced to work from home or not at all. The joy came to us naturally in those times, and a “meme” was a thing that saved bandwidth, so you couldn’t spam them – bad memes were a waste of money and a waste of good internets.

But that article has been lost, swallowed up like so many other web-ventures of old by the insatiable beast known on Walstreet as FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google; Netflix is in there because the acronym is rude otherwise). Also, people don’t write articles anymore. They’re too efficient and only run ads at the top and bottom of the page without interrupting what you’re trying to read, unless the author is one of the sub-human monsters that puts ads in the middle of his articles and makes you scroll past them just to get the rest of his insipid opinion. Rest assured, my insipid opinions come without ads in the middle. And likely without ads at the top or bottom, either, because maybe only a hundred people will read this and that’s worth about $0.01 today.

So characters! You want to make a character! Put your hands down, we’re not taking questions until later, so for now we assume you’re reading this because you want to make a character for something. I don’t really care what. Whether it’s for a roleplaying game, which has become more in vogue recently thanks to the show “Stranger Things”, I hear, or because you want to present yourself as a foxy cat-girl getting busy with a catty fox-man in your dirty, filthy Discord group.

If you’re designing a character for amorous roleplay, I assume the reality is that you are fundamentally playing yourself, with all the same excruciating hang ups and personal insecurities, except as an animal. But suppose you didn’t want to play as yourself? How to go about that. Well, there are several ways of thinking about it, but since I’m the author, I will use my tyranny of the mic to write as though my perspective is the only valid one.

You Choose Your Shirt, You Choose Your Life

We’ll start with the basic way to make any character and have it work. Figure out how they feel, and then play everything around coping with those feelings. No, seriously, it’s the simple banality of human existence and anything else you can think of is just going to be taking a back seat to whatever your personal psychosis is. That’s all you are – a wet sack of flesh with crippling mental problems and a strategy to overcome them.

To put this in terms you shouldn’t understand, think of how you choose to put on a shirt in the morning. Maybe you choose the shirt because it says something on it, or because you like a specific color, but how do you know you like that color? How do you know you like the band, or the terrible joke you should be embarrassed to wear in public? When asked these questions, many people will try to draw a string of logic. They’ll say that red is a dominant color, or they want to support their favorite musician, or they’re being post ironic and the point of their joke shirt is that it’s not supposed to make anyone happy.

But these are all falsehoods. Every time you put on a shirt, you don’t actually examine the whole wardrobe on an intellectual level and compare their relative advantages and disadvantages on factors as minute as color. People who do such a thing are considered to be obsessive compulsive, which is considered a disorder because they are barely able to make choices. The more time you spend trying to logically examine such a thing, the less able you are to do anything. The truth is, you pick your shirt on a whim because you feel like it, and you like the color red because it reminds you of succulent berries, or your monkey ancestor’s big red ass, or something. The insistence that red is a “power color” is just something people make up.

Many snap decisions come down to your lizard hind-brain and your feelings. People argue that their intellect is so huge, this is no longer true for them, but emotions actually control most of our decisions because emotions work quickly and easily. If you see something and it makes you scared, or angry, you react accordingly and right away. You don’t have ten minutes to evaluate the sight of a snake and determine based on its colors and head shape whether or not it’s venomous. If your kid climbs a tree, you don’t get to do a lot of math about their weight and the height they’re climbing at before you get nervous. Your instincts and your emotions are the same thing, and it’s how you make the majority of your choices.

There are some exceptions, when you have time, where you can try to evaluate facts and figures and try to let that shape how you feel about something, but in this day and age I’m sure everyone has had enough heated political arguments to realize that for many people, feelings can be difficult to change. In fact, much logic is only presented to specifically alter your feelings, and not necessarily to provide you with more comprehensible information. Ultimately, even things you spend a lot of time thinking about eventually get processed on an emotional level.

The Past and the Future are the Same Thing

So what does all this mean for making a character? Well, let’s divert into a little anecdote. I enjoy role-playing games as a hobby, and learned to play in a group that enjoyed a lot of theater and acting. We often shunned systems that were heavy on rules and templates, and focused mainly on having dynamic character personalities with clear motives, then playing those games around those characters. This made running games fairly easy for the guy in charge, because all he had to do was invent a colorful cast of faces for the group to interact with, and then see who they hated the most, then go from there.

But most groups are not especially fond of acting. Dungeons and Dragons is handily the most popular roleplaying system out there, and it’s no coincidence that it’s also one of the most restrictive in terms of describing your job within the group and telling you what you’ll learn as the game progresses. In D&D, the fighter fights, the wizard wizzes, the rogue steals everyone’s money and has to do everything in secret or otherwise the whole rest of the table declares a spot check every time he does literally anything.

And it was while running a game with a D&D sort of group that I first encountered a player who had written four pages of backstory for their character. Just to reiterate, I learned to play with a group that focused entirely on character motives and acting, and I had never been given a four page backstory before. Once we had enough experience, my old group could typically sum up a character backstory verbally, in a few sentences. It would be easy to remember and you wouldn’t write it down because all the important details were short.

There’s something to delve into regarding brevity, but to focus on this four page character – none of the backstory made sense or really conveyed how the character felt about anything. This character, as far as I can recall, obtained magic powers because he walked down an alleyway, was accosted by cultists, the cultists cast a spell, the cultists exploded, and then the character could cast magic. I think he may have also been some kind of zombie, but I don’t remember because it wasn’t an element that was integral, except, I believe, the player used it as justification to hide their magic powers. They were embarrassed about being undead, or something, and even though the rest of the group was doing magic, the character thought their magic would be linked to their lack of pulse. It wasn’t even useful magic – it was the ability to throw fireballs, so hiding it was the best possible way to make the character non-functional.

The rest of the writing was irrelevant. There was information about family history, past work, blood type – whatever – I barely remember it because it was frosting with no cake. The player never wrote a character. They wrote an expository list of events that were all linked to one person without any sort of personality. That is, the player never really understood how this character felt, or how that shaped their life, and it’s clear they hoped that by writing enough things, eventually a character might take shape. As though you might learn a lot about a man by listing what kinds of weeds were growing in his back yard, or by listing the cities he’s lived in, or by listing a chronological sequence of events the person was present during.

This player, and frankly nobody, should ever require a four page back-story for a character. When it comes to writing a character, the core element of who they are, the past, present, and future are all the same. If this person has anger problems, they probably have a pattern of lashing out, and solving their life’s problems by being too frustrating to deal with. If they’re timid, they probably have a history of conflict avoidance. If they’re smooth talkers, they think they can talk their way through everything. Whatever emotional way people engage with the world around them, they’re likely to behave like that through their past, present, and future. You can know who someone is in the present and know who they’ll be in the future without examining an in-depth historical report of their past. Indeed, how else could we interact with other humans if this weren’t the truth?

People get confused easily, and will quickly insist that the backstory makes the character because they see on TV, constantly, stories about the past. A show will say, “this man is like this because of something that happened to him years ago”. But what you have to realize is that when TV does it, and when it does it well, it’s not the past that defines the character. The past events being described are conflict. Say it with me: CONFLICT. Not character.

Conflicting Over Conflict

Conflict is what a character reacts to, and it drives the story forward. So let’s consider, if you were to show a character’s past, how is that story structured. Well first you begin with a character, right? Because without the character, how do you know how this person will react to conflicts? You don’t. So the character is designed before the backstory. So what is this story of the past? It’s a story about some conflict and how the character interacted with it.

If your character in the present is a knife-wielding maniac, then one plausible story about their past would be when they were confronted by a problem that was solved by stabbing the problem. What this shows you is that the character moved towards this behavior of violence, and it worked for them so they kept doing it. Over time, they came to believe that most problems could be resolved by stabbing things, and that’s just how they live now, but it still takes a specific kind of person to try stabbing something the first time.

If you imagine a violent person, you may also imagine they tried conflict avoidance and it didn’t work. Perhaps they tried being confident, and they were quickly ground down. Finally they resorted to violence and achieved success, but that may have been after a long progression of abuse, which is why they also don’t form personal attachments or trust anyone. These looks at the past can add a lot of flesh and explanation to why your character feels certain ways about certain things – why they feel their life’s coping strategies are the best ones. That’s why when you see them, a good story of the past gives the viewer the feeling that they’ve developed a better sense of who the character is.

Whether the past defines the character or the character defines their past is a chicken and the egg question, and something you as a writer would have to decide. There’s no one answer and there are good ways to go about both approaches, so long as you know who your character is before you start doing any writing at all. Because whatever you write, the event you describe will merely be a conflict, a moment, and how the character reacts to that conflict tells a viewer who that character is.

In and Out of Character

Speaking of role-playing games: you’ll find the overwhelming majority of players are on about the same level as those guys pretending to be cat-girls in their filthy, unspeakable Discord group. That is, most people just play themselves, but with a gimmick. They play themselves, but with a stutter, or they’re french, or a they’re a cat-girl, or a they’re a samurai, or they’re a robot; they can be anything, but not anyone.

This gets a bit more into acting, which actually does play in to every work of fiction. To act properly, you need to be able to put yourself comfortably in the mind-space of your character and behave as though you only know what your character knows. The generations-old story of the rogue that steals from the party is a great example of the challenge at work here.

Imagine you’re facing a lot of life-and-death situations back to back with somebody, but this person is also slippery and difficult to trust. They never let you down openly, but they’re constantly wrangling you into bad contracts that benefit them, and you think they might be embezzling the group’s funds. In terms of writing a story, this is a good opportunity for conflict. A good role-playing group can handle this on the fly, while a typical role-playing group absolutely can’t.

A typical role-playing group always has the same response. Whenever the rogue tries to skim a little money off the top, the whole table rolls “spot checks” to catch the thief in the action, and then prevent him from stealing there in the moment. This is what the people playing the game regard as an enforcement action to prevent stealing – as long as the whole table rolls, someone is usually going to roll high enough to catch the rogue before he gets away with it. But how does every character in the game know to be hyper vigilant all of the sudden? Well, they don’t, and just rolling dice at people isn’t how we solve conflicts like this in the real world.

A good group will actually start to develop suspicions they’re being stolen from only after it happens, as they do their accounting and realize they’re short some cash. They may suspect the rogue, but they rely on him to find and disarm traps, and he’s somewhat irreplaceable. So the conflict now becomes trying to solve that problem without simply executing the rogue on a mere suspicion. The other players have to go out of their way to try set some bait or catch the rogue in the act, and if they prove what he’s done, then there can be a punishment. If the rogue keeps getting away with it, perhaps the party starts establishing rules to try to cull the potential for stealing, and now the rogue has to work around these new restrictions.

The second group is more nuanced and more believable. They’re facing a conflict and trying to figure out a way around it, instead of just using game mechanics to stop it entirely. And while this may seem like it begins and ends with roleplaying groups, the logic here works for most every other medium. You can never just have characters behaving as though they know things they aren’t supposed to know, and the way your characters react should follow the fundamentals of how they feel. Characters react to what they know, not what the audience knows.

Another example that would follow closer to other fiction is the following: quite recently I played a super hero game as a “reformed villain”, which basically meant I was playing a villain. The main hero died, leaving a vacuum in leadership, and at the same time a new, young hero joined the group. My villain character quickly swept in and began mentoring this fresh, young recruit, introducing him to as many morally gray aspects of the job as possible. Using deception to get closer to villains, fighting people who were too insane to know better, sometimes even doing lasting harm to ordinary people in the heat of the moment.

As the game went on, the group demonstrated that being a super hero was a very fine line that was difficult to apply idealism to, but my villain never quite killed anybody. He maimed people. He once dressed as a pizza delivery guy and threw a pizza so hard it knocked somebody unconscious. He sold hotdogs on the street without a permit. All while mentoring this kid and showing him the advantages of tap-dancing on that fine line.

Until the villain did kill somebody. A super scientists who was building deadly “Iron Man” style suits for a gang of terrorists used an ejection seat to try to escape the scene, and the villain threw his shoe. The shoe was thrown so hard, it caused the scientist’s head to burst like it’d been hit by a cannon ball. It all happened in the blink of an eye, against the wind, as the ejection seat rocketed off at dizzying speeds, and the villain claimed the murder was not intentional, even though it was clear at the table that I, the player, the author, had killed the scientist on purpose. It’s something I’d done as a snap decision in reality, because I thought the scientists was dangerous and it seemed in character to make that choice.

What ensued was much less in character. The young ward my villain had been mentoring turned on him instantly and carried on, from that point forward, as though the villain had intentionally killed an innocent man. He used the justification that my villain was very accurate and “never missed”, even though my villain missed his aim plenty of times throughout the adventure. He did not respond to any argument about the potential threat of the scientist, or about the very real possibility of an accident in the heat of the moment.

The player knew it was on purpose. The player felt his naive young character was a fundamentally good person. Ergo, he and the villain were now at mortal odds and could never reconcile. It’s a delicate situation and something that some actual writers could fall into, where the audience is shown the intent behind an ambiguous situation, and somehow the characters come to the same conclusion the audience does even though the characters don’t have the same information.

In television, this is sometimes due to run time limitations. Perhaps the character was supposed to gather more evidence before coming to the conclusion the audience was given, but the evidence gathering was cut to save time. But in a book, or a roleplaying game, there’s really no excuse. Everything should be handled based on what the character knows, and not on what the audience – or in this case the player – knows. At least if you’re a purist. I will be honest and admit there have been some popular works of fiction where characters side with the audience in spite of, in narrative, not even having the same moral system as the audience, let alone their knowledge of the plot.

What you actually should have between the villain and the ward, is a major point of conflict. Not in that the ward knows the villain killed someone on purpose and has an issue with it, but that he doesn’t know if the villain intentionally killed someone. That, in and of itself, is a very real moment of awakening to anyone with idealistic opinions on a job that entails violence and apprehension. It requires soul-searching, and even coming to the conclusion that the villain did kill someone and that it was wrong revolves around a complex set of emotional and moral beliefs.

Such a moment is pivotal to a character. It puts them at their lowest point, where they question all they know and all they ever wanted. Where they doubt everything. And how they come out of that situation? That’s the character’s arc. Denying them of that arc, and simply using the audience’s knowledge to make a fast choice obliterates the character’s development and robs them of an opportunity to tell a story within themselves and to their audience. Using the audience’s knowledge is quick, and keeps you on the same page as the viewers, but it is dirty and tells a less interesting tale.

And Your Point Is…?

So like I mentioned at the start, none of this is actually universal. Some stories are more event-driven, and expository writing can be fascinating as well. You really could write a tale about a sequence of events so long as the events were interesting and kept the audience reading, so a strong character isn’t even always necessary. But for what it’s worth, I think knowing how to make a character in such simple terms makes the whole process of writing much easier. If you know your character, you know how they’ll respond to conflicts, so every story is as easy as thinking up a conflict.

But hey, it’s also true that in some settings, trying to follow the rules of a good character or a good story may hurt you. A lot of role-playing groups will shun that type of thing because they’d rather roll dice at the rogue, and they think the person playing the rogue is in the wrong for trying to skim money from the party, because these people aren’t playing characters, they’re playing a game. They don’t care about an opportunity to have a character conflict with the rogue, they want their money, damnit. The fact they have nothing to spend it on in 5th edition D&D is another matter entirely.

#essay

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kogo-dogo · 4 years ago

Note

You seem to have a lot of thoughts on weird old games. Do you have any suggestions for games to play from years ago that maybe people should revisit or at all of the games you know ones that you wouldn’t recommend?

… Hold on a second. Uh. I’m gonna go grab Ye Olde CD Case Full of Ancient Games for this one. Because my memory is pretty scattershot, so I tend to forget most things if I’m not looking at them. I will say that I’ll try to keep the games to ones you could conceivably afford, though, since I recently found out that some of my JRPGs are… pretty… valuable.

- The Legacy of Kain Series: This one isn’t one that’s aged badly at all, and generally all of the series is good. They’re made up of the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver games and cap off with Legacy of Kain: Defiance, which brings the two protagonists of each series together (you swap between them with each level). The game is about vampires but shies away from a lot of cliche vampire lore, taking place in a fantasy setting that defies a lot of explanation. It starts very “kings and castles” with the original Blood Omen, and then devolves into a nightmarish hellscape of bizarre contraptions, ruined civilizations, and horrifying monsters.

The main themes of the game are pretty fun, too, as a lot of it stems from the fact that the bad ending of Blood Omen is canon, with the rest of the series reflecting the titular Kain trying to undo all of his mistakes while his “son,” Raziel, tries to enact revenge on him for effectively killing him. There’s some time travel shenanigans, and some very memorable characters, and Kain is… *clears throat* I would marry this vampire, okay?

Blood Omen 2 is not the best game, though (it was made without most of the main team and is completely different, to the point the head writer brushed it aside as the result of a paradox), but it’s really kind of funny.

- Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath: I know this got rereleased on the Switch in HD, but I know every time I bring it up, nobody really gets it. It’s far from the most popular Oddworld game, even though it’s my absolute favorite because it remains absolutely gorgeous (especially considering how old it is) and Stranger is one of my favorite characters in video games period. A lot of it is centered on environmentalism and the evils of capitalism, but the biggest twist of the game hits you like a fucking train. The gameplay is also incredibly fun; I just absolutely love the fact you hunt your ammo and just carry a pouch of small animals you use as projectiles.

- Chaos Legion: This game is… okay. It’s not perfect. It’s a hack-and-slash that’s a lot like Devil May Cry (it is essentially a knock-off of Devil May Cry), but it comes with the interesting perk that the entire combat system revolves around training demons (the Legions) to assist you in combat. They can have offensive capabilities, defensive capabilities. They level up alongside you, they have different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a whole lot of fun, to be quite honest. The story is absolute fucking drivel and the cut scenes have this weird, campy vibe that is equal parts dramatic anime and really bad student film, though, which is a plus for me (it’s hilarious) but could probably instill some second-hand embarrassment in other people (sane people). The soundtrack kicks absolute ass, barring the credits music.

- Panzer Dragoon Orta: Probably the most affordable of the old Panzer Dragoon games, and one you don’t really need to understand the lore for because it comes equipped with an entire encyclopedia that breaks down the history of the world and every monster you encounter. It’s a rail shooter, kind of like Starfox, but you’re an escaped prisoner on a dragon who is just tearing shit up. It’s actually a lot more deep than that, but I doubt anyone would be interested in hearing me drone on and on about the world and the previous games which… are borderline impossible to afford (like Saga, which hurts my soul).

- Croc: Legend of the Gobbos: It was supposed to be a game about Yoshi. They lost the license. They made Croc instead. It is fucking adorable. You should fucking play it.

- Escape from Puppy Death Factory: This is actually a flash game that is… but, okay. LISTEN. It’s a flash game, but it’s a Metroid-style game with a heavy focus on puzzle solving instead of combat. You play as a little dog in a spacesuit, and you try to rescue puppies. The end boss is very fucking confusing (I don’t get it and it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game), but it’s legitimately adorable and has a very addictive soundtrack. This is seriously a game that could have come out as an indie release, but it’s free, and it’s just lingering around until Flash eventually dies and steals it from me. Heartless fucks.

- G-Darius: It’s a side-scrolling shooter where you fight giant robot fish. The entire Darius series is about shooting sideways and fighting giant robot fish. But G-Darius has Queen Fossil, and Queen Fossil is hands down one of my favorite boss fights in any game ever. Look at her. Look at her and be fucking amazed.

- Liquid Kids: It’s made by the same people who made Bubble Bobble and, uh, I’ve found it to be pretty easy to emulate. It’s about a little hippo(? Maybe platypus?) named Hipopo who fights adorable monsters with water-filled bubbles. Unlike Bubble Bobble, it’s an actual platformer where the point of the stage is to make it across obstacles and fight the big boss. It can be INCREDIBLY hard at times, but it’s so bright and colorful and fun. It’s one of those feel good games, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I’ve also talked about games like The Suffering and Breakdown, but I will be the first to tell you that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them. The Suffering is a little hard to swallow in this day and age, and Breakdown is just a mixture of not very good and relentless in its desire to not play fair.

If you ever want to hear me talk about the pricier old games I have hanging around that I could recommend? Let me know. Like, I am absolutely good for talking about shit.

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avengersmusings · 5 years ago

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FULL NAME: Steven Grant Rogers MEANING: Crown, Wreath NICKNAME: Steve, Stevie, Cap, Daddy MEANING: Steve’s a shortened version of his name; Stevie was a nickname started by his mom and picked up by Bucky; Cap is usually what the team calls him; Daddy is Elise’s name for him :) AGE APPEARANCE: Appears 30, is actually 102 BIRTHDAY: July 4th, 1917 ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer SPECIES: Enhanced Human GENDER: Cis Male ALLERGIES: None SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Bisexual THEME SONG(S): America’s Suitehearts by Fall Out Boy; Dancing with Our Hands Tied by Taylor Swift, Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley; Radioactive by Imagine Dragons

APPEARANCE

HAIR COLOR: Dark Blonde/Light Brown HAIR STYLE AND LENGTH: Close cut in the back with a little bit extra on top. Think Infinity War style hair. EYES COLOR: Blue EYESIGHT: 20/20, now. Holy shit it was terrible before the serum. HEIGHT: 6″2′ WEIGHT: 230 lbs OUTFIT/CLOTHING STYLE: The uniform is a must on mission but when he’s being Steve and not Captain America it’s kahkis and plaid shirts and button ups and old man clothes. ABNORMALITIES: None. DISTINGUISHING MARKS(SCARS,MOLES): Stretch marks along hips and stomach area from serum, small injection scars from the serum, and that’s about it. Maybe some moles here and there. SELF CARE(MAKE UP): Steve always looks put together okay, the 40s shoved that into him and won’t let go. FIRST IMPRESSION ON PEOPLE: People either underestimate him because they think he’s a “dumb blonde” or immediately respect him because he’s Captain America. SKIN COLOR: White mixed BODY TYPE/BUILD: Lean, Muscular, built like fucking truck with a tiny ass waist. DEFAULT EXPRESSION: It’s either “I have no idea what I’m doing” or “you WILL follow orders” there’s no in between. POSTURE: Honestly it depends? Steve makes himself smaller and tries not take up too much space but Cap? Takes up space and commands the room when walking in. PIERCINGS: None. DESCRIBE THEIR VOICE: Steve’s voice has a subtle Brooklyn accent and takes on a softer tone than you’d expect out of him. His voice hardens and deepens when he goes in Captain mode.

RELATIONS:

MOM: Sarah Rogers HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: Steve’s mom was his whole world before she died. Sarah took care of him when he was sick and her death almost ruined him. DAD: Joseph Rogers HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: Joseph died when Steve was young, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember how terrible his father was. The man was abusive and the day he got shipped off to WW1 was the best day for Steve and Sarah. SIBLINGS: N/A HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: N/A CHILDREN: N/A HOW WELL DO THEY GET ALONG: N/A OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS: N/A PAST LOVER(S): Peggy Carter (Ex-Crush) CURRENT LOVER: Elise Burke and Bucky Barnes REACTION TO MEETING SOMEONE NEW: Steve can talk to anyone okay, he makes friends with everyone he meets. ABILITY TO WORK WITH OTHERS: Steve is a team player you cannot tell me he isn’t. HOW SOCIABLE(LONER,ETC): Steve is basically a puppy he’s sociable and outgoing. FRIENDS: The Avengers team, Wanda Maximoff, Elise, Bucky. PETS: Scout, a golden retriever. LEAST FAVORITE TYPE OF PERSON: Bullies, men who take advantage of other people. PARENTAL TYPE(PROTECTIVE,ETC): Protective, Will do anything and everything for his kid. FAVORITE PEOPLE: Elise, Bucky, Clint, Thor, the rest of the Avengers LEAST FAVORITE PEOPLE: Red Skull, Bullies, ignorant people.

PERSONALITY:

..WHEN YOU FIRST MEET THEM: ? Distant, Confident, and Inspiring ..AS YOU KNOW THEM BETTER(AND THEY LIKE YOU): Affectionate, Warm, Funny. ..AS YOU KNOW THEM BETTER(AND THEY DISLIKE YOU): Intimidating, Closed Off, Guarded. FAVORITE COLOR: Blue FAVORITE FOOD: New York Style pizza, hot dogs, anything covered in cheese thanks. FAVORITE ANIMAL: Doggos FAVORITE INSTRUMENT: Saxophone FAVORITE ELEMENT: Air LEAST FAVORITE COLOR: Yellow LEAST FAVORITE FOOD: Anything from the 40s. LEAST FAVORITE ANIMAL: Emus, the bullies of the animal kingdom. LEAST FAVORITE INSTRUMENT: Honestly none of them? LEAST FAVORITE ELEMENT: Water HOBBIES: Art, slow dancing, warm baths or lounging in sunlight. USUAL MOOD: Friendly and approachable but also keeping a slight aura of leadership.

DRINK/SMOKE/DRUGS: Nope, not really. None of them have much affect on him and he was too sick to get into the 40s habit of smoking. DARK VERSION OF SELF: Most likely brainwashed into believing Hyrda is right, follows any order without hesitate or regard for civilian life, the “perfect Soldier”. LIGHT VERSION OF SELF: Intelligent, quick to make a call that will save as many people as possible, rushing headlong into trouble to help out a civilian. HOW SERIOUS ARE THEY: In Cap mode? Full on serious nothing can make him crack, but as Steve? He’s somewhere in the middle. BELIEVE IN GHOSTS: No. If so his dad would probably be hanging around and he doesn’t want that. (IN)DEPENDANT: Both honestly? Like Steve likes to pretend to be this independent person who doesn’t need help, but he also secretly craves it. So I’d say somewhere in the middle. SOFT SPOT/VULNERABILITY: BUCKY AND ELISE, failing the team or not saving something, doing something without regard to personal safety or well being. OPINION ON SWEARING: Steve won’t curse in public okay, that’s the 40s “good Catholic boy” upbringing in him but in private? He was in the army and BUCKY IS HIS BEST FRIEND :) DAREDEVIL VS CAUTIOUS: Steve “I don’t know what a parachute is” Rogers is the opposite of cautious. MUSIC TYPE: Older, softer music. MOVIE TYPE: Romantic Comedies, Comedies in general, Musicals. BOOK TYPE: History books, and then he gets mad about facts that are wrong. GAME TYPE: Cards, maybe? Those have been around for a while so they haven’t changed that much. COMFORTABLE TEMPERATURE: Steve would rather die than be cold. He enjoys warmer weather and sunshine and just not being cold. SLEEPING PATTERN: Steve’s an old man that’s in bed before 10 and up at like 8. He also takes up A TON of space in the bed and basically smothers whoever he’s sleeping with. CLEANLINESS/NEATNESS: Steve prefers things to be neat and orderly but isn’t bothered by a little mess. As long as it doesn’t get too bad or become a habit. DESIRED PET: So many dogs. HOW DO THEY PASS TIME: Doodling on scrap papers, boxing, lounging around in sunshine or warm spaces. BIGGEST SECRET: I feel like Steve really doesn’t have secrets? Maybe his dad being abusive because he doesn’t really want to talk about it. HERO/WHO THEY LOOK UP TO: Bucky and Elise. WHAT ANIMAL WOULD THEY BE: A golden retriever. FEARS: Being trapped in a cold, tight space, losing Elise or Bucky, failing the team and causing someone’s death, being lost in time again. COMFORTS: Elise’s perfume and Bucky’s aftershave, running laps with Scout, his mom’s old records, and reruns of old cartoons.

HOW DO THEY ACT WHEN THEY ARE:

SAD: Steve distants himself when he’s sad. A leader isn’t allowed to show weakness and sadness is one. He also likes talking through things that make him sad. HAPPY: Playful, energetic, probably smothering you with his biceps on accident because he gets touchy feely and wants a hug. ANGRY: Depending on how angry; it’s either the “you’ve messed up” face of disappointment or cold fury with biting, harsh words. Fists will also be thrown if he gets angry enough. AFRAID: Again, this is a weakness a leader isn’t supposed to show so Steve tries to hide it as much as possible. He withdraws and hides away until he works it out on his own or someone finds him. LOVE SOMEONE: SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW BODYGUARD/BEST FRIEND. Steve will literally do anything for someone he loves. Anything. He’s loyal beyond believe and up for anything they ask him. HATE SOMEONE: Steve doesn’t hate that many people but those he does quickly realize that an angry Captain America is not something you want coming at you. WANT SOMETHING: Steve? Allowing himself to get what he wants? Don’t know her. He’s the definition of “waiting over 70 years to tell my best friend i love him” type of guy. CONFUSED: You know that cute look dogs get when they’re confused and trying to work things out? That’s Steve thanks.

HOW DO THEY REACT TO:

DANGER: Danger is Steve’s middle name because he cannot stop himself from running headfirst into it. SOMEONE THEY HATE WHO HAS A CRUSH ON THEM: Steve gets confused because he still sees himself as the tiny 90 pound scrawny kid and nobody really wanted that. PROPOSAL TO MARRY: Steve’s not against the idea of marriage, but it’s also not something he knows they can really do? So I don’t really know how he’d react to that. DEATH OF LOVED ONE: Each loss feels like a personal defeat for Steve so it’s twice as bad. But after losing pretty much everyone he’s ever cared about (even if Bucky came back) it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. DIFFICULT GAME/MATH/ETC: That’s something that gets tossed aside until he has time to work it out, or send it to someone that can solve it quicker. INJURY: Steve gets injured and doesn’t realize it until after the mission is over like every time they go out. However, if one of his team gets injured, he’s taking down whoever hurt them. SOMETHING IRRESISTABLY CUTE: Steve immediately wants to go over and hold whatever it is. Babies, dogs, you name it. LOSS OF HOURS OF WORK: ........no this doesn’t happen.

KNOWLEDGE:

LANGUAGES: English, ASL, French, a little German. SCHOOLING LEVEL: High School & Some Art School FAVORITE SUBJECT (S): Art, History, & Writing INTERESTED CAREERS: An artist, maybe? EXPERTISE: Combat, Shield Mastery, Master Tactician, Enhanced capabilities PUZZLES: Puzzles take him a minute but the serum helps him figure them out rather quickly. CHEMISTRY: Chemistry is probably NOT Steve’s forte but he can follow along with basic things. MATH: Again, not his forte but he understand basic things. Plus throwing the shield takes some math skills. ENGLISH: Steve was surprisingly good at English in school, from interpreting things to reading above grade level. It was one of the few interests he had that didn’t make him sicker. GEOGRAPHY: Steve can read and understand maps. POLITICS/LAW: Politics and the Law are Steve’s thing. He frequently fights against people on the internet about their political views and will fight against laws he doesn’t agree with. ECONOMY/ACCOUNTING: The economy doesn’t really interest Steve, but he’s fully aware of the class divide and how bad some people have it. Current situations remind him a lot of pre-Depression times so he tries to help out as much as possible. COOKING: Steve cannot cook, he tries but cannot. SEWING: Sarah taught Steve at a young age how to sew because “if you’re going to keep ruining your clothes it’s time you learned to fix ‘em yourself STEVEN”. MECHANICS: Steve knows OF cars yes. BOTANY (FLOWERS): Besides the fact that flowers are a thing? Not so much. MYTHOLOGY: This is probably another subject Steve doesn’t know much about, it conflicts with his Catholic views he had growing up. DRAMATICS(ACTING,SINGING): God Steve hates even thinking about this because of the Cap tour. Ouch. READING LEVEL: Above average. Steve read for fun while sick so he’s well above where he should be. HOW GOOD ARE THEY AT PLANNING AHEAD: Steve lives off planning ahead okay. It’s his JOB as team leader to be 4 steps ahead of everyone and the bad guys. Rip Steveo.

ROMANCE:

DO THEY TAKE INITIATIVE: No, not really. He’s more content to be pulled around and go with the flow. HOW DO THEY ACT(SHY,ETC): In public? Shy, 40s boy out to play. In private? Probably the same what a loser. GENTLEMAN/LADYLIKE VS KLUTZY: Gentleman-like, please. GO SLOW VS JUMP INTO: S L O W as fuck. PROTECTIVE: Hi hello have you met Steve? ACT LIKE FRIENDS OR LOVERS: B O T H. WHAT KIND OF PRESENTS DO THEY BUY: Steve’s always bringing home flowers or gifts just because. Things for Elise to wear or a plant for the house? Also a random homeless puppy? Yeah Steve’s probably brought it all home at some point. TYPE OF KISSER: Honestly, Steve’s probably soft because he’s a soft boy but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when he can be rough :) DO THEY WANT KIDS: He can’t have them but he wouldn’t mind having one. DO THEY WANT TO MARRY: Yes, even though he really cant. MAKE GOOD OR BAD DECISIONS: Bad decisions are unintentionally made because Steve is a reckless idiot. ARE THEY ROMANTIC: Y E S. HOW ARE THEY IN BED: Steve likes making sure both Elise and Bucky are well taken care of even at the expense of his own pleasure okay. GET JEALOUS EASY: Not really? After everything they’ve all been through none of them really have to worry about anything. WIFE/HUBBY BEATER: You mean beating up people that do this? Hell yeah. MARRY FOR MONEY: Nope. FAVORITE POSITION: Steve enjoys being plowed by Bucky while Elise is on top of him thanks. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN ON THEIR DREAM DATE: Naked art time. Just using Bucky and Elise as a canvas and making a mess while doing it? Yes please. OPINION ON SEX: Sex was always something Steve wasn’t really interested in? Mostly because nobody wanted him (or so he thought) but now that he has two people that always want him? It’s a good workout and way to spend time with his two favorite people.

#char: steve rogers #steve: bio

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stormbornspawn · 6 years ago

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Winterfell - Season 8, Episode 1 Review

My thoughts on every (I think every? let me know if I missed any) scene from the Season 8 premiere episode.

Arrival - there was nothing wrong with this scene at all. Everything about it was expected. The northerners being apprehensive is exactly what I anticipated. Give it up for Jon and Dany looking regal AF in this scene. Good lord. Arya watching this whole scene play out was really great as a call back to season 1. Love the proud mama look from Dany as her babies fly overhead and scare the living shit out of everyone below. And did you notice her hair is in the shape of a heart? Tyrion and Varys banter is always welcomed and encouraged.

Winterfell courtyard - frosty is the only word that really feels right here. Dany’s trying to make a good impression and doesn’t get pressed when nobody kneels. Jon bent the knee - they should be on their knees, but no worries. She’s gonna overlook that cuz it’s her boo-thang’s family. All in good time. Bran coming up with the - we have no time for this - and dropping the Viserion bomb was way too rushed. This is the first issue I have with this episode. Dany’s dragons are often referred to as her children, yet hearing that one of them has been enslaved is completely glossed over and cut to next scene. This should have been a much bigger deal. Not just for Dany, but for everyone. Jon should have needed to take her somewhere to console her...you know, somewhere private...

The Great Hall - how many times does JOn have to remind these people that they are going to die without Dany’s help? Do they not believe him? I realize there are only a few people that have actually seen the army of the dead, but come on. I don’t expect anyone to be swearing fealty to Dany at this point, but a modicum of appreciation would be nice. She abandoned her campaign for this war and lost a dragon. Why did nobody bring this up? Lyanna Mormont needs to sit down - she almost called Jon a bastard and I was about to come up out of my chair. Sansa whinging about food - like, you knew they were coming and you are just now concerned about this? Dany holding her composure through that took some serious control. Her little clap back was good - whatever they want - that’s right, because they’re goddam dragons. I did like that Jon and Dany seemed to inch closer and closer to each other throughout the scene and the little look while Tyrion was talking was cute. Tyrion was well-intentioned, but they still won’t listen.

Sansa and Tyrion - I was waiting for this reunion and it did not disappoint. I would have liked to see Tyrion quell some of Sansa’s concerns as it relates to Dany. I was a tad concerned about the side eye that Bran was giving Tyrion at the end. Bran knows some things, so I’m curious what goods he has on Tyrion.

Jon & Arya - LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I was prepared to be underwhelmed here, but her jumping into Jon’s arms was everything I needed. The talk about family and Sansa being the smartest person Arya knows - yeah, didn’t see Arya siding with Sansa over Jon, but I get it. How is that dynamic of supporting family going to play out when it’s public knowledge that Jon is not their brother, but a cousin? I was also a little miffed that nobody brought up Littlefinger and that Dany and Arya were not formally introduced.

Euron/Yara/Cersei/Theon/GC - This whole segment of the show was just okay for me. I didn’t care for the dialogue. I love Pilou as an actor, but some of his lines were just cringe - I’m gonna put a prince in your belly. Like, wtf? I kind of felt a little bad for Cersei (well, not really) that she had to sleep with him and Lena brought the power in the after math of that scene. She’s brilliant and it will be the travesty of the year if she doesn’t finally get her Emmy. Theon finally rescuing Yara and making the decision to go and fight for the Starks - let’s get that ball rolling...even though I really enjoy Yara, I don’t think we will see her until way later in the season. The GC - and no elephants - wtf? Well, whatever...I would have rather had Ghost - and that’s the second big thing wrong with this episode. There was plenty of time.

Bronn - why? Completely unnecessary to have all the tits and ass in this episode. I know it’s classic GOT, but we are all over that element, I think, and it could have easily been him in a brothel and Qyburn comes to see him without all that sexposition. I don’t like the crossbow thing especially with all the talk about Dany getting hit with an arrow or a well-placed bolt.

Davos/Tyrion/Varys - can we give it up for Davos finally speaking the truth - Dany is a just woman and Jon is an honorable man - yes, please. Get married, make babies, and save the realm. Why Varys and Tyrion weren’t all over that - I don’t know. Tyrion wasn’t completely opposed to it, but Varys seemed rather extra cynical just then.

Jon & Dany - a lot to break down in this scene. Dany knows Sansa hates her and is really concerned that if she can’t even get her to respect her than the north is not going to fall in line either - that’s my interpretation of the scene. Jon saying that Sansa didn’t like them when they were growing up either was cute. Now, why in the hell are my baby dragons not eating? They hate the north? Or maybe, just maybe, they can sense that their momma isnt quite welcome there and they are feeling that emotion. I am shook that Jon got to ride the dragon (well, another one ;)) before learning about his Targ history. I saw this scene as Dany really letting him know, babe, I love you and I am willing to let you babysit my kids if needed. That 1000 years comment is coming back around again for sure. That waterfall and smooching scene was not for me - I ship them and know they are in love - that scene was for anyone that didn’t really pay attention in season 7 or read any interviews from anyone ever to just solidify that they are truly in love. Okay - it was for me too - I’m on my 3,487th rewatch. My prediction for why the dragons are acting funny - they know momma is carrying that man’s baby and they are overprotective. @me

Jon & Sansa - Sansa, why? All these two do is argue and it’s starting to piss me off. She says she trusts Jon and has faith in him, but then doesn’t trust Jon and has no faith in his decisions. They needed Dany and her armies and dragons and he got her to come there. This is why he left in the first place. She does have a valid question though - did you bend the knee for the north or because you love her? It’s a legit question, JON!! Answer. It’s both. That is the big theme of this season - love versus duty - and Jon can do both and will need to balance them both.

Arya/Gendry/Hound - the Hound and Arya was hysterical and I love the banter between Arya and Gendry. It’s like they picked up right where they left off. Can’t wait to see where this goes.

Dany/Sam/Jorah - This is tough for me. I am a Dany stan through and through, but I did not agree with her decision to burn the Tarly’s. At least not both of them. I do find it hypocritical when people chastise her for something that men have done for ages and hold her to a different standard though. I didn’t care for what she did, but I understand it. Sam’s reaction was expected and I do feel very sorry for him. I wish Dany had exhibited a little bit of remorse. Even if she wasn’t sorry, knowing he is JOn’s best friend, should have made her say - I’m so sorry. Just something.

The Reveal - I hated everything about this. Sam didn’t tell Jon as a friend. He told him in a fit of rage to try and turn Jon against Dany. I’m not okay with this. Jon wasn’t having it either. Jon executed Janos Slynt for much less. And Sam is the same person who told Jon they needed Roose BOlton’s help after the Red Wedding and told Olly to forget about his family being slaughtered by the Wildings. It’s a bit different when it’s your own family, but double standards much? Jon wasn’t having it, so I’m good with that - he’s still gonna have some words with his queen later. The reveal pissed me off because I think Sam should have come at it from a place of tenderness and instead it was bitterness about Dany and this news is gonna fuck her up. He doesn’t know they are together and he doesn’t really know her. I was pissed AF with the line - you gave up your crown for your people - would she do the same? Okay - when is someone going to bring up the fact that Jon bent the knee AFTER she agreed to fight for the north? And, please - she abandoned her fight for King’s Landing to turn her armies north and help fight. So, yeah, she would. This was the scene I was most disappointed with. John and Kit did a great job, but the writing was atrocious. All I can see is that they are setting this episode up to carry all the angst forward until the Night King is knocking on their door and then - just as Jon said - it won’t matter.

Umber - what the actual fuck? But I’m glad to see Tormund, Beric, and Edd.

Jaime/Bran - he’s waiting for an old friend!! GAAAHHHH!! I can’t wait to see the shit storm that his presence is going to bring in episode 2. That preview got my dragon momma heated.

Overall, I’d give the episode a 7/10. It was definitely not the strongest episode in the series and I blame that on choppy transitions and weird almost campy dialogue. Episode two better bring a little more grounding to the show, because I was not overly impressed with those 54 minutes. There were some great things that happened - dragon date, arrival, reunions, and how much was my girl Dany smiling this episode?? I’ve never seen her smile this much in seven seasons. Guess a good dicking down and falling in love will do that to you. The dialogue and lack of timeline really killed it for me though. As well as the glossing over of what I thought were really important storylines.

Let me know if you want to discuss.

#season 8 spoilers #game of thrones #jon x dany #daenerys targaryen #jon x daenerys #jon snow #episode 1

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thousandeyesand-one · 6 years ago

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Tagged by @naomimakesart

■What are your top 3 favorite houses of Westeros?

HOUSE TARGARYEN. I mean Hello! 👀

HOUSE STARK. The Ice to my favorite fire house!

HOUSE DAYNE. Extremely underrated & unexplored I would love to know more.

■If you could live during one era in GRRM’s universe what era would it be? (Age of Heroes, Valyrian Empire, Conquest of Westeros, Dance of Dragons etc.)

I'd probably be like either a weirwood & live through all of these eras lol or I'd be a child of the forest secretly surviving since dawn age at the isle of faces or something! Coz I can't choose one era 😜

■What is your favorite episode/scene from the Game of Thrones TV series?

Battle of the Bastards, Loot train attack, Tower of Joy, First look at Ser Arthur Dayne 💜 basically every time arya is on screen. But I guess S05E04 holds a special place in my heart that whole episode was about Subtle hints at jon's Parentage/Subtle-mild hints at Jonerys future magical babies/ & had perhaps my most fav scene in the show of dany & Ser Barristan Selmy bonding over Rhaegar!

"Rhaegar never liked killing, he loved singing."

■What ruler do you think brought about the most change in Westeros, be it good or bad?

Jaehaerys I Targaryen, the Conciliator. Alysanne Targaryen, the Good Queen. I think they were the Obama's of the 7k literally inherited the realm from Maegor who almost crumbled the dynasty & the realm but they rebuilt it to last for two more centuries. While you asked Good & Bad I'd like to mention for 99% of good that Baehaerys did there was 1% of bad done by him too. The Iron Precedent of 101 A.C. that establishes male inheritance over female which single handedly caused DOD, Blackfyre Rebellions & is still a problem! If only Jaehaerys would've listened to Alysanne & made daenerys the heir! Listen to your wives Men! Make it a habit!

■If you could ask GRRM one question what would it be?

In a shitty, patriachial world like Westeros, where it is more than clear that men have build & sustained their kingdoms & legacies through Acts of War or Revenge or Want & Need to secure power. Why are women like Daenerys, Arya & Cersei criticized as would-be Mad or psychotic/Too far gone or Already Mad characters?

■If GRRM could write a short novel/series about one other family or historical time (besides the Targaryens) in his universe what would you want it to be about? (My choice would be Nymeria’s Journey!)

Good choice Naomi!👌

I would like to learn more about The Daynes man House Dayne! They are so peculiar, mysterious & any reader of asoiaf knows theres more to that house that is important for the endgame than what we know! More about this family dating back to the Dawn age & the era of the rule of Kings of Torrentine. More about Ashara Dayne & her eldest brother who is still unnamed what is his name? How did he actually look like if his son has valyrian features? was he a snack just like his younger brother?.. you know.. important questions like those needs to be answered!

■What was your first introduction to ASOIAF/Game of Thrones? Did someone tell you about it, did you see it online or did you come across it at a store/shop?

My cousin told me about the book series but I was busy with my studies at the time so I couldn't pick it up. But then the show happened & he told me about it too so I watched the first season before reading the books. Then I picked up my Jaw from the floor after watching S01 & straight away bought those books. & THAT'S HOW MY LIFE ENDED!

■What’s one thing that bothers you about GRRM’s series?

I think it's the doylism that bothers me. It has always bothered me I am a Tolkien nerd & that man wrote stories beyond human capacity & error. Middle earth is as fantasy as fantasy can be & even though J. R. R Tolkien was inspired to write his stories by the service he did in military during war his story isn't a doylist one, maybe mild references here & there but nothing as serious as asoiaf. I feel like doylism complicates everything in this story! (P.S I also never was much of a history student Biology was Life!)

■What’s one thing you unabashedly love about GRRM’s series?

The impossibly, irrevocably, unattainable & unfair high expectation of men (selective men) that GRRM has created. I mean good luck to myself on getting in a relationship or getting married coz you aint never gonna be Ser Arthur Dayne awesome or Rhaegar Targaryen & Jon Snow Broody, Melancholy sexy!

■What are your feelings about the prequel series in development at HBO right now for the Long Night?

I really really love Bran Stark & how he is connected to the rich 8,000 or longer history of Kings of Winter & the actual nature of this world, all the stuff that predates back to Dawn Age. First Long Night is something I would definitely love to watch, Fingers crossed am sure I'll like it! Also because valyria came into existence right after the First Long Night so this series only gives me hope for a Valyrian Freehold Prequel THAT WHICH I TRULY WANT!

Now tagged by @chillyravenart

Here goes..

■Which Westerosi castle would you like to live in?

Starfall, Dorne. Duh!

■Would you rather be a rich and influential lord, born into wealth and privilege or would you rather be someone who wields power from the sidelines, like Littlefinger?

I'd rather be born rich & influential because I know myself I won't be another cuckoo Lord or lady of the 7k. Plus it seems like anyone like Little Finger or varys who rises from sidelines have to sell their souls to the Satan with zero sense of humanity & everything being a race for power.

■Pick one: platinum hair or purple eyes?

I'll take purple eyes because I have jet black hair & purple eyes just compliment the fuck out of black hairs!

■Based on a tag I made once, based on your physical features, which part of Westeros/which house do you belong to?

In dorne probably House Martell.

■Who do you think will actually defeat the Night King?

I think Bran is the one who is truly going to defeat Night King.

■Three people you think will die in season 8?

Night King, Cersei & Varys. Can I add a fourth? Melisandre too.

■What would you name your dragon/direwolf?

My Dragon would be called Tzarax & my Direwolf would be called Amaris which means Child of the moon. She'd be an albino without red eyes maybe golden eyes!

■How must Ser Pounce be avenged?

Ser Pounce's daughter should train to be a faceless assassin & return all badass with many faces of cats & avenge Ser Pounce roaming around the red keep biting the hell out of anyone because Valar Mewghulis. All Men must be biten.

■Whose POV chapters are your favourite? (If you haven’t read the books... skip this and hang your head in shame lol jk jk jk)

My fav POV chapters are Bran, Dany, Jon, Arya. In that order!

Hang your head in shame lmao👏😂

■Your favourite ASOIAF/GOT antagonist?

Varys. This dude is going to burn in the seventh hell for all the bs he has unleashed upon just about everyone he has ever come across. I would name LF too but unfortunately it seems Varys outlived him so yeah The Spider & his webs are deadly as they come.

My Questions are:

1. What is that one moment or situation in asoiaf or GOT Tv show that inspires you positively?

2. YOUR ONE TRUE SHIP?

3. What is your favorite, ride or die character? CHOOSE ONE, ONLY ONE!

4. If you were to be the Ruler of Westeros & name Seven fighters to your Kingsguard who would they be? (They can be from the current generation of asoiaf or any fighter from any era, choice is all yours!)

6. Your own House sigil, house color(s) & house words?

5. What are your views about Robert's Rebellion?

7. Which is that one Character you wish had more screen time on the show (or) had a POV in the books?

8. Imagine Red Keep School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, which houses would the sorting hat sort these characters into? { Arya, Jon, Daenerys, Bran, Tyrion, Robb, Jaime, Cersei, Sansa, Rickon, Gendry, Joffery, Margaery, Brienne, Pod, Tormund, Hound, Missandei, Greyworm, Bronn, Sam & Gilly }

9. How do you prefer to watch the Final season? With a partner or spouse / alone by myself with no one to bug me / go to a watch party or bar episode events.

I'm Tagging @chillyravenart @naomimakesart @beautifuloutkasts @drakhus @phoebemaybe @mamadragon-daenerys @blue-roses-and-red-rubbies @northernlights37 @tomakeitbeautifultolive @toaquiprashippar @daenerys1417 @submarinesofpacific @crystalmusezz @ anyone who would like to do this i'd like to know your answers!

10. Nobody knows for sure how this story ends, but what is your ideal end to this story?

#tag #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #this was fun!#ya'll better answer these questions it took me forever to make them up!

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kog0ruhn · 6 years ago

Text

A Layman’s Guide to My Stupid Clan Lore (Which is Still Very Long and Stupid)

So, because of the fact that I realize I talk about the history of my clan’s conflicts and I… haven’t finished writing the actual arcs so I know it makes no sense, I decided to pull an Elder Scrolls and do a Pocket Guide to Irthskaar so that anyone who wants to know what I’m talking about can read it and have it make sense. I know it’s probably just two people (me included), but what the hell, you know? This helps me keep my mind straight, too.

(Haven’s memory problems and need to write everything down is based solely on how bad my fibrofog is, after all.)

Anyway~

A Pocket Guide to Irthskaar

Irthskaar is a canyon that is technically part of the Greatwyrm’s Breach, located to the northwest of the Pillar of the World. It’s equal parts fissure caused by the impact of Shade remnants hitting the earth, eroded further by a river that flows through the area. It’s verdant around the banks of the river and more arid the farther you stray from it, but despite being a rather nice place for dragon clans to live (easily defensible since there’s only one way in/out on foot, with fresh water and vegetation to boot), it’s been mostly uninhabited. Until The Abandoned took hold there, the most traffic it saw since the Second Age were the occasional Snapper troop who’d set up camp temporarily and transient Beast Clans. Neither population tended to last long since many believe the land is cursed.

And it is. Oh man, you better believe it’s cursed. It’s a canyon partially caused by the Shade slamming into the ground so hard that it left a dent big enough for fifteen clans to live. Anyone with a nose for magic can smell the devilry that’s coating that place like a spiritual mucus.

Anyway, because of the fact it’s been mostly uninhabited, most of the structures within Irthskaar are of Second Age make. There’s ruins and statues, ancient altars, and even an entire city (called Omen) that have been repurposed by The Abandoned after they took up residence. Since The Abandoned has moved in, surrounding clans and Beast Clans have started to take renewed interest in the area and keep slipping closer and closer. Traders actually come through nowadays and allied Serthis, Harpy, and Longneck tribes have permanent to semi-permanent residences in and around the canyon.

The Abandoned

The Abandoned is actually called The Alliance of Those Who Were Abandoned, a dramatic name that was meant as an inside joke by the founders. Then, they couldn’t think of a better one. It’s a confederation of clans who, for some reason or another, wound up in Irthskaar and was originally founded by a trio of clans: Clan Elsewhere, The Wolves, and the now-defunct Council of Kain (a.k.a., The Council). Other tribes and clans ended up there by happenstance or because they had existing alliances with clans that were in the area, and soon Irthskaar had a healthy population of dragons. The leaders of these clans formed a council known as The Fifteen (as the original incarnation of The Abandoned had fifteen clans), and while the number of dragons who are a part of The Fifteen has dwindled to twelve, the name has stuck in honor of those who have fallen.

The different clans of the current alliance are Clan Elsewhere (former Plague dragons who are the economic and political powerhouse of The Abandoned), The Outlanders (a gathering of oddball outcasts and innovators who are the second most wealthy clan in The Abandoned), The Sixth House (a collection of powerful and ancient sorcerers), The Lorekeepers (a clan of librarians, historians, and writers), The Coalition of Magicks (a scholarly council of Arcane mages), The Keepers of the Sigil (a clan formed of survivors of previous calamities), The Graveborn (raiders-turned-protectors), Revelations (also raiders, and one-time enemies of The Abandoned), Umbra Ruinam (a coven of necromancers), and The Wolves (the “police force” and standing army of The Abandoned). There’s also Saija, a lone Gaoler who has forced her way into The Fifteen despite being unaffliated with any clan.

Previous clans (destroyed or defunct) include The Council (who originally owned the land in Irthskaar), The Infected (Plague cultists who moved north due to a family emergency), The Followers of the Pillar (a clan of pacifists and philanthropists), The Shards (essentially doomsday preppers), Clan Carnate (a small clan of roaming oddballs), The Twisted Scales (a tribe of displaced dragons), One-Clan-Under-Moon-and-Star (loyalists to a repeatedly reincarnated warlord), Shelcoof (a bunch of Lightning dragons who were long-time allies of Clan Elsewhere), Goetia (doomsday preppers with occult knowledge), and the Myrian Six (a tiny clan of Shade-hunting dragons who wound up in Irthskaar for obvious reasons). Some of these evolved into new groups, some left voluntarily, and others were destroyed during conflicts, with previous members now integrated into new clans.

And Now for a Segue Before I Get Into The Flauros Incident

I know I talk a lot about The Flauros Incident, but to really understand The Incident, you need to understand these five jerks:

Lich is a rogue necromancer living in the Scarred Wasteland, who works with his assistant, Falx, to figure out ways to create life out of nothing. The closest they’ve got is using concentrated Shade energy that’s dormant within the land to mimic lifeforms that already exist. They call these creatures “demons,” and summoning them usually requires a sacrifice of some kind, though they’ve figured out how to “bud” more demons from existing ones by borrowing energy. Lich has amassed quite an army, and Falx sacrificed one of his previous mates, and they show no signs of stopping. Uh, nor do they really realize how much trouble their pet project is causing.

Lich is just very isolated, one-track minded, and only really cares about things if they affect his research adversely. Falx is probably aware in some capacity, but he’s also an evil bastard who doesn’t care.

Now, remember how I said that summoning a “demon” requires a sacrifice? That’s where you get the ugly, bloody guy in the middle row. That’s Bifrons, the only dragon to ever survive one of Lich’s procedures. He was abducted and had part of the ceremony performed on him, but managed to get away before anything could be completed. It had a devastating effect on his physical body (which you can tell by looking at him), but a worse one on his soul. You see, the ritual was never finished, but it was finished enough that he wound up cursed with a half-complete “demon” bound to him.

That demon is Flauros. She used to look like a Guardian, but she’s unstable and changes pretty frequently. She’s a bit harder to control because she still has some primordial will in her, and the bindings on her were never completed; she can technically be stolen by any sorcerer who is clever enough to make a spell strong enough to bind her. She can think and reason and behave autonomously once given orders which is, well, unheard of for the bulk of her kind, and her more troublesome powers haven’t been cut off to make her more pliable. She is capable of doing some really messed-up things. She’s the physical embodiment of a demonic poltergeist you see in those horrifying “based on a true story” horror movies.

And at the very bottom, we have Hashakgik. Hashakgik (a.k.a. Dahaka) is a dragon who’s learned to use primordial, non-elemental magic to make himself a being of many faces, names, and allegiances. He has an extensive criminal record, has left a trail of destruction in his wake, has changed his form a dozen times, and is incredibly hard to get rid of. He’s a power-hungry and extremely dangerous cockroach in a dragon’s body who could probably crush you with his mind. Nobody in The Abandoned knew this when he showed up.

And that’s a good lead-up into The Incident itself.

The Flauros Incident

So, we know Bifrons wound up with Flauros bound to him because Lich couldn’t do his job right. What happened after that? Well, he also wound up with a handful of hirelings and followers who he brought on with the sole purpose of containing and eventually dispersing Flauros. This entourage began to be known as Goetia.

Goetia wound up in Irthskaar at the suggestion of Azimuth, one of Bifrons’ hirelings, who said the latent magic in the area could lend itself to their goal. Bifrons joined The Fifteen, Flauros was kept contained in their lair, and things went pretty okay for a while. The problem is that this was all a part of a plan on behalf of Azimuth and Hashakgik, who were old friends who hatched a plan to make themselves as powerful as possible to take over as much of Irthskaar as they possibly could. You see, Hashakgik was already in Irthskaar because of a clan he joined to lay low (The Infected), and he knew enough about magic to tell the canyon was special. It was holding some crazy power, but he needed a way to secure the territory for himself so he could figure out a way to tap into it.

Enter Azimuth, who originally came into service of Goetia honestly but then became convinced that Flauros would be a pretty easy, subversive way to achieve this goal. She and Hashakgik developed some spells to “steal” Flauros from Bifrons and tether her to something new (an amulet, which seemed like a no-brainer option; they could swap it back and forth to take control of her as need be), and then used her to start picking off or otherwise incapacitating powerful dragons in the alliance one by one. It worked well until they tried to target Snap, leader of Clan Elsewhere and Bad Bitch You Shouldn’t Mess With™, who immediately figured out that Flauros was responsible and set about retaliating by declaring an emergency, electing herself warleader, reorganizing the clans into an army, and then turning the whole goddamn thing on Flauros and anyone who decided to follow her.

Pictured above: a dragon you don’t wanna fuck with. (Thanks, doki!)

Azimuth panicked. What began as sneaky assassinations and corruption turned into her wildly throwing Flauros at anything that posed a threat, even exposing herself as a mastermind when she felt cornered. For a while, things went her way--she destroyed a couple of clans, killed a lot of dragons, and even swayed followers to her side with promises of power and safety--but it all changed when one of her subordinates decided to trick the majority of the Coalition of Magicks into raising an Emperor, citing it would be the only thing powerful enough to fight Flauros. The follower in question, Baphomet, justified it by saying she was pretty sure she figured out magical bindings that would allow her to control it.

Yeah, no. She didn’t have a goddamn clue what she was doing.

So now, Azimuth and her enemies had to contend with something worse than Flauros making short work of both sides of the conflict, after which Hashakgik decided that enough was enough. He wrenched control of Flauros back from Azimuth, basically cut her off from doing anything else, and then decided he’d go down swinging. He amassed an army of demons like Flauros, having figured out how to create them, took his army of defectors, and marched right on Snap’s war camp with the intention of killing everything in sight.

Between the battle, the Emperor, and then their battling again, the loss of life was insane. Right when things seemed to be ending in Hashakgik’s favor, though, Azimuth found herself dead and Hashakgik found himself sans Flauros. Shriek--leader of The Outlanders--had spent the whole squabble doing her own research, consulting the right people, and following leads behind everyone’s back, and nobody really noticed because nobody ever took her seriously. She figured out the amulet controlled Flauros and just… stole it while Hashakgik wasn’t paying attention. The Abandoned won the fight because a loud, obnoxious Spiral swiped a necklace and used said necklace to steal a demon. To say Hashakgik was surprised when his own weapon was turned on him by a dragon he barely knew existed would be an understatement.

Pictured above: The face of somebody who shouldn’t have won.

It ended in a fight between Flauros and Hashakgik, and the clash of their magics turned the treacherous Mirror into stone.

The Abandoned now use him as a decoration for the entrance to the canyon.

The Aftermath

Recovering from that kind of excitement is hard. Clans were destroyed, survivors were adopted into new clans, and they had to find ways to circumvent the loss of some very valuable and resourceful dragons in the alliance. Thankfully, some of this was taken care of by the introduction of Sitael, a wealthy traveling merchant with an eye for business and a heart of gold. He came seeking new customers, stuck around to bring in supplies, and became a permanent resident of Clan Elsewhere when he realized his expertise could bring in the gold and resources necessary to rebuild. He’s attracted quite a lot of money, donates a fair chunk of change to the other clans, and makes sure there’s always necessities around for anyone who needs it. His network is borderline insane, too, so if you want it, Sitael can get it.

He’s a good Pearlcatcher, Brent!

In time, things began to fall into place. A lot of dragons rendered homeless by The Incident joined The Wolves so they could protect their home, and the Keepers of the Sigil was formed by the displaced patriarch of another clan with the sole purpose of defending against the dark arts (Remus Lupin would be proud). Others stepped up their game to provide services and resources where others had fallen. New dragons filtered in who took the place of those who had died.

One huge point of contention that remained, though, was that Flauros was still around.

You see, Hashakgik and Azimuth may have been responsible for the whole sordid affair, but Flauros was their face and not every dragon really understood that blaming her was akin to blaming the gun instead of the shooter. Even those who did understand were wary of it happening again. Shriek’s decision to not hand over the amulet and let the Coalition of Magicks figure out a way to destroy Flauros caused quite a few waves, and left a bad taste in the mouths of just about everyone.

This would only come to a head when Elder showed up.

Who is Elder?

Elder is an asshole.

But Why is He An Asshole?

Well, he’s Hashakgik’s mentor, for one. And if you took Lich and Hashakgik and threw in a massive god complex, you’d get the four-meter-long package of destruction and chaos that was (is?) Elder. The only thing he cares about is power, his magical practices have made him so distant from dragonkind that he barely registers the dragons around him as people, and he is absolutely ruthless when it comes to getting his way. He’s small, but he’s strong and he’s smart and he’s utterly cold blooded, and he could, would, and will crush you underfoot if you stand between him and something he feels he deserves.

And if you think the fact he’s a teeny, tiny Spiral will save you, you are dead wrong. And also probably just dead.

The Elder Conflict

Elder wasn’t stupid. In the wake of The Flauros Incident, he waited and bided his time and watched from a distance, knowing The Abandoned would eventually show a weak spot. You see, he was aware from his doomed protege that there was dark and powerful magic in those hills, and that the only thing standing between him and that power was a bunch of broken clans. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes as Hashakgik, though. Charging headlong into a fight under the wrong conditions with the wrong tools was suicide.

He did try to bolster his initially poor numbers by forcing the clan, Revelations, into subservience, though. A clan of raiders, he kidnapped the daughter of the ruling pair and held her ransom, with the payment requested being as many dead inhabitants of Irthskaar as they could drag back. They were cannon fodder that he never expected to return, though they proved strangely effective. Not only were they good at destroying Sitael’s trade caravans, mopping the floor with stragglers, and even occasionally carrying out raids inside the canyon, they had the unintentional side-effect of inciting new and exciting forms of panic. Revelations, you see, is run by a pair of renegade Gaolers and has been even before the Seekers were reinstated and Gaolers resurfaced.

Fresh from The Flauros Incident, The Abandoned became convinced that Revelations was controlled by monsters. Monsters like Flauros. They didn’t have a clue what a Gaoler was. Obviously, those things were demons.

This started a massive political upheaval within The Fifteen. While the general public started blaming Flauros and, by extension, Shriek for the raids, Snap was hard at work making a case for the exile of the entirety of The Outlanders for their continued support of their leader and her pet demon. The Outlanders’ reputation worsened as dragons began to go missing, including members of The Fifteen, leaving no trace behind as to where they went. This had to be the work of Shriek, Flauros, and those creatures that kept raiding their lands, obviously.

And so The Outlanders were exiled. It was fairly unanimous when faced with the evidence Snap accumulated, with her essay of grievances carrying more weight than Shriek screeching she didn’t do anything wrong. Oddly enough, Snap’s mate sided with The Outlanders and went with them as they left, leaving a pretty sizable rift in Clan Elsewhere who--if you don’t remember--is the most powerful and influential clan in the alliance.

Oh, look. Elder found his opening.

Political instability is a hell of a thing. With The Outlanders gone, Flauros out of the way, and Clan Elsewhere reeling, the attacks began in earnest. Snap had her hands full trying to repel the incoming invasion, while Shriek and her clan were oblivious outside of the canyon. The only reason they even discovered that their old home was under attack is because they found the “missing” dragons whose disappearance she was blamed for. Turns out that they had an inkling of an idea that something bad was on the horizon, Snap wouldn’t listen because she’s too stuck in her ways, and they decided to take matters into their own hands. One of them, Kain, even know about Elder from previous scuffles and was pretty sure that he’d be sniffing around Irthskaar after finding out his old pupil had killed himself trying to tap into some good ol’ primordial Shade energy.

So, Shriek decided to help them. She put Flauros to use in subverting everything Elder tried to do, and even tried to make amends with The Abandoned to get them to back the “resistance” and allow her clan back into Irthskaar. Snap turned up her nose each and every time (mostly out of stubbornness because, let’s face it, Snap is very flawed), but eventually had to cave when The Outlanders, fresh from being attacked, came back uninvited and Elder figured, “Hey, everyone’s harried into the same hole in the ground now. Let’s just end this already.”

Elder--utilizing his necromancer slave, Mortanius--launched a full-scale attack on the barely prepared alliance, using swathes of undead, Revelations, and his own loyalists to lay waste to everything in his path. Things were going his way until Flauros entered the scene, Coalition of Magicks mages figured out how to undo his slave bindings on Mortanius (who, understandably, took the opportunity to scram, leaving his necromantic creations frenzied, directionless, and doing as much damage to Elder as The Abandoned), and the leader of Revelations took an opening mid-battle to turn on his daughter’s kidnappers. Even then, Elder almost held his own, stopped only by Shriek and Flauros as he tried to escape into a cave for cover.

They, uh, brought the cave down on him. They’re pretty sure he’s still alive, somehow, but it will be a long, long time before he figures out how to get out. If he ever does, the Keepers of the Sigil have moved their lair right outside, so they’ll be waiting for him. It will not end pretty.

So What is The Abandoned Up to Now?

Rebuilding. Again.

The good thing is that Elder’s onslaught didn’t do as much damage as Flauros did, so it’s been a bit easier to return to normalcy. The worst of it has been political restructuring such as the addition of new clans (Revelations, for one; Mortanius returned with his clan as well, hoping to seek sanctuary), the reinstating of Shriek into The Fifteen and The Outlanders into the alliance, rethinking policies and procedures, renegotiating trade deals, and redistributing power since Snap has this nasty habit of assuming direct control of things as soon as danger rears its ugly head. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a democratic council at all if the same dragon just overrides everyone consistently.

Oddly enough, Flauros is now regarded as a hero as well. It’s hard to argue with the fact that her swooping in out of nowhere and handing Elder’s ass to him is probably the only reason The Abandoned still exists, so they’ll give credit where credit is due. This mostly just means they stop talking about dispersing her, though.

Most everyone still doesn’t want to actually interact with her.

And why would you? I mean, she’s scary af.

#clan lore #this was fun to write

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meggannn · 6 years ago

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i'm curious from a writer perspective of DA, is the world set up similar to that of D&D (Humans, Elves, etc co-exist but who's king?). I've never played the game and was trying to figure out what the worldscope was like in terms of who's in charge, the history, etc but it's kind of complicated and hard to pin down. Would you mind giving a little insight into the premise of DA on a larger scale?

i’m sorry this took so long to get back to you! what a neat question – I haven’t played D&D or actually really read too many classic fantasies aside from some Tamora Pierce novels, so I can’t speak about what’s usual, but yeah Dragon Age is a pretty “standard” high fantasy I guess in the sense that it’s got dwarves and elves and magic and it’s set in a middle age analogue.

i also need to apologize in advance for how long this got. the short answer is, Thedas is a hot mess, everyone hates each other, and nobody knows what’s going on.

RACES

okay, so, there are four main races:

human – most populous and influential. known for causing a lot of wars.

elves – in most parts of the continent they’re second-class citizens. many are servants; in Tevinter elves are mostly enslaved. if they live in cities, they probably live in an alienage, which is akin to a ghetto. there are large groups of elves called the Dalish, which are nomadic groups that live in the forests and try to keep their ancient culture alive.

dwaves – mostly live underground, but there are several surface dwaves that, as the name implies, live aboveground. they’re the only race that cannot be mages due to their high resistance to magic, which is based on their history of mining lyrium (basically like a magic rock that helps mages and mage hunters focus their power). dwaves have a sort of resistance to it so they’re the only ones who can mine it safely and therefore built their economy and major cities underground.

qunari – technically a religion, not a race, but they’re known for their stringent religion and for having large horns on their head.

CONTINENT

DA is set in a world called Thedas (which literally stands for The Dragon Age Setting, don’t ever let anyone tell you your ideas are stupid). here’s the map, so, pretty big (click here for a bigger version):

unfortunately bioware is lazy and they never gave us firm borders, so we have to make due with whatever this is

POLITICAL NATIONS (skip if you don’t care)

I’m not an expert and don’t have the energy right now to go super in depth about each of these nations’ conflicts with each other. there are roughly 9 countries in the above map (bottom - up): Ferelden, Orlais, Free Marches, Nevarra, Tevinter, Antiva, Rivain, Anderfels, Seheron/Par Vollen. not pictured: Orzammar/the Dwarven Kingdom

Ferelden and Orlais are the countries we know the most about because two games take place there (Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age Inquisition). They both have monarchies. Ferelden has a king/queen, and Orlais has an emperor/empress. Orlais is also where the Divine lives, and the Divine (always a she) is the leader of the Chantry, the major religion (p much like magic Catholicism).

The Free Marches are a bunch of city-states, each of them ruled by a Viscount that’s elected by the nobles. Dragon Age 2 takes place in one of these cities, Kirkwall. one of the endings involves the playable character, Hawke, become the Viscount/Viscountess if they make certain choices. Post-Inquisition, one of the game’s companions ends up becoming Viscount.

Nevarra we don’t know much about. I believe they have royal dynasties. most monarchs are related/entwined with the military. one companion, Cassandra Pentaghast, is distantly in line for the throne.

The Anderfels are a bit of a wasteland. it’s called a kingdom but I gotta be honest, we know like a total of five characters from there so not much else info is available. It used to be part of the Tenvinter Imperium before the rebellion, but now it’s mostly known as being home to the Grey Wardens (see below).

Antiva is a plutocracy, so it’s ruled by the wealthy. there is technically a monarchy that’s been around for a couple thousand years, but it’s weak. the country is mostly ruled by “merchant princes” (not literal princes, just like bank owners and heads of trading companies, each have their own army, etc). they mostly resolve political disputes with bribes and assassins.

Rivain – tbh I don’t think I know enough about Rivain’s government. we know certain characters from Rivain, but according to the wiki they emphasize community welfare and I know they treat their mages better than the rest of the continent, where (apart from Tevinter) mages are largely locked up in towers for their entire lives.

the Tevinter Imperium is the only nation in the continent that’s a magocracy, or ruled by mages, and its economy is largely based off of slave labor (the majority of whom are elves, though I think they enslave some humans if I’m not mistaken). Tevinter’s leaders are called Magisters, and they are all part of the Magisterium. they are led by the Imperial Archon, which is usually inherited; otherwise known as the Black Divine, who is always male (more on that below).

Seheron belonged to the Tevinter Imperium for a long time, but it’s land that I think is still being fought over by a group called the Qunari. they currently maintain it, though it’s mostly native rebels that live there.

Par Vollen is the land of the Qunari. they’re really a religion, not a race, but most Qunari that you’ll see are horned giants. we know a lot about their culture from certain characters, but we’ve never seen it in person. in broad sense, the Qunari believe that every person has a certain role (you call people by their titles, eg “Sten”). they’re led by an Arishok which is like their highest ranking general and de facto spiritual leader.

(not pictured) Orzammar – underground, located in the Frostback Mountains (bottom of the pic, left of Ferelden. the last standing dwarven city. it’s like an underground metropolis based on a caste system.

HISTORY

so I don’t know if you’re asking for a long and detailed history, because if so I could be here all day, but in very broad strokes, here’s what’s going down

Elves: long ago they were the dominant race aboveground. they had their own empire in modern-day south Orlais (west of Ferelden), but now they’re treated like second-class citizens after their biggest city fell and they were plundered by Tevinter. then the Chantry came along and that took over.

Dwaves: they also had a massive kingdom underground that spanned most of the continent. these tunnels are known as the Deep Roads, and they still exist today, but they’re mostly collapsing and very dangerous.

Humans: Are kind of running the show now across all major nations. (they apparently aren’t even native to Thedas but arrived millennia ago on boats or something then took over. typical.)

THE BLIGHTS

the driving force of a major recurring conflict in this land is called a Blight, and the first Blight was responsible for the collapse of the dwarven empire. there’s a lot we don’t know about what exactly happened in the first Blight, we only have the Chantry version, and a lot of ppl in the world disagree about how they really got started, or what they even are. but here’s what “the story” behind them roughly is:

the Chantry says that Blights are punishments that the Maker (God) sends because the old Tevinter Magisters, once upon a time, used magic to enter the Golden City (Heaven, sort of). mages can enter a place called the Fade, which is like the magical space between fiction and reality that most people only access through dreaming. the old Magisters basically wanted to enter the Golden City and claim the Maker’s throne and become all-powerful gods and whatnot.

however! this was a bad idea, and so for punishment (or maybe just as a consequence of contaminating the sacred heart of the fade with their dirty human germs), the Maker turned all of those Magisters into monstrous things known as “darkspawn.”

darkspawn are like mindless zombies, sort of, except their primary objective is killing, not eating. what makes them darkspawn is the infection and spread of their tainted blood.

so after those magisters became darkspawn, they spread anything they came into contact with. any species can become tainted I think.

darkspawn are scattered and disorganized for the most part but you still see them here and then. most of the time, darkspawn stay underground in the Deep Roads wrecking mayhem (this is what caused the fall of the dwarven empire).

what a Blight is, though, is a massive swarm of darkspawn arriving to the surface and basically doing what they do, amped up to level 11. what causes a blight is when darkspawn find an Old God underground. the “Old Gods” are really just sleeping high dragons. (Tevinter used to worship these dragons.) there are seven old gods, so when the darkspawn find another of them underground, they infect it, it awakens and turns nasty and evil, and becomes an Archdemon, which leads the call for darkspawn to attack the surface. Archdemons are the sort of Big Boss that needs to be defeated to end each Blight, after which the darkspawn simmer down for a while until they find the next one.

the plot of Dragon Age Origins is the story of the Fifth Blight, which takes place in 9:30 Dragon (read that exactly like you would without colons, so “Year 930″)

TIMEKEEPING

timelines are currently measured by Chantry ages. the years before 1:1 are called “Ancient,” count backwards, and are basically like our BC. there’s no Year 0. the Ancient Age had the arrival of humans, the fall of the elves and the dwarven empire, and the first blight.

according to the wiki: “In the 99th year of each Age, the Divine looks for an event or portent in order to determine the name of the new Age. the last portent was a dragon awakening and going on a rampage, which suggested an age full of violence and destruction”

so dragons are a Big Deal because until this century, people thought they were extinct. except no…. there’s a blight, and an archdemon showed up. and oh look, dragons are appearing in Kirkwall too, and around Orlais. dragons are a symbol of chaos, basically, so the fact that this era is known as the Dragon Age signifies a lot of fighting/turmoil basically.

THE GAMES

Dragon Age Origins – the story of the Fifth Blight. you gather a bunch of companions and join the Grey Wardens (soldiers from all races who dedicate their lives specifically to fighting darkspawn) and become Big Damn Heroes.

Dragon Age II – the story of origin of the Mage Rebellion. you play as Hawke, a refugee who escaped the Blight looking for safe haven in a city in the Free Marches. you befriend several misfits and influence the political landscape that ultimately leads to mages across Southern Thedas rebelling against their captors.

Dragon Age Inquisition – the Mage Rebellions are wrecking havoc, Grey Wardens are disappearing, and at a would-be peace summit between the mages and their captors, the Divine gets blown up and now there’s a giant hole in the sky with demons falling out. you play as a random joe who wakes up one day with the power to seal up that hole, and together with a bunch of other well-meaning randos, you form the Inquisition to bring peace (I hope) back to the continent.

Dragon Age 4 – fuck it, but I hope we go to Tevinter. I’m tired of looking at Ferelden for two games. it’s far past time for an elven slave uprising, an old elven god is now trying to commit mass genocide and Thedas is still on fire, but no, Bioware’s focusing on fucking Anthem. we are suffering.

#Anonymous #askbox #megan talks about bw

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dracox-serdriel · 7 years ago

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Defenders

I liked Defenders. I should’ve loved Defenders, but I didn’t. I liked it.

Under the cut for spoilers of all episodes of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Defenders.

I understand there are four distinct shows involved here, so a little bit of “WTF” is to be expected. That being said, there are some pretty big problems with the Defenders overall plot.

Plot Issue #1: Who does the Hand bring back?

In Iron Fist, we learn that the hand “rarely” makes arrangements to bring back the dead, but the speaker likely means (it’s hard to tell) that it’s rare for the Hand to bring back an outsider to the organization like Harold Meachum.

I say this because in Daredevil Season 2, the Hand-ninja who Claire kills via shoving him out a window has a Y-incision scar from a previous autopsy, which clearly indicates he had died before. We also see the ninja Nobu - who Elektra incorrectly identifies as “the head” of the Hand in NYC in Daredevil Season 2 - return being burned alive. And again after having his neck and/or back broken (he was thrown from a roof)... the only time he stayed dead was post-decapitation (thank you, Stick).

While it seems reasonable that a higher-up like Nobu would be given functional immortality, the unnamed Hand-ninja-in-the-morgue suggests that it’s given far more freely than that. Given that one of the biggest points of conflict inside the Hand is Alexandra’s decision to use the last of their “faux-immortal” stew to revive the Black Sky, this seems like an important point. Who does the Hand bring back? How many of their soldiers have this “gift”?

With all the griping over the fact that Alexandra put them all “at risk” by using the last of their stock, you’d think someone (anyone, really), would’ve brought up the fact that the Hand has “wasted” its faux-immortality-goo on others who have been far less helpful (case in point: Harold Meachum).

This isn’t the only question RE: bringing people back. In Daredevil Season 1, Stick kills a boy who was supposedly another Black Sky that Nobu shipped to New York City for “activation.” Stick says he put an “arrow in that thing’s heart.” But clearly, killing a Black Sky doesn’t stop it from being a Black Sky, given that the Hand brought Elektra back to life. So why didn’t they bring the boy Stick killed back to life and make him the Black Sky?

I suppose it could be because the elixir freezes the aging process or doesn’t work on children for one reason or another. Hell, Stick might’ve decapitated the boy or something extreme to prevent that from happening. (But if that’s true, Stick would’ve known that the Hand could bring back Black Skies, and he wouldn’t have so stupidly buried Elektra’s body. Cremation is totally a legit form of burial. There’s no reason Matthew would’ve said no to that, especially if the reason for it was to prevent evil ninjas from desecrating her grave.)

To be honest, I could’ve understood why this point was never addressed in Defenders - except that they made “wasting the last of our serum” a central point of conflict - actually, the sole point of conflict - for our five antagonists. Five antagonists who supposedly have a long history of personal conflict, and two of whom have a very recent history of conflict -- as in, during Iron Fist, they were at loggerheads. There are endless possibilities here, as far as conflict goes. Madam Goa apparently tried to wrest control from Alexandra at some point... but it’s only mentioned in passing, commented on as “the past is the past.” There’s very little in the way of depth here.

Also, everyone keeps bitching that Alexandra brought the Black Sky back to life, yet the Black Sky hasn’t gotten them “closer” to their goals. Their “goals” meaning digging up a bunch of dragon goo underneath New York City. Why would anyone expect a weapon to succeed at that goal? The Black Sky is a weapon, not a backhoe.

Furthermore, in the span of a few months (six months?), the Black Sky has traveled all over the world (or at least to Cambodia) and killed every member of the Chaste. Except Stick... but that’s only because Alexandra ordered his capture (and let’s face it, he gets taken down, too--just later). The Hand’s only serious enemy - the Chaste - were extinguished thanks solely to the Black Sky. If we’re trying to figure out if the Black Sky is a valuable weapon, that’s the kind of information we should be looking at -- not whether or not she helped dig up dragon goo. Again, weapon -- NOT a backhoe. (For more on this, see Plot Issue #2 and Plot Issue #3.)

Plot Issue #2: If the Hand is so bad-ass, why do they suck so much?

Serious question. The Hand has an enemy organization called the Chaste. We’ve only ever heard of them in the world of Daredevil, and only because of Stick (and Elektra). I understand that the Chaste are skilled, dangerous warriors, most (all???) of whom will kill to stop the Hand. But the Hand are skilled, dangerous warriors, all of whom will kill for their organization, and at a few of (more than likely, many of) whom are functionally immortal.

How is it that the Hand, with all their advantages, has failed to overcome an organization like the Chaste? There’s no reason to suspect that the Chaste get all the naturally skilled fighters in the world - Colleen proves that the Hand has its own recruitment methods, and it’s a lot more subtle than putting a cattle-call for “evil ninjas” or “evil ninja wannabes.” The fact that some - even if only a handful - of their warriors can be resurrected over and over again should’ve given them the edge required to defeat the Chaste a long, long time ago.

But they haven’t. They don’t defeat their strongest enemies until the Black Sky turns up. And even then, they complain that resurrecting Black Sky wasted the last of their reserves. Apparently, wiping out their most dangerous enemy - the only enemy the Hand really had, the only army they were really facing - doesn’t justify that particular expense. Nobody bothers to mention that some of that same reserve was “wasted” on Harold Meachum--you know, the dude who set up Rand Enterprising purchasing a pier for the Hand to facilitate their drug smuggling. I’m sure Harold helped Goa and the Hand set up legit business/money laundering operation through Rand, too, as he served them in secret for many years. But, seriously, come on! Purchasing a pier/money laundering/faux-business deals vs. wiping out the Hand’s only true enemy organization/army? That’s not a tough call. Clearly the Black Sky has done more for the Hand than Harold Meachum. Yet no one speaks a world about how much of that dragon-goo was wasted on him.

Beyond that, the Hand has certain goals... goals which a bad-ass organization should be able to achieve. They want to return to K’un-Lun, a place from which they were banished, and they want the dragon-goo from under NYC. Why do they fail at both?

In Daredevil, after Elektra and Matthew steal the secret ledger, the lead boss man says that “this operation” has been decades in the works--in planning, starting, and executing. In Season 1, Nobu uses Fisk to acquire property--specifically, the Midland Circle block under which the special dragon goo resides. The Hand covers their activities by putting a building above the giant hole they’re digging and -- my favorite part -- by smuggling the dirt from that hole out via train car. Seriously? It’s New York City. Dirt is everywhere. If the Hand was so bad ass, they would’ve found a more intelligent way to dispose of DIRT than “smuggling” it out of the city via train.

In Defenders, the first episode ends with an earthquake. It’s implied that this happens because Alexandra pushes up the time frame on dragon-goo extraction. As Goa says, “It won’t be quiet.” Apparently, what she really meant was, “There will be an earthquake where an earthquake shouldn’t be!” Still, it begs the question: with all the careful dirt-extraction-and-smuggling going on, WTF were they doing that caused a freaking earthquake?!

Thankfully, the next part of this story makes a bit more sense. They stop digging because they hit “a wall” that they can’t get through. Alexandra quickly identifies “the one thing” that the masters of K’un-Lun value above all else (aka the Iron Fist--why she didn’t just say this out loud? If it was meant to be mysterious, then epic fail.) as the thing that can open the wall. So the Hand decides they need to catch themselves an Iron Fist.

Again, if they’re so bad-ass, then why do they suck so much? Goa and Bakuto both know who Danny Rand is. After the demise of Harold Meachum, the man has (literally) five known associates: Colleen, Joy, Ward, Claire, and Hogarth. Even before the Hand knew they needed the Iron Fist, they knew he was a threat to their enterprises, no matter how small. So why don’t they have someone staking out/watching his associates? There are five of them, and it’s likely that the Hand had people watching Joy and Ward because of their dealings with Rand Enterprises. They have the resources to stake out Colleen (her dojo is still in the same place, guys), Claire (who, again, hasn’t moved and isn’t in hiding), and Hogarth (who might be trickier than the first two because she’s got resources of her own--but nevertheless, she’s also not in hiding).

The Hand frantically searches for Danny Rand starting with episode two... yet Colleen safely works out in her own dojo while the Defenders are under attack at the Royal Dragon. Nobody is there keeping an eye out. Too bad. Had they bothered, then they would’ve had a chance to follow the Defenders to whatever warehouse they went to with a captured Sowande in tow.

I mean, I feel like surveillance is just a basic Smart Thing to do if you happen to have an organization like the Hand--you know, one with resources, power, and people willing to kill (and surely do other unethical things) for you. If you don’t want to kidnap Colleen to use her as bait for the Iron Fist (which, why not? That totally could have worked!), then at the very least, keep an eye on her location. The Iron Fist is bound to go to her (or she to him) eventually. Again, the man has 5 associates. FIVE.

So, they fail epically at getting the Iron Fist. Which blocks their dragon-goo-extraction plan. All because they fail to do a basic Smart Thing that an organization of evil ninjas/criminal masterminds could’ve easily implemented. Again, if they’re so bad-ass, why do they suck so much?

Okay, but that wasn’t their only goal. Right? They also want to go back to K’un-Lun.

In Iron Fist, Bakuto shows Danny a film taken during World War II of an Iron Fist protecting the pass to K’un-Lun from soldiers. Danny watches it and makes no comment about the location, which indicates either that Danny actually has discretion (which, honestly, isn’t that likely), OR that the Iron Fist in the film is protecting the same pass that Danny himself had traveled through (and protected). We don’t know when Bakuto acquired this video, but we do know that the passage to K’un-Lun opens every fifteen years. So if it was open in 1948, then it would likely open again sometime in 1963, and again in 1978, and again in 1993, and again in 2008. (Note: This doesn’t line up with Danny’s entrance into K’un-Lun around 2002 nor his return to NYC in 2017. So clearly the “fifteen years” rule has a bit of leeway to it--unless it’s closer to the “ten year” rule in the comics with about a year of time being open, making it every 11 years or thereabouts.)

My point is, unless Bakuto was telling the truth (unlikely) and only recently acquired this video, he knew the general location of K’un-Lun’s passage opening. If he ever had the goal of returning, why didn’t he have that location staked out? Why didn’t he have a home or disciple living in the general area reporting back to him? Heck, once he had the Iron Fist in his training camp, why didn’t he go straight to the now-unguarded pass and walk right in?

It’s implied that the Hand attacked K’un-Lun sometime at the end of Iron Fist Season 1. Danny spends much of his time in Defenders lamenting his dereliction of duty because everyone in K’un-Lun is dead because he wasn’t there to guard the pass. Of course, he doesn’t know that for sure -- what he saw was that K’un-Lun and its passage simply wasn’t where he left it. And the only dead people they found outside it were soldiers of the Hand. There are tons of reasons for the passage being gone--it’s far more likely that the masters of K’un-Lun closed that passage to earth prematurely to prevent the Hand Ninjas from infiltrating the city... or maybe they’ve closed it forever. Maybe a new passage was created elsewhere in the world.

But whatever did happen, none of the five fingers (Gao, Sowande, Murakami, Bakuto, or Alexandra) managed to get inside. Even though the Iron Fist wasn’t there to guard the entrance. Again, if they’re so bad-ass, why do they suck so much?

Plot Issue #3: If the Chaste is so bad-ass, why do they suck so much?

It’s possible that the reason that the Chaste manage to persist for so long is that they are, in fact, a deadly army. Maybe they cause real problems for the Hand all over the world... maybe the Chaste really are as bad-ass as Stick says they are.

Trouble is, both Daredevil and Defenders strongly imply that this simply isn’t the case.

For one thing, the Black Sky kills every single member of the Chaste (all over the world), yet the Fingers of the Hand bitch that she hasn’t done enough for them. You’d think eliminating an ancient and actually problematic enemy would be more than enough for them to STFU about it.

For another, in Daredevil Season 2, Elektra says that Nobu is the “head of the snake,” and that taking him down is their best bet to stop the evil ninjas from coming after her/the Black Sky. So does that mean Elektra, one of Stick’s best warriors, is in the dark about who the Hand really is? I suppose she could’ve been lying to Matthew, but given the stakes, that doesn’t seem likely. She honestly thinks that her (their) best bet is to take down Nobu, which makes no sense if she knows about Murakami or any of the other fingers of the Hand.

Even if Stick had a reason fro keeping Elektra (specifically) in the dark, given her inner Black-Sky-ness... then why doesn’t the Chaste know WTF the Hand are doing in New York City? It’s an operation they’ve been planning for decades. And more than that, it’s an operation that is quite ridiculously complex (given the actual goal of digging up dragon goo)--they have funding from criminal enterprises like Gao’s heroin, legitimate business dealings from infiltrating businesses like Rand Enterprises and the Roxxon Corporation. There were undoubtedly others. Which means there were plenty of places to start digging--to start trying to figure out WTF the Hand was doing for decades.

It’s implied that the Chaste have been thwarting the Hand’s attempts to activate a Black Sky for a long, long time. Too bad we know little to nothing about the Black Sky -- for example, how are they identified? If we knew more, it might actually tell us something about the Chaste.

Again, this is one of those things I might’ve been able to let go. Unfortunately, the destruction of the Chaste (their entire army) is part of the Defenders ramping up. It‘s the thing that says, “You four are the only thing that’s gonna save New York City. Ain’t no backup coming.” Conveniently, the only member of the Chaste we know (besides Elektra) survives for most of the Defenders, so we don’t waste time on a new character--but it begs the question... why was Stick singled out? That conveys a level of knowledge/authority that honestly hadn’t been there before. I mean, his connection to Matthew and Elektra was training... he went to these kids and trained them individually. The leader of an organization/army wouldn’t have that luxury. So did he rise through the ranks later? Or was he just so damn scrappy he happened to be the only surviving leader of the Chaste, no matter how low-level he might be?

Thus the conflict: the Chaste was “the army” for the Iron Fist, so their destruction tells the Defenders, our protagonists, that there ain’t no backup comin’, and chances are, anyone who might back you up won’t believe evil, undead/undying ninjas are trying to destroy New York City by extracting dragon goo from under it. Conversely, the Five Fingers of the Hand, our antagonists, simply aren’t impressed by the Black Sky who wiped out their only true enemies--given that they act as if such a weapon was clearly not worth the dragon goo that it took to bring her back!

So which is it? Are the Chaste actually a problem? If so, why did they complain so much about the Black Sky? If not, then why bother sending the Black Sky after them at all? Why even be worried about the Chaste, if they proved no real threat?

Furthermore, after so long fighting the Hand, why doesn’t the Chaste know anything about them? In Iron Fist, the leader of the Hatchet Men (another organized crime group that had beef with Gao/the Hand stealing their pier), told Ward Meachum a story about one of the Hand’s soldiers--who once had been a farmer, before the Hand brought him back. “They destroy those closest to them first,” the man explained (paraphrased). “All you can do is run.”

Bakuto is much more helpful. He tells Ward that decapitation can do the trick. (Previously, Ward had stabbed his father to death and dumped his body in a lake... unfortunately, Harold spontaneously resurrected in said lake. No dragon goo or ancient device-thingie required!)

Apparently, the rules of the Hand’s resurrections are thus:

It doesn’t stop you from dying--it just brings you back to life.

At least one time, dragon-goo (or something like it) is required.

Post dragon-goo resurrection, the individual will spontaneously regenerate after most deaths... unless their head is cut off. Then the only way for you to live again is MORE dragon goo.

It’s implied that cremating Harold Meachum also prevented him from spontaneously resurrecting. Though I suppose they could’ve also cut his head off before they burnt his body... you know, just in case. (Though it does beg the question--after Fisk said Nobu should be “left to burn”--how did he survive? DID HE SPONTANEOUSLY RESURRECT WHILE STILL ON FIRE?! Sorry, that question required all caps...)

So, we know that the Chaste knew about the faux-immortality thing. Maybe they didn’t know about the beheading (which is reasonable, as given the Hand would have VERY, VERY good reason to keep that kind of thing secret--something only an insider like Bakuto would know)... but surely, someone in the Chaste must’ve WONDERED about how they could resurrect if, let’s say, they took their enemies heads?

I don’t mean just a simple beheading. I mean, cutting off the heads of the Hand ninjas and taking them away--either to be buried or burned or ... whatever. Surely someone in the Chaste thought that this would be effective -- if not to stop them, then to slow them down. Right? What about burning the bodies? Again, this is a reasonable thing to try after killing someone from the Hand. Eventually, the Chaste should’ve known one way or the other if beheading/burning the bodies was an effective way to stop (or slow) the resurrection process.

Again, it’s implied that Stick knows about beheading being an effective means against them at the end of Season 2, when he cuts off Nobu’s head. (He doesn’t take Nobu’s head with him, though. So I guess it’s lucky the Hand was low on dragon-goo... otherwise, Nobu would’ve probably returned...)

It’s also weird that Stick doesn’t behead or cremate Elektra (who is buried under a name known to the Hand). Maybe the Chaste think that the Hand can only resurrect people who have been dead for less than a certain period of time. And Elektra was likely dead for a few days at least, though how they buried her in a legitimate grave with no autopsy is beyond my best guess...

Plot Issue #4: The Architect

Jessica Jones is hired to find John Raymond, the Architect who built the Midland Circle building. You know, the one covering up the giant hole that goes straight down to the dragon goo.

So, this guy -- who has no ties whatsoever to the Hand or the Chaste or anything like that -- is hired to build a building. Great. Then he discovers that nefarious shit is afoot below said building. It’s so nefarious that he stock-piles C4 and makes very specific plans to implode an entire building (a building he designed/built) to stop the nefarity of it all.

To be clear: the Hand is digging to get to a repository of fossils/at least one dragon body. For some reason (never explained), removing the goo of this dragon body (also not explained) will cause the entire city of New York to collapse (again, not explained at all). So, let’s say that John Raymond, all-around good guy, father, and architect, finds out that the Hand (or whoever he thinks they are) are illegally digging/extracting stuff from under the city.

How does a good man get from “illegal shit happening” to “I’mma gonna blow them up!”

I suppose it’s possible that he discovered that the Hand believed they were digging up dragon bones/goo and that, in so doing, the entire city of New York would be destroyed. This begs the question: how did he believe any of this crap?

Seriously, digging up dragon bones is one thing--and I can even believe that he’d be concerned that such digging causing geological devastation that would harm New York City. But someone in his position would report something like that to the authorities. There’s no need to BLOW UP A BUILDING to stop them! So why is he doing it? The only answer is that he actually believes that dragon-goo extraction will cause city-wide implosion...

But seriously, WHY? How does a normal guy with no connection to any mysticism believe that a few people digging a hole can sink all of New York City? (Note that the earthquake would be a good reason for him to freak out, but he was collecting explosives before that happened... also, again, he could’ve reported the illegal digging to the authorities rather than trying to blow up a building.)

Final note There is a thing that happens where when people say “New York City” when what they really mean is Manhattan (and only Manhattan). This is one reason why people will say “the five boroughs” instead of NYC--to make sure everyone knows they mean “New York City, as in, you know, all of it.” But it seems to me that the that Manhattan--not NYC/the five boroughs--will sink into the earth post-dragon-goo-extraction. I know this is a (comparatively) small detail, but it bothers me nonetheless.

#defenders #daredevil #jessica jones #luke cage #iron fist #somewhat of a rant

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beaft · 8 years ago

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How do you come up with your worlds for your stories? Do you start with a character or a world? How do you figure out the amazing little quirks and details that make it so attractive, without being repetitive or similar to another world? Do you go into the core mechanics of magic when it's present in your world? And how do you brainstorm your world/ideas? How do you know what's a good idea or bad and not worth pursuing?

Oh, man, thank you so much for giving me an excuse toramble about this (although my response is gonna be pretty long, so you mightregret asking). I have a lot of thoughts about worldbuilding, and very few ofthem are coherent, but here’s my best attempt!

(warning: lots of Wordsunder the cut)

1) I don’t really knowhow to answer this one, because…I honestly don’t know? Sometimes it just sortof happens – an idea comes into myhead, and I just put it down and run with it. The “Dearly Departed” ‘versehappened when I got lost in the woods, and found myself wondering what I’d doif I came out again to discover that everyone had disappeared. Pretty basic,but from there it evolved into a weird quasi-horror story with its own set ofrules, to the point where the original concept was fairly peripheral. Other times,it’s just a question of looking at something and asking yourself, “How doesthis work? What would happen if I changed this specific aspect, or addedsomething new on?” Sometimes it feels a bit like engineering – taking thingsapart and putting them back together in new ways, and seeing what happens as aresult.

2) I have kind of a weirdway of working when it comes to characters; sometimes a very loud anddistinctive voice will turn up in my head, and when that happens I spend a bitof time living with them and listening to what they’ve got to say. Then I put themin a sort of mental bank where they can be taken out and inserted into a storythat seems to fit them (possibly adapting some elements of their personality inthe process). Other times, the world itself will suggest what kind ofcharacters might fit into it. In Midnight Calling, a central idea is thatdreams have substance, and can be used as a weapon – so from there it justseemed narratively fitting for the main character to be narcoleptic. I do needto plan out my characters beforehand, though, because if I just try and makethem up as I go they all end up sounding like me (which is to say, confusedsnarky everymen who just want to go home and have a cup of tea and a nicesit-down). As much as we all love Bilbo Baggins, no one wants a story entirelypopulated by him.

3) The fact is, there aren’treally many “original” ideas left. Making something interesting doesn’t generallycome about by thinking of a concept that nobody has ever thought of before, butby combining old ideas in new ways. Occasionally, it’s fun to just mashtogether two completely random plots or genres, and see what happens. Forexample, Six of Crows is essentially justGame of Thrones meets Oceans Eleven, whilst TheDresden Files is what happens when you take a Raymond Chandler story andadd wizards. The weirder and the more seemingly disparate the ideas are, thebetter. (Or so I’ve found, anyway.)

4) While I’m objectivelyterrible at anything vaguely science-related, I do try to go into themechanics, because at the end of the day I like to have explanations for things.It’s…partly why the way Marvel deals with the whole “magic” thing kind ofannoys me? To give one example: we’re shown that Loki can shapeshift, and whenhe does his voice changes to match the voice of the person he’s imitating (whichindicates that it’s a full-body change, not just a superficial illusion). However,when he alters other people – such as transforming Thor into Sif – their voicesstay the same, implying that this is either a different kind of transformationaltogether or that the voice change and the appearance change are two separate spells.It’s little stuff like that which really gets to me, because it takesme out of that world and makes me question what the actual rules are, orwhether there are even rules at all. simply put, it feels lazy. So while it isimportant to walk that line between “over-explaining” and “under-explaining”, youdo need to have some kind of internal consistency in place - unless you’re doing full-on surrealism, in which case you’re probably not going to be doing much worldbuilding anyway.

4) My brainstormingusually takes the form of random scribbled notes with a lot of question marksand crossings-out, and probably makes absolutely no sense to anyone who isn’tme. I usually start with a simple concept, and once I have that down there are afew core things that have to be dealt with straight off the bat, such as: whatdifferent cultures exist in this world? How do they interact? Is there anydiscrimination, and if so where does it come from? (For example, having homophobiajust for the sake of “realism” is pretty sloppy, and just makes it seem asthough the author couldn’t be bothered to conceptualise a world in which gaypeople aren’t treated like shit.) What are the different social classes? What’sthe climate and geography? What important historical events happened that impactedthe world? Dragon Age does this really well, imo – while plenty of people havecomplained about the absurd amount of codexes and random lengthy chunks of socio-politicalinformation, there’s no denying that it does a lot to make the setting feel likea real place with a rich history, not something that conveniently sprang intoexistence right before the narrative begins. The way to stop this from becomingtedious and expositional is to allow it to support the story, rather thanbeing the story. Your audience doesn’t need to know everything that youknow. So long as you slip in details here and there, they can generally be countedon to fill in the blanks themselves.

5) The only way I cantell if an idea is good or not is to write it. Generally, if I find it excitingand I want to explore it further, it’s a keeper. If I’m twenty pages in and it’salready feeling like a slog, I don’t bother. While forcing yourself to grindthrough the tough bits is (unfortunately) a key part of the writing process, ifit doesn’t interest you in at least some capacity, then it probably won’tinterest anybody else either.

Thank you again, andapologies for the essay!

#replies #be shh now

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wbwest · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/05/05/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-5517/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 5/5/17

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In TV news, we got the first trailer for Marvel’s The Defenders series on Netflix. I dunno, y’all. I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’m behind on these shows. At this point, I’ve only seen Daredevil season 1 and Jessica Jones. No DD S2, no Luke Cage, and no Iron Fist. Sorry, kids, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Daredevil was a worthy bingeing experience, as each episode ended on a cliffhanger that MADE you have to check out the next episode immediately. Jessica Jones, not so much. It took me about 3 months to get through that show. Now, I enjoyed it, but it didn’t demand that I consume it immediately. I’m eager to catch Luke Cage, but I wanna go in order, so that means I’ve got to meet the Punisher and Elektra first in Daredevil season 2. So, even though The Defenders comes out in August, I’ll be lucky if I get to it in 2017. Anyway, I told you all that to make you see that my level of enthusiasm for this probably isn’t as high as yours because I’m so far behind. That said, I thought this trailer looked hokey as Hell. The scene where Murdock comes into Jessica’s interrogation felt like a bad fan film. Shit, the whole thing felt like a bad fan film. Remember when Playstation Network aired that Bendis Powers show? Yeah, it looks like that. Something about the cinematography of it all. And then they had to do another goddamn hallway fight. WE GET IT ALREADY! I just don’t know about this one right now..

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In other TV news, there are talks of a Roseanne revival, with ABC and Netflix interested bidding on the project. Laurie Metcalf, Aunt Jackie herself, reported that contracts have been worked out, so now they’re just trying to sell the series. Right now, Roseanne (does she currently have a last name?), John Goodman, and Sara Gilbert would star, while Metcalfe says she’s on board in some capacity. It’ll be interesting to see how they pull this off, ya know with Dan being dead and all. Still, it ended with one of the most maligned series finales in television history, and they’ve got a chance to basically erase it. How many shows can say that? Anyway, I was never a huge Roseanne fan. They were just so poor and depressing. Are they gonna lose the bike shop? Are they gonna lose the loose meat restaurant? Is Fisher gonna stop beating up Jackie? I know their struggles resonated with certain folks, but not me. I actually liked the Lottery Season because I could say “Thank God their lives aren’t such shit anymore!” Anyway, I’d bet money on this happening, so it’s now just a matter of where it’s gonna air. The big question is in which “universe” it will be set. After all, the finale basically laid out that everything since about season 4 of the show had been a lie, since Darlene actually ended up with Mark, Becky was the one with David, Jackie was a lesbian, etc. So, would we get the “true” Roseanne, or just more of what we’re used to? And with Mark dead, and David on The Big Bang Theory, I don’t really expect much from those characters anyway. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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I was on my own last weekend, so I took the time to watch TV and catch up comics. Well, I didn’t really watch TV, but it was on in the background. It provided the soundtrack to my comic time. What did I watch? CMT – Country Music Television. Yeah, yeah, you hate country. I don’t care. I grew up on it, so it has a special place in my heart. Anyway, when I saw Brad Paisley’s new video for “Last Time For Everything”, I KNEW I had to share it with y’all. This thing is a love letter to children of the 80s, complete with tracking/tape distortion lines. I don’t wanna spoil anything, so just check it out. Don’t worry – the song’s not about drankin’, or a dead dog, or his wife left him; it’s just a song about appreciating things when you have them because they won’t always be there.

The backdoor pilot for the Black-ish spinoff aired this week. Oh, you don’t know what a “backdoor pilot” is? It’s when an established show gives up one of its episodes to try to launch a new show. Since it already has a built-in audience, it kinda tricks viewers into watching a new show that they otherwise wouldn’t have checked out. Married…with Children had, like, 4 of them. Anyway, in Black-ish, Zoey went off to check out college, made a new best friend, and pissed off the Black Student Union. The whole episode was kinda hokey, but it worked. Chris Parnell was the spineless dean, which is basically every Chris Parnell character these days. And I love how they worked Deon Cole’s Charlie into the plot. If the spinoff gets picked up (I mean, why wouldn’t it?), I hope he gets a bigger role there than he has on Black-ish. If Black-ish is a modern-day Cosby Show, then this is its A Different World. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that, really.

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If you like useless gimmick items as much as I do, then make sure you pick up your Frork from McDonalds today. To celebrate the release of their three new Signature Crafted Recipes (Pico Guacamole, Sweet BBQ Bacon, and Maple Bacon Dijon), they’re releasing a utensil that they know nobody needs, but hey, why not? The Frork is basically a fry holder, where the fries act as the tines of the fork. In the infomercial, complete with Anthony Sullivan appearance, they claim the Frork will help you scoop up the toppings that fall off your overflowing sandwich. I swear Anthony Sullivan killed Billy Mays ‘so he’d get ALL that sweet infomercial work. But I digress…If you would like a Frork, check this link to see if one of your local McDonalds locations is giving them out today.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

HBO has hired writers for FOUR potential Game of Thrones spinoffs. So, get ready for Match of Chairs, Bout of Seats, Mother of Dragons and, my personal favorite, Tits & Swords.

Warner Bros has pushed back its theatrical animated Scooby-Doo film two years to 2020.

Girl Meets World is officially dead, as creator Michael Jacobs was unable to find a new home for the series.

While this news is about a month old, FXX has decided against a fourth season of Man Seeking Woman, which wrapped up its 3rd season in March. The season finale was a fitting series finale, so I ain’t mad.

Hot on the heels of its premiere, Hulu has renewed The Handmaid’s Tale for a second season.

Surprising no one, Fox canceled the freshman drama Pitch, about the first female major league baseball player. Following on their heels, NBC canceled the Wizard of Oz update Emerald City.

It was reported that Gabriel Luna’s Ghost Rider will be returning to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for the season finale

Speaking of Marvel TV, we got our first cast picture from Inhumans. KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

We also got our first look at the cast of Marvel’s Runaways on Hulu. They look like the comic, but I still hate that they aged Molly. I like her more as a precocious child to balance them out.

A strike by the Writers Guild of America, which would’ve affected all corners of entertainment, was narrowly averted at the 11th hour

Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed that they’re engaged. Man, they shit in the company ink! That’s the saying, right?

The biggest TV news of the week was that Ryan Seacrest was announced as Kelly Ripa’s permanent cohost on what will now be called Live with Kelly & Ryan. This bothered me so much! First of all, I was really kinda hoping an underdog, like Fred Savage, would get it. And if they had to go with a media person, they had Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen on the list. But Seacrest?! The dude’s empire is based in LA and, yes, he has an empire. He’s a modern-day Merv Griffin, producing Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Shades of Blue, and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. He also has a daily syndicated radio show, On Air With Ryan Seacrest, as well as hosts the weekly American Top 40 countdown. With all that going on, you’d think he’d stay in LA instead of taking a job from a New Yorker. Instead, iHeartMedia has built a radio station in the ABC Studios building so that he can do his radio show immediately after taping Live. The plan is for him to stay in New York Monday-Thursday to film Live, he’ll pretape Friday’s show on Thursday, and then he’ll spend Friday-Sunday in LA.

But that’s not ALL the Seacrest news this week. You see, talks of an American Idol revival have heated up again. I wrote about it a few weeks ago, when NBC and Fox were both interested in the show – NBC especially because they could, then, reduce The Voice to one cycle a year. Those talks fell through, but now it appears that ABC has gotten into the game, with one stipulation: there’s no Idol without Seacrest, so the show would have to move to New York so he could continue to host. The show’s production company, Fremantle, insists that it stays in LA. ABC wants to announce it during the May upfronts, which occur in two weeks, for a Fall 2018 premiere (yeah, it ain’t gonna be ready by this Fall). So here’s the plan on how that would work: Fremantle wants to air Idol on Sunday nights from LA, where Seacrest would then fly to NYC after the show in order to make it in time to film Live Monday morning. After filming Monday’s Live, he would then fly back to LA for the Idol results show. Once that’s over, he would fly back to NYC in time for Tuesday’s Live. My God! The live portion of Idol is only 10 weeks, but that is a grueling schedule that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. So far, however, it seems that ABC’s plan would be to air Idol on Mondays, to go head to head with The Voice, so this plan wouldn’t work.

Say what you will about Seacrest, but I’ve always admired the dude’s work ethic. He doesn’t seem to know the word “no”, and he’s constantly building his brand. With the exception of the short-lived On Air With Ryan Seacrest TV show (which is conveniently missing from his Wikipedia entry), he doesn’t really fail at anything. I guess hard work and determination really can take you places. I’ll tell ya, back when he was hosting Click and Gladiators 2000, I had NO CLUE he would become as big as he is. He makes me wanna go out and get 3 more jobs. Then again, I wouldn’t have his net worth of $330 million, but it’d be a start. Anyway, for taking all the jobs, while growing in power, Ryan Seacrest had the West Week Ever.

#80s #Comics #Country #Marvel #Music #Television #West Week Ever

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targetdummy · 8 years ago

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I’m not interesting, but I was tagged by @givemebishies to answer some stuff about. These probably won’t be that cool or interesting for anyone else to read, but here we go!

Rules: Answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions.

1. Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi. It’s sweeter, and you’re supposed to sip soda rather than drinking it like water. Plus, MJ still forgave them after they caught his hair on fire, started his painkiller addiction, and dropped him as a promoter because of the child abuse allegations, so I imagine he at least liked to drink it.

2. Disney or Dreamworks: Disney generally. I’m not a big fan of either one, but I think Disney has made more important things in their time. Kind of unfair since they’ve been around longer, but whatever.

3. Coffee or Tea: Cappuccino. And even then I don’t want to taste the coffee in it.

4. Books or Movies: I watch more movies, but I think more books have had a serious impact on my life. I don’t know though, Rocky is a freaking masterpiece.

5. Windows or Mac: What? Where is my GNU/Linux option? Richard Stallman didn’t die for this! [For real though, I use Windows because I’m peasant trash who likes to play video games without spending hours on configuration. Though, I am considering dual-booting with Linux Mint in the near future. We’ll see. And Stallman isn’t dead, that was a joke.]

6. DC or Marvel: Marvel. Gotta have my Spider-Man and X-Men. The Avengers are also much more varied and interesting than the Justice League.

7. Xbox or Playstation: Playstation all the way. I can’t even name an Xbox exclusive offhand other than Halo or Gears of War. Playstation has a more interesting history too.

8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: A friend of mine kept telling me to play both, but stressed Dragon Age more. I have played neither.

9. Night Owl or Early Rise: Night owl. I feel and work better at night. I like knowing the rest of the world is asleep.

10. Cards or Chess: Cards because they are an unlimited number of games! (So is Chess technically, but I like that with cards you can more easily have a random aspect if you want).

11. Chocolate or Vanilla: Are we talking ice cream? Vanilla. Are we talking brownies? Chocolate. Are we talking anything else? I don’t know.

12. Vans or Converse: I buy the cheapest shoe that feels comfortable and doesn’t make me hate myself when I wear them. I’ve never owned either of those.

13. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash or Adaar: I’m sorry, I’m only a level 2 mage, I don’t know those ones yet.

14. Fluff or Angst: both I guess? I’m an angst lookin’ to get his fluff on.

15. Beach or Forest: Beach beach beach. I need to be warm and surrounded by water.

16. Dogs or Cats: I like cats and dogs that act like cats.

17. Clear Skies or Rain: Rain all the way. Rain for days. Clear skies are boring and make me sad. They don’t even move. I can feel rain. It surrounds me and makes me feel loved. Warm rain especially, or cool rain on a warm day.

18. Cooking or Eating Out: I prefer eating out in both senses of the term. But for real, I love restaurants. I love the feeling of being in one, and knowing that my food is being handled by someone who knows how to make it well. Then to just have it brought to me, it’s awesome. Like, I didn’t make this. I don’t deserve this. But you’re giving me this, just for some paper. It’s just so comforting. Oh, and takeout is awesome too, because it’s that experience, but with more control and less atmosphere. All of it makes me so happy, honestly, I can’t understate how awesome it is to pickup food from somewhere awesome. Shout out to my people at El Canelo, that’s the place I dream of when I’m hungry. Any Chinese/Japanese is great too. Then fast food, Sheetz and Chick-Fil-A especially can be great. All of it, man. I’m sorry, I wrote too much for this.

19. Spicy Food or Mild Food: Spicy! Specifically, spicy and sweet. It’s all a part of the experience!

20. Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Halloween is cooler theme-wise. Japanese Christmas though 💕

21. Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot : Yeah, I guess a little too cold, because I love the sensation of getting warm.

22. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? Phew, does what Dr. Manhattan have count? You know, just be god. Nah, I wouldn’t want that, that’s too much. Controlling time would be cool. Would probably be depressing in reality, but cool in theory.

23. Animation or Live Action: This really depends on the work.

24. Paragon or Renegade: I have no idea what this is referencing. But Renegade is a 1986 beat ‘em up game that I really like for one reason: it’s the start of the Kunio-Kun series that would eventually lead to Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, or River City Ransom. Renegade isn’t amazing on its own, but really cool to see where RCR got its origin.

25. Baths or Showers: Showers usually.

26. Team Cap or Team Iron Man: Haven’t watched Civil War yet, but Iron Man.

27. Fantasy or Sci-Fi: Sci-Fi usually feels bigger than Fantasy and can include Fantasy elements without much of an issue (infinite universe, infinite possibilities), so I’ll go with it.

28. Do you have three or four favourite quotes?

Okay, these might get lengthy, so here we go:

1. (Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 2)

“Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt... anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing. “

2. (Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen)

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”

3. (Shigeru Miyamoto)

“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.“

And there’s a lot more but I’m bad at remembering them.

29. YouTube or Netflix: YouTube, I watch it way more than Netflix. I like all the different voices on YouTube, how accessible it is.

30. Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: Isn’t Harry Potter a My Immortal fanfic? I go with that one. Also, nobody will even remember Percy Jackson in ten years.

31. When You Feel Accomplished: When I’ve created something that people enjoy, and when I fulfill the needs of those I love. I haven’t been doing enough of either lately :/

32. Star Wars or Star Trek: I accept that Star Trek is superior in every way, however I will always defend Star Wars as my personal favorite.

33. Paperback Books or Hardback Books: Hardback. I am less likely to ruin it, and it looks nicer on a shelf.

34. horror or rom-com: I’m not a fan of either, but I like horror elements in other things.

35. tv shows or movies: TV shows. Individual stories that build to an overall story arc will always have more depth than a single movie. That’s why Samurai Jack is more compelling than any of the samurai movies it draws inspiration from.

36. favorite animal: Tiger.

37. favorite genre of music: Funk and its derivatives.

38. least favorite book: The Old Man and the Sea. I like Hemmingway, but it’s a book where nothing happens, the most exciting part is when he says the ocean is a women having her period, and the ending feels like actually watching an old man die. He doesn’t die in the book, that’s just how it feels.

39. favourite season: Summer. As hot as possible.

40. song that’s currently stuck in your head: ME NE’ER HA ME GUN SO ME HA TA MOO SHARP LI ME KNIFE

41. what kind of pyjama’s do you wear? Pajama pants and a t-shirt. I wear this all day when possible.

42. Handwriting or Typing? Typing. Gotta go fast. And I can’t compile my code from a piece of paper.

43. If you can only choose one song to be played at your funeral, what would it be? The Real Folk Blues.

44. What is your go to book/movie/tv show that you immediately find solace in when you feel down? Okay, I don’t know about books, movies, or TV shows, but I always find solace in any YouTube show that can make me feel less alone. It doesn’t have to be funny or interesting, I just have to feel like people are around me, talking, and being happy. Game Grumps works well for this, or most podcasts.

45. “Yer a wizard/witch, Y/N” - your reaction? I know. I didn’t learn to code just to not be a wizard.

46. Are you generally a messy or organized person? I’m an organized person who appears messy. It’s like a hashing algorithm. There is some initial data behind it, but you can’t make sense of the result, and there’s no way to reverse it.

47. What’s your go to comfort food? Anything fried. Especially fries. It just feels so familiar, so welcoming, like it can never be bad. Especially with good sauces, sweet and sour most of all probably.

48. Do you enjoy being creative? If so what’s your favorite way to create? I do. I’m not sure what my favorite way is. Writing is easiest, but making games and web stuff is so rewarding. I need to do more either way.

My question:

49: Other than Tumblr, what is your favorite website?

I have no friends to tag :D (But if you see this and nobody tagged you to do it, you can totally say I tagged you and do it anyway. I’ll vouch for you.)

#ask tag

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sunbrights · 8 years ago

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fic: by the claw of dragon (2/7)

fandom: danganronpa characters/pairings: natsumi kuzuryuu, fuyuhiko kuzuryuu, peko pekoyama + 77th class ensemble, et al. kuzupeko. character tags will be updated on AO3 with plot-relevant characters as chapters are posted. rating: m summary: The Kuzuryuu Clan stands on the precipice of the greatest era of its history. Kuzuryuu Natsumi promises to be the strongest leader the clan has ever seen, the Overlord of the South born again. That Hopes’s Peak Academy would select her for it’s 77th class was assumed, not hoped for.

To the younger Kuzuryuu son, everything is as it’s meant to be.

One class turns into three, and then five. Natsumi still thinks she got the better end of the deal, but she has to hand it to Yukizome: the classes aren’t terrible. They’re still useless, but at least they aren’t boring.

One day Souda and Nanami push all the desks to the sides of the room so that they can set up a video game tournament, and the whole class gets riled up over some stupid game where cartoon characters fight each other. Natsumi lingers in the back with Peko, and watches Nanami wipe the floor with them round after round after round.

“Kuzuryuu-san.” She’s texting when Nanami turns around in her seat. When she looks up, Nanami has one of the controllers held out toward her. “Do you want to play this round?”

Souda mutters, “What, seriously? Her? But she’s—” and Natsumi throws him a glare that makes him choke on the rest of it.

“What? Are you boring yourselves already?” Nanami smiles when she snatches the controller from her hand. “Fine, fine. Give it here. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

“So…. That means we need two more players.” Nanami looks up at the rest of the room. Natsumi focuses on selecting a character. She can’t decide between the pink blobby thing and the one that looks like a giant, ugly dragon. “Who else wants to play?”

The room meets her with silence.

Peko makes to step forward, but Natsumi pins her back to her place against the wall with a look. Having her be the only one to volunteer would be worse than no one volunteering at all.

She can feel Nanami looking at her.

“Well,” she says, “We could play one-on-one, but….”

“What the hell! You guys are holdin’ up the game!” Owari shoulders through the crowd and falls cross-legged onto the cushion next to Natsumi. “Gimme that, I’ll play again.”

“Then I shall play as well!” Sonia descends onto the last empty seat, and pushes her sleeves up to her elbows. “Be prepared, everyone— this game is about to ‘get lit’!”

Natsumi ends up picking the pink blob.

Owari decimates her.

“Bullshit!” she shouts, the fourth time Owari’s character flings hers off the screen. The rest of the class has crowded the TV to watch; someone in the back whistles as her blob flies into the distance and disappears. “That move is cheap and you know it!”

“It’s actually a pretty sophisticated technique,” Nanami says. Her fingers don’t break rhythm on the buttons as she talks; she’s ahead of all of them by at least three lives. “It’s difficult to control, but once you master it, it’s extremely powerful and reliable.”

“Shut up!”

“Hear that, Kuzuryuu? I’m a master.” Owari elbows into her space, and Natsumi elbows back. At this point she may as well be smashing her entire hand against all the buttons, for all the good they’re doing her. “Now c’mere so I can knock you out of this once and for all!”

“Shut up!”

“Do not feel bad, Kuzuryuu-san,” Sonia says. “I was eliminated ages ago. At the very least, you will get third place!”

“Shut up!”

It doesn’t last long at all. Her blob has barely respawned before it’s being flung again to the other side of the map, and all it takes is a few fumbled button presses for her last life to go down the drain.

Owari whoops. Natsumi throws her controller on the ground. The rest of the class leans away from the TV to wait for the round to finish; anyone versus Nanami is interesting to nobody.

“Aw, man.”

“What, were you seriously rooting for Natsumi?”

“I mean, kinda, yeah. She’s totally right about that move, it’s a frickin’ nightmare.”

“Can we kick this dumb-dumb out yet? I’m getting sick and tired of her always winning. She’s just pressing the same buttons over and over again!”

“She’s not winning, though.”

“Losing to Chiaki-chan basically is winning to the rest of us!”

“Let us play one more round. A ‘redemption round,’ if you will,” Sonia says, after Nanami has beaten Owari into a pulp, and the final tally screen is up to tell them how much worse they are in comparison. “Kuzuryuu-san and myself versus Nanami-san and Owari-san, for honor!”

Nanami starts to say something about rotating classmates and giving others fair turns, but Owari drowns her out. “You’re on!” she crows, and bullies her way over to swap seats with Sonia. “You and me, Nanami, let’s do this!”

Sonia settles into the seat next to Natsumi, and offers her discarded controller back. “What do you say, Kuzuryuu-san? Shall we teach them who is ‘boss’ and who is not? A true ‘Coming Back Special’!”

Natsumi rolls her eyes. “Jeez, if you’re gonna talk like that, you might as well not talk, Sonia-san.” She snatches the controller, and their classmates swoop in to crowd the TV again. “I just want to get this idiot to shut up.”

“Eat it, Kuzuryuu! You’re goin’ down!”

It goes about as well as any of them expected.

The irony of going to class on a daily basis is that now she has to do all her actual work on her own time. But the plan is simple enough, once she puts all the pieces together. It might be basic, but that’s only because she perfected the strategy years ago, and it hasn’t let her down since. She knows what she does, and she does it well.

She lays it out for Fuyuhiko the next time they talk, step by step.

“‘Novoselic’?” he echoes, when she’s finished. “Bullshit. That’s not a real place.”

“If things didn’t exist just because you didn’t know about them, then Aunt Miyū was a ghost until last year.“

“Will you give that a fucking rest already?”

“Look it up!”

“I am looking it up.”

She sits through watching him search for all the info she knows already. (She drums her nails against the body of her laptop when it takes too long. He snaps, “Cut it out,” and she starts tapping the microphone directly instead.) The fourth time he sighs like the computer is a personal imposition on him, she gives up.

“What’s your problem now?”

“I can’t find it on the goddamn map is the problem!”

Natsumi groans into her hands. “No, stupid, that’s the point.” The distance is such a massive pain in the ass; this would be so much easier if he were just here with her. “Whatever! Look it up on your own time. Just listen to me. The country is miniscule, okay? Like, beyond tiny. Most people don’t even know it exists, and most map makers just totally skip over it. But their military is loaded. Every single person learns how to use military-grade weapons as a regular part of school.”

She watches for his reaction, but he’s focused on another page on his computer. She reaches for the folder on the shelf above her head, the one with all her notes and printouts. He hasn’t interrupted her yet, and she doesn’t intend to give him the chance.

“Think about it. Who’s going to notice if there’s a few extra crates of handguns going through a place like that? If we had a waypoint for Europe, we can ship directly from there. Cut down on the trip for anything coming in or out. Man it with our own people.“

“And if there’s a monarchy to validate it,” Fuyuhiko finishes, “who’s going to think twice about it?” He must have switched back to the video chat, because he focuses again on the camera. “You think you got an in with the princess?”

“All politicians are the same,” Natsumi says. “Whether they’re a princess or some greasy local stooge. They all want the same things. They’re all afraid of the same things.” She leans back in her chair. “I can get her to say yes.”

“If you say so.” He squints down and to the right— at his desk, or maybe his phone— and then he says, “By the way. Niijima’s old lady’s in the hospital again.”

Natsumi hums. “How many times is that?”

“Three. He’s a fuckin’ mess, you should’ve seen him in here earlier. Couldn’t keep anything straight. I don’t think he’s slept in days.”

She can hear it in his voice. He’s fishing, trying to wheedle something out of her. It’s never worked; she doesn’t know why he still tries. “Spit it out already. What are you trying to say?”

He bristles. “I’m saying maybe it’s about time we take Niijima off that route. Let one of the other three take point. They can handle it.”

“What for? His mom isn’t the one making the drops, is she?”

“Shut up. I’m being serious,” he says. She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “He’s going to fuck it up for the rest of them if he goes. I was surprised he figured out how to tie his shoes this morning. If it’s not this drop, it’ll be another one.”

“I’m being serious too,” she snaps. “We’re not running a charity. He’s been slipping for months, he needs to start earning his keep. If he can’t do that, he’s gonna have to deal with the consequences.”

Fuyuhiko glares somewhere past the camera. He’s gritting his teeth when he says, “Fine.”

“If somebody fucks up, tell me.” Natsumi gathers her papers back together in a pile. “Until then, I’ve gotta focus on this.”

“Fine,” he says again, clipped. “I gotta go.”

The screen goes blank, and Natsumi doesn’t resist the urge this time.

As it turns out, Sonia’s schedule is easy to tap into. She usually eats lunch either in a huddle with some of the other girls in their class, or with Tanaka. It makes getting her alone annoying, but not impossible: Tanaka is always late to lunch (he insists on visiting his animals first, every single day) and Koizumi is the lynchpin of her little entourage. There are days when she goes somewhere else for lunch, and on those days the rest of them take ages to get their act together.

All Natsumi has to do is show up.

It’s a few minutes before lunch on a Tuesday, and Natsumi lets her tray clatter against the table where Sonia is reading. She doesn’t jump or flinch; she just looks up, one finger gently against the inner spine of her book to keep her place. “Sonia-san! Mind if me and Peko-chan sit here today?”

Natsumi’s already sitting by the time Sonia gets through saying, “No, not at all. There is plenty of room for the both of you.” Peko slides onto the bench next to her, and Sonia smiles up at her, too. “Good afternoon, Pekoyama-san.”

Peko only nods.

Sonia doesn’t seem bothered. She sets her book aside, picture perfect politeness. “I must admit, I am a little surprised,” she says. “I thought you and Pekoyama-san preferred to eat together just the two of you.”

Natsumi shrugs. “Yukizome-sensei says we should be ‘branching out.’” She manages half air-quotes, one handed. “So, we thought, why not, you know? Not all of you are completely terrible, I guess.”

“Well, I am honored to be the first,” Sonia says, and she really does seem it, chest puffed up and shoulders straight. “But I think you will find that everyone is very agreeable, if you give them a chance.”

Natsumi eats instead of answering. She tries not to let her curiosity get the better of her, but she can’t help it; she doesn’t actually know where Koizumi goes, on days like this. “Speaking of everyone,” she says, swallowing, “where the heck are they today? Don’t you normally eat with Koizumi-san and her little friends?”

“Ah. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Koizumi-san goes to the West building to eat lunch with a friend of hers in the Reserve Course. Sometimes the others are… delayed, in her absence.”

A friend in the Reserve Course. Peko looks at her, but Natsumi only bobs her head. “Ohhh, I get it. That’s how it is, huh.”

Sonia is quiet for a moment. She hasn’t started to eat yet, but she fidgets with her chopsticks. “Forgive me for saying so, Kuzuryuu-san, but I cannot help but notice… there is a certain amount of animosity between the two of you, is there not?”

Natsumi focuses on stirring her food. “With who, Koizumi-san? Pfft.” Her chopsticks clatter around the edges of her bowl. “That’s all in good fun, you know? We went to middle school together.”

“I see. With you and Pekoyama-san?”

“No,” Peko says. She doesn’t say anything else. Sonia looks at Natsumi instead.

“Me and Peko-chan didn’t go to the same school then,” Natsumi fills in. “We were home schooled for a while, but after that my parents decided to send me to a regular middle school.”

“Fascinating! I myself had never attended a quote normal unquote school before Hope’s Peak Academy.” Sonia doesn’t even attempt the air-quotes. “Did you find it difficult to acclimate to the change?”

Natsumi remembers the first day of middle school, how it had been the first time she could remember without Peko behind her left shoulder. Her teacher had been spineless, and the other girls in her class had gotten upset when he let her cut class and talk back without so much as a reprimand. None of them had known to watch their step or their mouths, not at first.

(She’d learned how to teach them the lesson on her own.)

“Nah,” she says. “It was a breeze.”

“Oh.” Sonia looks down at her tray. Natsumi slurps her lunch and lets her stew. “I must admit… I am having more difficulty acclimating than I anticipated, myself. There is so much I do not know already, and some days I feel I may never catch up. Perhaps if I had started in the school system earlier, I would not be having as much trouble as I am now.”

Natsumi doesn’t look at her. She eats, and thinks about how her middle school teacher, white faced and stammering. “You can tell yourself that if you want, but that’s not how it works,” she says. “You could’ve gone to preschool if you wanted and it would’ve been the same. Probably worse. You should be glad you started out here.”

“How so?”

“You’re a princess. Out there, that’s all you are.” She shrugs. “At least in here it’s the same for most of us. You don’t have to try so hard when everybody else is just as weird as you.”

“I see.” Sonia smiles. “I believe I understand. Thank you for the advice, Kuzuryuu-san. I wonder—”

Peko’s phone buzzes on the table. She lays her hand over it to quiet it, and it buzzes again. She pulls it into her lap instead. “Apologies. I did not mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, no, no need to worry, Pekoyama-san—”

Natsumi cranes her neck over to peer at the screen. “Who’s that?”

“Fuyuhiko-sama,” Peko answers. “Would you like to hear the message, young mistress?”

“Pass,” Natsumi says. She grins around her chopsticks. “He can text whatever he wants. I’m not his babysitter.”

Sonia pats her mouth between bites with a cloth napkin. Natsumi doesn’t even know where she found a cloth napkin. “Is that a member of your organization, Kuzuryuu-san?”

“My little brother.”

Sonia inhales sharply. Her napkin gets crushed in her fist. “Brother! I see.” She scans the dining hall: left, then right, then back over her shoulder. Then she leans in on both elbows, her voice low and expression intense. “Kuzuryuu-san. May I ask you a personal question?”

Natsumi chews. “I guess.”

“I have watched a great many television dramas that delve into the life and culture of the yakuza in modern day Japan. There is always a great struggle for power, rife with deceit and violence and betrayal. It is most dramatic!” She’s talking so fast Natsumi can barely keep up, and she’s leaning so far across the table her hair might fall in her food if she weren’t a princess. “Tell me, did you struggle within your family to achieve the position you have now?”

Natsumi has to screw her face up to keep from laughing. “I beat my brother at being born, I guess. And I usually beat him at pachinko, does that count?”

Sonia’s face falls. “I see.” She settles back in her seat, and pokes at the remaining rice in her bowl. “I know this is an improper thing to say, but… I must admit to some disappointment.”

“You shouldn’t watch trash like that,” Natsumi tells her. “I can guarantee I have at least five stories that are way better than anything else you’ve watched.”

“Really?!” Sonia grips the edge of the table with both hands. She nearly bounces in her seat. “Please do share! I would be fascinated to hear of your experiences, Kuzuryuu-san.”

Natsumi starts with the time she and Peko had been kidnapped and stranded in the mountains, and Sonia hangs on every word.

They eat together every Tuesday after that. It turns out to not be unbearable; Sonia is simultaneously everything Natsumi understands a princess to be, and everything she understands a princess to not be. She tells Natsumi about Novoselic’s labyrinthine traditions, and Natsumi tells her about the last fist fight that broke out in one of her family’s casinos.

It’s going well— which, Natsumi reminds herself, is all that matters.

Sonia leans across the gap between their desks one day, during afternoon homeroom. “Will you and Pekoyama-san be going to the dojo again after class today?”

“Probably! Peko-chan’s gotta get those reps in.” Natsumi tips her head back. “Right, Peko-chan?”

“Yes.”

“Why? You wanna come watch?”

“Well… yes and no,” Sonia says. “I have ‘reps’ of my own I must get in, actually. I have read that while most modern yakuza do not carry firearms on their person, many are still trained in their use, especially those in senior positions. Is that accurate to your experience, Kuzuryuu-san?”

“I know how to shoot,” Natsumi says.

(She’d gotten her first gun on her thirteenth birthday, a slim white revolver with gold plating around the chamber. Her father had taken her out to the compound’s practice range that same day; he’d knelt with her and shown her how to hold it, how to stand, how to bend her elbows just enough to absorb the force of the shot.

“Be patient, but don’t hesitate,” he’d said, big hands on both her shoulders. “When you have your target, take it.”

She’d screamed the first time she pulled the trigger. The gun had jumped in her hands, sudden and hot and violent, and her arms had ached all over afterwards, like she’d just spent an hour doing handstands. Her father had made her take the shot again, over and over, until she learned not to be afraid.)

“Excellent!” Sonia is delighted in a way only a princess can be, hands clasping instead of clapping. “I am afraid that since arriving in Japan I have been inexcusably lazy in practicing my marksmanship. I was hoping you might want to practice with me, Kuzuryuu-san.”

“You want to have a shootout,” Natsumi repeats. “With me?”

“‘Hells’ yes! It would be a fascinating comparison of our relative skillsets, do you not agree? Plus I believe it would be a— ‘bomb-ass’ good time!”

It’s been months since Natsumi practiced last, too. Students are allowed to bring whatever tools they consider necessary to furthering their talent, including personal weapons, but Natsumi had left her revolver at home when she left for school. (“There’s no need for her to carry another weapon when she already has one with her,” her father had said.)

“Okay,” she says, and Sonia’s face lights up. “But if I win, you never get to say ‘bomb-ass’ again.”

“And if I win, I may say ‘bomb-ass’ as many times as I like from now on without complaint. Agreed?”

Natsumi clasps her hand. “Done.”

When class lets out, they have to detour to the weapons cages; the school keeps practice weapons of all kinds in the dojo, but unlimited access is restricted only to students whose talents require the use of them. Any other students require approval

Sonia marches straight up to the supervisor without a single inch of guile or hesitation. “Hello. My name is Sonia Nevermind, and my associate is Kuzuryuu Natsumi.” She bends into a shallow, formal bow. “We would like to borrow two firearms for practice purposes, please.”

The supervisor is a skinny senior with glasses, a student volunteer. He references a small tablet behind his desk. “The Ultimate Yakuza—” Natsumi smiles at him from over Sonia’s shoulder. He can’t look at her for longer than a second or two. “And, uh, the Ultimate Princess.” He frowns. “Is markmanship really part of your curriculum?”

“We are young women poised to become proud and powerful leaders in our respective societies,” Sonia tells him, grave and, Natsumi thinks, entirely serious. “How would this not be part of our curriculum?”

“I— I mean, I guess, but the weapons are really intended for the athletes…”

Natsumi lays her palm flat on the counter. “Gee, Sonia-san, it almost sounds like this guy is trying to tell us what our talents are for,” she says. “But that can’t be right. I mean, they’re our talents, right?” She tilts her head at him. “What would he know about it?”

“Right.” His adam’s apple bobs uncomfortably. “No, right. You’re right.” The door to the cage buzzes, and Sonia swings it open with a smile. “Just, uh, keep them in the shooting range, and make sure to sign them back in when you’re finished.”

Natsumi had only seen the cage containing the swords, knives, and other bladed weapons before, because that’s the cage Peko has access to. The firearms cage is a veritable arsenal; Natsumi steps back to snap a picture with her phone to send to Rin later.

She chooses a sleek, lightweight pistol, the closest equivalent she can find to her revolver. Sonia chooses a massive bolt-action battle rifle. “An excellent choice, Kuzuryuu-san!” she says, when she slings the wide strap over her shoulder. “It is truly ‘adorbs af.’ Here, you must not forget these, either.” She hangs a pair of brightly-colored ear muffs around Natsumi’s neck. “Safety is of the utmost importance.”

They take their positions at the far end of the shooting range. They must look out of place, still in school uniforms; some of the other students give them sidelong glances. Natsumi glowers back until they look away.

Sonia pounds her rifle against the floor. “These are the rules, should you choose to accept: you take a shot, and I must duplicate it. Then I take a shot, and you must duplicate mine. We go back and forth until one of us fails or we both run out of bullets.”

Natsumi cocks her pistol. She lifts both arms, elbows bent just enough, and sends a bullet straight into the heart of the target. “Okay,” she says. “You’re on.”

“Excellent.” Sonia hefts the butt of her rifle against her shoulder, and barely takes a moment to steady the barrel. Her shot flies straight down the center, a perfect match. “Now! How about a true challenge, hm?”

They go back and forth, shot for shot. Sonia throws plastic rings into the air and shoots through them. Natsumi ricochets her bullet off of the broad side of a training dummy. None of it is at the level of the Ultimate students the guns were actually intended for, but for once that doesn’t matter.

Sonia drops to her belly for her final shot, the body of her rifle flush against her cheek. She aims high, and when she pulls the trigger the bullet bounces off the top edge of the target and shatters just one of the clay pigeon targets in storage behind it.

“That’s garbage!” Natsumi shouts. Other students around them glare. “That was all luck. No way that counts!”

“That is how we do in Novoselic, Kuzuryuu-san!” Sonia pumps her fist, her cheeks flushed. “Do you forfeit?”

Natsumi drops to the floor. “Hell no. What do I look like, huh?”

Her bullet finds its target. Sonia nearly explodes with delight when it does, which for her boils down to shouting “Amazing!” when the pigeon shatters.

“It looks like we are at a draw,” Sonia says, when Natsumi is back on her feet. She bows, her fist over her heart. “Excellent shooting, Kuzuryuu-san. You are a formidable opponent!”

Natsumi doesn’t bow in return. She rolls her eyes when Sonia isn’t looking, instead. “Yeah, yeah. You’re not bad either, I guess.”

They drop the guns back off together. (On the way they agree a draw means that Sonia can keep saying whatever she likes, and that Natsumi can keep complaining about it.) The skinny supervisor is still there, and his palms are sweating when Natsumi turns the pistol back over to him. The whole desk shudders when Sonia drops her rifle onto it.

“What do you think, Kuzuryuu-san?” Sonia asks, on the way back. “Shall we have celebratory ‘frozen yo’ in wake of our competition?”

“I need to wait for Peko-chan,” Natsumi answers. She’s missed enough of Peko’s training already. She doesn’t need to sway Sonia enough to miss the rest of it, and froyo makes her stomach hurt, anyway.

Sonia doesn’t seem offended. She only nods. “Yes. Of course. I shall leave you to it.” She dips into another, shallow bow. “Thank you for joining me, Kuzuryuu-san. It is always more enjoyable to practice with a partner. Perhaps we may practice again sometime?”

Natsumi could use the practice here and there, and she’s always liked target shooting besides. There’s no reason to say no. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “Why not?”

Sonia leaves, with a wave and a nearly literal spring in her step, and Natsumi slips back into the dojo. It’s mostly emptied out by now, save for Peko, still pacing through her forms. She must have started them as a cooldown, but Natsumi came in too late to follow them from the beginning. Peko is moving sure-footed and fast; Natsumi can’t read the transitions.

Natsumi sits by the lockers to wait. (The notification light of Peko’s phone blinks from underneath her pile of clothes.) She watches for long minutes, but she still can’t find a seam between anything.

“Hey,” she says eventually, only because there’s no one else in the room. “Peko?”

Peko doesn’t acknowledge her out loud, but her head does tilt in her direction. Her movements get longer and slower, until Natsumi recognizes the form in its final stage. (Gohon-me.)

Natsumi nods, and pulls out her phone to start tapping through her texts. Peko’s pace swings up back to normal.

There are times when Yukizome disappears, for up to an hour at a time. It’s never when it counts— she’s always on time for class or after-school review sessions— but sometimes during lunch, or breaks, or before the school day starts, someone will look for her and not be able to find her.

(Hanamura had insisted that she was out having clandestine meetings with some faculty member from the Reserve Course, and Mioda had shouted for a while about how she was definitely, definitely a secret agent.)

What’s important is that 1-B is empty sometimes during lunch, and that she and Peko can have free reign of it if they feel like it. It’s quiet, and private, and closer than either of their dorm rooms if they need to talk during the day without anyone else shoving their nose in.

Also, Sonia keeps wanting to eat with them any time they’re in the dining hall, and it’s starting to get inconvenient.

Peko brings lunch. They turn the chairs around so they can sit together at the same desk, and she sets places for the both of them. “Have you decided on a time to make our proposal?”

“No,” Natsumi says. “We’ve got a couple weeks. And I want to make sure we time it right.” There are two deadlines to think about: first, the deadline from the new contracts (of which there are now fourteen), and after that, the school’s practical exam. They’re close enough together that by the time the practical exam rolls around the deals will be finalized and polished, but recent enough for consideration. It’s a perfect arrangement.

She just has to get Sonia to say yes.

“We’re not going without a backup plan, either,” Natsumi goes on. “I’m not wasting a bunch of time doing damage control when she says no the first time.” She bends over the front of Yukizome’s desk and pops the drawer open. Yukizome had spent an entire class earlier in the week going over the practical exams: what to expect, how long they would have, where the judges were being selected from. It’d been the most bored Natsumi had been in weeks, but it also meant— “Here we go.” It’s buried under grading scales and flyers for student performances, but she finds it: one of the temporary student schedules for the exams.

The schedule is still rough, but this close to the exams it must be in its final stages. Natsumi’s is tentatively scheduled for day three; Sonia’s is for day five. “Hmm.” Natsumi drums her fingers against the desk. “Hey, Peko. What d’you think a practical exam for a princess is like?”

Peko turns in her seat to answer, but before she can, Natsumi’s phone buzzes in her pocket. A few seconds later, so does Peko’s.

fuyu-chan 12:33 niijima got picked up by the cops

fuyu-chan 12:33 not gonna say I fucking told you so but

fuyu-chan 12:33 I fucking told you so

Natsumi feels her stomach bottom out. The drops on that route had been going off without a hitch for months, even with all the things Fuyuhiko had said he was worried about. She types with one hand and tries not to crush the exam schedule in the other.

me 12:34 are you kidding me? why are we even wasting money on the cops over there???

me 12:34 what the FUCK happened

When she looks up, Peko is frowning down at her phone. “What?” Natsumi demands. “Did he tell you something about Niijima he didn’t tell me?”

“No,” Peko says, and dims her phone without responding to the message. “It’s— unrelated. What happened to Niijima-kun?”

“He’s a moron, that’s what happened to him.”

fuyu-chan 12:34 turns out everyone else on that route has been covering for him

fuyu-chan 12:34 on his own he’s a fucking mess

fuyu-chan 12:35 the cops aren’t going to look the other way when he’s got the goods hanging out of his goddamn coat pocket like an amateur

She doesn’t have time for this. She wants to throw her phone or scream or make the drive all the way back to the compound just so she can punch them all in the jaw.

“Natsumi.”

Koizumi is watching her from the doorway. She has a lunch box hugged against her chest, wrapped in cute pink cloth with a rabbit design on it.

Peko stands, but Natsumi holds her hand up. (Peko doesn’t need to be told to hang back, but there’s no harm in letting Koizumi draw her own conclusions.) “Hi, Koizumi-san.” She mimes checking her phone. Fuyuhiko’s message glows back up at her, unanswered. “Wow, you’re late today, huh? Better hurry. If you keep disappointing Satou-san like this, she’ll never put in a good word for you with the Reserve Course.”

“Cut it out. What are you doing in here?”

Natsumi pulls herself up to sit on the edge of Yukizome’s desk. “Me? I dunno.” She flares the exam schedule in front of her face again. “Maybe I wanted to go somewhere quiet for lunch. Maybe I wanted to soak in all the good class memories. Maybe I wanted to ask Yukizome-sensei something.” She stares at Koizumi over the edge of the page. “Who says it’s any of your business?”

“I’m not going to just ignore it when you’re obviously up to something,” Koizumi snaps back. She grabs at the schedule, and nearly twists it out of Natsumi’s grip. “These are our classmates. Is there seriously no one who’s off-limits to you?”

Natsumi slaps her hand away. Koizumi loses her grip on her lunch box, and it tumbles out of her arms; rice and cooked vegetables spill out when it cracks against the floor. The sound reverberates back out into the hall, but any students who care enough to peer inside turn their heads away when Natsumi glares back out at them.

The silence is thick. “So what if there isn’t?” Natsumi says, just for the satisfaction of snapping it in two. She slaps what’s left of the temporary schedule back on Yukizome’s desk and leans into Koizumi’s space. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Koizumi turns her face away first. The room is silent again when she crouches to gather her lunch back up. “You know,” she says finally, “I used to think that you’d changed. That something must have happened to make you this way.” She reties the knot, even with the fabric lopsided and stained, and glares. “Now I understand. You just became the person you always were, deep down.”

“Good,” Natsumi says. “It’s about time you figured it out. We’re not in middle school anymore, you know? Who knows what would’ve happened if you didn’t?” She leans forward, and sunlight from the windows throws her shadow in a sharp line across the floor. She drops the airy lilt of her voice. “Try it again. See what happens.”

Koizumi doesn’t say anything else. She takes her lunch and leaves— but she’s not quick enough to keep Natsumi from seeing the way her confidence withers, the way her eyes get big and the tips of her fingers turn white when she clutches the box back against her chest.

She thinks she walked out brave, but Koizumi always thinks she knows better than everyone else. She doesn’t know anything.

Natsumi leans back over to put the schedule back where she found it. “Peko.”

“Yes.”

“I changed my mind. We’re going to see Sonia tonight, after dinner. I’ve got what I need.”

“Yes, young mistress.”

Natsumi steps over what’s left of the mess of rice and vegetables on the floor, and taps out her response to Fuyuhiko.

me 12:42 send someone to get him. make whatever deal they want

me 12:42 i’ll handle him

#natsumi kuzuryuu #fuyuhiko kuzuryuu #peko pekoyama #kuzupeko #danganronpa #whew #sorry for the wait on this one #six chapters?? who said six chapters???#my outline??#my outline's not my real mom it can't tell me how to live my life #on the upside i have a buffer now #laughtrack dot wav #fic: by the claw of dragon #sunwrites

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