#also. ​the acting of the woman who played the corpse is next level

[spacemancharisma]

"every time we started to cut into her, she stopped us... what is it she doesn't want us to find?"

SHE WANTED YOU TO STOP HURTING HER. SHE WANTED YOU TO LISTEN. SHE JUST DIDNT WANT TO BE HURT ANYMORE.

[turbulentscrawl]

Could I get an Aesop, Norton and Kevin with a S/O who gets turned into a hunter because they learned too much? Like. Their Significant other was always very enthusiastic about discovering secrets and stuff, and they started acting off because they discovered something BAD. And within a month or so. They moved officially to the hunter manor? 🙏

If that's too much, feel free to ignore or decline!

I put my own spin on this, i hope you don't mind! This is SFW but going under the cut because it plays into the horror aspect of the game. Also, I don't have the time to whip up a kevin header currently and don't have the patience to wait on posting this....so I'll get his made and added later!

Warnings: body horror, angst

The worst part of it all is that you can’t even remember the reason for it all.

You were a seeker, a searcher, always nosing into places and subjects you didn’t belong. You craved to know the world’s secrets and that included the manor’s. You spent long hours, days, weeks, investigating the manor’s records, the histories of its inhabitants, obtaining the aid of…some horrific woman. A veritable snake. She told you something. Something bad…. Something that ruined you from the inside out, necrosing its way through every cell.

The changes come slowly at first, and painfully. Your muscles and joints would ache. Your head would throb. Your bones would move on their own, shifting and stretching inside your tearing meat. You drowned in darkness, and suffocated in blinding lights. The worst moments of your life came to you again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again! Again!

And when all the pain finally melted away, you were different. The friendly faces around you were once your enemies. Your own face was that of a lion, and the original of it staring back was the clueless lamb.

Aesop

-He showed little interest in your “search for answers.” He wants to understand everything better too, true, but even the detective sorts among you had found few answers. Orpheus, Alice, Naib…. No offense to you, of course, I’m just saying he wasn’t be holding his breath….

-But far be it from this recluse to stop you. He of all people understands what it means to hyperfocus on your work. Work is familiarity, truth, and on some level he can imagine how a tangled mystery might be as comfortable to you as a corpse is to him. They both reveal truths in indirect ways.

-Because of your busybody separation from one another during this time, he likely doesn’t notice the changes right away. He probably finds out from someone else about the aches and pains you’ve been having, the sweats, fever, and all without a match in the records to explain them away. People didn’t get sick in the manor, yet somehow you inexplicably were.

-Then you sleep. For days. You’re still enough that Aesop almost feels like he’s watching over one of his 'normal' patients, like he should be doing your makeup. He’s calm, but checks for your pulse and breathing a lot. That’s when he notices you crying in your sleep.

-And things only go downhill from there. Aesop is generally level-headed, but there’s something about your aura that begins to disturb him. He refuses to leave, to abandon you when something is obviously wrong, but you go more and more still under his watchful eyes. You stop breathing, your skin goes pallid, but blood is still hot in your veins—he gives your thumb a pinprick to be sure of it. Your pillow is always wet because you won’t stop silently crying.

-On a whim one day, he decides to check your eyes. He collapses to the ground when he realizes the sockets are empty and raw. He runs from your room then, and when Emily returns to investigate your body is gone.

-The next day, you return in perfect condition. Healthy, though confused, and with no memory of that last several weeks of pain. You both had a match the next day, and Aesop decided he would focus on protecting you above anything else.

-But the Hunter was new. Eerie, unspeaking, blind…and cried ceaselessly. Aesop was frozen in genuine fear when the other you lumbered by him, choking on pained sobs, perhaps in search of your old peace.

Norton

-He told you from the beginning that it was a bad idea. Norton was not an educated man but he had sense—and experience—enough to know when paranormal shit was not to be trifled with. He still had nightmares about that eye….

-But you went on ahead with your business anyway. He let you, albeit while watching his back a whole lot more. Isolating. Swallowing his dread. You remind him of his mistakes before you even make them.

-He doesn’t think much of your first symptoms. Norton gets sore sometimes, and feels ill. The Black Lung never did leave him, and some days he handles it worse than others. You have nothing like that, though, and after several days of persisting discomfort he remembers that fact and sends you to Emily. She’s as perplexed as him though, and that makes him feel even more nervous.

-He also doesn’t notice for a while that you’ve stopped talking about your search entirely. He asks you about it once, when he catches you staring at the wall in a daze, and feels like a knife pierces his lung when you say you don’t have the faintest clue what he’s talking about.

-He keeps catching you like that. Paralyzed in a particular spot. Watching things, unblinking. When you come to, you don’t remember what you were doing. Your memory starts go slip away like Luca’s does, but somehow it’s more severe. You remember who you are, who he is, but everything else is gone. Some evenings he practically has to spoon feed you dinner because the concept of silverware and food have escaped you.

-Paranoid of what it all means, Norton starts to stay with you at night. But he gets no sleep during those times because all night you moan in pain. When Norton wraps his arms around you for comfort, he wears he feels your muscles twisting and undulating under your skin.

-Norton does not remember the last time he’s screamed, but he did the day after you finally seemed better. After he finally started to relax again. He was decoding in the top floor of the hospital when he heard that familiar moaning coming from below. He freezes at the sound, and when he looks over his shoulder he sees a twisted, stretched figure crawling up through the gaping hole in the floor. He knows the hair, the voice, but nothing else is you.

-And he screams, backed up against the cipher like a cornered animal. Never in his life has he not tried to run for his life, but when this Hunter of you locks eyes with him he can’t. He can’t run from what he didn’t fight harder against. Even when facing Fool’s Gold—himself—he’s never felt so much like a failure.

Kevin

-He’s always known he lacks your foresight. Kevin can’t begin to suspect the truth of things like this place. The sprawling vastness of it, he doesn’t trust himself to comprehend the complexity, the darkness. But you? Well, even if this it all a bit eerie, he’s got faith in your intelligence.

-He plays closer attention to you than the other two. The second you start to look off, he tasks notice. He sees the obsession in your face, the dark bags under your eyes, the way your nose digs deeper into things than before. You become…pushier with people.

-Kevin suggests you take a break, but you wave him off. You’re onto something, you say, and just need a little more understanding before everything unravels. He doesn’t like that word. “Unravel.”

-Which is perhaps a premonition, because it’s a great word to describe what happens to you. When you’re awake—and you are awake for irrationally long hours—you seem positively mad. You whisper to yourself in words that don’t sound human. He catches “Hastur” among them a few times, and “Witch” but once again his own comprehension fails.

-And when you sleep, you scream. The fist few nights it happened, he and a few others came running from down the hall and roused you. You didn’t remember the terrors. Night after night it happened, the response dwindling until it was just Kevin abandoning his own sleep to help you from whatever was terrifying you in your sleep.

-Then, you stopped waking up. He tried everything! Water, those smelling salts Emily had. Nothing would wake you and you just kept screaming, screaming, screaming like you were being dissected in your bed. After three days of not sleeping himself, Kevin carried your thrashing form to the infirmary. He was horrified when Emily suggested restraining and gagging you, but he had no other ideas himself. He slept in the chair nearby for what felt like weeks.

-And one day it all stopped. Kevin woke up, cracked his stiff neck, and noticed you were gone from your restraints. Emily was as confused as he was, but before the panic could build you emerged from your own bedroom, right as rain.

-He pulled you aside and cried in your arms until he passed out himself.

-The next match, though, started his own series of nightmares. Only a few minutes in he heard that scream. That blood-curdling wail that had been seared into his memory. It paralyzed him, and everyone else, on the spot. And then the vestige of your suffering appeared. Dark, shivering, voice raw and pained. The new Hunter that rounded the corner was undeniably you, and Kevin was sure he’d never know another peaceful day again.

[karin-ko]

The Burmese Harp by Kon Ichikawa

Released in 1956 and directed by Kon Ichikawa, "The Burmese Harp" is set in Burma after the end of the Pacific War and portrays a Japanese soldier and the decision of Private Mizushima, who belongs to that unit. While it is a war film with a very sad story, it skillfully incorporates moments of humor, such as the synchronized running and turning of the Inoue Squad, and the presence of animals like dogs, parrots, and monkeys, which help to alleviate the tension in the film. Overall, it is a highly refined movie that depicts the tragedy of war and the emotional connections transcending borders among people.

Firstly, the film effectively depicts the horrors of war. The scene where Mizushima, unable to persuade the cornered Japanese soldiers at Triangle Mountain, wakes up among the corpses, conveys the fleetingness of life as one moment people are alive, and the next, they are all dead. The pile of corpses felt uncomfortably real, making me want to look away. While I agree with Mizushima and Captain Inoue that there is no need to continue resisting when the war is over, and it is best to cherish life and return to Japan, I can understand the sentiment of not being able to surrender when thinking about fallen comrades. Having fought for the country for so long, it is understandable to struggle to accept Japan's sudden defeat on the battlefield. Given their commitment to fighting to the end, there were likely many soldiers who made similar decisions and sacrificed their lives. The attention to detail, like the stiffening of bodies after death, the smell and the gathering of crows around corpses, the sheer number of unburied bodies left out in the open, and the depiction of wounded soldiers during the march back to Japan, effectively conveys the brutality of war.

The portrayal of kindness among people and the connection of hearts through music were particularly impactful. The exchanges between the elderly woman who engages in bartering and the soldiers, as well as the locals who mourn Japanese soldiers with Mizushima, were heartwarming. Also, the greatness of music in bringing people together regardless of borders or allegiances was evident, and the sound of the harp was especially beautiful. The scene where Japanese and British soldiers sing the same song in different languages reminded me of Disney’s "It's a Small World.” The moment when British people mourn Japanese soldiers and sing hymns, irrespective of nationality, was especially poignant, showing the kindness of humanity transcending boundaries. If I were in Mizushima's shoes, I would also feel intense remorse and conflict comparing their mourning over the Japanese soldiers with my own act of turning away from the dead bodies of my fellow soldiers, stealing the monk's robe to escape to Japan. Additionally, the scene where the soldiers sing until they lose their voices, believing in Mizushima's return, and Mizushima bidding farewell by playing “Aogeba totoshi" was beautiful yet profoundly sad. I wonder what happened to the monk who had his robe stolen while he was bathing…

Interestingly, most of the film was apparently shot in Japan, with only the actor playing Mizushima traveling to the actual location. I did not notice such a thing at all while watching the film, but it be said that some scenes were shot using the "screen process," which made me realize the high level of technology in this film. Moreover, the shifting perspectives between Mizushima and the Inoue Squad were effectively utilized, particularly in the scene on the bridge where Mizushima and the soldiers pass each other. The decision not to show Mizushima's face from the soldiers' perspective leaves much to the viewer's imagination. Other memorable aspects include the indoor scenes where the beautiful light enters the building, the staging of characters walking towards the camera from afar, overhead shots capturing the entirety of the scene, and close-up shots capturing the soldiers' feet and the sand smoke. The scene where Mizushima's shadow merges with the Buddha statue, hinting at his transformation into a true monk, and the scene where he walks alone in the vast land captured from a distance were particularly striking.

The film ends with a narration from one of the soldiers, which left me initially puzzled. I wondered why this somewhat ambiguous scene was chosen as the ending instead of showing Mizushima's journey or Captain Inoue reading Mizushima's heartfelt letter. Now, I think perhaps it is meant to provoke thought rather than simply glorify Mizushima as a hero. At that time, it would have been incredibly difficult to return to Japan on one's own. Moreover, there is no guarantee that one could survive for long alone in that land. Mizushima's resolve is admirable, but if I were one of his surviving family members, even if I were reading his letter, I would feel more devastated by his absence and the fact that I would never see him again than celebrate his glory.

Also, Captain Inoue is truly a remarkable person. He is compassionate and always strives to ensure that no one loses their life unnecessarily. His ability to understand Mizushima's feelings by confirming the ruby, a symbol of Japanese soldiers' souls, in the wooden box, and his assertion that Mizushima would not return without reading his letter, show his exceptional empathy. Mizushima must have found solace in his words. The actor's performance in reading the letter while holding back tears yet effectively conveying Mizushima's emotions to the squad was outstanding. It must have been incredibly challenging for Mizushima, having survived the war and finally being able to return to Japan, to abandon that path by himself. Mizushima's parrot must have remembered the things he repeatedly said, making its fate even sadder. Suppressing the desire to see comrades and family, and choosing the path of a monk to honor fallen Japanese soldiers, requires a strength of will that few can emulate.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Perhaps you'd like a an ask that's not discourse related? If so, then I wanted to ask you if you know what jin zixuan thought of jin guangyao?

Hi anon,

I appreciate your non-discourse-related ask 😉. Your question made me realise that the novel seems to explicitly avoid giving us any real sense of what Jin Zixuan thought of Jin Guangyao, or how he reacted to the ways other people treated JGY. It seems that JZX remained unaware at the time that Meng Yao came on his birthday--and literally got kicked out. At Phoenix Mountain, JZX stops being mentioned after JGY appears and while his mother mistreats him--he’s only brought back into the narration at the very end to scream at JYL. JZX is also absent the night that WWX goes to Jinlintai to confront the Jins about Qiongqi path and in the direct aftermath. But let’s dig for crumbs and make sense of gaps, and let’s see what we can infer from them.

We know that, originally, Jin Zixuan was the epitome of the proud Jin: “The ways of the Jin Sect were proud, and Jin Zixuan inherited every single drop of this. With his high standards, he had been unsatisfied with this engagement since a long time ago.“ We could wonder if the circumstances of JGY’s birth would have been something JZX would have judged him for. We know that he took offense to WWX’s persona, although it is not spelled out exactly what offended him specifically: “Because of this engagement, Jin Zixuan had no positive impressions of the YunmengJiang Sect, and had frowned upon Wei Wuxian’s behavior since some time ago.“ However, it’s unclear whether the circumstances of WWX’s birth influenced how he perceived his behaviour. All we know for sure is that two other Jin family members--his father and Jin Zixun--never forgot about it and brought it up. We also know that in the past, JZX felt comfortable ignoring people’s good will towards him if he felt he was motivated in his view of them, as he did with JYL in the past:

Jin-furen had brought him to Lotus Pier a couple of times. Neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng liked to play with him; only Jiang Yanli wanted to feed him the food that she made. Jin Zixuan, however, didn’t really like to pay her any attention.

At the same time, we do know that JZX had a sense of righteousness, what with him standing up against Wen Chao at Dusk-Creek Mountain. Likewise, we see with the soup incident that at least when it comes to a low-level cultivator who is a servant, a good deed done towards him without trying to gain his gratitude is enough to earn his respect, and for JZX to take action to raise the standing of that person:

Cleverly, the woman never acknowledged anything, but instead denied it ambiguously, her cheeks flushed, making it sound as though she was the one who did it, but didn’t want Jin Zixuan to know how much trouble she went through. And thus, Jin Zixuan didn’t force her to admit it any longer. However, in action, he had began to respect the cultivator. He began to pay attention to her, even raising her from a servant to a guest cultivator.

JZX even tells JYL: “Don’t think that just because you come from a powerful sect that you can steal and trample other people’s feelings. Some people, even if they come from poor backgrounds, their character are much better than the former’s. Please watch your conduct.” This underlines that, regardless of his upbringing, and perhaps even views that he might have held at some point in his life, at this point JZX seemed to want to judge others based on their character rather than their background. Of course, we can wonder if that reserve of good will would have extended to his half-brother, especially one that could try to take his place as the heir. However, considering the circumstances, from JGY’s birth to JGS’s decision to give him a name that did not align him with the same generation as JZX, we can wonder if anyone ever perceived then JGY as someone who could potentially become the next sect leader, as seen in this exchange between WWX and JC:

Jiang Cheng smirked, “Don’t carry your sword, then. It doesn’t matter. But don’t provoke Jin Zixuan from now on. He’s Jin Guangshan’s only son, after all. The future leader of the LanlingJin Sect will be him. If you beat him up, what should I, the sect leader, do? Beat him up with you? Or punish you?”

Wei Wuxian, “Isn’t Jin Guangyao here now? Jin Guangyao seems so much better than him.”

Jiang Cheng finished wiping his sword. After he scrutinized it for a while, he finally put Sandu back into its sheath, “So what, if he’s better? No matter how much better he is, no matter how clever, he could only be a servant who greets the guests. That’s all there is to his life. He can’t compare with Jin Zixuan.”

At Phoenix Mountain, while we do not see JZX say anything out of line to JGY, he is present while his mother and Jin Zixun disrespect him: and we get no reaction written for him while that takes place--he’s mostly licking his wounded pride. We also know that this disrespect by his family towards JGY was the norm, so we have to assume that JZX would have been a witness to it in other situations. In the context of that specific scene, it’s difficult to to infer something concrete from that silence: is it agreement? complicity? a certain indifference to JGY’s situation? an unwillingness of rock the boat or to seem to publicly challenge his mother? or simply him just being too self-absorbed by his romantic woes?

The next scene that would have made for an interesting case study is the night WWX comes to confront the Jins about the camp at Qiongqi Path. However, JZX is absent that night. Conveniently, or as a means to maintain a sense of ambiguity between him and WWX, we thereby do not know how JZX feels about what happened. He is also absent during the aftermath:  “At midnight, in the Golden Pavilion on JinlinTai sat over fifty sect leaders from sects of all sizes. Jin Guangshan sat in the foremost seat. Jin Zixuan was away [...].” (interesting that CQL added JZX to that scene). Which means he is not there to react to the mistreatment of JGY by others or to react to the way JGY is clearly lying for the purposes of manipulating the general opinion on WWX and save the Jin’s reputation.

We also do not get to witness the conversation that leads JZX to come to Qiongqi Path to try to stop Jin Zixun. All we get is a sentence of dialogue from JZX explaining that he thought JGY looked strange which prompted JZX tp questioned him questions (we of course know that JGY was purposefully acting that way to get JZX to go to Qionqqi Path, so it’s hard to take that as a sign of clear familiarity between them that would have allowed JZX to read hidden emotions from him). Did JZX ask out of specific concern for or suspicions of JGY? We don’t know! It is interesting to note though that, in this scene, Jin Zixun refers to JGY as “A-Yao”, which the narration contextualises by telling us that Jin Zixun started calling him in a more intimate manner despite the original contemps he had held for him. However, when JZX mentions JGY to Jin Zixun, he calls him “Jin Guangyao” (for reference, Jin Zixun calls JZX “Zixuan”).

All in all, we get very little from looking at JZX. However, there is something to be said in the absence of any specific grievances expressed by JGY towards him in terms of framing how JZX may have acted towards him when they were both at Jinlintai. Indeed, when Jin Ling asks JGY why he arranged for his father to go to Qiongqi path, meeting his death, JGY mentions the unfairness of the situation of both sons, but never brings up anything JZX did specifically to him. And we know that JGY has a great memory which allows him to hold grudges.

Suddenly, Jin Ling screamed, “Why?!” He stood up from beside Jiang Cheng. Eyes red, he rushed toward Jin Guangyao as he shouted, “Why did you have to do this?!”

Nie Huaisang hurried to pull back Jin Ling, who seemed as though he wanted to fight with Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao returned the question, “Why?” He turned to Jin Ling, “A-Ling, then could you tell me why? Why is it that even if I face everyone with a smile, I might not even receive the lowest form of respect, while even though your father was extremely arrogant, people flocked to him? Could you tell me why we were born from the same person but your father could relax at home with the love of his life playing with his child, while I never even dared be alone for long with my wife, shivering out of fright at first glance of my son? And I was ordered to do such a thing by my father as if it was natural—to kill an extremely dangerous figure who could flip out and conjure up a bloody massacre with his corpses anytime!

“Why is it that even though we were born on the same day, Jin Guangshan could host a grand banquet for one son, and watch with his own eyes how his subordinate kicked his other son down Jinlintai, from the first stair to the last!”

He finally revealed the hatred hidden deep within him. It wasn’t directed at neither Jin Zixuan nor Wei Wuxian, but rather his own father.

As a result, we might infer that, at the very least, JZX never directly acted towards JGY in a way that reflected how JGS or Jin Zixun (at some point) treated him. At the same time, it’s difficult to suggest that he stood up for him when other people disrespected him, and we know that JZX’s mother disrespected JGY in lieu of directing her anger toward the real culprit, her awful husband. Little seems to suggest that they grew intimate after JGY came to Jinlintai. It’s really hard to divine, as a result, what JZX might have thought of JGY.

The most interesting thing to take away from this is that it seems absolutely deliberate on MXTX’s part to show us as little as possible in terms of interactions between JZX and JGY. We can speculate as to why that is: to separate JZX from the machinations of this sect? to avoid giving us more ammunition to guess that JGY was behind JZX’s death? to ensure that WWX remains ambiguous towards JZX? or just as a means to avoid having to figure out how to work this dynamic into already complicated scenes and character relationships? etc.

[curious-wildflower]

Silent Hill 2- 1993

We play as James Sunderland who has just arrived in Silent Hill after reviving a letter from his wife who had died 3 years prior of a chronic disease

The letter claims that Mary is waiting for James in their "special place", which confuses James, as the whole town of Silent Hill was their "special place". He does note that the letter is written in Mary's handwriting and is aware James of a promise he made to only her promise to return to Silent Hill with her, but he never fulfilled.

After leaving the town's observation deck where he parked overlooking Silent Hill and walking to Silent Hill, James enters a graveyard and meets Angela Orosco, a nervous young woman who came to the town to search for her missing mother.

She warns him that there's something "wrong" with the town and that it could be dangerous, but he ignores her warnings, saying he doesn't care if it's dangerous and that he plans on finding his missing someone too.

When James reaches Silent Hill, he discovers that it is not the same, beautiful town it was a few years ago. In addition to the bizarre, omnipresent fog, the whole town seems to be rotting away and abandoned. Macabre, vaguely humanoid creatures are roaming the streets and attempting to attack James whenever possible. When he discovers that the path to his first destination, the lakeside Rosewater Park, is blocked, James needs to pass through an apartment complex to reach what he believes could be the "special place" Mary mentioned in her letter.

Outside the apartments, James briefly encounters a little girl, who steps on his hand before running away.  

Soon after that in the building he finds Pyramid Head, he hides in a closet as Pyramid Head abuses and slaughters two monsters known as Mannequins.  

James starts shooting from his hiding spot which makes Pyramid Head leave but is encountered again in the apartment building next door, where it proceeded to attack him, he’s unbeatable and only leaves after a siren starts to sound.  

Eddie Dombrowski is vomiting into one of the apartment toilets when James meets him.  

Eddie defensively responds to questions regarding a corpse in the refrigerator of the apartment room. James soon finds Angela again laying front of a large mirror, contemplating suicide with a knife in her hand. James persuades her to hand him the knife for her own safety, and she flees in an unusual panic to resume her search for her mother.

After James leaves the apartment building, he finds the girl he previously met humming to herself on a wall. He confronts her in frustration, and she reveals to James that she knows Mary and that "he never loved her anyway" before jumping off the other side of the wall before James can respond.

When James finally reaches Rosewater Park, he meets a woman named Maria, who he first mistakes as Mary due to her nearly identical looks, but showing off more skin and possessing more of an arrogant attitude.  

She decides to follow James in his attempt to reach his second suspected spot Mary alluded too as their special place due to it not being safe all alone, while traveling with her she reveals insight into matters that only he or Mary would know and acts in a very seductively towards James.  

They arrive at the Lakeview Hotel that he and Mary once stayed at.

James enters Pete's Bowl-O-Rama, where he meets Eddie again. He also spots the little girl who is verbally abusing Eddie but runs away upon seeing James. Eddie then reveals that her name is Laura. Outside, Maria claims to have seen Laura and, out of concern for her, has James try to pursue the girl.

After passing through Heaven's Night, James and Maria see Laura enter Brookhaven Hospital and follow.  

While exploring the hospital, Maria becomes sick and insists on resting in a room while James goes on, he finds Laura further on, but loses his temper with her when she claims to have known Mary for the past year as she has been dead for the past three. Laura lures him into a room under the pretense of looking for a letter from Mary and locks him in with the monsters known as Flesh Lip.

After they are defeated, the hospital undergoes a sudden dramatic change to the Otherworld, where James returns to the hospital room to find Maria missing. James later finds Maria in the hospital's basement; however, Maria becomes incensed, claiming that James had abandoned her and that he doesn't seem to care to see that she's alive after presumably dying. After she calms down, they continue to search for Laura. Pyramid Head appears and chases them through the hospital's basement, slaughtering Maria while they attempt to make their escape via an elevator. Alone again James decides to refocus on his original task of finding Mary. He leaves the hospital and finds a key buried beneath a statue in Rosewater Park, which leads him to the Silent Hill Historical Society.

The Historical Society has two levels: Toluca Prison and a labyrinth, in which Pyramid Head resides. In this area, James finds Maria, somehow alive and locked in a prison cell, who talks about memories of Mary.  

Maria claims that they were simply separated in the hospital basement and that she had not been killed. James tells her that he will free her, but upon reaching the other side of the cell, he discovers that she has been mysteriously murdered. From a newspaper article, James discovers that Angela killed her father, who sexually and physically abused her under the complicity of her mother. James saves her Angela from a monstrous representation of her father known as Abstract Daddy, after which she becomes hostile.  

Angela expresses her distrust in James and men in general, as from her experience they were "only after one thing". She also calls James a liar who "didn't want Mary around anymore" before leaving.

Near the end of the labyrinth in a walk-in meat locker James finds Eddie, who has snapped after a life of bullying and verbal abuse by his peers due to his physical appearance and weight. Eddie reveals he killed the dog of a bullying football player and then shot the dog's owner in the leg. It’s clear he’s snapped and says he’ll kill the next one to laugh at him. James, the idiot, asks Eddie if he's "gone nuts", prompting a fight, leading to James killing Eddie in self-defense.  

James now having a breakdown from having taken someone’s life starts to question his perception of the events leading him here to Silent Hill, the letter that he supposedly received from Mary goes blank, indicating that it never actually existed. James exits the labyrinth and rows a boat through dense fog to the Lakeview Hotel in hopes of finding Mary.

In the hotel's restaurant, James finds Laura, and she gives him the letter she claimed to be seeking earlier, which reveals that Mary and Laura know each other from the hospital and how Mary wanted to adopt her but due to her illness couldn’t also confirming Laura's claims of knowing Mary for the past year.  

In Room 312, James watches a video tape he apparently left at the hotel three years ago, which shows that he killed his terminally ill wife by smothering her with a pillow. For a few moments, James silently sits in face of the truth and his guilt. Laura, ready to leave the town, finds James, and he chooses to reveal the truth to her. Laura is furious at him for killing Mary and screams she hates him, then she runs away. The radio James has comes to life with a message from Mary, asking him to find her.

James explores the rest of the hotel, discovering that it is decrepit and rotting and is now nothing more than the remains of a building that has experienced a fire. James then finds Angela on a burning staircase, vacantly standing between two Abstract Daddies (symbolic of her dead father and brother.)  

Angela asks him to return her knife so that she can end her life, James refuses. As Angela ascends the burning staircase, James states that the room is "hot as hell", to which she replies, "For me, it's always like this", meaning that her life was always a living hell. Angela disappears upstairs beyond the flames, presumably to kill herself.

In the hotel lobby, James finds Maria resurrected again, bound and screaming for James's help, but she is immediately killed by two Pyramid Heads.  

The whole point of Pyramid Head is that he’s there to remove the visions from James’ mind to make him face the truth of what happened to Mary, they have been created to punish him for his sins. James fights them and when they are sufficiently weakened, they impale themselves with their own spears, as to indicate that their purpose had been fulfilled.

James is led to a hallway, where he listens to a previous interaction that Mary and he had while she was still alive. In the situation, James had brought Mary flowers, but she refused them, yelling that she's too disgusting to deserve flowers. By the end of the conversation, Mary desperately pleads for James to be with her. The memory ends, and James then enters a large metallic complex with a long staircase. At the top of this staircase, on the roof, he finds ‘Mary’ who transforms into a monster after becoming angered by James.  

Upon defeating her the game ends.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 06 (first part)

(Masterpost)(Episode 05)

Warning: This contains spoilers for All 50 Episodes

Bad Boys Bad Boys What You Gonna Do

Nie Huasang’s brought his nuts, and someone’s brought wine, so the boys are drinking in Wei Wuxian’s guest house. Finally he gets to drink some of the Emperor’s Smile wine that he’s been doing all those product placements for.

Boys, get a bowl or something for your shells, were you raised in a barn?

Wei Wuxian hits on waxes poetic about the wine, and Jiang Cheng tells him to shut up. 

Wang Zhuocheng’s raw-fish-eating face may have failed him, but his drunk faces do not disappoint.

Wei Wuxian teases Jiang Cheng about his list of standards for a chick: She should have natural beauty, be virtuous and caring, from a good family, not too talkative, with a gentle voice, and not too capable. Also she should not spend too much money. Drunken running ensues.

Cue Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin

(more behind the cut)

Much of the fandom has decided this list is a good fit for Nie Huaisang himself, and it sorta is. But he is both talkative and unvirtuous, what with all the current sneakiness, and all the eventual murders. 

This also definitely doesn't fit Wen Qing because she's capable as hell.  

This list is, however, a 100% a match for Jiang Yanli. Not in a weird, Jin Guangyao way--a lot of men want to marry a woman like their sister.  In a gender-divided and generation-divided society, a man’s sister might be the only woman he’s ever known well. Jiang Cheng adores Yanli and she’s his ideal model of a woman, as opposed to his mother, who...isnt.  

All these robes and talismans over the door do nothing to stop Lan Wangji from strolling in.  

Okay so - Lan Wangji is the senior disciple of the Lan Clan, yea? There is no way that patrolling the guest area is in any way his job. He is just walking around here at night specifically to see what Wei Wuxian is doing.

I already did a gifpost of the boys and their totally nonsexual horseplay, over here. I’ll just add, for sad factor, that Jiang Cheng is play-choking Wei Wuxian when they’re all on the bed, and later in the running-and-crying episode he is gonna for-real choke him. Foreshadowing! or maybe just coincidence!

One fun thread running through the young-cultivators episodes is that Nie Huaisang is legit terrified of Lan Wangji while also having a major aesthetic crush on him. Look at how flustered he is here, trying to act sober while also checking him out. 

Lan Wangji is shocked and visibly upset - what are you guys doing? This is not his busting face, this is, for a moment, his vulnerable and disillusioned face. He is super not used to what normal people are like. 

Wei Wuxian doesn't lie or otherwise try to get off the hook, which has got to have Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang grinding their teeth in frustration. He invites Lan Wangji to join them for a drink. LWJ cites a the “no drinking on campus” rule and WWX tries to convince him to chill. 

Then we have this lovely coordinated faint by the boys, to get out of going to get punished. Nie Huaisang has been practicing fainting in front of a mirror just in case he ever needs a skill like that in the future. 

Wei Wuxian keeps trying to turn this into a date. Eventually Lan Wangji is so upset he admits he can’t take all three of them by himself. 

Then the boys run away fake-barfing and Wei Wuxian hits Lan Wangji with a talisman. 

Steal His Agency That’s What You’re Gonna Do

What Wei Wuxian does to Lan Wanji here is definitely wrong. But it's not entirely a disaster.  It allows some crucial information to be shared between them, and it results in Wei Wuxian getting the utter shit beat out of him and never doing this again. I mean, he continues to mind-control his enemies and their eventual corpses, but he doesn't intentionally violate a friend or ally's autonomy in the future. Uhh not counting that whole golden core surgery-without-consent situation. And probably some other situations I’ve forgotten. He improves slightly, okay? 

It’s important to note, incidentally, that the Lan rules about drinking and other “vices” should not be viewed through a Christian lens. The Lans are neither puritans nor ascetics (look at their clothes, furniture, and jewelry, for starters). Being drunk is forbidden probably because it’s a loss of self-control. 

Speaking of self-control, mad props to Wang Yibo for being able to have zero physical reaction to fingers snapping in his face.

Drunk Lan Wangji

Under duress, Lan Wangji knocks back a cup of wine and promptly passes most of the way out. 

Wei Wuxian puts Lan Wangji into bed not unkindly, but pretty much like a sack of potatoes. Compare this to how tenderly he handles Lan Wangji the next time he’s drunk. 

WWX tells LWJ to call him Wei Gege, and giggles. Is this a term of endearment in this context? So far the various boys are calling each other -xiong, not -ge or gege.  In Western media, men calling each other “bro” is basically saying “no homo,” but brotherhood and sisterhood in C-Drama is often a way of indicating stronger love than friendship, without saying whether it's sexual or not. 

They finally start to have a conversation, and when Lan Wangji explains that no-one can touch his headband except, etc etc, Wei Wuxian stops trying to touch it. So at least he's not a handsy bastard in addition to all his other faults. 

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that his clan is boring and women won't want to marry him. Lan Wangji says that's fine. On one level this is the show acknowledging that he's gay, but I think he's responding in a gender-neutral way; he doesn't want to marry anyone. Marriage, from his perspective, is the literal worst. 

We don't know how he felt about his father, but he definitely loved his mother deeply, and she had a profoundly unhappy marriage, in which her husband did not provide companionship and her children were taken from her.

A note about all that: The dynamics of heterosexual marriages in The Untamed are not based on contemporary companionate marriage. Sex and reproduction is a wife's job in this world, and giving a gentry woman the option to choose her husband is radical. Wei Wuxian is the only one who dares say that Jiang Yanli should have a choice when Jin Guangshan casually tries to give her to his son in front of everyone.  

OP made this today but will totally reuse it when episode 23 rolls around

So Lan Wangji’s parents' marriage was extremely problematic but not necessarily for the reasons it would be in contemporary terms. Having signed on to marry Lan Dad, Mom would have expected to live together and get laid regularly (important for health, in some traditional views, regardless of love/no love) and to have the company of her children. Instead, she was isolated. Lan Dad wanted to have it both ways and so even though he loved her and apparently hooked up with her sometimes, he didn't do his duty by her. She didn't love him but she did her duty. 

Wei Wuxian continues to not get it, calling Lan Wangji dull and babbling about Lan Wangji’s parents until he realizes that LWJ is an orphan like him. 

A nice shift happens here. Once the penny drops, Wei Wuxian doesn't ask a single additional question - he just sees - by reading Lan Wangji’s face - what the deal is, and shares his own story to show he understands. 

This is the first time Wei Wuxian mentions being chased by dogs, which is kind of a big deal, because why was he left all alone when his parents died? 

Why didn't anyone take him in before Jiang Fengmian found him? How isolated are independent cultivators in this world? 

Tea Time

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen are having tea, and the Lan Clan is so uptight they don't touch each other's teacups. I don't know what this thing is called so I'm going to call it a tea speculum. 

Lan Qiren is back from the cultivation conference and says the red crack plague is happening over in Qinghe where the Nie clan lives.  Lan Xichen fills him in on the water demon, specifically saying Wei Wuxian figured out the connection to the red crack dudes, and explaining who WWX is, as if Lan QIren hadn't already thrown stuff at him and threatened to eventually kill him. 

Fun fact that I just noticed this week so didn't make it into earlier posts: In Episode 46, when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are in the Jiang ancestral hall, WWX says he was often punished to kneel there, and LWJ said that they heard about this in Gusu.  

So when WWX came to Gusu he already had a reputation as a troublemaker, and the Lan brothers were aware of it.   

Busted and Beaten

A Lan snitch comes in to say that Wei Wuxian has successfully corrupted Lan Wangji, which really shouldn’t cause as much surprise as it does.

“Wei Wuxian got drunk”

“Lan Wangji got drunk”

Lan Xichen takes a moment to consider carefully whether Wei Wuxian is a good friend for his little brother and whether perhaps he was too hasty in throwing them together. Ha ha ha no he doesn’t. 

On the punishment porch, Lan Xichen tries to lecture Lan Wangji in a calm way, but Lan Qiren wants to beat him and Lan Wangji wants to get beat. Wei Wuxian can’t understand why Lan Wangji doesn’t let him take the blame for the drinking. 

Lan Qiren goes way the fuck overboard with this punishment because he's angry--losing control and losing his sense of proportion--and Lan Xichen is shocked. The drone camera watching from above is also shocked.  

Lan Qiren has a few (very few) redeeming qualities, but his extreme rigidity and chronic resentment of anyone he perceives as bad are serious problems. His nephews are both struggling with complex moral quandaries as they get older, and he is absolutely no help to them in resolving their conflicts.

This is definitely...a style of parenting & teaching, but you can see how poorly it works, with Lan Wangji straight up saying “fuck it” after many years of conformity.  Lan Xichen is devoted to the middle path and tries to be obedient. But he is actually not walking anywhere near the middle path, as he gets pulled into colluding with a murderer at the same time as getting dragged onto his brother’s carnival ride. These men need parenting that isn’t so, uh, fucking stupid. (Yes, grown adults still need good parenting; watch Go Ahead if you doubt me) 

Wei Wuxian initially yells and falls down when he gets hit, but then he sees Lan Wangji is taking the beating without any reaction and he tries to do the same. 

Aftermath

Jiang Yanli gently lectures the boys, blaming Jiang Cheng for Wei Wuxian's drinking.  Jesus Christ, he's the younger sibling, could you just NOT, Yanli?  

Both boys ask Yanli not to tell their parents. The boys bicker about who's at fault and then Wei Wuxian shifts to baby voice and starts whining to Yanli about the pain. 

Yanli tells him to suck it up, and says after school she'll -- ok and I know this will be a surprise for everyone -- make soup for them. The boys immediately get back on the same team, which is team Please Put Meat In the Soup.

There's a nice character building moment for Wei Wuxian here. When he sees Lan Xichen he initially turns away to avoid running into him, but then he adults-up and goes to face him and greet him, giving him a half of a bow because of the pain, the pain. Rather than complaining about his punishment he meekly asks if he's broken another rule. 

Lan Xichen tells him that he did wrong but that Lan Qiren’s punishment was too harsh, and then in what is one of my favorite Lan Xichen moments, invites Wei Wuxian to use the cold spring to heal, but doesn't invite Jiang Cheng to go with him even though Jiang Cheng also was beaten. Lan Xichen, Matchmaker Auntie Extraordinaire. 

Then he answers Wei Wuxian’s question about his mom by saying she was just like Wei Wuxian and drove Lan Qiran up the wall. Jiang Cheng's reaction to that is really sweet. He does enjoy Wei Wuxian at the same time as being constantly irritated by him. 

Lan Xichen does his patented “breaking off in the middle of saying something and leaving out a chunk of the story” maneuver, although this time he doesn't include a flute solo. 

OP is mildly obsessed with Xuan Lu’s shoulders in this outfit. Also Yanli has an interesting sword, that's got some wood carving similar to Subian, but without the organic look, which OP only noticed because of screen capping Xuan Lu’s shoulders.  

Club Ruohan

Wen Qing continues to be pretty and slightly evil at this stage, sending magic fire notes to her boss using this talisman that is definitely floating in the air and not just hanging from a string. 

Wen Ruohan is in the mosh pit with his zombie groupies while he reads Wen Qing’s extremely vague status update and says "it all makes sense." 

Reach out and touch faith

Soundtrack

Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode

Writing Prompt

How did Wei Wuxian’s parents die?

Admin Notes

I’m going to start spacing out my “first part” and “second part” posts by a few days.  I’ll update this post to link up the second part once I post it, and my masterpost is always up to date. 

Also: if you want more of my original content but don’t want to follow my whole blog (not following is fine!), I keep a pinboard of fun stuff at the top of my blog. I try to post original content at least once a week.

Continued in the second part later this week!

[girlsbtrs]

How Being a Woman in Hardcore Helped Me Learn to Love Myself

Written by Jen Moglia. Graphic by Laura Cross. 

Since this is my first piece written for Girls Behind the Rock Show, I figured that I should introduce myself; hi, my name is Jennifer, but most people call me Jen. I live on Long Island in New York, and my favorite things include my cats, the color pink, giving gifts to my Animal Crossing villagers, and watching sports. Above all else, however, I love music.

I frequently refer to music as the love of my life. It somehow plays a role in everything that I do. I got my first iPod when I was five years old, stacked with everything from Miranda Cosgrove and Avril Lavigne to Tool and Deftones. Some of my favorite memories growing up are sitting in my pink and purple bedroom singing and dancing along to Paramore’s crushcrushcrush and Fall Out Boy’s Thnks Fr Th Mmrs on the local alternative radio station. I danced for 12 years, played cello for seven, and am currently a wannabe ukulele rockstar after buying one on impulse and starting to teach myself how to play four years ago. Even on the simplest, barely noticeable levels, music has been everywhere in my life for as long as I can remember; even now, I can’t complete a basic task without a song playing in my headphones.

Music became an even bigger part of my life when I started attending live shows. I went to my first concerts at age 10, seeing my two favorite artists - Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush and classic progressive rock band Rush - within one month of each other. By the time I was 15, I had been to my fair share of arena/seated shows with one or both of my parents, from Fifth Harmony to Fitz and the Tantrums to Alice in Chains. My first general admission show was seeing the Foo Fighters at Citi Field with both my mom and dad when I was 12, but my first pop-punk general admission show (yes, they’re different) came a few years later. I had the typical list of favorite bands that you would expect from a young teenager getting into alternative music: Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, Real Friends, and State Champs. 

In late 2018, I was able to see all four of these bands for the first time, and I am a firm believer that it changed the course of my life. I met, cried-during, and eventually got the setlist for Neck Deep at Stereo Garden on Long Island in September. I sang all of “Untitled” at the barricade for Knuckle Puck at SI Hall at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse in October. I had my first minor concussion scare (yay!) before Real Friends’ set at Irving Plaza in New York City in November. Finally, I crowd surfed for the first time during State Champs’ anniversary show for The Finer Things at House of Independents in Asbury Park in December. After just a few shows, I had fallen in love with this new brand of live music that I had just been introduced too. There was something so magical to me about skin covered in sweat and Sharpie marks, feet hurting from dancing in the pit all night, and meeting strangers on line outside the venue who would become your best friends and know your deepest secrets by the end of the night.

After making some friends at all of the pop-punk shows I was going to, they started to tell me that I should get into hardcore music. I was hesitant at first - the heaviest thing I had listened to at that point was nowhere near the snippets of hardcore that my friends had played for me - but, eventually, I decided to give it a chance. I was bored and home alone with nothing to do one night over the summer of 2019 when I listened to my first hardcore album, Laugh Tracks by Knocked Loose. Immediately, I got that gut feeling that you have when you know you’ve heard one of your favorite bands for the first time. I knew that this was something special that I was meant to find at this point in my life. For the rest of the summer, I worked my way through the rest of my friends’ hardcore and hardcore-adjacent recommendations, with Cost of Living by Incendiary, Stage Four by Touche Amore, You’re Not You Anymore by Counterparts, Time & Space by Turnstile, Springtime and Blind by Fiddlehead, Smile! Aren’t You Happy by Absence of Mine, Bad to my World by Backtrack, and Reality Approaches by Harms Way being some of my favorites. By the time the next school year started, I was hooked, and I already had tickets to my first few hardcore shows in the fall.

My first hardcore show was in November 2019, seeing Knocked Loose at Webster Hall in New York City - fitting, right? They were on tour supporting their new record A Different Shade of Blue, which I had become obsessed with the minute I heard it for the first time. Although I was ridiculously scared of getting stepped on and breaking all my bones (yes, that was an actual fear of mine), I had the time of my life at that show. There was something about this newer kind of live music that prompted a cathartic release, one that I hadn’t found anywhere else before. As soon as the show was over, I was counting the days until my next one.

My love for live hardcore music (and live music and hardcore music in general) has only grown since then, and that story sort of ends there. However, I want to go back to that first hardcore band that I listened to, Knocked Loose, and the album they put out that first summer that stole my heart. I was taken by storm as soon as the first notes of A Different Shade of Blue rang through my headphones, but something was different about the third track, A Serpent’s Touch, particularly the ending; I heard a voice that sounded a little bit more like my own.

This song features Emma Boster, who does vocals for one of my favorite hardcore bands right now, Dying Wish. When I heard A Serpent’s Touch for the first time, though, I had no idea who she was. I was used to the aggressive vocal delivery of frontmen in hardcore, particularly that of Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, but hearing it come from her changed my perspective on a lot of things. It’s not like the song was super angry and changed its tune to be lighter once the token girl came along; in her verse, Boster sings, “I watched the venom / Overcome your spirit / Jealousy holds you now / Distorting your appearance / Bleed out.” These were lyrics that held the same intensity that the lines screamed by the men held, and they sounded just as cool coming out of her mouth. As cheesy as it sounds, it had never even occurred to me that women had a place in this new world that I had discovered. The audiences in the live videos I watched (and eventually at the shows I attended) were made up of mostly men who looked bigger and older than me. When I did start going to shows, most of the non-man population consisted of my friends and I. Emma Boster, along with so many others, began to open my eyes to the fact that a place for people like me existed in this community. It didn’t matter that I had bright red hair or liked butterflies or wore pink - I was just as much a part of this magic as the men multiple feet taller than me with tattoo-covered arms, and I belonged there just as much as they did.

As time went on and I got more involved in the genre’s music and community, I discovered more bands with women in them, and it only fueled this fire of empowerment inside of me. When I felt insecure, I’d watch live sets from Krimewatch, a hardcore band from New York City, just half an hour away from my hometown. They have multiple women as members, including their energetic badass of a vocalist, Rhylli Ogiura. Year of the Knife became one of my all-time favorites, and their bassist Madison Watkins became a serious inspiration to me; the way that she can balance killing it on stage and running the cutest, most pink apparel brand I’ve ever seen (aptly titled Candy Corpse) amazes me. Even some of the bands I’ve found more recently have had an impact on me. I started listening to Initiate last year when their EP Lavender came out, and their beautifully colorful cover art caught my eye before I had heard any of their songs. Their vocalist, Crystal Pak, is also a woman, and she’s insanely talented. Discovering this kind of representation in this new universe that I had come to feel so at home in introduced me to a world of confidence and determination that I had never known before.

When people ask me why I love hardcore so much, I often give the easy answer; “the music sounds good.” If the person allows me to ramble on for a little longer, the answer becomes much more emotional and cheesy. Hardcore taught me that speaking up for what I believe in is important, and if there’s something I’m passionate about, it’s worth shouting about. I became familiar with this when listening to one of my favorite bands ever, Incendiary (the second hardcore band I ever checked out), before quickly realizing that politics are a pretty common topic within the genre - it’s what this music was practically built on. The first time I heard their vocalist Brendan Garrone singing about police brutality and injustice on songs like Force of Neglect and Sell Your Cause, I realized that there is so much more to music than just sounding good.

However, at its core, the thing I love so much about hardcore is what it taught me about being a woman. Growing up, I was the loud girl with the personality bigger than the room who always had something to say and had a never ending supply of excitement about just about everything. As I got older, I was taught that this was not okay. People didn’t like how enthusiastic I was about everything, or that I constantly had new ideas and new discoveries I wanted to talk about. As cliche as it sounds, I felt like everyone around me was trying to dull my sparkle, especially some of the men that I was encountering on a day-to-day basis. Even when I started to come to terms with my big and bright personality, in turn also coming to terms with my own femininity, I was told that this wasn’t how girls acted. I had to pick one - I could watch Disney princess movies and wear Hello Kitty hair clips, or I could be outspoken about my beliefs; but never both. The women that I mentioned earlier, along with so, so many more, helped me unlearn these toxic mindsets. Seeing someone like Emma Boster take the stage and scream ferociously for a full set helped me see that I could be a girl and still be a powerhouse. Following Madi Watkins around on social media showed me that I could love bands like Year of the Knife and also love heart-shaped purses and wear pink from head to toe. My aggression and passion didn’t make me any less of a woman, and my femininity didn’t make me any less of a force to be reckoned with. 

So, at the end of this love letter to hardcore and the women who run it, I say this; thank you for teaching me that I don’t have to shrink myself anymore. It has made a world of a difference.

[targaryenimagines]

Candle in the Northern Winds

Daenerys Targaryen x Reader

Word Count: 2,630

Summary: Memories played like repeated mantras in your head. Taunting you over and over again of things you could never unsee. Filling you with more and more despair as time wore on. What made it worse was the fact that you still couldn’t give her up. Despite the fact that she had completely shattered you.

Dialogue Prompt: “I’m still not over you.” and “I’ll always be there for you. Don’t you know that?”

Note: I changed the second dialogue prompt to “I’ll always be there for you, I swear.”

Other Note: Also mentions of cheating.

The winds of the North tear at your face. Freezing the tears streaming down in their tracks. Stuttering breathes escaping between chattering teeth. Hands clutching at your cloak trying to preserve any semblance of body heat.

You know that standing out here was a death wish waiting to happen, but you couldn’t bear to be in his presence anymore. Couldn’t bear to look into his eyes and see the remorse, the regret, that he clearly had. Couldn’t bear the feeling of nausea every time you saw them together. Acting to the world like nothing happened when it had torn yours apart.

Their actions had completely shifted your entire axis. Opening up a chasm beneath your feet and watching as you fell. Throwing you out to the wolves to be eaten because you had lulled yourself into a false sense of security. You had allowed yourself to love, to open up, and that had cost you more than you were willing to admit.

More than you were willing to believe, because if you did then you would remember how she had made you feel. You would remember why you had allowed yourself to open up. You would remember every single reason you had fallen in love with Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen.

The way her hair always fell into her face as she slept. Golden ivory falling in gentle waves to cover the most beautiful face you have ever laid eyes on. Little snores escaping between parted lips.

The way her eyes always lit up when she saw you. Glowing violet shining like the sun as she gazed upon you. Always filled with warmth and causing you to feel nothing but security.

Even to the way her hands always held yours in such a welcoming hold. Always with just enough pressure to show you that she wasn’t going to let go, but allowing you the freedom to make up your mind if you wanted to leave. Allowing you the leeway to let go if you wanted to. Her hands were like a warm hug against yours. Filling you with nothing but love and affection.

And then that all changed. Ripped from you before you were even given the chance to prepare yourself.

All because of Westeros.

All because of the Iron Throne.

All because of Jon Fucking Snow.

Because of him, and this cursed land, you have lost everything that ever meant anything to you. Every shred of happiness, of light, has been tainted. Memories that once left you with a sense of purpose now filled you with despair and anguish. Moments that you used to hold on to were nothing but wind beneath your palms.

Your mind was tainted by something you could never forget. No matter how much you tried.

No matter how much you pleaded.

Gone were the moments of slightly tousled hair because of sleep. Now all you saw was the beautiful ivory waves knotted together because of untold passion. A mouth that had always made you feel safe breathing out a moan. Her back arched against the stocky frame of the northern bastard.

Gone were the feelings of warmth and security when you looked into her eyes. For all you could remember was the way she had looked at you over his shoulder. The shock in her gaze quickly turned to anguish. Shattering everything you had thought you knew.

Gone were the moments of simply being in her presence. Being filled by nothing but warmth and affection, because now her presence was nothing but stifling. Her hold on you, just like that night, was a prison. Her fingers like the iron bars on a cell. Trapping you in an endless sea of despair. Continuously drowning you without any hope of rescue.

After all how were you supposed to swim, to live, when the thing keeping you afloat was the one drowning you?

You squeeze your eyes shut to abate the oncoming tears. You didn’t want to be weak anymore. You didn’t want to hurt anymore, but you know that the daggers that pierced your heart every time you saw her would always stay. That no matter how many tears you shed, how many sleepless nights passed by, that this hurt, this ache, would never fully leave you. No matter how much you wanted it to, because of one stupid emotion.

The emotion that still made your heart skip a beat when you saw her.

The emotion that made your hands reach out for her warmth during the harsher northern nights.

The emotion that made you crave her presence with every fiber of your being.

The emotion that made you so irreversibly in love with Daenerys. No matter if she broke your heart or not, because you couldn’t breathe without her, and you hated yourself because of it.

You hated that she still had this effect on you, but most of all you hated that you wanted to forgive her. That you wanted to give in to her pleading looks.

Give in to the gentle touches she lay on your forearm as you passed her.

Give in to the warmth that she still made you feel. To the love that still sang so brightly within your heart and soul, and that you could clearly see being returned.

Those emotions only doubled when you received the news of Viserion. Knowing how much that must have destroyed Daenerys. To not only lose your son but to then learn that you’d have to fight his corpse? A mere imitation of the light that Viserion used to be.

Bringing your palm against your forehead you try to ignore all the emotions running rampant through your body. With your other hand you pull your cloak tighter against yourself. Trying to savor the minimal warmth you gained because of the action.

Letting loose a deep sigh you watch as it clouds in front of you. Your eyes trailing across the misty lines as they slowly disappeared. Never noticing the figure that was approaching you until a warm, gloved, hand appears on your forearm.

Jumping, you pull away from the hold. Your body whipping around to face the person who the hand belonged to. Although, in your heart, you knew exactly who it was.

Your heart thudding against your chest as you met the violet gaze of Daenerys.

Doing your best to appear unaffected by her sudden appearance you straighten yourself. Your arms crossing protectively over your chest. You allow yourself to shift slightly backwards so you could put a little more room in between the two of you.

Something that Daenerys noticed automatically. Her brow turning down in a clear show of her displeasure. Though she made no move to rectify the sudden distance. Knowing that you had every right to react that way to her presence.

Finally, after a moment, she speaks. “You shouldn't be out here in the cold.” She shifts in place as she glances around at your surroundings. “You’re not used to the northern weather. You should go somewhere that’s warmer.”

Your mouth twists into a self deprecating smile. Your words spitting out of your mouth like they were acid. “And where, pray tell, should I go? To you?” A short laugh escapes your mouth. Ignoring the hurt that flashed across stunning violet, you continue. “Or should I stay in the great hall where I have to listen to the great Jon Snow speak? Or, better yet, should I go back to my chambers that only stay warm for half the night? Where would you like me to go, Your Grace?”

Wincing at the use of the formality Daenerys moves closer to you. “You can stay with me.”

“Why would I want to stay with you?” The question is practically snarled between clenched teeth. “Why would I want to stay with the woman who broke my heart? Why would I want to stay with the woman who promised me forever and broke it the moment she got something better? Tell me, Khaleesi, why would I want to be anywhere near you?”

Daenerys doesn’t speak but as you were asking your questions she wilted more and more. Defeat flashing across her face as the words rang through the air. The venom laced within your tone causing her to blanch.

Scoffing your move further away from her. Very much aware of her burning gaze following your form. You could feel the way defeat was beginning to worm its way through your body. Your shoulders slump because of it and your voice drops to a pained whisper.

“Do you know what’s worse,” you ask, agony laced within your tone. “After all of that. After everything that you’ve done to me. I’m still not over you.” Chuckling lowly you turn your gaze back towards her. Your eyes darkened because of your emotions. “I still love you with everything that I am, and I hate myself because I do. I hate the fact that you still make my heart skip a beat. I hate the fact that I miss your voice as the first thing I hear in the morning and the last I hear at night. I hate the fact that I can’t seem to get any air without you being next to me. I hate that you still own my heart and soul even after you destroyed them.”

Widened violet eyes meet yours before they narrow. A determined look flaring across her face. Fire alighting within her gaze. Moving Daenerys situates herself in front of you. Her gaze leveled with your own, and you try to fight down the feelings of warmth that you got because of it.

Bringing her hand up Daenerys’s hand cups your cheek. Her thumb running soothing circles against it, and you fight with every instinct in your body telling you to lean into it. You watch, silently, as Daenerys seems to be processing things. Her mouth thins with thought as she continues to stare at you. Finally, after a moment, she begins to speak. Her voice was low and filled with sincerity.

“There aren’t enough words to express how sorry I am for hurting you. No words that could ever excuse my actions. No words that could ever show you how much I need you to forgive me, but I’m going to try to say what’s needed to be said for over a fortnight. Whether or not you forgive me is up to you. I am not going to begrudge you for any actions you take against me nor will I try to sway your feelings for me. I am simply going to say what I should’ve said the last time you were in front of me like this.” Taking a deep breath Daenerys closes her eyes for a beat. Trying to work up the nerve to continue. Feeling you shift causes her eyes to snap open and a determined look to flare, once more, across her face. “I am going to start by saying the truest thing that I have ever said, I love you. I love you with everything within me. You are the one that has always stood by me when times were at their hardest. You loved me at my best and cherished me at my worst. You are the reason that when I look back that I’m no longer lost, because I know you’d be there. I know that you’d always be there to cheer me on. You’d be there when I need a shoulder to cry, and I took advantage of that. I took advantage of the fact that you were always there. I started to believe that you would always be there. So I stopped paying attention to you. I stopped paying attention to your needs and desires, and started fueling my own. My need for the Iron Throne blinding me to what I already have.” She pauses. “Had, and that’s something I can never forgive myself for. I can never forgive myself for letting my own goals push themselves before you, because you’re the only one that’s ever put me first above anything else. You’re the only one that’s ever loved me as both Daenerys Targaryen and the Mother of Dragons. You’re the only one that is more important to me than anything else in my life. Which is what makes my actions even more despicable. The fact that I willingly hurt the love of my life because I was hurting, because I couldn’t handle everything that life had thrown at me. I was weak and ignorant. Forgetting everything that you’ve gone through for me. The years of you staying loyal to me, and how did I repay that? By cheating on you with the one person I should have never touched. The first new thing that had come my way in Westeros.” A cynical laugh falls from Daenerys’s lips at the thought. “I suppose he was exotic to me, but that still will never change the fact that I was unfaithful to the most amazing being that I’ve ever met. To the one person that has never given up on me. Who has always been there for me. Well now it’s time that I’m here for you, and I promise I’ll always be. I’ll always be there for you, I swear.”

Closing your eyes you could feel the way your breath sucks in sharply. Feeling the way the cool air stings your nose because of it. You know that in your heart what Daenerys said was the truth, and that she would stand by her words, but a part of yourself, a big part, didn’t want to be hurt again. Didn’t want to give Daenerys the chance to do it again, but the other part wanted to. For there was no greater risk than loving Daenerys.

Opening your eyes you meet glowing violet in a steadfast gaze. Trying to convey to her how important your next words were going to be. Something she seems to understand immediately based off the shifting in her stance.

“Time,” you murmur, watching as confusion flashes across her face. “I need time. I can’t forgive you overnight because what you did shattered me, but if you’re willing to pick up the pieces? If you’re willing to accept the cuts that will happen because of it? Then I know I’ll be able to forgive you one day.”

Her face breaks out into the largest smile you’ve ever seen. Her exuberance clearly glowed within her eyes. Bringing your hand to her lips Daenerys presses a chaste kiss to it. Her lips curling into a smile against it.

Whispering, almost reverently, Daenerys looks at you with complete devotion. “I would wait until the end of time to be with you. I would go through any pain, no matter how great, if it meant having you in the end. For there is no greater pain than losing you, and I’ve become all too aware of what that feels like. I vow never again to go through it. Nothing will ever keep me from you.”

Smiling you allow yourself to feel warmth and love once more. Accepting the feelings with a welcomed embrace. Allowing yourself to feel everything you’ve been pushing away for so long. It was like coming home after a long journey.

Glancing towards Daenerys, and her bright gaze, you know that there was still a long road ahead of you. That there would be bumps and that there would be tears shed, but you couldn’t bring yourself to feel anything but determination.

For as long as you had each other you could get through anything.

As long as you kept moving forward you would be okay, because there was no need to be lost anymore.

Not as long as you had her and she had you.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The REAL Story Behind The Crooked Man And The 7 Other Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes With *Even More* Disturbing Backstories

It was 4 years ago that we first met the Crooked Man.

With a *sickening* reveal via rottweiler fit for the latest season of Rupaul’s Drag Race, the suited gentleman staggered his way from The Conjuring 2 (2016) into our nightmares.

But his ashy undertones, gnashing teeth, and general aura of “I’m a demon, or something, which means I have no real motive apart from wanting to kill you” isn’t the only thing that fits the film far too well.

The Conjuring universe is the definition of ‘based on a true story’. And the Crooked Man fits the brief.

In the opening scenes of the film we see lovable and bulliable Billy stutter through a nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all liv'd together in a little crooked house.

Accompanied by a totally-cursed-i-mean-just-look-at-it zoetrope (it’s a bit like a mini projector that shows you a moving cartoon), Billy introduces us to one of the handful of extra entities terrorising London’s most haunted house. You can discover more about the true story of 284 Green Street which inspired The Conjuring 2 here. 

But Billy also introduces us to a real nursery rhyme inherent in British culture - and British history.

Yes, the nursery rhyme, like many, is based on dark and twisted reality softened for a bedtime story. And amongst this history was a real person. Unfortunately, the Crooked Man is not the only fairy tale monster or nursery rhyme entity that will be haunting your dreams.

Are y’all tucked in?

The Crooked Man

The nursery rhyme was first told sometime in the 17th century during the reign of King Charles I. But the Crooked Man was not the Stuart King - it was allegedly inspired by Scottish general Sir Alexander Leslie and the covenant he signed.

The covenant secured religious and political freedom for Scotland despite prevailing animosity between the English and the Scottish.

The crooked stile is the awkward alliance between the two parliaments and the crooked house refers to the collective union the Scottish and English lived together in. But the ‘crooked’ part works on another level, too.

The great recoinage of late 17th century meant sixpences - which feature in the rhyme - were made of very thin silver and thus easy to bend.

An alternative origins story links it back to Lavenham, a village in Suffolk (England). The half-timbered houses leaned at off angles as if supporting each other, creating a crooked aesthetic that matches the nursery rhyme.

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

I distinctly remember hearing the story of the Pied Piper when I was about 7 years old. I was there, sat crossed-legged on the wooden floor in assembly and listening to the headteacher tell us the tale of the musical maverick with an overhead projector.

I remember it being far more nostalgic and not so traumatising.

The story goes that sometime in the 13th century a peculiar man dressed in brightly-coloured clothes (pied clothing) was hired by the town to rid them of the rats with his pipe-playing abilities. Hamelin had been suffering from an infestation that would threaten the locals with the plague. The piper was to play his pipe, entice the rats with his magical music, and lead them to a river where they would promptly drown.

He was hired and he did the job - but they didn’t pay up.

The piper couldn’t exactly refund his services. Instead, he sought vengeance, luring away the children of the town with his magical pipe. He waited until Saint John and Paul’s day where the adults would be in the church, dressed in green like a hunter, and played his pipe. The children of the village swarmed to him, all 130 of them, following him out of the town and into a cave. Three were unable to follow due to being blind and deaf and thus told the villagers what had happened.

The real story:

Some versions of the story claimed he made them walk into a river, others claim he returned them after payment. But what we do know for sure is that there is a street in Hamelin called Bungelosenstrasse. On this street - ‘the street without drums’ according to translation - the children were seen last. No music and no dancing is allowed on this road.

Bluebeard

We open on a typical Medieval scene: a powerful and wealthy man is looking for a young wife to replace the last one who mysteriously went missing. Bluebeard’s been through quite a few women, actually, but it’s his latest bae that stars in this story. Bluebeard marries his neighbour’s daughter and goes on a business trip.

He tells her he can stay alone in their house but she cannot open a certain door.

Of course, she opens the door and finds the corpses of his ex-wives. Her and her sisters band together to kill Bluebeard, showering themselves with a wealthy inheritance.

The real story:

This tragic tale of murder and mystery is unfortunately all too true.

There are many alleged origins of the folktale. Let’s start with the Medieval ruler of Brittany, Conomor the Cursed: his new wife agreed to marry him to prevent him from invading her father’s lands but accidentally walked in on a room full of his dead, old wives. She was visited by their ghosts who warn him if she falls pregnant, he will kill her, preventing a prophecy that claims he will be killed by his own son.

She gets knocked up, gives birth, and then she gets her block knocked off.

An alternative inspiration could be a similarly brutal figure: Gilles de Rais (15th century). He was accused of murdering approximately 140 children who suddenly went missing in the Nantes countryside. He was condemned to death and executed in 1440.

Snow White

It’s one of the most popular fairytales of all time.

The story goes that a queen gives birth to a baby girl but dies in childbirth. The king’s new wife is wicked and vain, asking her magic mirror ‘who is the fairest one of all?’ on a daily basis. When the child turns seven, the mirror changes its answer from the queen to the child, Snow White (yeah, that’s weird). The queen hires a huntsman to kill Snow White, but she begs for mercy and says she will live in the woods and he can pretend he killed her.

She finds shelter in a cottage belonging to seven dwarfs who agree to let her stay as a maid until the evil queen asks the mirror her favourite question. It claims Snow White is still alive and the fairest of them all. She goes through several methods of attempting to kill Snow until she falls into a deep coma. The dwarfs host a funeral, a prince comes along, and he, uhhh, kisses what he assumed to be a corpse and she is awakened.

They then get hitched but don’t invite the queen to the wedding. The queen asks the mirror yet again the identity of the fairest, assuming Snow is well and truly deceased but the mirror breaks the bad news to her again. The queen tries to kill her once more but Snow’s hubby forces her to wear red-hot iron slippers and dance in them until she dies.

There’s a lot going on here.

But rather than unpacking everything that's wrong with all of this *gestures to everything*, let’s just get to the dark reality beneath it all.

The real story:

The inspiration is generally deemed to be Margaretha von Walbeck, a young woman who had a terrible relationship with her stepmother. She was forced to move to Brussels and fell in love with Phillip II of Spain, a romance not popular with her parents.

Suddenly, however, Margaretha died. Rumour has it she was poisoned.

Another detail of her life also links her to Snow White: her father’s copper mines were often filled with child labourers whose growth was stunted by working in them, mirroring the ‘dwarves’ in the story.

But Margaretha is not the only contender: Maria Sophia Margaretha Catharina Freifräulein von Erthal *inhale* also hated her stepmother. This - and the fact that her stepmother was given a mirror as a gift by her husband - also ties her to Snow White.

Hansel And Gretel

It’s possibly the most simple fairy tale up for discussion: a brother and sister are sent out to the woods by their father. The mother asked for him to send them away so they can survive a famine. But Hansel uses stones to trace their steps back home. One day, however, he uses crumbs. They get eaten by the local wildlife, so the kids get lost.

They then discover a witch's house, a gingerbread cottage. She lures ‘em in, fattens up Hansel, and prepares to feast on his flesh. The kids plot against her, throw her in the oven, and steal her stuff before heading back to live with their father.

Okay, so maybe this one isn’t based on a true story. It’s based on true stories. Yep - plural.

The real story:

Child abandonment and infanticide was pretty common during plagues, famines, and all other circumstances of poverty. In fact, this particular tale is believed to come from the Great Famine which stretched across Europe from 1315 to 1317. Child abandonment surged during this time.

Rapunzel

Turns out Disney lopped off a lot of Rapunzel’s real story to make it a family friendly movie. Yep, this is a weird one.

A pregnant woman begins to crave a kind of salad leaf (Campanula rapunculus, also called rapunzel) in the garden of the house next door. He goes out to nick it but is caught by the homeowner - a witch. She says he can take the rapunzel, but in return he must give her the child once it is born.

The witch raises Rapunzel as her own but locks her away in a tower when she is 12 to protect her from the outside world.

A prince eventually rocks up and decides to climb her immensely long hair. Unknown, probably PG-13 and probably not consensual acts happen. Still, given it's the medieval era they agree to get hitched after escaping.

The witch discovers her plan, cuts off her hair, exiles Rapunzel, and uses the locks as bait for the prince before throwing him to the briar roses below where he is promptly blinded. Rapunzel gives birth to twins and the prince finds her, identifying her only by her voice. Her tears restore his voice.

The real story:

Being kidnapped or being kept hidden away from the rest of the world is pretty common, well, all of the time. But Saint Barabara, a Greek saint, was the main inspiration for the tale.

She was locked away in a tower in Turkey in the third century by her father in an attempt to protect her Christianity. But her Pagan father’s efforts did not succeed and she discovered the ways of Jesus. She escaped but she was eventually caught by her father who then tortured and beheaded her.

Religious intolerance, y’all.

Beauty And The Beast

Time for another Disney classic with a heavily edited plotline.

The father of a family seeks shelter in a grand palace during a storm. In the morning before he leaves he takes a rose from the garden but is caught by a beast who threatens to kill him for nicking a flower. But the beast agrees not to kill him if his daughter takes his place instead.

The daughter moves to the palace but asks to go see her family for a week. She is then convinced by her sisters to stay at home. A magic mirror then reveals the beast is dying because she isn’t with him. She returns to him and her love breaks the curse that makes him appear so monstrous.

The real story:

Petrus Gonsalvus (1637-1618) was born with hypertrichosis. This meant he had a thick layer of hair all over his body - his physical difference didn’t go down very well. He was kept as a ‘wild man’ in a cage and fed raw meat.

When he was 10 years old he was gifted to the king of france. But he wasn’t kept as a ‘beast’. He was educated like a nobleman and was taught to read, write, and speak three different languages. He was then married off to the daughter of a court servant.

He was married to her for over 40 years and they had seven children together.

(Aww.)

Three Blind Mice

Three blind mice, three blind mice, See how they run, see how they run, They all ran after the farmer’s wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a thing in your life, As three blind mice?

The real story:

It's one of those nursery rhymes you grow up with - and 17 years later you realise how traumatic it actually is.

This nursery rhyme can be traced back to the reign of Bloody Mary (16th century) who had a tricky relationship with Protestants. And by that I mean she burnt them alive, hence the nickname.

The three blind mice represented three Protestant bishops who may have been blinded before their execution or spiritually blind for following Catholicism. Another reference to Queen Mary was her as a farmer’s wife.

Her husband, Philip of Spain, owned several estates and thus was technically a farmer.

Welp, there goes your childhood.

If you liked this post go on and like and reblog. Go on, share your love for my amazing talents with the world!

And if you want to read an article about the paranormal every weekend then you best be hitting follow!

See you next week, kiddos. Sleep tight.

[krreader]

becoming human | chapter three.

pairing: cops!bts x android!reader (as in, ot7 x reader, but may change) fandom: bts warnings: detroit:become human!au ; mentions of murder ; blood ; language genre: crime ; angst ; crack ; (possibly smut) word count: 1.8k+ previous: 1 ; 2

summary: the crime rate of seoul has been rising rapidly these past weeks and nobody could deny that there was more to it than gangs or the likes. something was brewing that not even the famous bangtan boys could solve, a unit specifically formed for hunting down criminals that most couldn’t. so when even they couldn’t find out what was going on, the department decided to add a new member to the team that would hopefully be able to solve the mysteries behind those crimes. what bangtan hadn’t expected however, was that their new member would not be human, but one of the androids sent by CyberLife.

a/n: hope you like this new chapter friends ♥

Namjoon was the first to push past the police officers and reporters that were at the crime scene, the rest of his squad right behind him.

Some looked angry, others shocked and then yet again others scared.

They barely got any details when the call came in, just that Jin was involved in a lethal crime with an android.

Who the victim was, though, they did not know, hence, the anxiety that clouded them as they walked into the elevator and waited for it to take them to the top floor that Jin grew up on.

“I told him to get rid of that thing the moment androids started acting crazy,” Yoongi hissed, “Why couldn't he just listen?!”

“Guys, let's not jump to conclusions yet. Hyung is resourceful, he can take care of himself and his family,” Namjoon said, but even he was afraid of what he might find once those doors slid open.

The corpse of their oldest member? His mother?

They didn't have to wonder any longer, because the moment the elevator doors opened, they all let out a relieved breath when Jin stood there, his mother right next to him, answering the questions that the police officer needed to have  answered.

“Hyung!” Taehyung dashed forward and immediately hugged Jin, then his mother, “Oh thank goodness, you're both safe!”

“We were so worried!” Jimin let out a breath and hugged his mother just like Taehyung had.

“We're.. okay,” Jin nodded, wrapping one arm around his mother who didn't quite look like it, but that was probably just the shock.

“What the hell happened?” Hoseok asked with furrowed eyebrows, “They didn't give us any details when they called.”

Jin let out a sigh, then asked the police officer to take his mother down to the car and drive her over to his brother that he had already called beforehand. It'd be best if she stayed with him for a while, now that his father was out of town. He didn't want her to be alone right now.

He didn't want her to go through the details of what had happened once again and any other questions the police officers might have, he could answer on his own.

“I knew something was off the moment I came in, but I definitely didn't think things would escalate like that.”

Jin's head turned, his members all doing the same, finding a dead android on the floor.

“He wanted to kill my mother, but when I entered the apartment, his attention shifted. Probably because he knew that it wasn't her who tried to get rid of him, but me,” Jin looked at Yoongi, “I heard what you said. I wanted him to be gone for the sake of my mother, just in case something bad would happen, but.. I should have done it sooner.”

“So he wasn't just stabbing anyone who did him wrong but he.. rationally thought about it?” Taehyung furrowed his eyebrows.

“He was.. emotional. He was angry and sad, because he felt like I had betrayed him. Then he wanted to tackle me down, but I still had my gun on me and I just shot. As many times as I had to for him to fall down and not move anymore.”

“You did the right thing,” Hoseok put his hand on Jin's shoulder, “Who knows what would have happened if you hadn't.”

“There's.. one more thing,” Jin now looked at their leader, “RA9.”

That got all of their attention.

“Did he mention it?”

“He said that at least RA9 cares about them and that their time of being slaves to us human beings is finally over. Which makes me think.. this isn't just random cases of androids becoming deviants anymore. This is androids fighting their programming. And this RA9 that they all talk about.. it seems to be their god or their leader. Something or someone that makes them.. wake up.”

An android rebellion? The thought alone made all of Bangtan instantly shut up.

They had hoped these were just a few random cases, maybe some guy sitting in his basement messing around with the programming of androids in hopes of gaining something from it.

But if this truly was the android's fighting their programming, then everyone was at risk with how many androids nowadays existed.

“Did anyone bring that stupid machine?” Namjoon said angrily.

“You mean (Y/N)?” Jimin asked in confusion, not understanding why Namjoon hated you so much, “She's in the car downstairs. I told her to wait, just like you asked, boss.”

“Somebody get her up here. I want her to look at the scene. Also, hyung,” Namjoon turned to Jin, “Do you still have the security cameras installed?”

“I do, but he tampered with them, I already checked.”

“Let that tin woman check again.”

���Seriously, hyung,” Hoseok sighed and shook his head.

Jeongguk ended up being the one to go back down and get you, surprised that you were still sitting there in that same position that you were in when they had left, only that your eyes were now closed.

“Uh.. are you.. sleeping?”

“Something like that,” you smiled and turned your head to look at the youngest member, “How is Officer Seokjin?”

“Good. Alive, just like his mother. The.. deviant was the one that died,” Jeongguk waited for you to get out of the car, then briefed you on your way up, “The boss wants you to look around, see if there is anything else that you can see that would help us figuring this entire RA9 thing out. There must be a way for us to stop this.”

Once the elevator doors closed, you said, “Finding the source of RA9 is a good idea. However, I do not think that it would help us stop this plague.”

Plague. Jeongguk always flinched when you talked about your people like that.

“Then what do you think we should do?”

“I have a few ideas on that matter. I should discuss all of them with your boss. He wants me to come directly to him when I have ideas on how to solve all of this.”

If only he were a little nicer to you if he thought you were so valuable.

Because the moment he saw you, he instantly turned around with an angry huff.

“Officer Seokjin,” you bowed with a smile, “I am glad to see you survived.”

“Uh.. thanks.. I think.”

“May I look around freely? Or are there any areas that are out of bounds for me?”

“Suit yourself. He messed with the cameras, so I doubt you'll find anything on the security footage, but..-”

“Repairing process at 89%.”

All of them looked at you with wide eyes, Taehyung's grin spreading, “Woha.. she's so cool.”

He only stopped when Yoongi nudged his side.

Instead of only playing the footage in your head, you decided to stream it on the TV, for all of them to see.

Jin's mother was making dinner, the android was cleaning the apartment. It all seemed fine, up until he came across a tablet.

“Can you zoom in on that?”

You did so in an instant, revealing an email that Jin had sent to CyberLife. 

About returning the android.

“Note the LED on his head,” you zoomed in once again, “A blue LED signifies a stable and well position. It’s what most androids were programmed to have at all times. Yellow is an increased activity or strain that can sometimes happen when an android is confused or tasked with difficult things that he has to solve quickly.”

“But his LED is red,” Jin narrowed his eyes at the screen.

“Red is something that only occurs when an android is not functioning correctly. It shows imbalance and a level of distress. CyberLife has various reports of LED's turning red during the building of the first androids. Those with red LED's were faulty. But red LED's always had something to do with the builders having done a mistake. In this case, it seems as if something else causes the androids to have this kind of distress.”

“She's right. Just think about it,” Jimin spoke first, “All androids that became deviants that we encountered were put under heavy emotional stress. Hyung's android, that knew it would be shipped away, probably destroyed. The android of that woman that got cheated on, something that would hurt all of us if it ever happened to a human being. That android that bashed his owner's head in after the android was abused over and over again.”

“So you're saying they suddenly.. feel things?”

“Hyung, think about it. What do we do when our emotions are too overwhelming? We panic. We scream. We lose ourselves. We don't function properly anymore.”

“But androids are not designed for this..-”

“I know you all think they're just stupid machines,” Jimin then turned to look at you, “But even machines stop working properly anymore if we do something to them that we shouldn't do.”

“Park Jimin is correct, unfortunately,” you chimed in, “Think about a normal computer. You play games on it, games that require a graphic card that is much better than the one you own. You try to play it on the best possible graphic settings, but your computer will give up eventually, because it is not designed for a game such as the one you want to play.”

“Only that instead of giving up and shutting down, these androids fight their programming,” Hoseok ended the conclusion, “Should that even be possible?”

“No,” you shook your head, “The one that designed these androids should have made sure it would never happen. But maybe he didn't know just how advanced his androids would really become. Maybe he just didn't predict an outcome like this.”

“But why now? Androids have been on the market for years and these deviants only started surfacing within the last couple of months. What suddenly changed?” Jin asked.

“RA9,” Jeongguk said, “This is like every other rebellion, guys. It just needs one person to spark it. One person that finally realized the world was unfair and decided to fight it. One person for others to follow in his footsteps.”

“I can't believe this,” Namjoon shook his head, “If this.. theory is true, then every single person that is close to an android is at risk. Every child, mother and grandmother is at risk when being outside and close to an android that is deciding that the world is unfair and that humans are a threat to them.”

“We need to find RA9. We find it, we destroy it and this nightmare is finally over,” Yoongi nodded..

..like that was easy.

[moniquill]

I’m going to talk about Greedfall. Fight me.

So recently Greedfall was on 70% off on Steam, and I bought it.

I did so fully in the knowledge that this game is a garbage fire. I knew from the moment I saw the trailers back in August 2019, and I made some posts about it:

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187141616836/greedfall-comes-out-next-month-on-the-10th-get-so

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187185773016/no-i-will-not-absolve-you-geek-friend

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187213116466/i-think-youve-fundamentally-misunderstood-the

And reblogged people saying more and better things: 

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/187152585746/dalishious-untilthisdreamisgone-akedhi

A particularly large FUCK YOU to Darkfreya, who said this in the comments:

“ I will definitely buy this and hope it does well. We need more games like this. The fact that is a game about colonization does not bother me at all. Your character is neutral (and probably desperate trying search for a cure to a disease that is killing your people) Who you side with is your choice, and I seriously doubt siding with colonizers is seen as being the “good” choice.”

But there’s a valid argument to be made that you can’t REALLY criticize a game just based on trailers and synopses and lets plays and all that. You need to PLAY it, to play it all the way through and get the CONTEXT of the STORY.

So strap in chucklefucks, I did that. All spoilers, no repentance. 

 Note: I am writing this reaction on the fly as I play. I have had no spoilers except what’s in the promotional material. This isn’t so much a game review as an admonition of bullshit; I will be focusing on the main questline; the things that the game forces you to do to progress the story. I’ll also follow native-specific sidequests.

I am De Sardet, a man or woman who is the cousin of the new governor of The Congregations’ colony on Teer Fradee. I have an unexplained green birthmark on my face. My first quest item is saying goodbye to my mother, the Princess De Sardet, who has the mysterious and fatal illness that’s plaguing the land - the malichor. 

There is no mention whatsoever of my father at this time.

In Serene, I futz about doing minor sidequests, meeting my first two companions (Kurt and Vasco), and levelling up by looting boxes and murdering bandits. I get to witness the ravages of the malichor; the streets are full of dead and dying people, there're corpse wagons and bonfires, generally looks like a good time.

I meet with the two representatives of the Not!European nations that The Congregation is a neutral ally to both of. One is Theleme, the super religious spanish inquisition types who dress in Cromwell-era English and French clothing. The other is The Bridge Alliance, who are all about science and technology and seem vaguely middle east to north african flavored - they wear turbans and kaftans, their architecture has domes and minarets, etc. Each representative gives me a quest with MORAL DILEMMAS! Do I deliver the heretics to the guard for arrest, or allow them to escape? Do I do the same for the charlatan alchemist? If I listen to them, they’re all totally innocent, but letting them go is bad for my reputation with the diplomats. Except that I can lie. So yeah… this is pretty much a ‘Do you BE EVIL because you can, or do you act benevolent at absolutely no expense to yourself?’ choice.

As I’m getting on the boat to head to Teer Fradee, I am railroaded into my first boss fight! This bursts out of the side of an adjacent ship:

All I know about it is that it was brought back from Teer Fradee, and that ‘it was supposed to be out for days’ - presumably it’s drugged. It’s visibly injured. I see it take another bad hit from a falling mast in the pre-battle cutscene.

I have no choice but to kill it.

I beat it into submission (with magic, because that's what I spec’d into) and then get a cutscene where it’s helpless and desperately scrambling away from me, gazing at me with intelligent, desperate eyes.

I dispassionately shoot it in the head.

I am hailed as a hero.

Like seriously here’s the video (not mine, just pulled from youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfIHBIJiAU

We cutscene across the ocean, Vasco gets real serious with some shorebirds, and we arrive at Teer Fradee.

On the steps of the governor’s palace, I have my first encounter with a native - Siora, daughter of a chieftain, who is here to seek an audience with the governor. She speaks to me in the native tongue, presuming that I will understand. She has a facial marking similar to my own. I use my political clout to get her into the palace. When we meet my cousin the governor, he goes on and on about how similar Siora and I look; as if we could be related.

This is the first clue, in the story, that I - De Sardet - have native ancestry. There is no avenue for me to explore this at this time.

Siora wants us to be allies to her clan in their hostilities with the Bridge Alliance. I’m sent to speak with Mal Bladnid - the chieftain, her mom.

I’d like to mention at this time that the designers clearly went out of their way to NOT invoke NDN visual tropes with regards to be people of Teer Fradee - No beads, braids, and buckskins, no flute and drum music. They have an irish/celtic/norse/pagan vibe, as I read it. They have a ‘what even is that’ accent. They also wear a ton of different styles of face paint, the significance of which are never explained. 

The game at large seems to assign characters without regard to phenotype - any person of any faction may be european/black/asian in appearance. There are about a dozen faces in the entire game, endlessly recycled. It comes off as :FINGERS IN EARS, SHOUTING “WE DON’T SEE RACE!!!”:

At the first opportunity to talk to Siora back at my legate pad in New Serene, I can ask Siora if she really thought I was a Native. She says that yeah, she did, because I look like one, and she’s never seen a foreigner who’s an on ol menawi - she doesn’t tell me what that means, and I don’t have an option to ask. 

Following the main quest line and going to see Siora’s mom, I learn that she’s already taken off to fight a battle. We catch up at the tail end of the battle, hundreds of people on both sides are dead. I meet Siora’s sister, and I can talk her down from a roaring rampage of revenge. We find out that their mom’s been taken. We spend some time optionally looking for and healing survivors - you can also just let them die. Save them, and you gain a reputation boost with the natives. Then we explore the ruins, which are continental in style, and learn about the legend of super doom battle of old vs wave of colonizers the first - the native people made a pact with the land which raised guardians, and in exchange certain people become ol menawi. What this means is not explained at this time, other than it’s a pact with the land and why the native people have magic. 

At this point I diverge from the main quest to find out what happened to Siora’s mom; we go to the Bridge Alliance camp and find that she died on the way there. We have to argue/finagle/blackmail the captain of the outpost into allowing us to take her body.

Upon returning to Siora’s village, we find that her mother’s remains have been delivered, but new complication: there are missionaries from Theleme insisting that they had an agreement with queen Bladnid - the village would convert to Not!Christianity and in exchange Teleme would aid them against the Bridge Alliance. If they agree to this, they’ll have to bury Bladvid according to Theleme religious standards. Siora thinks this is bullshit, we must investigate. It is unclear how I’m supposed to pursue this. 

I return to Constantin and report on the ancient ruins where the battle took place. He tells me to go see Lady Morange, who tells me to go check out some other ruins near some mines. This continues the Ancient Mystery questline.

I proceed to San Mateus (which is also where I need to go for main questline things regarding talking to the Theleme leaders on the island) 

Entering the city for the first time thrusts me into a cutscene so fucking upsetting that I had to put the game away for a while and come back later. Upon entering the main square, I see a priest strangling a native man, while a creature not unlike the one I was forced to fight back in the first boss battle is being burned alive. The priest is demanding that the native man denounce his gods. He then strangles him to death. I am given no opportunity to intervene. Afterward, when I’m able to talk to the priest, I can declare myself as a believer or not - I can answer yes or no, or attempt charisma to weasel out of the question. If I fail charisma I have to answer yes or no. If I declare that I’m not a believer, we have a fight scene. I am not allowed to kill this man; the fight ends as soon as he’s incapacitated. He wanders off, declaring that he won’t forget this and that I’ll have to fight him again later.

THE BURNED CORPSE OF THE TREE-BEING REMAINS IN THE SAN MATEUS SQUARE FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

In the palace I meet Petrus, after talking to the Mother Cardinal, Petrus becomes one of my companions. The Mother Cardinal asks me to investigate a native village that she believes is worshipping a demon. Yeah sure I’ll get right on that.

I proceed to Hikmet to talk about their science team’s work on the Malichor, and learn that the natives are very antagonistic toward their people. A soldier interrupts the conversation to tell us that an outpost has been routed in a native attack. I’m asked to assemble a team to investigate a science party that’s gone missing.

I return to Constantin to tell him about meeting the governors; he tells me to proceed with all the questlines I’ve opened and whines about how his parents never loved him. Worth noting at this time that Constantin appears not at all well. He’s pale and has dark circles under his eyes. He claims to be fine, just nauseated.

My main questline threads are now:

An Ancient Mystery

Scholars in the Expedition

Demonicial Cult

I choose to follow the cult one first, because Native involvement.

I proceed to Tir Dob, and meet with the investigators. The leader is frustrated because the natives don’t want to talk to her, and she’s convinced that there’s deep evil afoot. When I talk to the villagers, they dismiss me and tell me it’s not my business. Which, I mean, fair!

Notably, one woman asks about my mark/status an on ol manawi. When I say I’m not bound to anything/I didn’t do anything to bind myself, she tells me that one of my parents must have been a doneigad. I have no opportunity to pursue this.

There is no story-continuing option for me to leave it, or to pursue a path of gaining the villagers’ trust. I am required, by the game’s narrative, to spy on a villager. I break into his house and look at his things; I comment on how terrifying his fresco is and how morbid his altar and how horrible his mask. Siora points out that the mask is just worn to intimidate enemies in battle. It’s identical to the warthog spirit mask I can buy at any number of native merchants and wear. Petrus says that there’s obviously demon worship going on.

I tell sister Ephesia, and she sends me to follow the villager on his journey into a secret place in the forest. He disappears into a sacred grotto. I commune with a tree and experience a narrative, then have to solve a very obvious puzzle to enter the grotto - to invade a sacred place that I am obviously not welcome in. There is no option to refuse to do this that forwards the story. In the grotto I witness a ceremony that’s presented, through cinematography and music, to be SO TERRIFYING AND OBVIOUSLY EVIL because there’s… a small amount of bloodletting? A glowing tree spirit speaks at the end of the ritual and all participants triumphantly shout.

Siora, if in the party, says that the rituals of her tribe aren’t so scary, cementing that the game feels that this ritual is intrinsically horrifying in some way.

We go to ask the chief of the village about what we spied on, and she explains that it’s a ritual to evoke the strength of warriors and invoke a blessing against the Theleme investigators. She tells us that the voice we heard one one of the many faces of nature, and that if we proceed to another location and perform a ritual, we may hear from another face of nature - but that we might not be happy with the results.

We proceed to Vedvilvie, where we meet Aged Hermit. He tells us that a detachment of Bridge Alliance soldiers was here a long time ago, and gives us information about where to find their camp. We explore the swamp, looking at assorted corpses and ruined tents and ancient frescoes, then talk to Aged Hermit again, who tells us about a ritual to summon the earth. 

We perform the ritual, and are thrust into a boss battle with Nadaig Vedemen. There is literally no choice but to kill her. The Aged Hermit rebukes us for having done so, calling us murderers and monsters. Gotta say, I absolutely agree with him. Siora tells him to calm down, that we were only defending ourselves. She explains to me that he knew her before she became a Nadaig - that Nadaig are Doneigada who’ve called upon the power of the island to the point of physical transformation. That it will happen to her and to me, eventually. That’s what on ol menawi and the mark means.

There is no opportunity for me, as a player, to avoid killing the Nadaig.

We return to Tir Dob and confront Derdre about sending us into a death trap; she had hoped the Nadaig would kill us. We now know secrets that no one outside the clan has ever known. She asks us not to tell. 

I proceed to the Bridge Alliance Scholars’ camp and find they’ve been captured by locals, who want to trade them for prisoners that the Alliance has previously taken. We run into some locals who give us important information about where the prisoners are being held, because they feel it would be better if the prisoners were gone. We meet Aphra, who joins the party and leads us to where prisoners are being held. Two options here - guns blazing bloodbath, or ghost sneak mission where we bust the prisoners out undetected and harm no one. I choose the ghost option. Regardless, upon bringing the rescued scholars back to camp I’m confronted by three natives who I have to fight with. Once defeated, I have the option to either spare their lives or finish them off. Only Siora argues that I should let them live. I do.

We return to Hikmet and talk to the governor. This opens the Search for Panacea questline. Aphra is now a permanent possible companion. 

Aphra’s personal quest: More required spying on the natives. Siora greatly disapproves. I have no option to shut this shit down, to tell her ‘No, we are not doing that.’ We spy on the elders, who are having a meditative session where they listen to the voice of en on mil frichtimen. They catch us spying and call us down, chastise us, and then invite us to watch the rest. Aphra makes comments about how ‘it’s almost like they really can hear a voice on the wind; must be delusion-level faith!’ She then says she has to mull this over and to talk about it later.

We proceed to the ruins that Lady Morange mentioned; two of the three required fetch items are in the general vicinity of a Nadaig. It is possible, through sneaking, to reach them without having to fight the Nadaig, so I do that. We find that the people who built the ruins were…. DUN DUN DUN…. From the congregation! We used to be EVIL! Like we’re totally not now!

We report to Constantin, who is looking even more sickly. He tells us to investigate this history with the Nauts and laments more about his daddy issues. He also says that I look too much like a native for it to be a coincidence which, at this point, fucking DUH. This opens the The Prince’s Secret questline. 

Meanwhile, on the quest for panacea, I head back to the village where I freed the Alliance prisoners to talk to the chief. There’s several dialog options, since I didn’t go bloodbath when rescuing the prisoners, but there’s also a spying option. One way or another, I gain the information that I need to go to the village of Vigshadir in Frasoneigad to find the Tierna harch cadachtas. Siora knows how to get there.

Upon arriving, I’m told that this is one of the holiest sites on the island and I’m not welcome. Alas, I can’t continue the story while respecting that answer - I can insist forcefully or I can gain the villagers’ trust with a couple of fetch quests. Either way, I end up learning where the Tierna harch cadachtas can be found. I disturb her taking a nap with some salamanders. She’s not at all happy to see me, even when Siora speaks on my behalf. She sicks her salamanders on me and takes off; I have to kill them. I then follow her up a path to a root door that requires an offering to unlock. Siora suggests that it’s a seed; we go back to the village and talk her bodyguard into letting us into her house to poke around. I should mention that there’s a bunch of lootable stuff in her house, and the game doesn’t punish me in any way for taking it. I find the correct seed and we proceed through the root door to a maze that Siora says is SUPER SACRED. Nevertheless, I’m forced to kill a bunch of animals on my way through. I tried sneaking several times; due to bottlenecking, the animals always become hostile.  Toward the end of the path, we also come upon an instantly hostile native man, who I am also forced to kill. 

We come out on the other side of the maze in Credgwen, just in time to witness the tierna running from and being gunned down by an Alliance solider. Cradling a bullet wound to her abdomen, the soldier is poised to execute her with a pisol shot to the head when Nadaig Fresamen appears and throws him ass over head. The Tierna then tells Nadaig Fresamen to attack us, and I’m once again in a mandatory boss battle where I am forced by the narrative to kill a Nadaig. Once again it ends in a cutscene where I shoot the Nadaig in the head. I think maybe the game designers think this looks badass, instead of coldly sociopathic? The Tierna is visibly distraught, screaming and crying at what we’ve done. She’s about to attack us when she’s shot in the back by the Alliance Soldier, who then says a bunch of Evily McEvil things, then tries to fight us. Upon besting him, I get to either kill or spare him. 

I kill the shit out of him. 

We bring the very very wounded tierna back to her village, where she wakes up and tries to kill me (Siora calling her off). She explains that the panacea she made is to treat islanders who’ve escaped captivity from the Alliance; those who are captured are gruesomely tortured in the name of science.  She suggests that the malichor might be a curse from En on mil frichtimen. 

We take this news to Constantin. It is now super duper obvious that he is very sick.

Siora tells us who we need to talk to about En on mil frichtimen, Constantin tells us to do that. 

I’m level 16 now.

I hop back to the other main questline, grabbing Petrus and Vasco to go to San Matheus and investigate the Nauts’ problems there. Go to talk to Bishop Domitius but am pulled into a cutscene where Mother Cornelia asks me to get back some sacred tablets that she thinks were stolen by island natives. Yeah, lady, I’ll get right on that. I talk to Bishop Domitius, who accuses the Nauts of being the origin of the malichor. I go to the docs to investigate the rumors. Long story short, the Nauts are fine and I shut down the Inquisition’s investigation of them. When I get back to my residence, there’s a letter asking me to come see some natives at the embassy. Because Native rep[resentation and Native storylines are pretty much all I care about in this game, I pause everything else to pursue that, bringing Siora and Petrus.

I meet with them in the woods, where they’re camped out with the body of an inquisitor they killed. Petrus greatly disapproves. We get some keys and a letter from them, learn that there’s a camp that Native captives are being brought to, and go to investigate the inquisitor’s house for more details. We rummage through his house, find another letter detailing the camp and a chest in the order headquarters. We also find a key to said chest. On our way out, we’re confronted by a bunch of ordo luminus thugs. I have the option to get Petus to talk them down, so I do.

We go back to the place where the natives are holed up and find we’ve been followed by inquisitors. Talk talk fight; we kill them. The natives thank us and say they’ll report this to queen Derdre. I’m now level 17.

I head back to Admiral Cabral to tell her about shutting down the Naut investigation. She tells me that the Nauts discovered the island 200 years ago, the congregation tried to colonize, a few bad apple lords got all tyrannical, and both the natives and thier own workers rebelled against them. The colony was destroyed and only a few survivors made it out. The princes of the congregation swept it all under the rug in humiliation. Then she drops the bomb that I’ve been waiting for the whole game: I am the product of a later Congregation expedition. I’m the child of a Native and was born on a Naut ship. So yeah, I’ve been playing as a stolen child divorced from my native culture this whole time. I’m just gonna leave this link here:

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20913408/us-stole-thousands-of-native-american-children

I immediately go to demand answers from Constantin.

This is a major act shift; things I find out in the next string of cutscenes:

Constantin has the malichor and is totally dying.

Kurt comes in to warn us about a coup d’etat that’s in the works - the coin guard plants to take out all three governors and seize control of the island. Apparently if you haven’t followed his personal questline about abuse within the coin guard ranks, he betrays you at this time. I’ve been doing the companion quests all along but not commenting on ones that don’t involve natives. 

After putting down the coup d’etat, I go back to Constantin to rally. We’re now in Act Two, and my main quests are as follows:

The Suffering of Constantin, where I have three leads - San Matheus, Hikmet, and Native.

The Trial of the Waters, where I need to go speak to Glendan.

So I head to Wenshaveye to talk to the healer there. The village is having problems with missionaries and with abruptly and violently aggressive tenlens - animals that are usually docile. The aggressive tenlen attacks started right about the same time the missionaries showed up. Hmm.

There’s an interlude here where I come upon a bunch of merchants fighting a Nadaig and for a brilliant moment I thought I could kill the merchants and save the Nadaig but no. It’s instantly hostile to me and I have to kill it. The killing of Nadaig in this game is treated as a neutral action, like killing wild animals. 

So yeah turns out the missionaries brought a vicious white tenlen, holed it up in a cave, it was riling up the others, it killed two village kids who went into the woods to canoodle. I shut all that down, kicked the missionaries out, and was able to bring the healer to Constantin. Plot thread resolved! Let’s go see Glendan.

I can’t get in to see the council without having a seal proving that I’m the chosen representative of a current council member. Fetch quest time - literally I just have to go back and talk to Cadasach, the healer, and he hands me the seal I need. I presume it’s more involved if I’d chosen one of the other healing paths. 

I talk to Glendan, he tells me I need to complete the trial of the waters, a new questline opens. Also, the next part of Siora’s questline - promises set in stone - opens. I drop everything and follow that because I’m kind of in love with Siora.

We head to her village and talk to the missionaries, they send us to go see the stone that the agreement was engraved on, we get there and fight a bunch of enemies, the stone is destroyed and we can’t read it. Time to go see the engraver, Caradeg. We get to his house to find it absolutely destroyed. The only clue is a stone bearing the mark of the Dunncas’ clan. So we head to Vigyigidaw. Dunncas tells us that they exiled Caradeg because he wanted to make war on the settlers. Have fun, bootlicker. On my way out of the village I’m snagged by a guy with a side quest; he wants me to get some settlers to stop preventing the clan from going into a sacred glade to replant trees that the settler clear cut. See sidequests for details on that.

Before doing Trial of the Waters, I decide to go check up on Eden and Father Iustinius, bringing Siora and Petrus.

Stolen tablets, lots of talk about how primitive and naive the natives are and how those who aren’t converted are obviously worshiping demons and that’s who must have stolen the tablets.

Siora comments that this place is horrifying, and wonders how the people could have tolerated the priests building continental-style buildings over the top of their village.

We go to talk to the theologians, then to Ler. Because I’m not awesome at Charisma, I’m left with no option except to threaten and bully my way into him giving me the name of an old woman, mother of one of the warriors who left the village. I lose re with both the natives at large and Siora personally. The old woman tells us where to find the exiles, and gives us hints on how to avoid traps and sneak in unseen. She implores us not to hurt her son.

We head for the exiles’ camp. I choose the option where I sneak in and don’t murder everyone, and the old woman meets us as we’re leaving and thanks us for that, saying she’s going to try and talk her son into finding a new clan. We head back to Eden.

They thank us for the tablets, are excited to set out a new expedition, the game tells me to wait 24 hours for the results. So I have to hike my ass to out camp, sleep 24 hours, and haul back to where I just was to find out that a party that went into the swamp ran afoul of…. something.

Siora points out that the survivor was obviously bitten by a poisonous swamp creature and that a local healer probably knows the remedy. We go talk to Ler again.

Ler tells us that the village doneigad is one of the exiles, but that the old woman we talked to earlier knows plants well. I’m pretty sure that if we’d murdered her son to death in the previous quest, she’d refuse to help us. Because we didn’t, she makes us a potion. The wounded guy wakes up and begs us to go and rescue his dumbass loser friends, so of course I do. 

We’re going back to Vedvilvie, because of course we are.

We arrive at the camp, listen to both the ordo luminous guy and the research sister whine about how the other is mean/incompetant, and go to investigate the dig sites. We find a dude with a caved in skull who was clearly struck from behind with a mace, a guy who was killed to death by lewolans (big lizards), and a poor chump was was obviously stabbed to death before being fed to lewolans. Siora says it’s pretty clear that Mr Inquisition orchestrated this to frame the research lady. I agree. We go to confront him. Choices: Take a bribe and side with him, tell him to leave the expedition, expose his bullshit to everyone.

The ‘correct’ choice in the game is not to reveal his crimes before everyone, but to banish him. Because [Centrist.jpeg goes here]

We follow the path of San Matheus, come up against a nadaig magamen, murder it to death, and enter a cavern. Long story short, Saint Mat totally became a doneigad. He saw on en mil frichtimen as an extension of the concept of light and prayed to him. Also I found a bitchin’ set of holy armor. I put it on Petrus. 

Theleme’s gonna be big mad. We head back to Eugenia to tell her, are confronted by Virgil and the Inquisition. He wants to destroy the relics and evidence that Sait Mat converted to the faith of the island, we kill him to death and go tattle to Mommy Cardinal. I push her to make the decision to reveal the truth to the masses, and to visit the cave herself. 

Theleme is not, in fact, big mad.

Anyway, returning to the main questline.

So there’s two options through the cave of testing, bloodbath or sneak. I chose sneak. Touch a basin, have a vision, solve a very easy puzzle - just like the tree one from earlier. 

There’s a Nadiag waiting, and the command prompt I have for it after solving the puzzle is ‘Tame’... yanno, like one does with an animal. Because indigenous people are fauna. Fucking gross.

I see a fresco depicting a spirit of the volcano. I go to talk to Glendan. He sends me to find the high king, who is missing. I need to see the rest of the high council: Derdre, Dunncas, Ullan. Guess it’s time to finally deal with the Ullan plotline. See side quests for details.

When I head back to Hikmet, I get a whole string of cutscenes because it’s been a while since I’ve been there - including one where I follow up with the islander rebellion. The governor asks me to parlay with the leaders of the rebellion, where I find out that the on ol menawi who the alliance have been kidnapping from villages have been taken to laboratories for experiments - where they have been tortured and killed. This lines up with all earlier accusations, and with that Hikmet dude who was trying to murder the tierna and me - he said they were going to dissect her. So yeah. I go to thier main camp, and fucking surprise, I was followed by Alliance soldiers who promptly stark attacking. I have two choices: fight alongside the natives or put an end to the rebellion. I, of course, fight on Team Native. I then proceed back to Hikmet to ask What The Entire Fuck, Sir? He denies knowing anything about natives being captured; he assures me that this lab is a medical research center. I declare that I”m gonna take a look at it myself.

 I grab Aphra for this, and in the process agree to continue her personal questline. We ask the young apprentices about how to get into the Cave of Knowledge, which, I cannot state enough, IS A SACRED PLACE CLOSED TO OUTSIDERS. Only people who are becoming doneigad are supposed to go there. The narrative makes me. This happening, over and over, gives lie to the premise that the game allows you to make good or evil moral choices - that you can DECIDE to be a good guy or a bad guy. You can’t. You can either choose to violate the sacred spaces of the indigenous people or -not play this game-. There is no ‘Sit Aphra down and tell her that it is implicitly wrong to do this’ option. 

So we go to the cave, it has a seed gate, we find some brigands who’ve murdered a native, they’re planning to dynamite thier way into the cave, we can talk them inot leaving or murder them to death, guess which one I chose just guess. We get the seed and enter the cave.

In the cave, we examine several frescoes; one depicts a ritual where, in a circle, someone is pouring blood on a stone in the presence of a Nadaig. Another depicts the same figure, but now marked as an on ol menawi. We then hear people coming and are prompted to hide, because being caught here would sure lose us the trust of the natives. Which we do not deserve at all, after this. The game prompts me to spy on the young people, which I do, listening in on thier conversation. When we leave the cave, Aphra says that clearly we need to spy on a whole, actual ritual. The game teases me with ‘accept’ or ‘refuse’, but the choice are actually ‘start the time now, or later’ - the story doesn’t allow me to ACTUALLY refuse. We show up, and Dunncas actually gives us permission to watch if we don’t interfere.

After the ritual, Alliance soldiers show up. We kill them to death. The chiefs thanks us for having been there. Aphra says we should look into Dr. Asili. So off to the lab we go.

I’m pretty sure, narratively, that I’m supposed to have stealthed my way through this. However, after seeing a pit of burning bodies and people in cages right as I entered, I just bloodbathed my way through. Also arrested the apprentices and killed the fuck out of Asili. Fun fact: Asili gave Constantin the malichor! Also me, but I’m resistant, since native and on ol menawi. 

I return to talk to Constantin about the sanctuary and the Hikmet problem and everything and find that he’s gone on a journey with the doneigad healer and things have gone wrong. I set out after him. I follow combat signs and talk to Aiden in wenshaveye, then head to the alliance outpost. We catch up with a badly wounded and unconscious survivor, get him a potion, and then have to wait 24 hours. This is a repeated feature of the game an annoying as hell, because the only way to wait is to return to camp. When he’s awake he describes the attack; animals controlled by some kind of native sorcerer and fire and explosions. A native grabbed Constantin and ran off with him. We continue the investigation - I go to talk to Daren. Daren says that they weren’t behind the attack - no one would ever attack Catasach. Catasach is, btw, super dead. I examine the body. He was killed by something than can wield magma. Good times. Daren tells us there’s a ritual by which a doneigad can see the last moments of his life - only tierna can perform it. Good thing we saved her earlier…. From danger that we put her in….

So we head off to see tierna, and she readily agrees because I avenged her earlier. Pretty sure it would have taken more convincing if I’d let the dude who shot her live. One fetch quest to get spell components later, we’re able to perform the ritual. 

Vinbarr did it.

I go to question Derdre, Ullan, or Duncas. The latter two have the best opinion of me, so I hit up Dunncas first. Dunncas tells me to go to Wennshavar. Folks there give me some backstory, tell me to find Cera at the cave of knowledge. 

We come upon alliance folks torturing a native woman, presumably Cera. This bitch has a whole ass villian speech. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the people I saved with Aphra’s science team? Could just be a recycled face though. We run down to interrupt. Aphra wants to reason with her, Siora wants to kill her. Yep, it’s the science team I saved. I have several options here; fight them, use intuition to remind them I saved them, threaten them, or let Aphra speak. I choose to let Aphra speak more because I want to hear what she says than anything.

Aphra shames her and reminds her that they left Asili together because of his cruelty. She whines that Aphra knows she’s not REALLY like that, and stomps off like an angry toddler. No fight. Cera thanks us for saving her, leads us to the cave, and opens it for us.

Inside the cave we find a fresh new fresco; it shows Vinbarr going to talk to the spirit of the mountain. He’s gone to join En on mil frichtimen. We see another fresco depicting a nadaig meneimen - the bird/mountain form. Vinnbar’s gonna turn into one. We look at some other murals, I let slip that I’m looking for Constantin, Cera peaces out and seals us in the cave because she thinks we’re looking for Vinnbar on a vengeance quest. We find another way out. The path is now laden with traps because she doesn’t want to be followed. Sorry, Cera, that no one informed you that I am a protagonist and thus no one can prevail against me. 

We go to the mountain passage depicted in the fresco, go through a cave maze, and find the mountain trail to the sanctuary. We meet up with Cera, who forces us to fight her. We snag a seed from her body after killing her and her folks to death. Which the game offered no way out of doing. Now we have both seeds and can open the sanctuary. We scamper through some scenic vista and arrive to find Vinnbar burying Constantin with rocks using telekinesis. He says the on en mil frichtimen told him constantine is the bringer of doomtimes. Now we have to have a boss fight. Partway through, he transforms into a nadaig. We continue fighting andf kill him to death. 

I sure do murder a lot of nadaig in this game.

We return Constantin to New Serene and I’m pretty sure this is the break into act 3… Catasach made Constantin on ol menawi and he is stoked about it. He has branch antlers and pointy teeth and yellow eyes and feels great. I am concerned. 

Time to go talk to Glendan again. 

I lose three rep with the natives over, yanno, having murdered their high king to death. I now have to go and talk to the three potential high kings and gain the support of one of them - Derdre, Dunncas, or Ullan. Of those three, Dunncas is the only one who hasn’t tried to murder me or betrayed my trust so… off to Dunncas. His agenda is balance and healing. He easily agrees to let me see en on mil frichtimen if he’s chosen, and tells me how to make sure that he is - if I get a spectacular ancient crown from the grave of the high king that became the first guardian. He expresses distaste for using such a method. Siora is also worried about me making a decision that will impact all of her people. Gotta say that I agree, I have absolutely no place being involved in this decision at all - let’s see if the narrative lets me opt out of meddling! I go to see the other two candidates and hear out their agendas, out of fairness. 

Ullan’s agenda is peace and alliance with the colonizers. He also readily agrees to help me.

Derdre wants to repel the colonists and take back the island. She says she’ll let me see en on mil frichtimen only if I rally Eseld/Siora’s tribe and join in the attack on the Ordo Luminous camp. Which, morally, I am absolutely all for. However, it seems like the game is heavily leaning on Dunncas as ‘the right choice’.

But yeah, fuck it, I’m backing Derdre all day long. Lets fuck up some Spanish Inquisition!

I have the option to inform the mother cardinal of the coming attack. Why the entire fuck would I do that?

So I destroy the fuck out of the camp and murder a bunch of inquiition torturers and free the surviving prisoners and gather evidence of war crimes. Then I go to mommy cardinal, who is big mad (Theleme -2 rep) that I didn’t tell her first. Boo. Fucking. Hoo. 

Having done that, no there is no way to proceed in the questline without retrieving the crown, which involved murdering a Nadaig Magamen. I get the crown, and Derdre meets me there and rebukes me for entering a sacred place, trying to take the crown and throw the election, as an outsider. She is 100% correct. I give her the crown. 

I wait two days and then go see en on mil frichtimen, who tells me that the malichor is the result of how the continental people treat their land. I’d like to pause here and talk about the role of Magical Natives in Green Aesop stories. Let’s review some tropes: 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CloserToEarth

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InHarmonyWithNature

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalNativeAmerican

This some some colors of the wind / Avatar’s blue cat people bullshit, the idea that indigenous people are implicitly and intrinsically more -one with the earth- and that ‘modern civilization’ has lost this, to their detriment, and can only heal through <s>cultural appropriation</s> learning and adopting deep earthy truths known by indigenous people. The point of this in the story is to tell a Green Aesop - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreenAesop - it sets a paradeigm of indigenous people being the noblest of noble savages - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobleSavage - of indigenous people as a simpler, greener form of humanity. It’s othering. I’ve written a lot about this in the past, check out my post about woo: https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/32577796262/the-following-is-a-post-about-woo

This particular brand of othering of indigenous people directly and personally fucked me up, as an indigenous person, when I was a kid. That could be why I have a personal grudge against it. 

Moving along. 

en on mil frichtimen alo tells me that Constantin is the bringer of doom times, and that Catasach essentially stole power from the island to keep him alive. I need to put a stop to his endless bitter hateful hunger. So yeah, that’s a thing. I go check up on my dear cousin.

When I show up, emissaries from the alliance and theleme are there begging Constantin for troops and also me; they’re suffering horrible attacks on their outposts and people. They’re blaming the natives. I mean, to be fair I did just crown queen Derdre Kill ‘Em All so….just saying. But moving on, I talk to Constantin about the sanctuary. He...doesn’t react well to the warnings about himself. When I ask him about his body with the island, it sure does seem like he got high on apotheosis and wants another hit. He doesn’t believe that the malichor on the continent is the fault of the continentals. 

My main quest lines are now

The attack on San Matheus

The attack on Hikmet 

And honestly fuck both those places because both of them were running torture camps but whatever, I guess I’m off to investigate.

Mommy Cardinal over in San Mateus wants me to hit up an outpost that’s being attacked relentlessly by wild animals. Speculation is that ‘island demons’ are controlling them.

Governor Burhan says the same thing’s happening to his folks. 

Upon checking it out, the islanders are also being attacked; the animals are attacking indiscriminately, and while having that conversation a guy bursts in to say the guardian of the village (a nadaig glendemen) has turned on his people.  So we kill it to death in a boss fight and it’s revealed that the corrupted nadaig was causing the animals to be killrabid. Now that it’s dead, the animals are back to normal. 

Samesies over near San Matheus. 

A human must be responsible, the creatures wouldn’t be so coordinated otherwise.

Is it my cousin? I bet it’s my cousin. 

We go talk to Constantin.

He says ‘ha ha ha nothing to worry about….peace out, my adorable cousin!’ and takes off to parts unknown. I shake down his guards, but all they can tell me is that he’s going north outside the city. I rummage through his papers, and find his journal. Yeeeeah he’s super high on apotheosis and wants to become a god. Like, supplant and replace on en mil frichtimen. And he’s off to ‘get rid of’ some natives in Cwenvar who saw him the other night and might denounce his actions. I’m gonna have to take out my cousin by the end of this game and it will be a tearjerker cutscene. Calling it now. 

We head to Cwenvar to talk to the natives. They show me how to spy on Constantin. We follow him to a sacred grove, where he’s clearly gone cuckoo bananas. He’s commanding a corrupted nadaig, which he tells to hold us back - but not kill me. SO we kill the nadaig, and then have a chat with on en mil frichtamen, who confirms that Constantin is trying to gain godhood by murdering god and taking his power. Yanno, as one does. In a cutscene, I list all the people who will totally help me against Constantin. This includes… pretty much everyone, because I’ve diplomatted my way through the game and everyone likes me. Time to go rally armies. 

It’s worth noting at this time that on en mil frichtamen calls me ‘flesh of my earth’ and earliet called me ‘the child that was stolen’ - there’s a very ‘YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE’ vibe here, implying that I’m only able to succeed at this task because I’m native by blood - I’m not REALLY a continental and thus a Tainted Person made of Endless Greed. It is my native-ness and my bond to on en mil frichtamen, passed down from my donegiad parent, that allows me to be the hero of this game. 

I want you, dear reader, to stop and think about the gross racial implications of that.

Moving forward: We go to ask Dunncas for help in how to break Constantin’s links to the land. He gives me seeds to place at the base of the stone Constantin has erected, to topple them. I have to fight a corrupted Nadaig each time. At this interval Siora points out how wise and attuned to en on mil frichtimen Dunncas is, and I express regret at not choosing him to be high king. TOO SUBTLE, GAME.

So yeah, couple of tedious boss fights. 

Having broken his links and gathered my allies, it’s time for the endgame. We go back to the sacred grove where I talked to en on mil frichtimen, I get a series of heartwarming cutscenes with my companions and allies as I ascend to Constantine’s heart stronghold. 

I reach Constantin. I have to fight a big bad ultra nadaig, which Constantin tells not to kill me. 

He has a long cutscene in which he pleads his case, asking me to bond with him and rule together. I can either bond with him and join him in godhood, which is implied to doom all of humanity to eventually succumb to the malichor because no land can ever be healed now, or I can kill him and save the world like a big damned hero. 

Then Mr. deCourcillion narrates the epilogue, where I get to hear about the consequences of all my decisions through the game. My decision to crown Derdre results in forcible decolonization of the island and healing thereof, but the old world nations are plunged into war and the malichor gets worse there. Am I supposed to feel bad? I don’t! 

In the ‘best’ ending, Magical Native Healers travel to the continent and teach the sad tained continentals how to live in harmony with nature and heal their lands. 

Here, have an every possible ending video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcUByGfNXgY

Know what weirds me out as an actual indigenous person? Learning that I’m a stolen child way back in Act 1 never resulted in a quest where I in any way question or explore my real ancestry. I never try to find out what clan my real mother was from or if I have any living relatives. I never look into why the Congregation abducted my mother and why I was raised by Princess De Sardet. The game just feels that this is unimportant. The important thing was that I have Magical Native Blood. 

So yeah. That’s the game.

In studying the fandom presence of this game, roughly no one is interrogating the fuckedness of the premise or narrative. The active fandom seems to be mostly people who want to bang Vasco, people who think Constantin is a sad wooby who deserved better (including a lot of people who chose the ‘bad’ ending because they wub himb) and people who want to bang Constantin and justify it because he and De Sardet aren’t REALLY cousins… and people who are just here for The Aesthetic. Fun fact there are exactly 12 F/F fics on a03 set in this universe.

Here, have some examples, all from https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/GREEDFALL and https://archiveofourown.org/tags/GreedFall%20(Video%20Game)/works

https://destiny-rahl.tumblr.com/post/616743783790460928/constantin-de-sardet-my-beloved-otp-this

https://swiveldiscourse.tumblr.com/post/615782041344147456/not-sure-who-needs-to-hear-this-but-this-game

https://totallyamoral.tumblr.com/post/615651870535532545

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766497/chapters/49345631

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676554/chapters/49106921

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747450

Lots of people compared this game to Dragon Age: Inquisition when it first came out because the gameplay looks similar. But here’s the thing… the first time I finished DA:I, I immediately wanted to turn around and play it again, as a different character, as someone who made different decisions and followed a different romance and brought different companions with me on quests to see their different reactions. 

I do not want that with Greedfall.

My first thought upon fisnishing was ‘Oh thank fuck, I’ve seen this to fruition, I don’t have to play this anymore.’

That is not how I should feel at the end of a game.

I feel tired and broken and hurt and used, much like I felt after reading Sister Raven.

https://moniquill.tumblr.com/post/165881710831/so-today-i-read-a-book-called-sister-raven

 Native-specific sidequests of note: 

In An Aspiring Merchant, you meet a native merchant in New Serene who’s trying to set up shop; because he doesn’t have the correct paperwork and didn’t follow the bureaucratic process, his stuff keeps getting confiscated. I do not have any opportunity to explore why his lack of paperwork gets his stuff repeatedly confiscated, rather than just getting him sent home.

While I’m getting the paperwork for him, his cousin arrives with a shipment of goods. The guards confiscate the goods again, and arrest the cousin. I go to investigate, and find that cousin threw some punches when the guards once again confiscated all of the goods, and was arrested for disorderly conduct. Ok. So I proceed to the jail and find that he has been sent to fight -to the death- in the arena?! When the prison guard says ‘Hey, it wasn’t me, I was just following orders’ I’m not given an opportunity to ask who’s giving the orders or pursue the miscarriage of justice. I head to the Arena. Despite being a Legate, one of the highest governing offices of the colony, I have no option to put a stop to these shenanigans. I can’t just spring him, or pay bail; I am required to fight beside him to secure his freedom. 

Completing this quest opens the Ullan/Vignamri questline.

Ullan wants to trade with Hikmet, Hikmet wants us to secure the roads, we visit another chieftain, he agrees to a meeting, Ullan shows up and shanks him, I shout at Ullan about how that was bad to do, Ullan thanks me for giving him the opportunity. 

In Logging Expedition, I follow up on the quest hook about settlers clear cutting a glade that I got in vigyigidaw. Standoff between the natives and the settlers, natives want to plant trees, settlers won’t let them. Three settler woodcutters died recently - after investigation there was a conspiracy to poison them by an elder in vigyigidaw - my character refers to this as an act of vengeance by a hateful old man. Despite having literally just had it explained to us that it was supposed to be an object lesson in why not to clearcut the forest - the meat would have been fine if it had been prepared with a particular (possibly now extinct?) berry.

So we pop all the way down to the congregation colony to ask Mr. Courcillon how to diplomacy this ‘property disagreement’. He tells us to go to the basement archives and then see Lady Morange. Just from a gameplay perspective, this - like many sidequests - is fucking tedious. Just running from one place to another, grabbing a few lines of dialog in each place, with no player decision or engagement. This is a poorly designed game. So we hash out the contract, which was created back where neither side had any understanding of the other side’s ideas of what land ownership means. Manhattan was bought for 60 guilders worth of glass beads, etc etc.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12657/was-manhattan-really-bought-24

We have to prosecute the old man for murder if we want a new land deal signed. To prosecute the old man, we have to go stop a mining operation. It’s just one thing after another, and all of it boring and tedious. I had to stop in the middle of this questline and put the game down not because it was upsetting, but because it was -boring-. I hope that the readers appreciate the work I’m putting into making a detailed critique of this garbage fire.

[aerithagainstabusers]

So I saw Greg’s review of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and it was so dumb I had to pick it apart so here we go. Spoilers for the remake below

This starts off bad. Immediately Greg is whining that the game isn’t what he wants. He complains about knowing the characters too well which is an absolutely insane thing to complain about. The deaths of the AVALANCHE don’t mean much in the original. You meet them a few times then they die. You have no connection to them

By getting to know them more - like Wedges love for the Sector Seven cats and how Jessie was an actress before her dad became gravely Ill after working for Shinra, they become more human. You can relate to them more and there’s more investment there. So when the fall of that plate comes? Losing them is more impactful than in the original

The battle system can be set to the same as the original in classic mode except you can’t physically attack (that is automatically done for you) so Greg can’t really complain about that. Sounds like he’s mad he died at bosses he didn’t die to in the original

His complaint about Sephiroth is weird. He’s the main bad guy. He needs to show up. With Sephiroth in the OG, you only hear about him a few times while in Midgar, where the remake is set. They need to bring him In much earlier and show Cloud suffering PTSD to understand this guy is a threat.

He also complains about not having a lot to do. And yeah while it’s not as open you have way more to do. The side quests are actually side quests - with the original, the only side quests you really have before leaving Midgar is dressing Cloud up and getting the perfume, tiara, and underwear. Otherwise? You’re stuck doing what the game tells you to do

You might ask “why are you always saying ‘in the original when you’re in Midgar’and I’ll explain that now

This. Is. Not. A. Spoiler.

The creators said from the start it would only be in Midgar and it would be an episodic game. All the promotional materials showed the game only in Midgar. It was obvious that IT WAS ONLY IN MIDGAR. Greg has no right to complain.

Now yes. You don’t have the same free travel but there is more to travel and there’s so much more content to make up for the fact you can’t leave the city. And by doing so, Midgar comes alive. So when you leave? It feels more of a loss and like you are leaving somewhere you have a connection to. Now this was disappointing because I was definitely wanting more. Like I wanted to keep playing in because it was dragging me in. But it was clear from the start and they were transparent with this. Greg clearly wasn’t looking all the things that were coming out about the game since you knew what was going on.

It even says on the back of the box it’s going to be the story in Midgar and that it’s the first game of the remake “project” and would go deeper into the city

Why is Greg surprised and acting like he’s being cheated out?

His next complaint is.... very worrying

Nanaki in the original never acted like a pervert with Aerith. He acted like he was aggressive to lower Hojos guard but that’s a nitpick. But the rest? Holy fuck Greg, STAY AWAY FROM WOMEN

in the remake, Hojo does not have plans to crossbreed Aerith and Nanaki. Instead? He wants to have SOLIDERS repeatedly rape her so she can “breed” and laughs in her face as he tells her all about how he ripped her mother’s corpse to shreds so he can continue to investigate her. There’s only molecules left of Iflana. He also tries to kill Cloud, Tifa, and Barret so he can show aerith their corpses to kill her hope she’ll be saved

But more importantly, Hojo's proposal in the remake is far more horrifying than in the original. He wants her to be raped over and over. Why the fuck doesn’t Greg see this as being bad an as a “P.C. culture” addition? What is wrong with you, dude. How do these things not show how insane he is

The cross-dressing is a stupid complaint. So you don’t get to go to a brothel and watch a small cutscene. Who cares? You get to see Cloud perform on stage at a cabaret and he is dressed up while on stage while you do a mini game. And that isn’t fun? Okay, Greg.

The events he’s talking about by the way? You fight in a Colosseum, you can choose to help Johnny, and/or you can do the iconic squatting game. Then you go to the Honeybee Inn, do a dancing minigame, and perform on stage. 

As opposed to the original where you talk to a man and tell him what dress you want. Do the most squats, Buy some wine at an inn, have a bath with a bunch of men, and give a woman some medicine. The amount of time you spend doing that will take you the same amount of time to do one side quest in the remake. Of course, the original had it’s restrictions because of the platform it’s on, but the remake definitely did go out of its way to expand that and make it feel like you were doing more.

This is a bit more valid. Like I get having nostalgia for the OG game and preferring it and that’s okay! But the Harry Potter comparison ruins it. Also Greg doesn’t seem to realise the difference between a remake and a remaster. The game is being remade. Of course the gameplay is going to change. Turn based games aren’t viable anymore and considering how good the graphics are, it would ruin the immersion. They had to change things like this to make it more modern. Remember, they aren’t just making this for fans. They’re wanting to bring in new people. 

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE REMAKE

SO PLEASE

IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED IT

READ THIS NEXT PART WITH ABSOLUTE CAUTION OKAY?

OKAY

SPOILER

WARNING

OVER

I really hope this is just a joke that Zack wasn’t mentioned before he appeared. But considering this is Greg, and how he really doesn’t seem to understand this game, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t know the significance of this scene. He says later in this article that it took him 24-40 hours to finish the game. Which, if you actually complete it (by doing all side quests, unlocking all limit breaks for everyone, getting master materia etc) it should take you ninety hours. Which makes me think he never went to Nibleheim and saw the cutscene of what happened to Zack and Cloud. Because FF7 is a very quick game if you just focus on the main quests. If you actually dig down deep? You can go way past the timer and have it frozen at 99:99:99. I don’t think he did anything in the original game and just did whatever the game told him to do without looking at anything else.

I really hope this is just a stupid edgy joke because Zack is a well-loved character but you never fucking know with this moron.

I understand his complaints about Nanaki. Nanaki is always in my party in the original so I was bummed you couldn’t play him, but he appears in the penultimate chapter. The writers probably didn’t feel it was worth their while to add him as a party member, and instead, make him a guest who helps.

The Sephiroth complaint is stupid because he’s missed the point. Up until he appears in the Shinra building, he isn’t actually there. Cloud is hallucinating. He is shown as being mysterious and unreachable as Cloud tries to get to him or freaks out whenever he sees an image of him.

Honestly this just sounds like Greg is mad it’s not the exact same as the original.

Which would just be boring, in my opinion.

Y’know what I said about Greg doing what the game told him to do and nothing else? Yeah this is proof. You have an All materia. It’s called ‘magnify’. And unless you didn’t look for treasure or looked at the new materia when you collected it? You would know this is the all materia. The summons in this game aren’t what they are in the original. You can’t use them in every battle and they only come in boss battles or otherwise difficult encounters because in the remake, it’s made clear that they are incredibly powerful. They come to you maxed out. Which he would know if he paid attention.

I will agree with him to an extent about the maxed out materia. Materia is easy to obtain in the remake (Cloud says this to Aerith when she playfully brags about having it), so if Greg had critical thinking, it would be clear that they don’t sell well is because .... well, it’s easy to max out. Everyone is doing it. But I will agree with him that the game is ‘too short’ in a sense, since having Firaga in only Midgar can be problematic for later games. I do have to wonder what they’ll do in the next episodes. Will you have to level up the magic power after upgrading it so Firaga does the same damage in later dungeons as it did in the sewers of Midgar? It would also be neat to physically ride the chocobos through Midgar to make life easier but I also understand why they had the carriages  as it makes it less weird when Tifa suddenly appears in one when she’s going to Don Corneo’s only to never see a carriage in Midgar again, and the loading screen when they ake you from place to place does make it quicker for you to get places.

Still, it would be nice to ride them at some point so I will give Greg this complaint.

Like I said above, if you do everything in the original it should take you 90 hours. If it took Greg 2 days cumulatively at his highest estimate, he’s not completing the game, and he’s not achieving anything.

For comparison, here’s my latest game

As you can see, it’s at 44 hours. I have done all the sidequests (excluding the one mandatory Fort Condor which would add more time on to it but I didn’t want to do that this time around). I have reached the bottom of the crater, however, I have not done anything further and am now focusing on doing the rest I need to do. Like getting to level 99 on everyone, maxing out my command, summon, and magic materia to get the master materia for those three. Or maxing out all four enemy skill materia. Or getting everyone's limit breaks, or beating the weapons. Because these things take time. I could easily run and kill Sephiroth in that run right now. I could finish the game. But as I’m wanting to complete it as much as I can, then I can’t do that. And that’s not me doing a perfect game where you need to get 99 of each item you can (excluding things like the battery where you can only get three of). If you’re doing a perfect game, it takes even longer but honestly, that’s not something I’d say you’d need to do to ‘finish’ the game. That’s only if you want to challenge yourself.

Also might I add, the remake? It takes about 40 hours to finish it (I don’t know if that includes sidequests). This means in one part of a game  is the same length as the original if you don’t do any sidequests in the OG. I don’t know what Greg is talking about by ‘achieving less’. Yeah you don’t go to as many places, but considering this will be in different parts like the original, you do way more in the remake than you do in the original while in Midgar. 

The random encounters are definitely less in the remake. They don’t happen every a certain number of steps. Instead, you stumble across them in a realistic way rather than have a screen transition. It is way more immersive and again, is something that makes the game feel alive. It feels like an obstacle to overcome to get to the next place rather than an interruption like the original game random encounters (which I do love by the way, but it is very much a product of it’s time)

The next part also makes me laugh. He seems to think that because the other game has things finish ‘faster’ means it’s more productive. Which really shows he thinks his channel is great because he does more videos in a short period of time. Which, yeah, on a surface level it is more “productive”, but it’s not exactly exciting game play, is it? 

For comparison. Aerith says in the original that Sector Six is dangerous so she’ll help him out... but it takes about two minutes to go through and the random encounters are incredibly easy. It’s also not explained why the place is in ruins.

In the remake however, Aerith leads Cloud through it as Cloud is unfamiliar with it, and it is more of a challenge to get through, and he actually needs her help to get through the rubble. She explains part of the plate collapsed the tunnel and that’s why it’s such a mess. You get attacked by bandits on the way there and you spend an entire chapter trying to get through sector six, as it becomes the threat and the difficult path Aerith describes in the original. Rather than a place you just pass through with no issue, making you wonder “why the hell is Aerith insisting she goes with me?” outside of her having a crush. 

It’s small details like that which make the game come alive and actually makes you feel like you did something rather than it being a place you just passed through. It takes you longer, but it feels more like an achievement.

No one feels like they achieved something when you leave Sector Six and go to the park outside Sector Seven’s gates. Because it’s just a road to get to where you need to go. Your next challenge is trying to get Cloud chosen as the girl for Corneo but that is optional. I mean, if you prefer that it’s easier to get through as you like just seeing the story than solving dungeons, that’s fine! But this just shows Greg’s ‘quantity is quality” mindset. 

Also, when you climb up the plate to get to the Shinra building? IN the original, you climb up some pipes. The hardest part is the swinging pipe, which is incredibly easy when you time your jump to the squeaking of the pipe. They tell you it’ll be difficult to get to the Shinra building... when it takes you all of five minutes.

The remake has you climbing up the plate and broken buildings, using a grappling gun to get to higher ground when your walking path is done, while you get attacked by Shinra soliders trying to stop you from getting to higher ground when they recognise you as AVALANCHE. While it’s not hard it definitely feels more of a challenge than “climb up this pipe. jump onto that pipe, now climb up another pipe” in the original. And with the Shinra soliders while you can stop them easily, it does make you feel that getting there is going to be a struggle, or at least something that’s inconvenient and it’ll be ‘hard’ because people will try and stop you along the way.

Although I do wish that when you were in the Shinra building, you had to do more sneaking in the higher floors like you did in the original, but at least the game does give you a reason why you don’t need to sneak around. The mayor’s off hand comment about hating Shinra as he gives you a keycard in the original is expanded to the Mayor being a member of AVALANCHE who is actively helping you.

 I also think it's funny he complains about “mundane tasks” when the original game is full of that, too. All JRPGs have it

Basically, this entire review of Greg’s can be “WAHHH IT’S NOT THE ORIGINAL WHY IS IT MAKING ME WORK HARD!” and it’s hilarious

[iggy-of-fans]

Daminette AU part 3

I just want to say thank you so much for the people who liked, reblogged and asked to be tagged! I wasn't sure this would be received well and I'm so grateful you all like it! So here's part three, of about four or five parts. It gets intense again after some fluff  and I hope I keep your interest. Please let me know what you think! I love feedback! 

Justice League meets Miraculous, Adrien breaks more than his mind

Adrien has been seeing Maria's ghost everyday but doesn't show it. He's been planning to get the Miraculi of the ladybug and the black cat, so he can wish Mari back, and make a perfect world for her, where Alya, Nino and even Lila and Chloe all get along and his mother and father are well and together (when the police searched the mansion they found Emily Agreste's near corpse and brought her to the hospital. Turns out all she needed was proper medical care, but she was trying to use Dusuu to be free from Gabriel forever and by extension Adrien because he was just like his father in her eyes) and everything is happy in his world. He thinks it's Marinette's mission to him to make sure everyone is happy and it's what she wants. He is so far gone, and thinks the Miraculous Cure and his wish will make everything okay and so is willing to kill whoever he needs to. So he breaks out of prison, killing the guards for the "name of love". He then goes to find Nino and Alya, to help him get Mari back. And Alya says yes. She wants revenge on Ladybug for letting her get put into jail, she's just doing her job! She still thinks Lila was innocent, but she also feels bad that Marinette commited suicide, because she thinks that they could all just be friends. So she thinks Adrien's demented plan will turn everything perfect, with her two besties finally getting along. Nino is finally realizing how demented everything had turned, and he says he'll help, but plans on telling Ladybug as soon as he can. 

Marinette wakes up at Wayne Manor, Damien is asleep in a chair next to the bed in some sweats and a t-shirt. His wounds were healed but he's still dead tired. At the foot of the bed lies Captain, the kwamis all cuddled up in his fur. Next Marinette notices she's wearing a shirt (likely Damien's since it falls only off one shoulder. The scar on her arm where the kids from Paris injured her is plainly visible, a big pink puffy reminder that she isn't good enough for this wonderful family that have been taking care of her. Damien wakes up suddenly when she tries to move and looks so relieved she's awake. He immediately gets up and asks her if he can hug her, because he'd been so worried. She asks why and finds out she's been near comatose for almost a week. The Kwamis and Captain all wake up and join her, hugging her and checking her over. She realizes just how much energy it took out of her to bring back all the people who died and rebuild three cities. She asks him why he still cares when he's seen her scars and he looks at the arm she holds out. He asks her is she trusts him and when she nods, he takes his shirt off, revealing his back full of scars from his early childhood training and his chest from his hero work. He tells her that she made him accept himself, scars, flaws and all, because she had always treated him with kindness, no matter which mask he wears. She's so touched, and she hugs and cries into his shoulder, because no one has ever accepted Marinette so completely. Eventually they realize how hungry they are and Damien throws his shirt back on and grabs a nicer, long sleeved shirt for Marinette and some shorts that fit her like capris. 

Downstairs at lunch, the entire bat family is sitting, like zombies, dead tired and worried about their littlest member when Damien and Marinette join them. They are all out of their seats and swarming around Marinette, asking her if she's okay and what she needs to feel better (tea? Chocolate? Dessert?) and she finally feels loved and just asks for whatever food is already made. Alfred has been making any of her favorites he knows of every day hoping she'd wake up and he brings all the leftovers out for her to enjoy. He even tried his hand at French macaroons and she tears up because she's so grateful. While at lunch, Bruce tells her that the league wants to meet her, especially Wonder Woman, since her mom used to be a Ladybug before. Marinette worries about this but Bruce assures her that she would be well guarded with at least one of the Wayne's around, and Captain and Titus there as well. She was also allowed to come fully transformed so that she can just disappear whenever she felt the need to. So she smiles and agrees to meet them, and they plan a huge Gala for the League and Teen Titans to meet their newest little member, and he explains it will be civis for everyone else and why.

A week later, (Marinette has been going back to the pent house because she still feels better about it, and she needed clothes) at 11 in the morning, Bruce started welcoming member of the League into his home. They came dressed in casual wear, hidden under illusions for some of the more outlandish looking members. They are all comfortable in the Gala room when Damien walks in, guiding Marinette (dressed in her own design, a casual summer dress with a Mandarin Collar and long red lace sleeves with black polka dots and a black skirt that fades to red at the shoulders, and a simple black mask) and everyone's jaw drops. Bruce and the batfam all walk to the entrance and Bruce introduces "Guardian Angel" a play on Damian's nickname for her and her duty as guardian of the Miraculi (and because to them she really is a guardian angel, because she's always there when they need her most, or just seems to know when they need her). Embarrassed but not willing to let her mood be ruined, Marinette smiles shyly at them all. The rest are still trying to pick up their Jaws. This beautiful little mite is the one that saved their lives? Wow! And is Damian actually SMILING? Wtf? 

Diana is the first to recover and goes to meet the newest Ladybug, saying she's practically her sister because her mother had been Ladybug once and she wanted to know everything she could. Marinette tells the League about what happened in Paris, and at first they deny that they could've missed that. But when they check their phones they're shocked. With the Mayor being imprisoned, the news finally leaked world wide and sure enough, it was all there, every detail. They were shocked, seeing how the continued exposure desensitized the citizens and how horrible people acted towards each other. They all apologized to her for not stepping in, but commended her for her ingenuity, leadership skills, and ability to keep level headed even though she's so young. She smiles and meets everybody, guessing who most of their superhero personas were by herself. She is never without Damian at her arm, getting anything she could want, and the Teen Titans and Super Boy notice this. They're all shocked at Damian's turn about, how he reacts to the slightest twitch or facial change, how he steps in and changes the subject, or how he leads her exactly where she needs to be. When lunch is served, Alfred makes sure all her favorites are there, and when the dancing starts, the batfam all dance with her, but Damian doesn't even look at Raven when she asks for a dance, simple humming before stepping back in to escorts Marinnette off. 

In Paris things are taking a dark turn. Max refuses to help them, having learned this lesson, but they manage to kill his parents and only helping them get to Gotham will make his life better. He manages to hack the Agreste plane and autopilot it to USA. Once there, the two crazed teens and two reluctant teens start making their way across to Gotham, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind. The closer they get the more despicable. They stop off in Metropolis and meet Lex Luther, who is willing to give them whatever they want to kill the new heroine in Gotham. Nino, with the help of Max, is finally able to send a warning out to Gotham, a video that he sends out to everyone who lives in Gotham that Adrien is coming, that he used to be Chat Noir and that he's completely lost his mind. 

As the Gala is coming to an end, Tim's phone beeps with a notification that one of his flagged words got picked up on. He plays the video for everyone to hear and Marinette becomes paler by the second. 

To be Continued….

@spicybelladonna @nyctamaximoff @kuroko26 @captainmac6 @fsketchart @2sunchild2 @bitterheart12224 @abrx2002

@ginamarie1512 @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen

Anyone who asked to be tagged, I really hope I did this right!

[yume-x-hanabi]

Family - Chapter 3

Translation of chapter 3 of the short story from the ToX2 scenario book. (See my masterpost for other chapters.)

(Note: this is a very rough translation. I’ll need an editor when I’m done with this story orz)

CW: graphic description of violence

--

Chapter 3

Julius untied his bandage and looked at his red-colored left hand. The burn had healed and it didn't hurt anymore, but there still remained scar that caught people's attention, as well as the sensation of his skin being pulled. In the locker room of Spirius Corporation’s Department of Dimensional Affairs, Julius covered his hand with a black leather glove. He closed this fist and opened it. The soft pony leather glove fit perfectly.

After that, he took out his glasses from his jacket's pocket and put them on. He looked at himself in the mirror inside his locker. Those were fake glasses without corrective lenses. They felt weird on his face. They softened the sharpness of his gaze and made him look like a goody two shoes.

But that was fine. After all, he was a god of death masquerading as a human to approach his fellows and consume their lives. He must conceal his true nature. He could not let anyone be scared of him. Anyone.

Julius quietly closed his locker. Time to start working.

In the file a support agent handed him, there was information about a new fractured dimension scanned by the Kudlak.

           Fractured Dimension No.F41A5 Data Transmission

           Depth: 121       Variation: 0.35       Entry Point: Duval

           Teammate: …

Julius closed his eyes and let the light of his mind run through the darkness, searching for the coordinates; the light converged toward a point and made contact. The entry point opened up. The next moment, Julius jumped into the fractured dimension.

In the prime dimension, Duval used to be a port town south-east of Trigleph that throve on fishing. However, the town lost its shine when the world declined, and became a dangerous area where crime flourished. This fractured dimension’s Duval station had a similar rough atmosphere. Dressed in a fine suit uncharacteristic of the area, Julius stood out like a sore thumb and attracted hostile gazes. Cautious of not letting his guard down lest he invited pickpockets, Julius looked for something out of the ordinary.

“Bunch of hyenas,” he spat in his mind.

“Sorry for the wait, partner,” a funny voice called from behind him. His teammate had arrived.

“Who said you could call me partner, Rideaux?”

Without looking back, Julius swiftly sidestepped a shiny shoe aimed his way from behind.

“What?!”

When the ugly shoe missed its mark—Julius’ back—the leg attached to it lost its balance and its owner, Rideaux, fumbled forward.

“Let me show you how you kick someone’s back.” Julius kicked the now defenseless man with all his force.

“Guwah!”

Julius’ colleague, who was only a year older, fell to the ground ungracefully, and got up while coughing painfully.

“Why did you do that?!”

“There was a venomous snake on your back, so I crushed it for you.”

“Then I must… thank you… Oh?” As he was about to return the favor, Rideaux’s fist stopped in midair. “Glasses?” A twisted smile distorted his angry face. “Ha ha ha ha! That’s good, that’s perfect! It suits you so well! Did you take my words to heart, boss?”

“I don’t care what you think, but can you stop calling me that?”

“So, who’s the lucky one you want to hide your evil look from? Did you get a girlfriend or something?”

Julius did not answer.

“Am I right? You need to introduce me to that poor woman later.”

Behind the fake glasses, Julius’ eyes clouded in anger.

“For the sake of your love life and your fake glasses, I’ll forgive you for that kick, boss.”

Julius steeled himself to slap off the hand Rideaux was extending toward his shoulder, but that hand suddenly slammed into him and pushed him aside.

“Wha?!”

A knife embedded itself onto the ground, and a man clad in black jumped after it. An orange-gloved hand grabbed the knife and thrust it at Rideaux in the same movement.

Rideaux parried nonchalantly. “Aren’t you an impatient one, Mr. Nameless Thug?”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear anything from a Spirius agent after you lot sold off our organization, Orange Gear!”

Understanding the situation, Rideaux shrugged. “Ooh, so in this dimension, our company is making deals that incur terrorists’ ire.”

“Don’t you act surprised!”

Julius knew that Rideaux was trying to do something similar in the prime dimension.

“If you two think you can survive this…”

Before the man finished his sentence, Julius’ sword slashed through his stomach. “Be quiet.”

In an instant, the terrorist was rendered unable to fight, and his body hit the ground.

“Always alert, huh.”

Julius swung the sword to shake off the blood from its tip.

“Oh? It wouldn’t be like you not to be alert in this town.” Rideaux smirked.

“I was talking about you. You stole one of my swords when you pushed me.”

Julius retrieved the sword from Rideaux’s hands by force.

“I just thought I should give you a handicap. He’s just a low level thug from a terrorist organization.”

The man was oozing blood from his stomach. On his chest, a pin in the shape of an orange gear glinted.

“Heh, is that badge a sign of the terrorist group?”

“Look at those fools taking pride in being treated as cogs in a machine.”

When Julius bent down to take off the badge, the man sat up and tried to grab him. Wordlessly, Julius took out his blades and stuck them through the man’s throat, finishing him on the ground.

“I collected them as a child… Those shiny things the assemblymen and directors who came into my house had pinned to their suits…”

Watching Julius smile as he played with the badge in his hand, even as his cheek was red with the man’s blood, Rideaux felt that something in his partner had shifted.

“Stop smiling, brat!” someone shouted angrily.

Several hot-blooded men formed a human wall around them, as though they were trying to block their path. They all wore the same badge as the dead man.

“Here come his buddies…” Rideaux started counting them aloud with exaggerated gestures.

Like any good terrorist group worth its name, the Orange Gear did not simply block out the street, but also had members aiming their weapons at them from the nearby buildings’ windows.

“Too bad, I don’t have enough fingers to count them all.”

“Hey you, the one in red with the stupid bob, you better shut your mouth or I’ll kill you!”

“You’ll kill me… Nice.”

Julius’ lips formed a faint smile. “Shall we compete, Rideaux?”

“…Compete?”

“This world is doomed anyway. Let’s see who can gather the most badges. You’re not the type to say no to games, are you?”

“You…”

Rideaux was surprised by Julius’ proposition to make killing a game. At the same time, a shiver ran down his back. The spyrix in his gut stirred. The darkness behind Julius’ glasses…

“Julius, you know… You really do have the most evil eyes.” Rideaux laughed and took out his knives, holding three in each hand.

Julius cut through the mountain of corpses at his feet with his two blades.

The members of the Orange Gear lunged at him with a scream.

Countless badges fell from the sky along with droplets of blood.

[holyfool-arcana]

The Holy Fool: Chapter 3

Hook, line, sinker

Word Count: 2.1k Warnings: Mentions of infant death and murder, implied sexual relationships,  Rating: M Description: An Arcana AU set in a Vesuvia that is half-noir and half-fantasy.

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Liuyin’s left ear had been both yelled off and pinched beyond sensation by the time Doctor Devorak returned, and they were pretty sure it was as red as a sunset by now. Luckily, Auntie Liya had grown weary of tormenting them for their impulsiveness and left to brew herself some tea in a huff, and Liuyin had retreated back into their own room, changing out of the funeral robes and veil, and into a casual set of clothing once more.

That extra layer of blazer made them feel better, like a suit of armor, and Liuyin had healed themselves up as well, a bit vexed by the lingering sting where their hair had hung over their ear.

Thus, Doctor Devorak was greeted by the sight of aunt and apprentice in the courtyard veranda, two cups of tea between them when he emerged from the autopsy and packed the baby back into its original bundle.

Liuyin smiles at him and gestures him to one of the stone benches-- Aunt Liya scoffed, rolled her eyes, and then begrudgingly produces a matching third teacup that had been tucked up her sleeve before pouring out some tea as well, Liuyin seemingly unperturbed by the judgemental airs as they steepled their fingers and turned to the auburn-haired man.

"The baby died in water. But it wasn't drowned this morning, and I also doubt it was drowned in the harbor," Liuyin says plainly.

The doctor blinked, frowned, and then stared at Liuyin, rather taken aback. "How did you figure out?"

Liuyin smirked internally-- they were only half-sure of their prognosis, with the rest being guesswork. "There's a certain smell to bodies found at sea, from the salt, and when I'd been holding onto it this morning, the body was already stiff as a board."

“And the drowning?” the doctor asks, admittedly with a bit too much excitement.

Liuyin had opened their mouth, most likely intending to tell them, before being cut off with a resounding smack to the table coming from the older woman.

"Liuyin," Aunt Liya interjected with a withering look between the two of them, knowing and probably resenting the fact her ward was enjoying the banter. "We don't speculate on the manner in which the bodies our clients bring to us died!" She admonishes.

Liuyin replied, nearly reflexively, “Sorry Auntie,” while not sounding very remorseful at all.

By clockwork, as if this were a dance they’d perfected by now, Aunt Liya had said in the vernacular dialect of Langya, “Silly child, we’ve seen so many dead, why the interest in this particular body?”

“You’re not curious at all, auntie?” Liuyin asked blithely, with that same sort of calculated shrewdness they’d exhibited at the docks. Be just vexing enough to get others to dismiss you, but not enough to want to harm you or arouse suspicion. It involved a fair amount of playing at stupidity in moderation, something that must have come by either years of practice or as instinctively as breathing.

When Julian tried his hand at it, it came wrapped in a bundle of cavalier flirtatiousness. For Liuyin, it was a calculated mix of ignorance and innocence projected onto a face with eyes far too clever for such a con.

Yet Julian Devorak watched in amazement as the very woman who raised Liuyin from an infant huffs and busies herself with chugging down the chrysanthemum tea in dismissal at their ward’s pretense of innocence, having seemingly bought the lead.

Hook, line, sinker.

“Our lack of curiosity is what has kept us alive and fed,” Aunt Liya replied pointedly. “Our clients are wealthy, or powerful, or both. What’s to stop them from believing we’ve outlived our uses? Especially if secrets were shared with,” and here, she levels a sharp gaze at the doctor, who’d at least had the good grace to look down at the steaming cup. “Outsiders with no regards for what we do, our customs and rituals.”

Liuyin was openly frowning now, and had been opening their mouth-- perhaps to argue, perhaps to agree, perhaps, and this was a ludicrous belief, Julian had thought to himself, to defend his own honor.

He cuts them off by standing with a flourish of his overcoat, having gauged by now that he had, as with most places, overstayed his welcome. “Ah, well Madam Zheng, Apprentice Mei. It’s been an honor, to be certain, but I must be off.”

No use driving a wedge in between Liuyin and their aunt, especially given the way they’d indicated their regard and appreciation for them on the way to the coffin-house.

The witchling looked as though they wanted to interject further but hadn’t the opportunity-- Julian readjusted his gloves, nodded sharply at them, and then made his way down the cobblestone path of the courtyard to the front door. He doesn’t wait to clarify Liuyin’s abrupt call for him to wait, nor Madam Zheng’s hiss for her apprentice to stop being so foolish and reckless to chase after such a man.

With a hint of ruefulness, he thinks that the old witch is right.

✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩ͯ•͙͙✧⃝•͙͙✩ͯ┄•͙✧⃝•͙┄✩̣̣̣̣̣ͯ

“I suspect foul play,” Julian greets Asra with no other prelude as he sidles in from the back door to the shop, stooping before he hit his head on one of the lower ceiling beams.

“Mhm? That’s nice,” the white-haired magician replied absently, stooped over a table on which laid a prosthetic arm as well as a spread of cards.

Unbidden, that old longing returned to his chest like an instinct-- not really love, no, and even calling it a crush was pushing it, but that inclination to act like a foolish schoolboy and (metaphorically) tug at Asra’s curls or chatter his ear off till the other would just literally shut him up by crushing their mouths together, give his hands something better to do.

A flash and then the impulse was gone.

After a brief pause, Asra prompts, gesturing. “The arm and the missing fiancee? Or Liuyin’s baby?”

“Well,” Julian cleared his throat, deeming whatever Asra was doing safe enough to pull a seat up for, slinging his arms around the back of the chair. “I’ve only taken a look at one of those.”

“So the baby is a foul play case,” Asra murmurs as he reshuffles his deck of tarot cards and then flips one over, frowning at the horned figure on it.

“I think so. I think Liuyin would agree, but her aunt wants the case closed and baby buried,” he muses. Not in a suspicious manner, he had gauged-- Julian knew enough about that sort of thing, the wanting your secrets buried six feet deep where no one could hear even a whisper of it. It was almost… protective, in its own strange way, slightly overbearing or smothering, which reminded him of Pasha and the way she scolded him when she got too worried for his safety and recklessness. Idly, he wondered if Liuyin were the same.

Asra seemed to agree, flipping over another card-- a smiling youth who looked suspiciously like the person occupying a corner of the doctor’s thoughts, an orb with a star shining within it cupped in their hands. “The Old Witch doesn’t like asking questions. Says they’re bad for the business.”

“I can tell, dear,” Julian replied automatically, earning him a look of near-scorn from the magician. “But is it because she doesn’t like to or doesn’t want to?”

“What difference does it make, even?” Asra raised a brow. “A baby died. Case closed and over with.”

“Don’t tell me your cards aren’t saying there’s more to it than that,” Julian replied, reaching out a hand lightning-quick, laying it over Asra’s.

“I’ll take another avenue,” he responded firmly. “It’s not a matter I want to pry into. Liuyin’s business and mine remain separate for their sake.”

“So there is something more, you agree.”

Asra turns to him then, something like fire in his violet eyes as he carefully, using his free hand, encircled the wrist that Julian had caged his other hand with, extricating the offending appendage. “Ilya.”

He’d never heard him sound this dangerous before, truth be told. It was sending shivers down the hair on the back of his neck.

Asra continued. “Whatever happens, my affairs are my own, just as Liuyin has their own matters to attend to. I suggest you don’t try to reel them into this. Are we understood?”

What if they want answers, what if they want to be reeled in?

It was so silent that Julian could hear the soft rasp of his own breathing, the dull thud of blood in his ears. “Yeah,” he found himself nodding obediently.

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“Blessings for the rich, blessings for the poor!” Liuyin chanted listlessly, waving the stack of talismans in their hand as they assailed yet another group of unsuspecting tourists in the Temple District.

“You! Good sir over there! You look like you could use a little… magic in your life,” Liuyin said with as much charm as they could muster after staying up the previous night, chasing after a baby-corpse-snatcher in the dark, and then getting yelled at by their aunt for consorting with the likes of cads like Doctor Devorak who stuck their noses too far into other peoples’ businesses. As a result, they were made to hand out talismans as punishment to the tourists, which, between the tourist-wrangling and the general lack of success this endeavour turned out to be, was far worse a task than having to clean the cadavers brought in.

The tourist, probably not expecting to be beset by a figure who dressed like a religious fanatic and spoke like a particularly ambitious but dead-inside street vendor, had shaken off their grip and stalked away.

Other attempts bore similar fruit, with only one or two accepting their talismans-- Liuyin had checked the sigils inserted subtly into the charms for protections that had a persuasive air-- one that manifested as a small voice in the user’s head that suggested they visit a particular coffin-house on the edge of the Center City and the Temple District for any blessings, curses, exorcisms, and funerals they needed to undertake.

Their punishment, as per usual, ended at sundown. Liuyin gazed over at the setting sun and groaned, wiping a clammy hand down their face and slumping against a nearby wall. Finally, finally, their workday was over.

With great enthusiasm, they’d torn the veil and forehead ribbon from their head and balled it up, shoving them along with the talismans into the pouch slung from their shoulder, getting started on the white robe they wore atop their actual clothing as well, undoing the sash.

“You didn’t look the type to be into public indecency, but I suppose appearances are deceiving,” a voice said right next to their ear, and Liuyin jumped forward several feet before realizing who it was.

“Gods and devils,” Liuyin had blurted out, “Please don’t sneak up on me again, Doctor Devorak.”

“Call me Julian,” he grinned down at them.

“Julian, please don’t sneak up on me again,” they corrected, letting their robe hang loose, opening onto a pair of loose trousers and neck-high blouse, so much for public indecency.

“Won’t happen again, darling. ‘Pon my honor,” he’d said, holding three fingers up and clasping the other hand to his chest in a gesture like taking a vow.

They looked half-amused at that, softening the words, making them less suspicious than they were earlier. “What do you want?” Liuyin asked, query mirroring what they’d demanded from the doctor just earlier today-- heavens, it was only today that this entire fiasco had taken place. Not even twenty-four hours later, and they’d been bantering with the taller man as if they were old friends.

“Ever to the point as usual,” he’d said with a grin. “Come, walk with me. I was looking for you, but your aunt said you were out-- while chasing me off with a sword.”

“Ah, right, the peachwood sword. I believe she thinks you’re a wicked spirit,” Liuyin muttered, earning a hearty chuckle from Julian. Their aunt used it to banish wicked spirits, as was common in their line of spiritualism. Liuyin had their own, usually left in their room along with the rest of the charms and trinkets, unless they were going to perform some ritual or blessing or another, in which case they had it strapped to their back.

“Then, my dear,” Julian says, swivelling around to face them with a hint of mischief glinting in his eyes. “Would you be adverse to an evening of wickedness?”

Liuyin raised a brow expectantly. “Where did you have in mind?”

His answering smirk promised a world of trouble. “The Red Market.”

[multific]

Full Moon

Shawn Mendes x Reader

Halloween!AU

Summary: Being in love with someone is one thing, but being in love with the most feared and A well-known murderer is another.

Warnings: mention of murder and everything that has to do with it (blood, corpses, etc.), obsessed behavior, and slight abuse and mention of sex and sexual acts. If any of these subjects makes you uncomfortable, affects you in any way, upsets you or anything else, please do NOT read. This is your final warning!

 Shawn considered himself to be a normal twenty-one-year-old. He goes to college every day, he pays attention during classes, well most of the time. He likes to play hockey, he has many friends and he goes to parties almost every weekend.

He was also very popular among girls, his handsome face and well-built body was what most women wanted for themselves. But Shawn didn’t want any of them for more than a night.

Yes, he was a player. He was the kind of playboy who had a different girl every other day. He just didn’t care for any girls.  All he cared for is a good fuck and then he left without looking back.

About a month ago everything changed.

He and his friends went to a bonfire Halloween party. The party itself was great, the music was Shawn’s type and so were the women.

He laid his eyes on the freshmen, noticing a girl, she had long black hair which was curled, she had every curve right and her dark skin looked silky. And soon as the girl and Shawn’s eyes met, he knew he won her for the night.

He talked to the girl and all she needed was a solid five minutes of sweet-talking and Shawn was already in her pants.

They went into the near woods and he fucked her against a tree.

It was one of the best times, he ever had, and he was thankful that the girl didn’t want more, because as soon as they finished, she left without a word.

Shawn wanted to go back to his friends or find another partner for himself, but he heard a muffled noise a little further in the woods.

He walked that way. He expected to see another couple making out or having sex, but what he saw, changed not only his life but him as a whole man.

He saw a woman around his age or maybe a bit older dragging a bag into a hole. At first, he thought it was a prank, but when the large bag started to move and make noises, he realized, that there was a human in that bag. Shawn hid behind a tree to observe the situation. As the bag wiggled and cries came from it, the woman picked up a shovel near the hole and with one movement, she smashed it against the bag. A loud noise came from it and the bag stopped any movement. Shawn knew, whoever was in that bag just got hit in the head, with the edges of the shovel at that.

Soon blood stained the bag, and Shawn realized, he just witnessed a murder.

The woman dragged the bloody bag into the hole and said only one sentence.

“Try and steal other’s men now, bitch.”

Shawn’s eyes became round as the moon that evening. He had to admit that this was the most dangerous situation he ever seen, his heart was pounding out of his chest as he watched from the dark as the woman covered back the hole. He intently watched the females back and started contemplating, should he tell others, should he call someone, should he capture her and bring her to the police? He didn’t know what to do.

In the end he picked his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911, but before he could press the green button, he took one last look at the woman. She was now looking beside herself and Shawn could see her face.

She was the most beautiful human he has ever seen. Unconsciously he locked his phone up and stared at the woman as she just stood there looking up at the sky with a wicked smile on her face. She spoke up again, talking to herself.

“Idiotic whore, no one messes with my friends, no one.”

Shawn now understood the situation. The person in the bag, who was now underground, either flirted or stole a friend of hers boyfriend. And in exchange, she killed her.

She was a maniac. A psychopath. A dangerous person who deserved to rot in jail.

And yet, Shawn found her to be gorgeous, found her voice to be the best melody he ever heard.

He became obsessed.

He never talked about the incident to anyone as Shawn went back to his normal everyday life.

***

The next week he saw the news of a girl saying that she disappeared and there were no traces left behind. The police suspected that either her uncle or a serial killer killed her.

A few days later he saw an article about a serial killer.

The news called the killer Full Moon, since they killed when it was full moon, creative huh?

Shawn realized that the girl he just saw, the killer that they are looking for, he saw her.

He could never forget a face like that. He wanted to see her again, hear her voice. He wanted to be with her, help her, anything.

That’s when his life took a huge turn.

HE never touched another woman, not even when they throw themselves at him. He didn’t care anymore.

All he wanted is that woman.

He didn’t care that she was a killer, he loved her.

His obsession, it turned to love. At least, what he thought love was.

He did research.

He read every single article that was written about her. He ever read the police statements.

He read many books about serial killers in general and he even watched interviews with them.

To the people around him, nothing changed about Shawn. But when he was at his home, his true obsessed self came out.

And after half a year passed, he decided, he wanted to see her, he needed it.

Shawn thought of ways to make her come out, as he discovered, she not only killed women but men too. She didn’t care about race or gender, and there wasn’t a typical profile that she killed. That’s why she was so well-known and dangerous. No one could catch her since she didn’t seem to kill out of anger, but rather, for fun. And it wasn’t like she killed only blondes, no she didn’t care.

Shawn had tried to find her through the girl that he saw her kill. He looked up on the girl’s profile to find the guy and he even looked on the college’s website in hopes of finding her. But nothing. Either she was really good at hiding, which she was, or she didn’t go to that school.

Little did Shawn know that luck was on his side.

One night, it was raining cats and dogs outside. He knew that night was supposedly a full moon. He was walking around town to catch the tiniest glimpse at his obsession.

But as the rain started, he needed shelter, the closes option was a church as he ran in.

He entered the holy place and sat at the bench. Although his family was religious and brought him to pray many times, he just never actually believed in it.

He looked at the huge cross right across from him and then up at the ceiling.

It wasn’t the biggest church, but the sound of the rain echoed through the whole place. Then he noticed burning candles. He thought that the priest might be there somewhere.

Then he heard a loud thud that echoed through the church. He slowly stood from the bench and went to the direction of the sound. He figured that the priest might have fallen or something. But he didn’t call out.

He walked further in and surely enough, the priest was lying on the floor in his office. Since the door was open Shawn saw that the priest was still alive.

But when he moved to help him, a figure blocked his view of the holy man on the floor.

It was her.

She was there. Right in front of him.

Shawn heard the priest moaning in agony and the woman stabbed him in the throat to silence him. Shawn took a step back but his slightly wet shoes made a squeaky noise against the marble floor. Alerting the female of his presence. Shawn closed his eyes only for a millisecond but as he opened it he saw the woman quickly walking towards him with a large knife in her hand. As a defense, he put his hand out in front of him. Sure, he was taller and more muscular than her, but she had experience in killing. And without hesitation she would do it. As Shawn put his hand out, she slashed in creating a big cut right across his palm, the wound was deep and it hurt like hell for him.

But before she could strike again Shawn instead of defending himself, just stood still. Awaiting the knife to slice right into his chest or neck to kill him. But it never came.

He looked at the confused female in front of him.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you going to defend yourself? Come on! Give me some fun, Pretty Boy!”

Shawn couldn’t help but melt at her voice, the same voice that he heard eight months ago.

“I know everything about you.” he didn’t know when he found his voice

“Great most people do.”

“No, I’m different. I-I love you.”

She let out the most horrifying, scary laughter, but to him, it was like an angel giggling. The whole church got filled with her laughter.

Tears appeared in the corner of her eyes as she stopped laughing. To any other viewer, her laugh would be compared to a demon’s, but in Shawn’s eyes, all he saw was sparkles and her beautiful smile.

“Love?? And they say, I’m insane?!” she laughed some more and it made Shawn smile a bit. “Did you hit your head or something Handsome?”

“N-no. I just. I saw you eight months ago in the woods, and ever since, I wanted to meet you.”

“You saw me?” she looked at him like he had two heads. How did an average guy like him manage to sneak up on her, see her and he didn’t even call anyone.

What level of fucked up was that?

“Well, then Pretty Boy, I can’t let you go now, can I?” a smirk was now on her face, she debated where to stab him, in the throat would give her that wonderful view of her victim choking on their own blood while she watched as the life left their eyes. Or in the heart? Immediate death and the nuisance that is him would be gone in a second.

Or…

Shawn spoke up before she could decide.

“I don’t care if you kill me.”

“You really are not normal.”

“I’m happy now, I managed to meet with you, and I not only spoke to you, but I was able to see you laugh. I can die happy now.”

Her twisted mind began to work quicker than ever. There was a man standing right in front of her, who would do anything for her. She can use that to her advantage.

“What’s your name?”

“Shawn.”

“Well then, Shawn. Let me tell you this. I won’t kill you, but in exchange, you’ll have to follow me wherever I go. No questions, you’ll do as I say. You’ll be my personal little pet.” a sinister smile displayed on her face as she looked him in the eye. And he saw it lit up with….joy?

How sick was this man?

“Really? Thank you! That’s more than I ever wished for!”

“Do you have a house?”

“Apartment.”

“Great, let me just display that guy for the police, I know they like to take nice pictures. And after that, take me to your place, and there better be some food!” she said as she pointed at the dead corpse behind her.

Shawn only nodded and she left to finish her art.

“Come here and drag him out.”

“WAIT. Don’t get your blood on him.” she said. Shawn completely forgot about the cut on his palm. He wrapped a cloth around his hand and did as he was told.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked as she walked around the priest. Shawn only stood there, watching her. Then she abruptly stopped and looked up at the cross. “I know.” she said with a smirk.

“Clean your blood up.” She said when her art was done.

***

Back at his apartment he cleaned and bandaged up his wound. He could barely contain his excitement, his love, the woman that stole his heart was right there, in his kitchen eating his dinner. But he didn’t care, all that mattered was that she was finally there, and he was her pet.

“Now, don’t get cocky, Pet. I can still kill you.”

“Right.” he said as he sat down in front of her by the table.

“But if you can please me, I won’t kill you.”

“P-please?” Shawn heard the slapping noise before he felt the pain on his cheek.

“I said no questions!” she yelled.

“Sorry.” he said.

“You will do as I say and if you can fuck me right, you get to stay alive. Aren’t I generous?”

“You are.” he said as he looked her in the eye. Hers was full of insanity and mischief.

She stood from the table and grabbed his neck. Slightly applying pressure, she slowly started to suffocate him.

“Don’t fail me. I’d hate to slice such a pretty face off.”

***

He delivered.

Oh, he delivered so well. Everything was perfect about his body for her. From his muscular built to his length and girth. The way she rode him, stretching her to perfection, reaching points she never felt before. 

Four hours.

That’s how long they have been at it.

Four hours and he convinced her that she can use him for more than murder and to achieve her art. The art of death.

Shawn was in a state of bliss as she slept beside him. He couldn’t believe what he just did with her. His heart was pounding so hard, he felt like he would get a cardiac arrest. He even earned to know her name. Her lovely name, Y/N. He didn’t know if it was her real name or a made-up name. But he didn’t care, at least he knew what to call her. Full Moon would have been weird after some time.

***

Falling in love was with a murderer was Shawn’s biggest sin. Not only could the fact that he volunteered to help her be bigger. Not only the fact that he killed for her, numerous times. Not only the fact that he ran from the law to be with her.

And he truly fell in love. Two weeks after he met her. It wasn’t obsession anymore, well maybe a bit of that too, but the main feeling in his heart was love.

But someone like her did not feel love, she felt possession. He was her property now, her only toy to play with.

She was a psycho, a killer, a murderer, and he loved her.

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A/N: A little something for Halloween. Hope you liked it!