#and girls who are just v distinct in either their appearance or personality

[minustwofingers]

Weird question but whats ur type in women? Describe in detail. 🤣😅

honestly i think at this point it’s just women who don’t want me

[hopeshoodie]

Does anyone else feel like the lady characters in THTH don’t have as much interiority as the men so far? 

Jada is the most fleshed (post to follow about that because I have thoughts), but to me the romanceable women feel flat when compared to how the romanceable men are written. 

Marisa is probably the girl we have the most details about- her yoga stuff, that she spends most of her time doing outdoor stuff like biking/hiking/camping- but as for personality we just get that she's overly romantic, hot headed, and jealous. But not a lot of her thoughts on the events of the game, she doesn’t really form friendships with the other cast members outside of her and Theo being united in the no-rule break committee. Even Theo gets some exploration into his mixed feelings about rule-breaking with the player, whereas Marisa kinda just says ‘oh well I really like you’. 

Dakota is the most quirky of all the girls, but literally has no personality outside of 'lol I'm confident! I like food! Touch my butt and feed me pizza!!' We only get personal details about her incidentally (grew up by the ocean) or when other people are revealing things (she’s a workaholic per the conversation with Liam). We get that she revels in having gossip to share, but only when it moves the plot forward. 

I won’t count this against Priya because she’s only been here for a day, but I know nothing about her other than Girlboss (™). 

And Sarah just… I did a loyal route with her and I feel like I know nothing about her. She knows she’s hot, she’s competitive, she likes to have a good time, she hates being told what to do. But she doesn’t have any of the breadcrumbs about her life outside the show, or a backstory on why she’s here/why she’s like this/who she is. Even the intimate suite scene that has the chance to ask other LIs questions is like… Just her flirting with you. Which like, I know some people irl aren’t comfortable sharing about themselves, but she just seems so shallow without the little bits that make her more rounded. 

And like, it’s fine. It’s the same characterization that you’d get in like Episode or Lovelink, but it feels off to me because the men are written in a similar way to characters in LITG- fleshed out, multifaceted, distinct characters.

Like.

We see Theo reckoning with insecurities about his music and wanting to be the most wanted person in the room (but very much not being). He struggles with obviously wanting money and also being a massive whore. 

We see Henri trying to self modulate between these intense emotions but wanting to not appear too forward, and being out of his element. We see how open and earnest he is as he talks about his life and values. 

Liam is just Liam 🥰. (FR Liam’s my favorite boy because his character is v nuanced TO ME) He’s here for a good time and is unattached but also gets jealous quickly and makes rash decisions because of it. He’s goofy with the other guys but also stands his ground to get what he wants. He's direct about what he wants but doesn't take it too far or make it anyone else's problem. He's genuinely friends with the other cast members. He’s clearly very smart and successful but doesn’t talk about it/have a lot of bravado.

But none of the girls outside of Jada have similar storyline. I just. I want more from the women. Sarah and Alex’s one-sided rivalry is fun and Henri/Dakota’s one-off gaff about stealing food was amusing, but they’re the few times the girls interact with other cast members who aren’t MC. 

I want to see Sarah and Theo’s ‘OMG we’re NOT interested in each other NO WAY’ partners in crime schtick grow into a friends to lovers arc. I want to see Dakota either finally getting into the core group of friends (Jada, MC, Alex) or getting upset that she’s usually excluded. I want to see Marisa floundering because if MC isn’t with her she literally has nothing going on. 

I just want to see character setups and arcs similar to what it seems like all the guys have gotten. 

[violetsoju]

airport

kuroo tetsurou · fluff · 2.2k

warning: slight suggestive theme, mild language, characters are aged-up

a/n: did i write this on impulse because i still can’t believe i was actually in this situation? maybe. did i write this as a manifestation of having a kuroo to bitch about and assure me? maybe too. did i get more encouraged to write this after reading a discussion in a server on bra sizes and brand recommendations a few days ago? maybe three.

“Kuroo, I’m serious. Stop laughing.”

A distinct cackling laughter from the speaker of your phone fills the four walls of your bathroom, along with a lazy lopsided grin flashing on the screen that’s perched on the wall mounted shelf next to the sink.  

“But you’re making it so hard not to! Plus, you’re supposed to brush your teeth for two minutes, not talk and brush your teeth at the same time for two minutes.” Kuroo reasons, laughter turning into soft chuckles.

“Sorry babe, but I didn’t catch anything you said just now because you sounded like a fish blubbing underwater, except you’re blubbing white foam instead of bubbles.”

He finds it hard not to grin like a fool at your figure from his side of the screen, hands on your hips with a toothbrush stuffed in your puffed-up cheeks, hair pushed back with an elmo headband that he finds ugly yet cute because of the two ridiculously huge eyes dangling on top.

You mumble something yet inaudible while wiping away the drool of toothpaste dripping down the side of your mouth, a small pout dotting your lips.

“Rinse up and tell me from the top again once you’re done, alright?” Kuroo sighs, shaking his head adoringly as he manages to make out a ‘fine’ out of the string of muffled sounds from you.

And do you listen to him completely? Of course not. So he rests his left cheek on his palms, humming to the bits of information you try to squeeze in without accidentally swallowing tap water while cleansing your face.

The white tiles in the background shift to cream walls shakily, along with the shuffling sounds of room slippers against the wooden flooring. “Then as we were walking towards the karaoke place, I somehow fell behind the rest and ended up beside him. And guess what happened?”

“He confessed to you?” He jokes, oblivious to where this is heading, yet.

“God, I’d rather that happen.” You take a seat in front of your study desk filled with skincare products tucked on the side, placing your phone against the wall. “Instead, he called out to me, which I turn to him and find him looking at my boobs, saying ‘oh, its nothing’,”

Kuroo visibly flinches a little, eyebrows furrowed in disgust, eyes widening slightly, like he just tasted a sip of milk that has gone bad. “Excuse me?”

“He was looking at my boobs, Kuroo. My boobs. Shamelessly. Saying ‘oh, its nothing’. What the heck?” You mentally thank yourself for not opening the cover of the toner in your hand, to save the mess you would have made from all the expressive hand gestures.

“And you were wearing your usual tank top, right?” He smacks his lips together, as if trying to get rid of the bad aftertaste.

“Yeah, the usual square neck rib knit tank top that I always wear.” He tilts his head to the side, eyebrows knitted in confusion. Your wardrobe of tops flashing through his head. “The one that you don’t understand why I own a several pieces in different colours. That one.” A long ‘oh’ resonates through the speakers, the particular top emerging from the sea of clothing.

Kuroo processes the image for a few seconds. “That’s not revealing at all.”

“Exactly! It’s like the most basic thing? There’s tons of girls out there who wear the similar thing as me too.” You tap your toner onto your face with your hands. “And I was even wearing a jacket on top of it? It’s not like I was fully exposed or something. But even if I didn’t have my jacket on, I don’t see how it’s taken as a sign to stare brazenly like that. I wear whatever the heck I want to make myself feel and look good, not for someone else to ogle at, unable to keep their raging hormones in check.”

He hums in agreement. “What did you do or say to him then?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what made me so pissed at that moment either.” You sigh, reaching out for your wash-off mugwort mask. “I snapped at him, telling him that when he talks to girls, he should be looking at them in the eye, not at their boobs.”  

“That’s my girl.” Kuroo flashes his signature cheshire-grin. “What did he say then?”

Your lips purse together, recalling the situation. “I don’t think he even heard me. Partly because you know how I rush through words like I’m rapping when I’m mad.”

“Told you to apply for that rap competition show on tv.”

“Kuroo.” Your glare earns an apology and light-hearted chuckles. “Another reason why I don’t think he heard me was because he actually had the balls to sit next to me during the karaoke session.” His eyebrows arch at the statement. “To which I dragged Mizuki to sit next to me and he got pushed to the side with the other guys.”

He huffs through his nose with a tinge of frustration, fingers running through his dishevelled hair. “How old is he again?”

“20, I think. But still, that’s no excuse for being so disrespectful towards girls and women. He’s already a full-grown adult for crying out loud.” You set the timer to 15 minutes on your phone, shuffling to your bed. “Out of all the boys I’ve met that are of his age or back when we were his age, I’ve never met such a disrespectful guy. In this area of discussion, I mean.”

“You mean you haven’t met such a horny monkey before.” Kuroo summarises. You snort at his remark, making yourself comfortable under the covers while waiting for the mask to work its magic.

“So you’re mad that he looked at your boobs.”

You place your phone between your folded knees, slouching against the bed frame. “Of course I am. It’s a violation against my body. How the fuck does he think he’s entitled to look at someone blatantly like that? Imagine someone staring at your dick like its nothing.”

The stupid cocky smirk appears on screen again. “Not gonna lie, but I would be proud. Or amused.”

“Freak.” You scoff, scrunching your nose at his reply.

His amber eyes gleam under the dim lights through the screen. “You sure you’re not mad at anything else?” He prods, not letting you off the hook.

“I guess I’m so mad because I never expected this to happen to me. I mean, look at me. What’s there to look at when I’m basically as flat as an airport?” You gesture to your breasts, ignoring his ‘you’re exaggerating’ interjection. “I would understand if he was staring at someone voluptuous or well-blossomed. But what’s the point of staring at a wall so flat there’s no cracks or dents in between?”

Kuroo’s sharp yet soft features settle into a knowing look. “So there is something else that you’re mad at.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “That is?”

“You’re upset that your boobs are small.”

Your eyes take a 360-degree turn, huffing exasperatedly. “I’m not. I’m happy with the way they are.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

His firm discerning expression in the 10-second-long stare off has you heaving a long sigh in defeat. “I mean, there are times which I wish they would be just a little bigger…” You hesitantly admit, biting the inside of your lips. “So I don’t have to rely on push-up bras that much. And they would look nicer in wireless bras… Or in deep v neck cuts… Or plunge dresses…”

“Babe, they’re perfect with the way they are now.” Kuroo’s words doesn’t come out as pity or consolation; it’s filled with raw honesty and sincerity.

You glance down at the soft flesh beneath your oversized t-shirt that once belonged to Kuroo. “I know, but sometimes you can’t help but want more, right?”

“I understand, it’s natural.” He nods in acknowledgment. “But we have to be grateful with what we have, don’t we?”

A soft smile tugs the corner of his lips at the sight of your pout. “You’re right. Why did I get myself so worked up just because of one horny monkey when I have such an amazing and supportive boyfriend?” His lips curl up with a little more pride at you remembering and reusing his little remark.

“At your service, always. And ever ready to chase off any horny monkeys in sight.” He places his hands to his eyebrows as a salute dramatically, earning a hearty laugh from you.

“Question time. On the bright side, don’t you save more on bras because they require lesser fabric than bigger sizes? Less fabric, less production cost?”

“If only it were like that, Kuroo. You know what, we’re going bra shopping for our next date.”

“May I be granted the honour of choosing the fine piece of garment?” He places his hand over his right chest.

You hold onto your imaginary ruffled dress in the air, dropping into a mid-curtsy. “If I have the honourable chance to be blessed by your gracious kindness to pay for it, be my guest.”

“Of course, m’lady.” He bows curtly, giving you a flirtatious wink.

You giggle at his sappiness. “Okay my turn. Aren’t you jealous that you don’t have the chance to hold them like other boyfriends do for their busty girlfriends when their boobs swell and get sore during their periods?”

He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but the glint in his eyes says otherwise. “It’s not like that’s the only time I get to touch them.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you suggestively.

“Pervert.” You gasp, covering your breasts with your arms.  

The timer on your phone beeps, signaling it’s time for you to wash off your mask.

“Didn’t take you to be a boob person. Thought you were more of a butt person.” You place your phone back on the wall mounted shelf in the bathroom, turning on the tap water to run.

“I’m neither. Because I’m a you person, your person. A person that loves you as a whole, not by parts.” You swear you can see him giving you that smug grin of his with your face submerged with water, washing off the remaining residue.

“You know, maybe God deliberately blessed you with a lesser amount in this aspect.”  His voice echoes through the speakers.

You reach out to your face towel hanging next to the sink and place gentle pats on your face. “And why is that?”

“Because God knew that you’d be unstoppable if you were blessed in all aspects. I mean, look at you. You’re already slaying it despite your fun-sized boobs.”

You nearly choke on your own saliva from the fits of laughter at his comment. “What the hell, Kuroo. No one calls a C cup and below fun-sized.”

“If people call those below the height of 160cm fun-sized, I don’t see why I can’t do the same with breast sizes.” He reasons with a nonchalant face.

“Fine, fun-sized boobs they are.” You give in, switching off the bathroom lights. “Your drop-dead gorgeous kick-ass girlfriend has fun-sized boobs.”

“And I love it. That’s what makes her special too.” He adds, face full-on smitten with love.

“Shut up, cheesy conman.” You chuckle softly, your face a mirror image of his.

“Well, you chose one yourself. No refunds.” The coolness of your moisturizer helps soothe the warmth blossoming across your cheeks, but not the warmth spreading throughout your chest like a cosy fireplace on a cold winter day.

【☾】

Zero and one digits flash on the top right of the screen, signalling it’s way past your bedtime. You’ve been on the phone with Kuroo for close to two hours, no wonder you feel yourself drifting to sleep each second. Kuroo senses it too, from the way your eyes twitch and lose focus.

“Alright, last question before we wrap up for today. When are you hanging out with them again?” He asks, stifling a yawn.  

You let out a yawn as well, stretching your arm over your head, popping a few bones. “I don’t know, but I may skip if he’s tagging along.”

“Nope, we’re going together. Me and you.” Kuroo states matter-of-factly with droopy eyes.

You rub your eyes that has been lidded with sleep. “What if you’re busy on that day like today?”

“Then I’ll just clear my schedule for the day. Gotta show the lil boy who owns this airport.” His deep voice croaking through the speakers of your phone.

“Airport?” You question, confused at his statement, wondering if sleep has started to take over your sense of hearing.

“Airport.” He gestures at his tiddies sleepily.

“Kuroo…” Your distressed groan doesn’t stop him from his babble.

“Gotta show to him that it’s a private one too, not some public area that’s available to any common folk like him. Right, babe?”

a/n: in Chinese, there’s a saying of calling flat chested girls or girls with small boobs as 飞机场, which means airport because the airport runway is flat. so it’s like one’s chest is so flat that it can run the plane lmao. all sizes are precious, don’t get me wrong. this is purely for entertainment purposes

shoutout to @moonboohoo​ for being my irl Mizuki that day ily ❤️

[guxciestone]

Hello!! I just found this by chance and followed you because it seems like you have great content! Ignore me if I like a lot of your posts or something 😳😳

I wanted to try this game because it's actually something I came across and was curious as to see what you could see in it. Or my vibes ya know? Hopefully the practice goes well and I will def give feedback on it! Have fun with it though and take breaks when you can

Sending positivity and love!

NATAL

- Joy

— note.

hii @astrojoy <3 i know that the assumption / vibe game ended very short. i apologize for it—i end up doing 3 asks & then give up on the games, lmao. but i was scrolling through my asks & your chart popped out to me. i love your natal chart! you have lots of attractive placements that i want to point out 💗

🤍 sun in libra in the 12th house conjunct the ascendant @ the 22° ; you find your utmost ego, confidence through achieving balance & peace in your inner world. you might be spiritual or could be interested in the “unseen”—like tarot, subliminals, manifestation, & etc. you could be an empath, or intuitive. little do you know that this pleasing, peaceful yet mystical & gentle energy you hold attract others towards you. you could attract tons of unwanted attention from others. you easily stand out from other people, which can make you a magnet & shine bright—like the sun. it is likely you have a slight insecurity in your identity, but others believe that you are sure of yourself. even though that is the case, it’s important that you use this placement for your best good because you have the 22°. if you don’t use this placement properly, you might fall victim to weird energies & become easily influenced or become too egotistical.

☁️ venus in scorpio conjunct the ascendant @ the 8° ; let’s be honest . . . you’re attractive & most likely physically good-looking LMAO 🚶🏽‍♀️ you find beauty & attractiveness in mystery, intensity & depth when it comes to your appearance, personality, how you present yourself to the world! you are very mysterious & alluring for sure. especially with that extra 8° & your scorpio rising at the 0° (your scorpio rising being at its earliest & purest) you’re truly a bombshell! you very much do attract others & you most likely are conscious about it considering the fact that your venus is in the 1st house. you should be careful! you could be prone to catcalling, harassment, & other things because of this strong energy you radiate.

✉️ neptune in aquarius in the 4th house squared to the ascendant @ the 10° ; it is possible that you could have a slight confusion when it comes to either who you are as a person, who you represent, your style, or how you want to be perceived by others. your venus in 1st house squared to your neptune is also supporting this. so you might have a confusing, or ever-changing first impression or style. maybe your childhood could have been foggy because of restrictions & responsibilities. this might have made grow up to not really know your true aesthetic or ‘brand’. spiritually took a huge part in your childhood & it might have made you a slight humanitarian growing up. it also could have made you felt different in the family life. wanting to do things for the better good. your uranus in the 4th house ALSO supporting this—but with uranus trine your ascendant, you embrace this uniqueness & don’t find shame it. especially with your uranus trine prominence. you’re different!

⛸ uranus in the 29° trine your sun, mercury, venus, vertex & ascendant / uranus conjunct mars ; ok, i love you. you are such a trailblazer! you have a distinct mindset, personality, beauty, appearance, a distinct way of creating & reaching your goals. you might attract tons of copycats with that 29°, & it could also give you immense pride in yourself. which isn’t a bad thing <3 it is pretty much in your destiny to embrace your differences. you could be an “it girl or boy” or radiate that type or energy. all of your placements are 👌🏼

🍚 venus in scorpio in the 1st house squared to your midheaven in leo @ the 2° ; even though there are many great things about you. you might still fall victim to feeling as though you need to ‘fix yourself’ or constantly check yourself so that you can keep up a decent appearance. you are attractive, social, sweet, & pleasing in your aura but this need to please everyone can easily make someone appear superficial. no need to worry because others perceive you as someone who is confident, who has it all, & who radiates a calming energy. you are well-liked, but make sure to not appear superficial in your reputation :) w/ moon in cancer in the 8th house trined to your ascendant easily give you a comforting energy because you desire comfort, deep, & homely connections to feel emotionally fulfilled so you are very precise on making others feel safe. you aren’t afraid to be emotional. especially with a decently aspected moon, your emotions are perfectly expressed.

[missmentelle]

Would you say it's the same thing for ADHD? I was diagnosed as having 'traits of adhd' a few years back and always assumed it was more a reflection of the fact that i was diagnosed by a med student not being supervised who made some significant errors in the way she tested me as well as omitting what I thought were some significant observations from her writeup, but I've been wondering lately whether I am actually ADHD or not

It’s the same for all disorders - if a diagnosing professional wrote down on a psychology report that you have “traits of” a mental disorder, it means that they felt you did not meet the criteria for a full diagnosis at that time, most likely for one of five reasons:

You didn’t have enough symptoms to meet the minimum required for the diagnosis, or you were missing a key symptom that is required to make that diagnosis.

Your symptoms are not severe enough to warrant a diagnosis; they do not cause significant disruption or impairment in your daily life. 

Your symptoms only occur in one specific context (eg. you have symptoms at school, but not at home, work or with friends), or your symptoms are a side effect of medication or intoxication. 

Your symptoms have not been going on long enough to meet the criteria for the diagnosis, they don’t occur frequently enough to make the diagnosis, you have long symptom-free periods that negate the diagnosis, or your symptoms did not appear at an age consistent with the onset of that diagnosis.

You sort of meet the criteria for the diagnosis, but there is a different diagnosis that does a much better job of explaining your symptoms (this is sometimes listed as a “differential diagnosis”, rather than “traits of X”).

A report stating that a person has “traits of” a certain disorder or “features of” a disorder is actually extremely common. I’ve probably read more than thousand psych reports at this point in my career, and it’s quite normal for phrasing like that to appear on them. Usually, this is actually a sign that the person is being rather thorough - they are noting that they considered ADHD as a possible diagnosis but ultimately could not make the diagnosis for some reason or other. As I said, other reports may format this differently, and include a list of “differential diagnoses” in the conclusion - this is a list of diagnoses that they considered but ultimately ruled out for one reason or another. 

Unfortunately, learning that you have “traits” of a disorder doesn’t really tell us much, especially without seeing the full psych report. Maybe you didn’t have ADHD then, but you have since developed it. Maybe you don’t have it and never did. Maybe you have some other sort of executive dysfunction or disorder that explains your symptoms, but it was missed the last time around. Maybe a diagnosis of ADHD was warranted back then, and still is. Maybe you only have ADHD symptoms in a specific context, which would make you ineligible for diagnosis but suggests there is something going on that needs to be addressed. I don’t know enough about your case to know for sure. All that I know is that the only way to be sure if you have ADHD - or any other mental disorder that you may be concerned about - is to seek a second opinion and get another assessment done. 

(I’m going to give some clarification about what having “traits of” a disorder means for other readers who may have similar questions. You should know, though, that ADHD is actually slightly different than other disorders like BPD that you may have “traits of” - ADHD is a neurological condition that responds to medication, and if you are given ADHD medication when you don’t actually have ADHD, you are going to notice pretty quickly that you’ve been misdiagnosed. If you calm down and get more sleep while taking what is effectively speed, you can be pretty sure that ADHD is the correct diagnosis for you. People with other disorders like depression, agoraphobia, PTSD and BPD don’t have the same kind of litmus test available for their diagnosis.)

It’s important to remember that everyone has traits of at least one diagnosable disorder - most people will have traits of several. Some people are more easily distractible than others, some people have more trouble sleeping, some people are naturally low-energy or feel more intense emotions. If you browse through a copy of the DSM-V, you are going to find some stuff in there that sounds like it applies to you. Nobody has perfect mental health, especially in their teens and early 20s. But most people do not meet the criteria for the diagnosis of a mental disorder.

This is where we have to think critically about what a diagnosis actually is, why we do it, and what it actually means. Diagnosing a psychological disorder is not like diagnosing a medical disorder, where we can do some blood tests and scans and know exactly what a person has. Psychological diagnoses are always subjective, to some extent - we made categories to describe common clusters of behaviours and symptoms, and we decided where to draw the line between “someone who is just quirky” and “someone who needs formal psychological treatment”. Where exactly we draw that line has always been the subject of debate. 

We could make it so that everyone who has any sort of mental health flaw at all gets diagnosed with a disorder, but that sort of defeats the point of diagnosis - if almost everyone on earth has a diagnosis, then a diagnosis effectively becomes meaningless. There’s no longer meaningful distinction between “someone with an overactive imagination” and “someone with treatment-resistant psychosis” - it all just gets slapped with the same diagnosis. It can also lead us to “medicalize” behaviours that might not need to be “medicalized”. After all, if we diagnose someone, we need to do something about that diagnosis. Diagnosing them means we’ve identified that they need some sort of treatment or intervention. But do all quirks in human behavior really need to be ironed out with treatment? Do we really want to build a world where everyone who falls outside a very rigid definition of mental health gets told that they have something wrong with them? Likewise, if we make diagnosis too restrictive, that’s not good either. Now we have the opposite problem - if we make the criteria for a diagnosis too strict and too narrow, we miss people who might seriously benefit from having treatment. If we say “you need to be severely suicidal before we can diagnose you with depression”, we’re going to overlook a lot of non-suicidal people whose depressive symptoms are ruining their lives, and who could be treated if we just recognized them as depressed. If we are only diagnosing and helping the most severe of the severe cases, we aren’t really making good use of the tools available to us and diagnosis once again becomes basically meaningless, because not having one is no longer a good indicator of whether or not you need help. 

Diagnosis is a balancing act, and there are a lot of people who fall in kind of a grey area where it’s not totally clear if we should be diagnosing them or not. People are complicated, and they rarely fit neatly into categories. If we have a twenty-year-old girl who experiments with drugs, has a lot of short-term and casual dating relationships that end poorly, struggles to make and keep friends, and doesn’t really have a stable sense of who she is and what she wants, does she have BPD? Or is she just a normal 20-year-old? How would we decide? If we diagnose her, we might be pathologizing behaviour that isn’t really all that unusual for her age group, and making her feel like she’s defective for struggling with things that are pretty normal for someone her age to be struggling with; diagnosing her could make her believe that she’s incapable of healthy relationships, which could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, if we don’t diagnose her, we could be missing the fact that she does actually have a fairly serious disorder, and depriving her of the chance to get life-changing treatment that might help her develop the healthier, more fulfilling relationships that she has been missing out on. We could be leaving her to deal with her destructive behaviours on her own, without having any of the language or tools she needs to disrupt those patterns. 

If you’ve been assessed by a mental health professional and you have questions about how they reached the conclusions they did, I encourage you to ask questions and have an open conversation about your symptoms, possible treatments and needs. If you don’t feel that they have a good understanding of your case, I highly encourage you to get a second opinion on your diagnosis from another professional. Whenever possible, seek a diagnosis from someone who specializes in mental health - this should be a psychologist or psychiatrist (or in some cases, a neurologist), and not a general practitioner or family doctor (some family doctors can diagnose and treat basic depression, but even then, you should seek a referral to a specialist for further treatment and assessment). Also remember that diagnosis does not have to be a barrier to seeking therapy - anyone can get therapy, even if they do not meet the criteria for a psychological diagnosis, and everyone can benefit from seeking out a therapist to improve their coping skills, social skills, and general mental health.  Hope this answers your question! MM

[higuchimon]

[fanfic] The Pain of Healing:  Chapter 3 [end]

 Each of the Kaiser's slaves stood as straight as their bodies would allow, staring at where the Chosen were most likely to appear at.  DarkLizamon, two Dark Tyrannomon, and four Evilmon, all ready to unleash their attacks at the Kaiser's lightest words.  He waited, a twisted little smirk on his lips, as the Chosen and their partners emerged from the thickest of the woods, watching all around them nervously. 

He didn't wait very long to greet them.  "Chosen."  He almost spat the word out.  As if these people deserved to be Chosen.  Only he deserved that honor - Daisuke remained to be seen, given his status as the Kaiser's soulmate.

"Where's Daisuke?"  The blond demanded.  "You had to have done something to him!"

"I did?"  Kaiser did his best to look offended.  He was actually pretty good at that, since most people's existence offended him.  He'd told Daisuke to stay out of sight until he was told otherwise.  "Why would I do something to him?"

"Because he's not the sort of person who would just run away,"  the purple-haired girl declared.  "So you did something to him and Ichijouji Ken!"

Kaiser's lips twitched a fraction.  "I can say with perfect honesty that I've done absolutely nothing to Ichijouji Ken. Nor did I take Motomiya Daisuke anywhere without his permission."  Of course, that greatly depended on what one thought of as "permission". 

The other girl shook her head.  "We don't believe you."

"You don't have to."  Kaiser raised one hand slowly, savoring the drama of the moment.  He did so hope that Daisuke was paying attention.  This was all for him in the end, severing his ties to these idiots and reforging them where they belonged.  He was Kaiser's soulmate.  He belonged to no one else.

He snapped his fingers, and his forces surged forward, flames and claws ready to strike his enemies down.  He wasn't at all surprised to see the Chosen Armor Evolving their partners and getting into the battle.  That didn't make much of a difference to him.  He could always put Rings on his slaves again if he had to.  It might even make an interesting date with Daisuke. 

His eyes flicked briefly over to where he knew his soulmate waited out of sight.  Daisuke stared at the other Chosen, tension written large in every line of his body.  Kaiser caught his eye and smiled a trifle, not enough for the Chosen to notice, but Daisuke would see it.  Once this was taken care of, they could return to the fortress and rest for the evening. 

"What did you do to Daisuke?"  The blond surged forward through the array of enemies, hands gripping on his partner's mane, glaring at Kaiser with furious eyes of blue.  "Where is he? Where's Ichijouji Ken?"

"Why do you think that I know anything about that?"  Kaiser asked, still not displaying a hint of worry. He knew the plans that he'd made.

Takaishi snarled softly, staring down at him.  Then his eyes widened and he swallowed briefly, rage melting away to shock.  Kaiser smiled.  Daisuke had looked much like that on learning that his soulmate was the Kaiser.  Only that had been far, far sweeter than this.

"Takeru?"  The brunette girl flew closer on Nefertimon.  "What's wrong?"

"Don't you think if he really hadn't done anything to them, then he'd be a lot angrier?"  Takaishi asked, not taking his eyes off of Kaiser.  "This is a guy who loses his temper at the drop of a hat!" 

Kaiser sniffed; that wasn't even close to being true.  But he really didn't want to stretch this out forever.  He had plans for dinner.

"What do you think you're saying?"  Kaiser asked, affecting an offended tone.  The girl glanced at him, then at Takaishi. 

"If he's not really upset about us thinking he did something, then he did do it,"  Takaishi growled out each and every word.

"Really?"  Kaiser sniffed.  "That's your logic?  Because I'm not angry, I must have done something?  You're jumping to serious conclusions."  He tried very hard not to laugh, no matter how difficult it was.  "Pray, tell me what it is that I could have done to them, or why?"

The youngest boy stared at Kaiser in his own turn before he offered a suggestion.  "Daisuke and Ichijouji-kun are soulmates.  You could kidnap Ichijouji-kun and use him to blackmail Daisuke."

"Would I do that?"  Kaiser couldn't quite hold back his smirk this time.  "I can assure you that I have brought no harm at all to either of them."  Daisuke had best keep his mouth shut on that, too.  Kaiser didn't think he'd hurt him.  He could safely miss a meal or two, and Kaiser had fed him as soon as he'd behaved himself.  That was nothing more than discipline.

"Yes."  Armadimon's partner declared without a breath of hesitation. "You've never liked Daisuke.  You'd do anything so he wouldn't b able to fight you.  What would be a better way?"

Having him be my soulmate.  Kaiser chuckled.  "Oh, if that's what I wanted, I could ensure that he not fight me in any number of ways.  Your Digimon are no more immune to my Evil Rings than any other Digimon - and what would be the result on one of you if I put a Ring on them?"  He regarded each of them in turn.  So far none really seemed that appealing to make the test on, and it was an interesting test indeed.  Though he wasn't going to try it on V-mon.  Daisuke was his soulmate and didn't deserve that.

None of the Chosen looked very happy by now.  They'd managed to defeat the Digimon he'd brought along - the ones he'd allowed out for now - and now moved in closer.  Kaiser smiled a long and slow smile.

"I suppose I could tell you where Motomiya is.  That, I do know."  He waited the proper amount of tense-ridden moments before nodding slightly.  Out from behind him there rumbled a large, powerful Triceramon.  It had taken Kaiser ages to find this one, and now it strode forward with Daisuke perched on the back.  The noises the Chosen made were fascinating - especially when they noticed that Daisuke wore no bonds at all.  He wasn't staying there by being forced. 

At least not by ties they could see.  Kaiser knew very well that Daisuke wouldn't have stayed that quiet and obedient without V-mon being firmly locked up.  But the Chosen didn't need to know that.

"Daisuke!  Get down from there!"  Takaishi snapped.  "What are you doing there?"

He didn't answer.  Kaiser had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't to speak to anyone without Kaiser's permission.  Triceramon came to a stop next to his master, and Daisuke slipped down to stand next to him, not even looking at the Chosen.  Kaiser made a note to reward him for that. 

Once Daisuke stood beside him, Kaiser wrapped the fingers of one hand around Daisuke's, then turned the other's head so their eyes met.  He allowed Daisuke, and only him, to see the amusement and pleasure in his eyes, then glanced at the Chosen.

"I have no need to kidnap Ichijouji Ken,"  he declared.  "But Motomiya Daisuke belongs to me, now and forever. And there's nothing that any of you can do about it."

He didn't possess the power to read minds - he doubted such a power even existed - but he could feel their horrified looks on him, especially as he leaned forward to lightly lay a kiss on Daisuke's lips.  He'd never kissed anyone before and he'd not quite thought to do it the first time in front of an audience, but he did rather enjoy this.  Daisuke's lips were warm and soft and sweet and after a startled moment, he began to return the kiss.  Kaiser groaned a bit and would have continued, if there hadn't been a noise of some kind coming from the Chosen.

From Takaishi in particular, who stared at them as if Kaiser were the personal embodiment of his own worst nightmares.  Then, slowly, Kaiser decided to take the last step, the one that would prove they had no more claim to Daisuke, now or ever again.

He'd already decided on how to do that.  He nodded slightly at Daisuke, who nodded back, still remaining quiet until he'd been granted permission to speak before them.  Then Kaiser raised a sharp knife, and peeled off one glove.  Daisuke did the same thing, holding his hand out.  With one quick movement he slashed first Daisuke's hand, then his own. 

Four distinct yelps - probably more, but definitely four.  Kaiser hated the pain, but the next part made it all worth it.  He wrapped his wounded hand around Daisuke's, and the warmth from their touch swept through him.  The pain eased off in a few moments, and he could feel the wound slowly knitting back together.  When he finally pulled his hand back and glanced at it, the wound didn't exist any more.  The same held true for Daisuke - the sign that bound them as soulmates, as Heal-Touches. 

He caught Daisuke's attention again and nodded slightly.  Daisuke drew in a breath and turned to face the Chosen, his hand raised and turned so they could see how it had healed cleanly. 

"That's not possible,"  Yagami murmured, her hand searching for and grabbing onto the other girl's.  Kaiser recalled that they were soulmates as well.  "This is - Daisuke's soulmate is Ichijouji Ken - we saw that - "

"I think they're surprised,"  Daisuke said at last.  Kaiser chuckled softly.

"I think you're right.  But they're also correct."  With a deep breath, Kaiser reached up and removed his visor, letting them see his entire face for the first time.  Takaishi said something - was that French? - that Kaiser didn't entirely catch.  Not that it mattered.  What mattered right now was telling them who he was.

The smallest boy shook his head.  "You - you're the Kaiser?"

"I am."  Kaiser agreed.  "And Motomiya Daisuke is my soulmate, as I am his."  He kept Daisuke close to him, pleased that the other didn't even look at the Chosen.  He had his suspicions on why he did that and they had nothing whatsoever to do with Daisuke suddenly being eternally devoted and loyal to him.  That would come later. But it would come indeed.

"Daisuke?"  The girl's voice wavered as she took a step forward. This one was Yagami, he recalled.  Not that her name mattered a lot, bu it might be interesting to know.  "Are you all right?"

Kaiser nodded ever so faintly, knowing that Daisuke would see and understand the gesture. Daisuke drew in a quick, steadying breath and turned towards the Chosen.  His smile shone out as bright as the sun.  Kaiser could not help but feel a trifle displeased to see it turned towards them instead of him.  He fought it down, though, with effort. 

"Hey, guys.  Nothing to worry about."  He kept one arm around Kaiser as he spoke.  Kaiser wasn't used to this much human contact, but it would help encourage them to understand that Daisuke wasn't going anywhere that wasn't with him.  "I know I wasn't expecting this.  But I'm fine."

"You're not fine."  Takeru's lips pressed together hard, fingers clenching to the point that even at a distance, Kaiser could see how white the knuckles were.  "That's the Kaiser."  Absolute hatred laced every word that he spoke.  Kaiser had never heard someone say his title like that and he wasn't certain that he liked it.

"Yeah, it's Ichijouji Ken.  He's my soulmate."  Daisuke regarded Takeru, and Kaiser saw hints of worry in his eyes.  He would have to ask about that at a later time.  "It isn't something you need to get worked up about."

Takaishi's Pegasumon bumped his head against him, murmuring something that Kaiser couldn't hear, and Takaishi breathed in deeply, a little of the tension fading away from him.  At the same time, the Triceramon beside them began to shift and paw at the ground a little, snorting faintly. Kaiser's eyes narrowed.

"Calm down," he ordered, grateful that they were close enough he could do so without the Chosen hearing him.  The last thing that he needed was for them to think he didn't have perfect control over his slaves. 

But Triceramon didn't listen. It twitched and shifted harder, and Daisuke threw a worried look at him.

"What's wrong with him?"  His soulmate wanted to know.  Kaiser started to answer, but before a word could escape his lips, Triceramon roared something that might have been a challenge and might have been simply nothing more than rage incarnate. The creature backed up several paces, ignoring all of Kaiser's attempts to bring it to heel, either with the Ring, his Digivice, or his whip.  It drew its head back and from deep within the mouth came a blast of pure fire, aimed at Kaiser himself.

Time seemed to slow down around them all.  Kaiser only vaguely recalled having told Wormmon to stay in the fortress.  He wouldn't be needed for this; nothing could possibly go wrong for him.  He wasn't even certain of why Wormmon crossed his thoughts as he saw the fireball streaming towards him.  It would hit.  Nothing could stop it.  He was done for. 

Something crashed into him.  No, not something - someone.  Daisuke knocked him down and Kaiser could see him standing in between him and the Triceramon, fists clenched, glaring at the Digimon with a gaze fierce enough to melt metal.  Kaiser wanted to tell him to get back, that a human couldn't stand against a Digimon of that strength, not without a partner - and V-mon wasn't there either.   From the way Daisuke stood, Kaiser had a suspicion that he hadn't gotten out of this unscathed.

I don't want him to be hurt.  The thought seared across his mind in a heartbeat and he knew exactly how true it was.  He waned no real harm to come to Daisuke. He wasn't completely certain of why and now wasn't the time to figure it out.

"Guys!  What are you waiting for?"  Daisuke snapped, not taking his eyes off Triceramon.  "Break the Ring!  That should calm Triceramon down!"

Triceramon's horns began to glow a deep shining red, each circle on the horns as bright as the sun.  Daisuke took a step back - still keeping himself between Kaiser and Triceramon, shoulders tense, arms spread in a defensive gesture.  Kaiser shook his head to clear it, starting to get back on his feet.  He was the Digimon Kaiser.  He didn't require saving or defense or anything!  There wasn't a single Digimon who wouldn't obey him! 

But when he grasped for his Digivice, it wasn't there.  He spied it a short distance from where he'd fallen, alongside of his whip.  In the same moment, he could hear Triceramon's grumbling growl of a voice, preparing to unleash a powerful attack. 

"Golden Noose!"  The voice came from above, and with a quick jerk of his head, he spied Pegasumon and Nefertimon above him, circling around one another, performing that joint attack of theirs, wrapping the lasso around Triceramon, hauling the creature backwards.  Feet pawed at the air as the two struggled, then from underneath there came Digmon, drill slicing into the Ring and shattering it.

Triceramon paused at once.  His eyes, which had retained their scarlet glow the whole time, faded back into sense.  The creature stared at Kaiser, then to the Chosen, all of whom remained nervously on guard.  Kaiser snorted, snatching up his Digivice and whip, thinking of who he could call to get him and Daisuke out of here.

"Are you certain you don't want me to incinerate him?"  Triceramon's voice was deep and rich; if Kaiser had ever thought about what one would sound like speaking, that was it.  "It's what he deserves."

"No."  Daisuke shook his head.  Now that Kaiser could get a better look, he saw a nasty burn across one side of Daisuke - the side that hadn't knocked him down.  His own side that had plowed across the ground ached and his uniform would have to be cleaned, if not actually replaced.  But the damage to Daisuke worried him more.  It wouldn't be anything that he couldn't fix, but it wasn't right!  Daisuke was burned because of him.

"Daisuke's right,"  Yagami agreed, slipping off of Nefertimon.  "No one deserves that."

"I'm not so sure,"  Takaishi muttered before he glared at Kaiser again, eyes as cold as two chips of ice.  "Why don't you get out of here?"

Kaiser sniffed, but he knew when the time to leave had come.  He wanted to take a better look at Daisuke's wounds anyway.  Just because he wasn't reacting that much didn't mean they didn't hurt.  A quick snap of his whip summoned an AirDramon, who ghosted down and waited for them to climb aboard.

"Don't expect to see Daisuke any time soon,"  he growled, folding his cape around his soulmate.  "We are getting to know one another."  He could feel Daisuke drawing breath to say something and hissed softly, "No.  Keep quiet."

The AirDramon rose into the air and hurried on the way back to the fortress.  Kaiser didn't look at the Chosen at all.  His thoughts were divided - what had happened to Triceramon?  How had it managed to attack him?  That shouldn't have happened at all. 

But what he worried about more was Daisuke.  How bad were those injuries?  Energy had to come from somewhere, so what would it cost him to heal Daisuke?  He'd gladly pay it; no one harmed what was his except him, and Daisuke was most definitely his.  He would have to work that out once they got home and he could see the details.  He didn't think it was as bad as it could have been if the fireball had actually hit Daisuke head on - that could have seared him to the bone. 

Kaiser told himself firmly that he didn't shudder at that though.  Not in the slightest.

"Why did you do that?"  He asked as the fortress came into view.  "You could have let it hit me."

Daisuke glared up at him.  "You know, for a genius, you can be pretty stupid.  You're my soulmate.  Why would I let you get roasted when I can stop it?" 

That made no sense to Kaiser.  Of course they were soulmates. He was quite certain on why he was angry about Daisuke's wounds.  But why had Daisuke done that at all?  That he couldn't understand. He shook his head.  "You don't even like me."  He wasn't going to let Daisuke get away without a solid answer.

"What's that got to do with anything?  You're not just my soulmate." 

Kaiser started to relax.  Oh, he'd heard this before. Valued for his looks, for his brains, because he was the unyielding master of the Digital World - he'd heard it all before. He knew this ground very well indeed.

"You're a person.  You shouldn't get roasted like that. How are you going to do better if you're dead?"

Kaiser might well have stumbled or even fell if he hadn't had such perfect control of his body.  He'd never heard anything like that, and he wondered what sort of nonsense filled Daisuke's head.  He shook his own head quietly.

"You expect me to do better?"  He'd certainly never thought to hear those words coming from anyone, let alone Daisuke.

"You're going to be better."  Daisuke tilted his head up to stare into Kaiser's eyes.  "And I'm going to help you."

Kaiser could only shake his head.  Clearly Daisuke was more injured than he looked.  Had he hit his head?  But he would soon get all of that sorted out.  At least he'd accomplished one thing - the Chosen were aware of who he was and that Daisuke now belonged to him.  There wasn't any way they'd try to get him back now that Daisuke had openly saved his life. 

It was time for a new beginning, with the one fate designed just for him.

The End

Notes: Maybe I’ll do the next story for DaiKen Week 2022. We shall see. Though I am tempted to work on something with Piemon and Takeru. That is why Takeru is so skittish.

[phoebehalliwell]

hunger games fusion: demons rule and make witch and human kids fight for their amusement. Patty was a victor at 17, mentored by Sam, her district's only other winner (and a whitelighter who died in the arena but was resurrected before anyone could notice), and they got close, but after she was so traumatized that she broke all contact with him except for the yearly games, married Victor Bennett a regular human, and had three daughters. But Victor couldn't handle the magic and left and Patty 1/?

turned to Sam. they had Paige but gave her up in another district before demons found out about a half-whitelighter baby. then Patty died shortly after, leaving her family homeless (bc you can't live a victor's life if there is no victor) and Sam a drunken mess. Cut to years later, and 13-year-old Phoebe just got Reaped for the Games. Piper volunteers in her place. Leo is her district partner. Sam is their mentor. And in the arena she meets Paige, 11 and Reaped from a neighboring district.

okay i’m picking districts. patty comes from the warren line who are known to be very powerful witches so i’m saying she’s a career. u kno what i’m gonna saying district 4 fishing as a parallel to san francisco bc like. they got fishing there. and then we’ll also say for aging purposes whitelighter don’t have immortality (or they do but they age regardless) and we’ll also say instead of being her mentor bc since i’m saying she’s a career they definitely have a plethora of winners to choose from we’ll say sam was also a tribute from district 8 textiles in patty’s hunger games they formed an alliance and she developed feelings for him despite already being in a relationship with victor back home when he died patty used her power to freeze him giving the elders just enough time to do what they needed to do. technically he “died” but he lived on as a whitelighter aiding the side of the revolution. patty wins the hunger games and brings pride to her family but feels v disillusioned w it all bc well killing other kids was not fun and losing sam was the worst and now she’s toted around like some prize jewel and she doesn’t know if victor can’t tell or if he doesn’t care that at every single gala they have to attend she feeling like breaking down into tears or feral screams. but she can’t. so she spends the next couple decades being the perfect, delightful hunger games winner, she has three kids and totes them everywhere with smiles but god she just hates it all she hates it all so much she so much. and the hunger games are on every year and her kids are glued to the screen bc that’s how they were raised but patty can’t even stand to be in the room when the games are on tv and one night she meets sam again she didn’t even know he was alive after all of these years but like meeting him makes her feel just slightly more sane bc this was something the games couldn’t take away from her they tried but they couldn’t here he was and patty almost felt like she could breathe again sam had aged normally so he didn’t look like the kid who was killed in the hunger games so he went back to district eight to watch out for his family and his community blah blah blah they rekindle the relationship patty gets pregnant but uses and illusion spell to pretend she’s not whoever can sense the magic just assume she’s using it for vanity to appear younger bc patty decided she’s not gonna raise this child she’s seen the way her kids were raised surrounded by the games and capitol touting its glories and she just would want her daughter to go through that if she has the opportunity not to so when she gave birth to paige she gave her to sam and asked him to keep her safe, so sam took her and brought her to a close pair of family friends in district eight who he knew would keep her safe and love her as their own.

and blah blah blah patty and sam continue to fight for the revolution but one day they’re found out patty is killed by the water demon and things are still kept very hush hush but like. she was a victor and she was killed by a demon. that doesn’t just happen. people talk. so when prue is reaped she’s hyped but more importantly she’s determined she’s gonna save her family and bring back their good name and she’s good she’s really good and paige is watching from district eight and she hates watching the games but she can’t help but root for the girl from district 4 who looks like her and hope that she makes it through. but the issue with prue is she has this insane protective instinct. she had it for andy, her partner in the games, and it almost got her killed. prue could be ruthless, but she undeniably had a soft spot. she ended up sacrificing herself in the games so a boy from district eight could win. leo wasn’t sure how he’d ever be able to repay her. flash forward a couple years and piper’s still grieving for her sister and her mother and she’s become ruthless. phoebe’s fallen for a demon. paige is still minding her business in district 8. when it comes time for the reaping & piper’s drawn, phoebe tries volunteering as tribute but piper shuts her down. it’s clear from the look in her eyes that she is determined to do this. she is going to kill every single person in that arena. phoebe’s begging cole to do something about it, he’s a demon, he has to have some sway. she’s already lost patty, she’s already lost prue, she can’t she can’t lose piper too.

over in district 8, paige is reaped. paige is not a fighter, this much she knows. leo, her mentor, isn’t much of one either. but leo knows strategy. he knows the others powers, strengths, weaknesses, and he knows healing pretty well. paige is mortal, putting her at a distinct disadvantage, but if she can lay low, keep from dying for long enough, she might have a shot. and another note: avoid piper halliwell. her sister died sacrificing herself for leo, piper might be looking for revenge against district 8. so just. keep your head low. and paige does, bc like. she doesn’t wanna get murdered before the games even start. but leo doesn’t. well, okay, he didn’t intentionally get in an elevator with piper, but he was the one who struck up conversation. she glared at him like she wanted to rip his guts out, but all leo saw was the immense sadness behind her eyes. he wished he could heal her. she seemed like she needed it.

meanwhile cole really needs to decide is he’s gonna risk it all for phoebe. they say demon’s can’t love, but what he feels is pretty damn close. but is it worth the risk to go against the capitol to try to save phoebe’s sister. it’s dangerous. it’s beyond dangerous; it’s a suicide mission. he could sit back. go through the motions. pretend to save piper, but he can’t, he’s so sorry, he tried, he’ll be there as a shoulder for phoebe to cry on. that’s an option. a compelling one. a really compelling one. and he better pick fast bc the games are starting.

the games are mountain themed this year, featuring very little natural resources jagged cliff edges winding caverns with a disturbing array of creatures hidden within and very thin air, especially to those coming from sea level. paige already knows this is going to be brutal. there’s not really a space to lay low, like leo suggested, and she can see from across the dias piper is giving her murder eyes. and she knows she knows she knows leo said don’t go for the cornucopia she’s mortal running into a pack of bloodthirsty witches but there’s no way she’s gonna survive without resources so like !! the clock counts down and she’s like gotta make a decision bc right now they’re all basically on a sawed off mountain top getting off of here safe is gonna be a bitch it’s something she’s gonna have to take slow if she leaves when everyone’s going for the cornucopia she has a chances of making it out alive but the odds of her making it down the ridge with supplies and killer witches on her tail. no. leo’s right. she should just run for it. mmmm but there’s some canned food about 5 yards in she could just go for that and leave. enough time to escape, small enough to carry. the gong sounds. time to commit to the bit. 

she sprints over and grabs the food, doing a quick 180 and darting back towards the cliff’s edge. she can hear brutal screams and the sound of teenagers choking on their own blood, but that’s not what gets her. it’s the fact that the kid next to her is frozen where he stands. she can’t think about it too much, that’s a luxury she doesn’t have, but she does spare a quick glance over her shoulder. the witches are fighting, sure, but every other mortal in the arena is frozen. it’s piper, it has to be piper, making sure she’s awake for the kill. paige doesn’t have time to worry about it. she begins climbing down the wall.

piper can’t figure out why the district 8 girl isn’t freezing. she tried multiple times. a telekinetic from district five knocks her to the ground but she’s blown off his hand before he can make another move. the next hit goes for the head. the district 8 boy has the power of invisibility, he’s a lost cause for now, but she can still get her revenge on the girl. piper runs over to the cliffside paige disappeared down. she can still see the raven haired girl scampering down a narrow ledge. she’s pretty far down, but piper’s been working on her aim. just in time, paige looks up, eyes wide with fear as piper throws out her hands at her. the cliffside explodes, but paige doesn’t go with it. no. she orbs. and rematerializes right back where she was, tucked in the jagged groove piper just created. piper doesn’t have time to go for another kill, she’s already had her back to the cornucopia too long. but if she could spare the time, she would climb down there herself and demand to know exactly what was going on. since when can mortal orb?

paige was Not favorable ranked to win the games. mortals never are. but after that orbing stunt, sponsors were all over her. no one had even seen a whitelighter in the games. rumor had it they were extinct. but to have one there?? well, they already died once, they could probably avoid it the second time. paige’s new orbing power didn’t give her half of the confidence the sponsors had, though. her plan was still to wait it out until the majority of the fighting was done. but there really were no resources. she would sometimes get food from the her sponsors, but the gamemakers seemed to be curbing her supply. she’d have to return to the cornucopia.

the careers had set up camp there. mainly, they’d just wait for the other kids to show up, starving and desperate for food, and pick them off one by one, but if the days were particularly dull they’d sent two off at a time to go hunting. piper always went. she almost always killed. one day, her and her hunting partner from district one (a blonde witch named billie) came back to find the other careers slaughtered and a good amount of supplies taken. double edged sword. bad, because they lost supplies. good, because that lowered the amount of tributes left. bad, because that meant billie and piper were inching closer and closer to killing each other. they didn’t go out hunting together anymore. they didn’t trust the other to have their back. they’d alternate, one witch standing guard at the mountain top while the other travelled down to hunt. paige didn’t know this. if she had, she probably would have time it out to the day piper was gone. but she didn’t.

it was hard to get a read on the situation, paige would only dare to venture a peak above her ledge every couple minutes as piper circled with a watchful eye. but the gamemakers new paige was coming. new supplies had been dropped that morning, with fresh loaves of bread, containers of soup, and canned peaches (paige’s favorite!). she just didn’t know how to get there without getting killed. she tried to talk herself through it, name every step as a method of calming down. she feared her voice would carry, though, and only risked it when the wind howled through the mountains. even still, her voice barely sat above a whisper. okay. i’ll go when piper’s the at the opposite end of her round. that’ll give me the most time. and if she tried to hit me, i’ll orb?? and once i get the supplies... then what. scaling this cliff would be a bitch. she hadn’t tried moving when she orbed, but that might end up being a learning while doing situation. okay. i’ll grab stuff, and i’ll jump. and i’ll orb safely down to the bottom. yeah. i can do that! i can do that. okay. paige took another look from her hiding place. piper was about to hit the further point of her guard. paige smiled. she almost felt like this plan could work. i’m gonna get some freakin canned peaches!! orbs swirled around the canned peaches, whisking them away. of course piper noticed. of course she noticed right where they orbed to. a tiny paige face peeking over the cliffside. oh, she was gonna kill her.

this was a horrible plan. this plan was gonna go horribly. there was no way this plan could work. but here they were, witch and demon, flying out to the arena. cole was gonna fry the area with an energy ball, hopefully disabling it long enough for phoebe to dive in and steal piper. and then they’d run. it was a horrible plan. there were a thousand ways it could go wrong. a hundred thousand. ten million. infinite possibility, infinite opportunities to fuck this up. but here they were, witch and demon, flying out to the arena.

paige grabbed her canned peaches and and thought fuck it guess this’ll have to do bc there was no was she could go toe to toe with piper’s wrath. better hope her obing power was under control. she leaped off the side of the cliff. and landed right on top of piper, knocking her to the ground. yikes! then a loud pop, like a transformer blowing, and the sky went dark. not like nighttime. like someone had turned the lights out. piper couldn’t see shit, but that wasn’t going to stop her, she reached out, clawing for anything, and found her hands around paige’s neck, gripping in pitch black. and then a voice, calling her name. piper! not prue, phoebe. piper swivelled around, but couldn’t see a thing. phoebe? paige tried to worm from piper’s grip, but piper slammed her to the ground. she could hear a pair of footsteps running closer. piper! piper, we’re getting you out of here. phoebe laid a hand on her sister’s should, and there was light. it wasn’t the arena, the power still hadn’t come back, but there was light. the shock of it loosened piper’s grip as she stared up, blue lights and witch’s orbs swirling in the air around the three girls. around the three sisters. paige stirred, barely conscious. piper, we’re getting you out of here. come on. piper paused. the girl did look a lot like prue. piper! power’s gonna come back any minute. -not without her. -what? -i mean it, phoebe! not without her. phoebe shrugged at cole. this wasn’t part of the plan, but quite frankly it was amazing they had made it this far. fuck it. why not. cole grabbed the sisters, ready to shimmer out. where to? piper looked at paige. a sister on the brink of death. she knew where she had to take her. leo.

[scoutception]

Final Fantasy II review

One of the most interesting parts of the Final Fantasy series, and a big reason why I’m so fond of it, is that every main series game takes its own approach to the gameplay. From the job systems of III and V, the Materia system of VII, the Junctioning system of VIII, or the straight up action combat of XV, every game has a different focus that makes them stand out, and while the results can certainly fall short at times, it’s still something worth commending. For example, take the subject of today’s review, Final Fantasy II. For the second game in the series, and a game that came out in 1988, it’s a huge step up from the original game in a lot of ways. A much more detailed plot, containing several defined playable and supporting characters, a much more experimental battle system, the introduction of many elements, gameplay and otherwise, that would establish a true identity for the series, away from just being a ripoff of Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, it’s an impressive and critical step forward for the series. Unfortunately for the game, it hasn’t been 1988 in over 30 years, and it’s now easily the weakest game in the series in my opinion. As for why that is, well, that’s what we’re taking a look at today. As with the first game, I’m reviewing the PSP version. Note I’ll be pretty lax with spoilers, so take caution, if you actually care to avoid spoilers.

Story: Final Fantasy II takes place in an entirely different world than Final Fantasy I, a tradition that every main series game would follow. The peace of this world is shattered after the rise of Emperor Mateus of Palamecia, who, bent on world domination, raises a fearsome army and unleashes the denizens of Hell upon the land, conquering a large portion of the world. The city of Fynn organizes a large resistance effort, only to be attacked by the Emperor’s army, forcing a small remnant to flee to the town of Altair, establishing the Wild Rose Rebellion, led by Princess Hilda. During the fall of Fynn, four youths, Firion, Maria, Guy, and Leon, attempted to escape as well, only to be attacked and left for dead by the Emperor’s soldiers, with Leon going missing as well. Rescued by the rebellion, and healed by the white wizard Minwu, Firion, Maria, and Guy, having nothing left to return to, and wishing to search for the missing Leon, join the rebellion to fight back against Palamecia. Meanwhile, the Emperor, his army having taken heavy losses taking Fynn, takes to devising much less conventional methods of establishing his rule, starting with a massive airship called the Dreadnought, meant to scare the populace into obedience, on threat of total destruction.

Compared to the very light plot of Final Fantasy I, the story here is much more involved. Instead of wandering between locations more or less aimlessly, there’s always an explicit plot reason to go to new locations, the party being given tasks like finding mythril to supply the rebellion with better equipment, or trying to recruit potential allies. Compared to the party in the first game just being completely blank slates, the party consists of the more distinctive Firion, Maria, and Guy, with the fourth slot being filled by various guest characters that come and go as the story goes on, such as Gordon, the prince of the fallen kingdom of Kashuan, and Ricard Highwind, the last of the dragoons, and there’s actually an established side cast, including characters like Hilda, the leader of the rebellion and princess of Fynn, Paul, a noble thief assisting the rebellion, and Cid, a former knight who maintains the world’s only airship, with this notably being Cid’s first appearance in the series.

Final Fantasy II is also very noticeably darker than the first game. While the plot circumstances of the first game weren’t exactly cheerful, with the world falling apart due to the influence of the Fiends, outside of a select few towns, this wasn’t very obvious, and the game overall carried a bright, adventurous feel. Not so with Final Fantasy II, where the Emperor is a much more prominent and ruthless villain who’s already conquered or ruined a majority of the world, always keeping another plan on standby, and staying one step ahead of the heroes. Many characters die over the story, from random NPCs to even temporary party members, and the game overall carries a prominent melancholic, empty feel to it, one that’s very impressive considering the time it was made.

To be honest, however, it actually goes a bit too far in this regard. Almost everything the protagonists accomplish comes at the cost of allies dying, or something preventing them from fully completing their mission. Many NPCs are pessimistic about the chances of humanity being able to win against the Emperor, and so much destruction is wrought upon the world by the end that it seems there’s not even much left to save. From the very beginning of the game, which starts with your party instantly being destroyed in an unwinnable battle, the game is nothing but a constant stream of death and hollow victories, with plenty of characters you can find mourning their losses, and there’s very, very few points in the story that offer any sort of relief from it. Combined with the Emperor barely seeming bothered by anything the party accomplishes, and running circles around them more than a few times, it’s very easy to simply lose any investment in the story.

The characters unfortunately only add to this lack of investment. It’s hard to hold it against the game, but the main party of Firion, Maria, and Guy is still easily the least developed cast in the series. They have little dialogue to themselves to begin with, and have very minimal personality traits, especially Firion, who pretty much only exists to be the hero by default. Additionally, whereas in most RPGs, the cast’s varying personalities and skills tend to gain importance, here, the only skill any of them have is Guy being able to talk to beavers, which only comes up once in a way that doesn’t even affect the story, and, again, they have nearly no personality otherwise, which totals out to each of them having, at best, 1 moment each throughout the story where they’re not completely interchangeable with each other, which barely elevates them above the completely blank slate party of FF1.

The guest party members and NPCs fair a bit better, but not by much. The guests tend to be at least mildly interesting, like the fatalistic Minwu, the cowardly Gordon, who learns to be courageous as the story goes on, to the pirate girl Leila, but they’re still nothing special, and there’s surprisingly few other NPCs, most of which aren’t too memorable either. Even the Emperor himself is about one of the most stereotypical evil emperor characters you could have, not helped by the very few scenes he gets. That’s not to say he’s a bad villain, though. His successfulness does create a presence that looms over the entire story, and he pulls off one of the coolest plot twists in the series; after being killed by the party in a very easy battle late in the game, he simply returns as a demon himself, having become far, far stronger than he had ever been in life, to the point of taking over Hell itself. It’s such a unique and unexpected twist on the seemingly weak political villain that it alone cements the Emperor as one of the more memorable villains in the series. Overall, while the writing of the game is quite impressive for the time, and laid a good deal of groundwork for the improved writing of future entries, it’s just passable at best nowadays.

Gameplay: Here’s where things really start falling apart. On the surface, not much the combat doesn’t seem terribly different from Final Fantasy I, with it still being a standard turn based system with basic commands like attacking, using magic, and defending. The big differences in Final Fantasy II’s combat lie in the character progression. The first game had you simply selecting a party of 4 classes at the start of the game, gradually making them stronger across the game by leveling them up and acquiring specific equipment and spells for each, like pretty much every normal JRPG. FF2, on the other hand, uses a much more complex system. Every party member is capable of using every weapon and learning every spell, in the process abandoning the D&D system of set spell charges and instead introducing the traditional MP system, and characters are not set in specialized classes and roles. Instead, FF2 discards the usual EXP based leveling system, and instead uses a stat leveling system, where the individual stats of each character level up separately depending on the course of battle, and while each character starts with predetermined stats that favor a particular role for them, with enough grinding, you can still reshape them however you wish. This stat growth system would later be used and refined for the SaGa series, and it’s a very ambitious attempt at improving upon the party building system the first game established.

In total, there are 12 main stats that can be increased through battle: HP, your health points, which is raised in regular intervals, or losing HP in battle, MP, magic points that allow you to use spells, which is raised by having MP reduced in battle, Strength, which determines your physical attack, and is raised by using the attack command, Magic, which determines how much MP you get when it is gained, and is raised by having MP reduced in battle, Spirit, which determines the strength of white magic spells, and is raised by casting white magic in battle, Intelligence, which determines the strength of black magic spells, and is raised casting black magic in battle, Stamina, which determines how much HP you get when it is gained, and is increased by losing HP in battle, Evasion, which determines how likely a character can dodge physical attacks, and is raised by being targeted by attacks in battle, Agility, which factors into evasion calculation, and is raised by having high evasion, and Magic Defense, which determines how resilient a character is to offensive magic, and is raised by being targeted by offensive magic in battle.

However, it doesn’t stop there, as individual weapon types and spells also have levels that can be raised, which is done so by gaining skill points in them by attacking or casting them during battle. Once enough skill points are gained, they advance to the next level, with the hard cap being 16. Gaining weapon levels allows that character to be more accurate and attack more times at once with that type of weapon, and raising spell levels increases their power and makes them more accurate. Each weapon type, consisting of swords, spears, axes, staves, knives, bows, shields, and unarmed, have different attributes, such as spears being a relatively balanced type, with lower individual power than swords and axes, but higher accuracy, while bows are allow characters to attack from the newly introduced back row, which makes them immune to physical attacks, but prevents them from attacking with any other weapon type. While focusing on one weapon type with each character would seem the most efficient, the game only tends to give you one or two weapons of each type at a time, many of which have good boosts in power or added effects, making focusing on a few different types a decent idea.

Shields are unique in that, while equipping them doesn’t raise your defense as might be expected, and actually lower your attack, they give large evasion bonuses that makes dodging attacks much easier, and have the chance of blocking a physical attack completely even if something does connect, all of which increases as you gain levels in it. As for other defensive equipment, you have heavy and light types of armor, with light armor giving less defense bonuses than their heavier counterparts, but not weighing nearly as much, and thus leaving you much more evade. As for spells, they start out very underpowered, and have awful accuracy in the case of buff and debuff spells, but become much more effective after a few levels, with the downside of them costing more MP to cast with each level gained. Characters can learn up to 16 spells, and are free to remove them at any time, at the cost of having to level them again from scratch if they ever relearn them. Instead of simply learn spells by buying them in towns, spells are instead learned from tomes, which can be bought from shops, found in treasure chests, or dropped from enemies. Using them on the field teaches a character that spell, while using the tomes in battle instead casts a high level version of the spell, at the cost of losing that tome.

Unfortunately, as creative as this all is, this system has some serious issues. The main one, which you have already guessed, is that the game is incredibly, incredibly grindy because of these mechanics, and in a much worse way than most other RPGs. While not every stat is going to be important for each character, depending on how you build them, there’s still a lot of things it forces you to keep track of. Even if you want to make a dedicated mage, sticking in the back row with a bow for the whole game will leave them with so little vitality and HP that they’ll just be uncomfortably fragile, and with the magic attacks enemies have by the endgame, you really want to keep them in the front row for a good part of the game. Most spells, including important ones like Life and Esuna, for reviving party members and removing status effects respectively, while extremely useful, have such horrible accuracy to start that they’re completely useless before you level them up, and the weapon distribution is quite unbalanced, with swords having easily the best selection even in the midgame, essentially leaving most other types as stopgaps.

While you might level your important stats a good bit just naturally going through areas, trying to deliberately level any of them is a commitment. While HP, strength, spirit, intelligence, and magic defense tend to come easily enough, increasing stamina often only happens through the loss of a large chunk of their maximum HP, which, obviously, preferably doesn’t happen on a regular basis. This goes likewise for MP and magic, which is rather irritating, as not only do you need more and more MP as your spells level up, but ways to restore MP are extremely limited and costly. The bizarre loop of agility factoring in to evasion increasing, while itself only leveling up based on your current evasion, means that the only reliable way of increasing either is to equip the lightest equipment you have. While leveling up weapon levels is easy enough, especially since you can dual wield different types at once, leveling up spells is a much slower process, with casting low level spells during random encounters, even those that won’t actually help at the moment, often being one of the only feasible ways to get them leveled quick. You may even be tempted to ignore magic beyond simple spells like Cure because of the individual effort needed, but the game will quickly hammer the importance of magic into you; from the randomly encountered flans and bombs that either have absurd physical defense or tend to explode if not fully defeated in one turn, with magic being the only reasonable way to take them out, to mandatory bosses that hit quite hard, and also have enough physical defense to make physical attacks nearly worthless without absurd grinding, you’re not getting through the early game without dedicating some time to magic. On the flip side, another early dungeon has a boss that outright absorbs magic, making physical attacks the only way to beat it.

The game has quite a reputation for being brutal, and it’s not inaccurate, with most dungeons being more than glad to beat you down without remorse, and there’s tons of troublesome enemies to be found throughout the game, doubly so if you try to go for all the treasure chests in the area, as many of them are guarded by encounters called monster-in-a-box, which are often much more powerful than other encounters around. Most bosses are more than happy to make your life miserable too, especially the infamous Lamia Queen and Behemoth. However, this difficulty is in no way fair or well designed. While the growth system can easily leave you unsure as to whether or not you’re prepared for a dungeon, since you have no easy guideline to go off of compared to standard leveling, that’s not even the worst of it. The design of the dungeons, and even the world map, are horrible. There’s tons of doors scattered throughout pretty much every dungeon, and 90% of them lead to dead end rooms with raised encounter rates. There is absolutely no way to tell which doors are dead ends and which are necessary to progress, so you’re reduced to trial and error, which is extremely exhausting when there’s so many doors per dungeon, and you’re almost guaranteed to get into an encounter before you can leave each one, and if you’re tempted to ignore any doors when they don’t seem mandatory to progress, in many of those cases, there’s treasure rooms hidden among them, once again with no way to figure out other than guessing.

The world map, on the other hand, is one of the best arguments against open ended world design there is. Compared to the first game, there are almost no physical obstacles barring where you can go, other than a few rivers that are only crossable by canoe, something you get almost immediately, and a few areas only accessible by boat. Instead, you’re kept out of where you’re not supposed to be through the Dragon Quest 1 method of having the random encounters kill you horribly. The problems with this method are twofold: not only are the borders between where you’re supposed to be and where you’re not very thin, to the point of running into late game enemies just outside of the first town if you go just a biiit too far to the left, compared to Dragon Quest 1 often using bridges as visible borders between areas, but it just doesn’t really fit with how the game is designed. Dragon Quest 1′s pacing is rather relaxed, as while you do have plot objectives, the game doesn’t rush you to fulfill them. You’re meant to just hang around the areas you can survive in, grinding your way up and getting whatever equipment you need until you feel confident to move onto whichever area seems to be designed for next.  In Final Fantasy II, you’re constantly being sent back and forth between areas to get new orders or do whatever the plot wants of you at that moment, but while the game loves telling where to go, it’s pretty bad at telling you how to get there, with its often vague directions being spread out between NPCs in multiple towns, to boot. While there is a map of the overworld you can access, it can still get pretty annoying having to meticulously check where you’re going, and you’re still liable to being decimated just because you wandered into a harmless seeming area. One nasty example comes after completing Kashuon Keep, not too far into the game. You’re expected to head back to Altair, which is on the other side of the world and is quite a bit of a walk, but heading south soon loops back to the Altair area, making for a much shorter walk. Trying to put this idea into practice, however, sends you across the large Palamecian desert, full of enemies more than eager to tell you that this area is still a few dungeons away from being accessed. It’s not completely unsurvivable, and can be safely traversed by finding the nearby hidden Chocobo, but it’s still a nasty situation after a very irritating dungeon.

The biggest, and most frustrating, source of difficulty, however, is that the game stubbornly refuses to tell you anything about what’s going on behind the scenes. There’s so many mechanics left unexplained that cause a lot of difficulty if you don’t understand them. For example, every enemy has a stat called rank, which determines how many skill points for your weapons and magic you’ll actually get by using them on said foes. Essentially, if your weapon or magic levels are higher than the enemy’s rank, you need to use that weapon or spell more times in that battle based on the difference between the numbers to actually get any skill points. Not an unreasonable system, and you can view every enemy’s rank in the bestiary, but the game never directly addresses this, and even the most powerful enemies only go up to rank 10, effectively softcapping your skills and spells at 10, which often leads into having your party attack each other to bypass the entire mechanic, a depressingly efficient solution most of the time. Other stats the game never cares to explain are evasion and magic defense, which both display both numbers and percentages. For evasion, the number represents the number of attacks that character is capable of dodging, as physical attacks strike multiple times per round, and the likeliness of evading each attack. With magic defense, the number represents the number of attempts at avoiding a status effect can be made, and the percentage represents the chance of successfully doing so. Despite the name, the stat does not reduce damage taken from magic attacks.

On the subject of magic, the spells available to you are also plagued with unneeded complexity and vagueness. First off, the descriptions for many spells tend to only give you the barest idea of what they actually do; Aura “Enhances effectiveness against various foes.” It never tells you what enemy types count, or that it only becomes effective against certain types as its level increases, you just have to hope that it’s working whenever you use it. Barrier “Raises a barrier to defend against special attacks.”, again giving you no indication as to what it’s actually protecting against. Shell and Wall both claim to raise magic defense, but give no obvious indication how they’re actually different from each other, and Dispel claims to remove protective magical barriers, which lowers the target’s magic defense, even though you may infer that it removes buffs, like in later games. Other spells tend to be redundant or very situational. Basuna removes temporary status effects, compared to Esuna removing permanent status effects, which is near worthless since not only do temporary effects wear off after a number of turns, but they go away after battle regardless, and are rarely effective enough to waste a turn removing. Fear increases the likelyhood of enemies fleeing battle, which is not only rare to actually work, but is worthless, since you don’t get any credit for defeating any enemies that do flee. Sap reduces the MP of the target, which is not only rarely likely to work, but counterintuitive if you have the infamous Osmose spell, which saps large amounts of MP while restoring the same amount for the user. Status effects also have different elements to them, namely body, mind, and matter, with most enemies having different resistances. Some spells, like Stop and Paralysis, have the same effect, but different elements, and keeping track is both difficult, both remembering which spell is which element, and what enemies are actually affected by each element, and nearly pointless, since the effects are rarely worth bothering with in favor of just attacking. Matter elemental spells, however, are rarely resisted by most enemies, even bosses, and mostly comprise of instant death spells like Mini, Break, Teleport, and most infamously, Toad. Not only does this game make instant death spells effective, it makes them downright overpowered, with almost every encounter being capable of being solved through judicious application of Toad.

But the peak of all this is a special property that some enemies, like ghosts and the final boss, have applied to their physical attacks: a draining effect that not only restores their HP by the amount of damage inflicted, but specifically inflicts 1/16th of the target’s maximum HP per hit, with them eventually attacking 8 times per turn by the final dungeon. To sum this up simply, this makes heavier equipment worse than worthless. Not only will the defensive power do nothing to protect from this damage, but it actively weighs you down and destroys your evasion, guaranteeing you’ll take all those possible hits unless your did some extreme evasion grinding. You’d be protected better by not wearing anything at all, because at least then you’ll make use of all your natural evasion. Unless you want to constantly heal your characters for half their health everytime you run into specific encounters, you have to dedicate a lot of your time, or most of your run through the game, to getting their evasion leveled enough that this isn’t a problem. Knowing this can be the difference between fruitlessly blowing all your resources and breezing through effortlessly, and there is a certain weapon, the Blood Sword, that has this same draining effect, which can singlehandedly annihilate the final boss once you’ve figured this out. While there’s a few other smaller issues, like several encounter formations that cannot be ran from for no apparent reason, other than possibly being formations used in certain monster-in-a-box encounters, those are the main issues, and being aware of them, and having the information to circumvent them, makes the game much, much easier. If anything, it makes the game extremely breakable. From physical attackers that dodge everything thrown at them, to spellcasters that can wipe out encounters with a single cast, it doesn’t take much to erase the difficulty once you know what you’re doing.

As for bonus content, there’s Soul of Rebirth, a bonus mode unlocked after completing the main game, first added in the GBA version, which focuses on several characters who die in the course of the story finding themselves in what they think is the Jade Passage, the path to Hell. While a cool concept that has a really neat final boss of its own, namely the light side of the Emperor, who split off from his dark half after death and instead took over Heaven, it still has issues of its own, namely that most of the party are guest characters in the main game, and carry over the stats, equipment, and spells they had when they left the party, meaning if you didn’t bother training them and stripped them of all equipment before they departed, you’re in an absurd time. The mode is also quite short, and only consists of two dungeons that are just mirrored versions of the final two dungeons of the main game and a town. A neat addition, but not much more than that. Other than that, the only optional content to find in the main game is the Arcane Labyrinth, a bonus dungeon added specifically for the PSP release. The game uses a keyword system where you can learn important terms from NPCs, and ask about those terms to get directions or a bit more plot. It’s sort of neat in concept, but in practice it doesn’t amount to much other than make it slightly more annoying to find out what to do, especially if you manage to miss a keyword. The Arcane Labyrinth, however, revolves around its use. In order to progress past the entrance, you must select a keyword at the portal to the next floor, which then takes you to a specific floor based around the keyword you chose. Almost every floor has a little sidequest to solve, like defeating specific enemies or giving items to NPCs, which give you new keywords exclusive to the labyrinth, or hints for some of the trickier floors. While they can be kinda annoying to do, you only ever have to complete them once for their reward, and can otherwise run straight to the exit on subsequent visits.

Every floor requires you to select keywords for the next, with 45 different floors being available in total, and the Arcane Labyrinth is actually split into 3 sections, with the northwest section requiring four floors to be visited, the northeast seven floors, and the south ten floors, though while you can’t visit the same floor twice in the same section, you can choose repeats in separate sections. There is much more strategy than simply randomly selecting floors, however. Each keyword belongs to a different category, which cause different reactions depending on your next choice. Picking keywords in the same category in a row cause better treasure to spawn and lower the encounter rate, while picking something in a category that opposes it, such as a matter and materials floor after going through a magic and spirits floor, has the opposite effect. Even more importantly, each playable character has a set of keywords that resonate with them, to varying degrees. This becomes important after finishing all three sections, which unlocks the Arcane Sanctuary. Within is Deumion, the master of the Labyrinth, who summons a superboss, Phrekyos, to test you, with its strength varying depending on how many keywords you’ve gotten through the story, making it beatable even in earlier parts of the game. Beating Phrekyos allows you to get a reward from Deumion; if you picked enough keywords that resonate with a certain party member, you will be able to get their ultimate weapon, which not only have tons of power, but confer massive stat boosts when equipped. If your keywords didn’t resonate enough, you only get an elixir, something that you can buy, albeit with absurd amounts of money. The optimal keywords for the main party are only unlocked in the endgame, but it can actually be worth visiting early for the party members that are used in Soul of Rebirth, as the weapons make it much more manageable, though visiting too early can end with you being much too powerful compared to how you should be. A special set of keywords also allow you to see Deumion’s past, leaving you able to either peacefully receive from him the Revive spell, or fight him as the ultimate superboss for the Destroy spell. Both are disgustingly impractical, but it’s a neat idea nonetheless. Overall, the Arcane Labyrinth, though still rife with its own set of frustrations, is actually one of the more enjoyable bonus dungeons I’ve come across, with a very creative concept that actually leaves you curious as to what the next floor could hold.

Overall, while the gameplay of Final Fantasy II has some interesting ideas, it’s held back by an irritating lack of explanation as to how it works, the overly grindy design, and just plain poor design and execution. It’s a miserable experience that makes even other early JRPGs seem appealing, just because their grinding is so much simpler to handle, and I need to note, this is the most polished version of the game. Between bugs, a horribly limited inventory, and even more absurd design decisions, like stats sometimes decreasing instead of increasing, or weapons massively decreasing magic accuracy, and increasing skills taking even longer, any version earlier than the GBA version is even more infuriating and even less playable.

Graphics: Final Fantasy II is actually a quite nice looking game, as with the rest of the Final Fantasy releases on PSP. Locations have a lot of detail to them, like ambient effects like rolling fog, and noticeable lighting effects, with a few areas like Pandemonium having pretty fascinating designs, and there’s some pretty good looking cutscenes for bigger story events. Spell animations are pretty neat, and attack spells have a nice detail where their animations become more elaborate as you level them up more. Characters even finally look accurate to their original art by Yoshitaka Amano, unlike earlier versions, though that’s not necessarily a positive: between Firion’s random mishmash of materials and colors, Maria and Guy’s awkward, half complete outfits, and the terrifyingly gaudy Emperor, this is possibly the tackiest looking cast in the series. The monster designs, on the other hand, are top notch. After Final Fantasy I’s bestiary was lifted almost entirely out of D&D, this game introduced a lot of original and iconic enemies, like the coeurls, the bombs, the malboros, the adamantoises, and the behemoths. It even introduced chocobos, though it’s easy to miss their existence, as their confined to one spot on the world map that’s decently hidden. While there are still a lot of oddities like vampires and giant mantises, it’s still one of the biggest advancements in the series in this regard. The enemy designs also excel in that they look much more threatening than in the first game. These enemies literally come from Hell, and look the part. I’d even go so far as to say that this is the best looking Final Fantasy game on the PSP, and has some of the coolest enemy designs in the series.

Sound: Final Fantasy II’s soundtrack was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, as usual, and remixed by Tsuyoshi Sekito for the remakes. All things considered, it’s my least favorite soundtrack in the main series. That’s not to say it’s bad at all, and there are some great tracks like the Rebel Army Theme, the somber main theme which plains on the overworld, Ancient Castle, the Tower of the Magi, Battle Theme A, typically used for major boss encounters, and Battle Theme 2, the final boss theme. However, as an overall, it’s just not quite as good as the soundtracks for the rest of the main series, to me. It also contains my least favorite version of the Prelude, being just a bit too high pitched for my liking, and my least favorite battle theme, sounding way too intense just for regular encounters, and quickly becoming grating not too far into the game. The soundtrack is good in its own right, and is worth a listen, it just doesn’t quite reach the heights that some of the others do.

Conclusion: Overall, I give Final Fantasy II a firm not recommended. Though very ambitious and important for its day, its story, design, and mechanics have aged like milk compared to the other Final Fantasy games on the NES. While technically still perfectly playable, especially with deeper knowledge as to how the mechanics work, it doesn’t make for much fun at all. You’re better off keeping your distance from this entry. Now, with this absurdly long review finally done, finishing this game, and the subject of my next review, hopefully to be soon, have convinced me I need a break from older RPGs for a while. Till next time. -Scout

[littlepurinsesu]

V Watches MagiReco - Episode 3 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime Episode 3*

And so the Rena and Kaede friendship-ending plotline comes to a very satisfying conclusion! This episode actually had me in tears quite a few times (;Д;)

So many things to talk about and unpack so I’m going to try and keep it as succinct as possible >_< Starting with the most obvious: OH MY GOSH THOSE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCES. I LOVE THEM. SO MUCH. HOLY CHEESE (♥ω♥*)

Yachiyo was the most elegant water goddess ever. True beauty right there. I have nothing else to say. Perfection. Momoko’s was super BADASS I LOVED IT omg all the flames and kicks!!! They really did a good job showcasing the duality of her tomboyish image and her gentler, “girly” side. Rena’s was like a cuter and more whimsical version of Yachiyo’s (since they have the same water theme), and I really love how the anime took the mirrors in her doppel and featured the imagery so heavily in her transformation! That last shot with the thunder was also super cool! And Iroha leaping off the building with all the feathers was so pretty *___* The bird imagery is as heavy as ever with this transformation, especially with the fact that she’s literally “flying” as she “falls” off the building. I also find it quite interesting how the cloak always comes last with a slight delay, especially with how the cloak was depicted as being almost “its own thing” before she caught up and merged with it!

All in all, these transformations were top-notch, and I love them even more than the ones we saw in Rebellion. They definitely lean more towards traditional magical girl transformations (which I personally prefer), while still retaining a decent amount of the trippy look of the Rebellion transformation style and overall PMMM aesthetic - a really good balance that encapsulates the tone of MagiReco quite well, in my opinion ^^

Okay enough rambling about transformations and onto some plot xD

Mitama finally appeared! Her voice is as Mitama as ever, and I really like the touch they had with how all her movements seem very deliberate and calculated, and very flamboyant. She gives off the impression of a very friendly and approachable person, but you can’t quite tell what she’s thinking or hiding, and get the feeling that there’s definitely more to her than meets the eye. Which is basically Mitama in a nutshell, so A+ for her portrayal. I do wish we saw her do a bit more, though, but it was only her introduction this week, so hopefully we’ll see more of her in the coming episodes :) The Mayu cameo was shorter than the Ren one, but I do like this method of “debuting” characters without shoehorning too many girls into the main plot, so I hope they keep this pattern up.

One small issue I had with the episode was the fact that they seemed to either change or gloss over the tension between Yachiyo and Momoko? This is biased because I’m a viewer who’s familiar with the game story, so seeing them getting along fine threw me off for a moment. But I guess it wouldn’t be an issue with anime-only fans, especially if they really did decide to just do away with the tension and have the two of them as perfectly amicable friends. Which is fine, too. I was just confused for a moment because of my expectations (one of the interesting things when you watch an anime with a preconception of the plot and characters) ^^;; I did like their tension and the way they made up in the game, though, so I’d be a teeny bit sad if they really did cut it, but that’s more of a personal preference, so not really an actual problem :)

Momoko’s super awkward and stiff “apology” was hilarious to watch, though xD Also, Momoko with her hair out!!! Definitely wasn’t expecting that! I thought it was supposed to show how stressed or tired she was worrying about Kaede, but no, seems like she sometimes just walks around with her hair like that. While I prefer her with the ponytail, I always appreciate it when anime (especially magical girl anime) show the characters with different hairstyles; makes things so much more realistic :3 And Mitama doing her hair was super cute, too ^^

The way they went about showing Rena’s internal struggles was really well-done. One thing I’ve always liked about PMMM is how you often get a sense of things being either “not quite right,” or you just have no idea what’s going on. I felt that in the scene with Rena watching TV in her room (Sayuki cameo!), transforming in and out of different characters. It’s strange and eerie, and it disorients you because you’re wondering what’s going on and what’s even real. But it’s a really nice kind of confusion that keeps you on edge, which PMMM is really good at, and I think it was captured very well in this episode.

I personally don’t relate to Rena’s personality or struggles at all, but for some reason she always manages to make me cry. I bawled when I read her Magical Girl Story in the game for the first time, and the little bits of it they incorporated here (much appreciated) got me sobbing as well... I really hope they don’t stop developing her character after the main five enter the scene and Team Momoko takes a backseat. There’s so much to explore with Rena, and I think they’ve done a really good job so far.

Kaede is as precious as ever, and her interactions with Rena were super sweet. I think it’s nice that Rena has a friend who’s so open and patient when she’s trying her hardest to open up and express herself well. The past two episodes really showcased the relationship dynamic between these two, including all of its strengths and weaknesses. I did, however, furrow my eyebrows slightly when they found Kaede. It’s understandable if they wanted to change the brainwashing from the game version of events, but the fact that Kaede seemed so chill and undisturbed when they found her seemed kind of weird to me, and frankly, didn’t make much sense xD I’d expect her to be a bit more scared or even traumatiised after being stuck in a place like that all alone, especially considering her timid nature xD

But the fight against the Rumour was definitely a feast for the eyes. The Rumour looked quite different from the game version, but in this case I think the creative liberty they took actually made the Rumour seem more distinct from a Witch. The barriers aren’t exactly identical in nature, the the huge winding staircases extending into the sky really go to show how large the scale of a Rumour can be. Iroha didn’t do much, but Yachiyo and Momoko had amazing teamwork; the water and fire looked amazing together! And again, I loved the use of mirrors in Rena’s attacks! It’s a unique and aesthetically interesting choice, and also helps differentiate her water-based attacks from Yachiyo’s. Kaede’s trees and leaves also looked lovely!

Backtracking a bit to the very beginning, but I wasn’t expecting Touka and Nemu to make an appearance so soon! That short scene did a pretty good job at showing the basic facets of their personalities, especially Touka’s, as well as their relationship dynamic. It was a really nice way to parallel and lead into the friendship-ending dilemma that Rena and Kaede are experiencing.

And on the topic of things I was not expecting... that Mami appearance at the very end!!! She showed up earlier here than in the game, but I think that scene provided some pretty important information that the game glossed over. Here we aren’t just told that Kyubey can’t enter Kamihama for mysterious, unknown reasons; we’re actually shown what happens when he tries. And seeing Kyubey openly asking Mami to go to Kamihama and investigate gives her a very logical reason to be there when she eventually gets introduced to the game’s main cast. But yeah, seeing Mami definitely had me feeling all nostalgic again ;___; I don’t even remember the last time I saw her, or any of the Holy Quintet  members, moving in anime form (;Д;)

Oh, and Lil Kyubey is possibly one of the world’s most adorable creatures ever and I WANT ONE AS A PET OMG (ᗒᗨᗕ)

This week’s review turned out a lot longer than the ones in the past weeks (and I just keep jumping all over the place between topics and not even going in chronological order) ^^;; Probably because I just had too much to scream about because of the transformation sequences ^3^ So I’ll quickly end this now by saying how excited I am to finally see the mightiest magical girl Tsuruno Yui debut next week!!! (*≧▽≦)

[vanitygrxxx]

Vanity. Seems like a dated word and an old concept that has never been more prominent before today. What does vanity mean in a world of social media, cellphones and perpetual exposure? What does vanity mean in a world of lax morals and little dignity? What is dignity? What are morals? What are lax morals? Are they a bad thing? Who sets the bar? Everything is up for debate. Is it immoral to be so into yourself? Why is it frowned upon by some but glamourised by others? And if today’s world is characterised more and more by shameless vanity should we just all embrace it? Or should we be more critical of it? Is it an inherent thing that we learn to suppress due to societal standards or are we conditioned into it through societal pressure?

These are a few of my concerns and questions on the matter of vanity and to be honest I haven't been able to answer any. And to be even more honest every answer seems right. Depending on one’s point of view of course. In my case, my background and upbringing are a somewhat unorthodox mix of traditionality and forwardness that have made my confusion on the subject even more intense. My parents were raised in the rural town of Sparta, Greece. Greece, where I’m from, has always been a deeply traditional country that even though considered part of the western world, it has deeply rooted middle eastern influences that can be considered as more conservative. It has also been characterised throughout the years by a core dispute between communist and right wing parties and their respective followers which is still very prominent. Therefore the country itself is a nation defined by a series of conflicts and contradicting mentalities. However, the ‘westernisation’ that we espouse as a nation calls for an open-mindedness and progressiveness that Greeks were not eased into. And that has definitely created a sort of conflict for my peers and me. Because we are a generation that has grown up with the ideals and ethics of our parents and grandparents, family being a very strong institution in Greece, but with the need to keep up with current trends and norms and be more open to change. Moreover, carrying the weight of an ancient civilization that has shaped the entire humanity, we are expected to honour that heritage by adhering to expanding our intellectual capacities and disregarding superficiality. Therefore, it strikes me as odd and troubling when I see any greek girl my age posting pictures on instagram of her face accompanying it with a misspelled inspirational quote in english just to project a certain image of herself and simultaneously downplay the vanity angle by easing it with a ‘meaningful’ message. This is a common occurrence that is truly baffling to me which highlights the vast disparity between truth and image. This is also a recurring theme in many ancient greek written works such as the Odyssey; the concept of «είναι και φαίνεσθαι», the difference between reality and appearances.

On the other hand however, I wonder, am I just being an overly critical, contemptuous, angry person? I could cut people some slack. At the end of the day is vanity so bad? It has existed since the dawn of time and has been the driving factor behind many achievements I am sure. After all how can we distinguish vanity from self-love, ambition and confidence? They say be comfortable with your looks, love the skin you're in, but when does loving yourself become a little too much? These are questions that constantly trouble me and to which i have tried to give answers multiple times but to no avail.

Greek artist’s alter ego Anna Goula shown above is a trash pop singer who mocks contemporary Greek performers.

The most obvious and early tale of vanity is that of Narcissus. Enamoured by his own reflection but not being able to realise his feelings towards himself, he was burned by the flame of his own passion. This myth gave its name to what we now know as narcissism, the overt admiration of ones self and looks and their self-idealisation. Vanity, on the other hand, started off as a term referring to the futility and ephemeral nature of life and material things, however it has mostly become synonymous to narcissism and egomania in current times.

One very prominent example of how the social and cultural dynamics surrounding vanity have drastically changed over the past  few years is the rise of the Kardashian aesthetic and the reign of instagram culture. Kim Kardashian has almost single-handedly rendered shameless vanity an acceptable if not desirable trait, and has even managed to capitalise on it by not only using it to expand her followers which in turn translate into more money but by also publishing a book full of her selfies, titled ‘selfish’ and rightfully so. I think that current instagram culture has a lot to give when it comes to insight on the matter and probably more so when it comes to ordinary people rather than celebrities.

Kim Kardashian’s aforementioned book.

I am also interested in how female artists like Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin explore the female image and sexuality in their photography, which could provide insight coming from either a pro or anti vanity point of view. I also once attended a talk by Juno Calypso, a young photographer who explores the issue of vanity, self-worship, the futility of beauty and its attainability at any cost, through her site specific performances and photographs. Her pinky pastel aesthetic also alludes to stereotypical explicit femininity and seamlessly blends the past with the present. I would certainly like to look at artists like that whose strong aesthetics are a source of debate and inspiration.

Juno Calypso’s Honeymoon Series.

I would also like to look at Yorgos Lanthimos, the only famous Greek director who is currently the pride and joy of Greece due to his accolades. Even though I have only watched some of his movies in fragments, I was surprised by his distinct aesthetics and concepts when I saw a magazine editorial he shot with Taylor Hill. The young model is posing in her underwear in her grandmothers utterly traditional home, resulting in an unusual but very real and gritty visual, that speaks volumes to Lanthimos’ greekness. I would definitely want to explore his earlier movies more in depth, more so because of his exploration of greek social and familial dynamics rather than his exploration of vanity, but at the end of the day aren’t they both related?

Lanthimos’ shoot for V magazine.

Last but not least, I would like to look at how vanity is related to fetish and explore their relationship to fashion and cinema. Looking at collections and runways from the 90s by Thierry Mugler, the sheer theatricality of the models, the way they have been directed to essentially perform instead of simply carry out a catwalk and of course the clothes, inevitably bring to mind dominatrix-y aesthetics. Of course latex also plays an important role in forming that aesthetic and is a big part of the fetish notion which is worth looking into.

Thierry Mugler’s fashion shows.

I believe that all the works I have done so far have more or less included the element of vanity and body ideals in one way or another. Combining latex with traditional victorian hoop skirts was a way for me to explore the relationship between the traditional and the contemporary and examining the dynamics between the conservative and the sexual. I also tried to explore that relationship in my manifesto project, where I looked at my upbringing and more specifically my rural roots and the agricultural background of my family and tried to explore the gap between the aforementioned traits to the more ‘liberal’ and modern upbringing I had in the city. I also tried to explore that relationship in two linked performance/photography pieces I did last year, combining again my traditional background to my sexuality and self-admiration; one was set in my grandmother’s house while the other one was set in a temporary stay sex hotel in Athens. I feel like my experience so far with latex and pvc will prove useful, at least as material exploration and experimentation are concerned and will pave the way for me to explore further the notion of vanity and fetish through their material realisations.

My ‘Portrait of a millenial’ project, set in Priamos sex hotel in Athens. I placed objects like family photos, christian icons and doilies from my grandmother’s house and did traditionally ‘grandmother’ things like crossword puzzles as if I were in my own home.

Second part of my ‘Portrait of a millenial’ project. I made a revealing burlesque costume and wore it around my grandmother’s house to highlight the difference between the sexual and the flamboyant and the religious and traditional.

[imdoingthismspaintadventure]

Worm 1.6 - In which we meet futuristic techno Dredd

II heard the cape arrive on his souped up motorcycle.  I didn’t want to be seen fleeing the scene of a fight, and risk being labeled one of the bad guys by yet another person, but I wasn’t about to get closer to the street either, in case Lung was feeling better.  Since there was nowhere to go, I just stayed put.  Just resting felt good.

Yeah it’s better you stay and try to explain what went down. Fleeing after all this..wouldn’t be a good look. And let’s try to stay far away from  the knocked-out fire demon while we’re at it.

If you’d asked me just a few hours ago about how I thought I would feel meeting a big name superhero, I would have used words like excited and giddy.  The reality was that I was almost too exhausted to care.

You have experienced a loooot of things just today girl. It’s not everyday you get into a life or death fight and then meet some people of dubious character, all in the span of like 20 minutes. Shame your first encounter with a bona-fide superhero is in a situation like this.

It looked as though he flew up onto the roof, but the six-foot long weapon the man held kind of jerked as he landed.  I was pretty sure I saw the tines of a grappling hook retreating back into the end of the weapon.  So this was what Armsmaster looked like in person, I thought.

Armsmaster! So...master of weapons? He seems to have a pretty badass one in one arm, which seems to have multiple uses. Good old Grappling Hooks! The way for grounded super heroes to keep up with flight-types!

The largest superhero organization in the world was the Protectorate, spanning Canada and the States, with ongoing talks about including Mexico in the deal.  It was a government sponsored league of superheroes with a base in each ‘cape city’.  That is, they had a team set up in each city with a sizable population of heroes and villains.  Brockton Bay’s team was officially ‘The Protectorate East-North-East’, and were headquartered in the floating, forcefield-shrouded island that you could see from the Boardwalk.  This guy, Armsmaster, was the guy in charge of the local team.  When the core group of the top Protectorate members from around Canada and the States assembled in that classic ‘v’ formation for the photo shoots, Armsmaster was one of the guys in the wings.  This was a guy who had his own action figures.  Poseable Armsmaster with interchangeable Halberd parts.

Wooaaah. So he’s a really big shot! Leader of the local Protectorate which seems to be this universe’s version of the Avengers/Justice League/big main hero organization. He lives in that badass flying fortess! And seems to be pretty marketable as well. Meeting him in the flesh like this in your first day, woah .

He really did look like a superhero, not like some guy in a costume.  It was an important distinction.  He wore body armor, dark blue with silver highlights, had a sharply angled v-shaped visor covering his eyes and nose.  With only the lower half of his face exposed, I could see a beard trimmed to trace the edges of his jaw.  If I had to judge, with only the lower half of his face to go by, I’d guess he was in his late twenties or early thirties.

High-tech superhero armor and professional gear! Sweet!

He’s giving me a mix of iron man and judge dredd vibes with that costume. Either way he seems to exude “veteran and skilled super” a lot.

His trademark and weapon was his Halberd, which was basically a spear with an axe head on the end, souped up with gadgets and the kind of technology you generally only saw in science fiction.  He was the kind of guy who appeared on magazine covers and did interviews on TV, so you could find almost anything about Armsmaster through various media, short of his secret identity.  I knew his weapon could cut through steel as though it was butter, that it had plasma injectors for stuff that the blade alone couldn’t cut and that he could fire off directed electromagnetic pulses to shut down forcefields and mechanical devices.

HE HAS A MASTER WEAPON WHICH CAN ACT AS ALL OF THE WEAPONS AT THE SAME TIME. THAT’S SO AWESOME

I knew he was gonna be technologically-focused, with that badass floating island and all!

A spear-axe hybrid strong enough to cut through steel, with plasma injectors and EMP blasts?? Fucking sweet.

“You gonna fight me?” He called out.

“I’m a good guy,” I said.

Stepping closer to me, he tilted his head, “You don’t look like one.”

Oof. That’s true. Miss looking-like-a-living-bug with dark colors and yellow lenses doesn’t seem very heroic at... all

Also I really like how that line was delivered for some reason. You don’t look like one

That stung, especially coming from him.  It was like Michael Jordan saying you sucked at basketball.  “That’s… not intentional,” I responded, not a little defensively, “I was more than halfway done putting the costume together when I realized it was already looking more edgy than I’d intended, and I couldn’t do anything about it by then.”

Your power is very hard to use in a kid-friendly way! You command a swarm of biting, stinging, maybe-venomous, maybe-flesh eating bugs! That grimdark look is actually apropiate

I wonder if this work will explore heroes who want to do good things but have characteristically “evil powers”. Taylor could easily be one!

There was a long pause.  Nervously, I turned my eyes from that opaque visor.  I glanced at his chest emblem, a silhouette of his visor in blue against a silver background, and was struck with the ridiculous thought that I had once owned a pair of underpants with his emblem on the front.

Pfft! Taylor your young fangirl self is adorable

Also gave me Deku flashbacks, as with the hero journals

“You’re telling the truth,” he said.  It was a definitive statement, which startled me.  I wanted to ask how he knew, but I wasn’t about to do or say anything that might change his mind. 

Lie-detector?? God his suit just has everything

I love technology based powers by the way. When a hero stacks himself up to the teeth in sweet tech it’s a sight to behold

He approached closer, looking me over as I sat there with my arms around my knees, he asked, “You need a hospital?”

“No,” I said. “Don’t think so.  I’m as surprised as you are.”

“You’re a new face,” he said.

“I haven’t even come up with a name yet.  You know how hard it is to come up with a bug-themed name that doesn’t make me sound like a supervillain or a complete dork?”

Hmm that’s true! Swarm sounds villanous, same with Plague, Sting, Hivemind, Pestilence...

Bug is probably too simple. (Insect) Queen maybe? Eh Queen is so general that it’s probably taken already. Control? Probably taken  and sounds villanous.

He chuckled, and it sounded warm, very normal, “I wouldn’t know.  I got into the game early enough that I didn’t have to worry about missing out on all of the good names.”

There was a pause in the conversation.  I suddenly felt awkward.  I don’t know why, but I admitted to him, “I almost died.”

“That’s why we have the Ward program,” he said.  There was no judgement in his tone, no pressure.  Just a statement.

Hmm, what is that? Some sort of superhero training?

I nodded, more to give a response than out of any agreement with the answer.  The Wards were the under-eighteen subdivision of the Protectorate, and Brockton Bay did have its own team of Wards, with the same naming convention as the Protectorate; The Wards East-North-East.  I had considered applying to join, but the notion of escaping the stresses of high school by flinging myself into a mess of teenage drama, adult oversight and schedules seemed self-defeating.

Oooh so it’s like the Teen Titans, and other young superhero groups! Young teenage superheroes! Nice!

Also yeah, that would probably be similar to school, and you wanted escapism with this. I don’t think you would get bullied though, but I understand your reticence.

“You get Lung?” I asked, to change the subject from the Wards.  I was pretty sure that he was obligated to try and induct new heroes into either the Protectorate or the Wards, depending on their age, to promote the whole agenda of organized heroes who are accountable for their actions, and I really didn’t want him to get on my case about joining.

He probably is obligated to ask, yeah. I suppose they don’t condone vigilantism. So changing the subject to the dragon man is probably a good idea!

“Lung was unconscious, beaten and battered when I arrived.  I pumped him full of tranquilizers to be safe and temporarily restrained him under a steel cage I welded to the sidewalk.  I’ll pick him up on my way back.”

“Good,” I said, “With him in jail, I’ll feel like I accomplished something today.  Only reason I started the fight was because I overheard him telling his men to shoot some kids.  Only realized later that he was talking about some other villains.”

Armsmaster turned to look at me.  So I told him, walking him through the fight in general, the arrival of the teenage bad guys, and their general descriptions.  Before I finished, he was pacing back and forth on the roof.

“These guys.  They knew I was coming?”

Yeeah that was a pretty epic misunderstanding there.

Also they probably knew you were coming thanks to the kinda-omniscient know-it-all in their team soooo yeah.

I nodded, once.  As much respect as I had for Armsmaster, I wasn’t in much of a mood to repeat myself.

“That explains a lot,” he said, staring off into the distance.  After a few moments, he went on to explain, “They’re slippery.  On those few occasions we do manage to get in a toe to toe fight with them, they either win, or they get away more or less unscathed, or both.  We know so little about them.  Grue and Hellhound were working on their own before they joined the group, so there’s some information there, but the other two?  They’re nonentities.  If the girl Tattletale has some way of detecting or tracking us, it would go a long way towards explaining why they’re doing as well as they are.”

Insteresting! So Regent and Tattletale are very well hidden! I imagine it must be easy for Tattletale to do so, but I still don’t know what Regent does... He’s definitely the most misterious of them all at the moment.

Heh, and he uses Hellhound for Bitch, he’s a hero so of course

It kind of surprised me to hear one of the top level heroes admitting to being anything less than perfectly on top of things.

“It’s funny,” I said, after a few moment’s thought, “They didn’t seem that hardcore.  Grue said they were kind of panicking when they heard Lung was coming after them, and they were casually joking around while the fight was going on.  Grue was making fun of Regent.”

“They said all this in front of you?” he asked.

I shrugged, “I think they thought I was helping them out.  The way Tattletale talked, I think she thought I was a bad guy too or something.”  With a touch of bitterness, I said, “Dunno, I guess it was the costume that led them to that assumption.”

“Could you have taken them in a fight?” Armsmaster asked me.

I started to shrug, and winced a little.  I was feeling a little sore in the shoulder, where I’d tumbled on the roof after being blasted by Lung’s flames.  I said, “Like you said, we don’t know a lot about them, but I think that girl with the dogs-”

“Hellhound,” Armsmaster said.

“I think she could have kicked my ass on her own, so no.  I probably couldn’t have fought them.”

Yeah they didn’t really seem evil per se, they were pretty nice to us! Maybe because they confused us for a villain...

And yeah I don’t think you could have beaten them. Of the two powers I sorta know of them, hellbeasts and kinda-omniscience beat bugs, I’m pretty sure. So yeah.

“Then count it as a good thing that they got the wrong impression,” Armsmaster said.

“I’ll try to look at it that way,” I said, struck by how he easily he was able to employ the whole ‘take a negative and turn it into a positive’ mindset I’d been trying to maintain.  I envied that.

Heroes tends to be more optimistic than most.

“That a girl,” he said, “And while we’re looking forward, we need to decide where we go from here.”

My heart sank.  I knew he was going to bring up the Wards again.

Yeaah and he’ll put you in an awkward spot again...

What do you want to do Taylor? Start as a standalone hero and then work your way up through your acts and deeds? Could you even do that and still be well-regarded by the Protectorate?

“Who gets the credit for Lung?”

Caught off guard, I looked up at him.  I started to speak, but he held up his hand.

“Hear me out.  What you’ve done tonight is spectacular.  You played a part in getting a major villain into custody.  You just need to consider the consequences.”

“Consequences,” I muttered, even as the word spectacular rang in my ears.

Oh, so he wants to talk about who gets the credit? Huh, didn’t expect that. It could be a good first step for her hero career, but it could also be dangerous to let villains know about her existence, especially if she’s going solo

“Lung has an extensive gang throughout Brockton Bay and neighboring cities.  More than that, he has two superpowered flunkies.  Oni Lee and Bakuda.”

I shook my head, “I know about Oni Lee, and Grue mentioned fighting him.  I’ve never heard of Bakuda.”

So he has two liutenants with powers! Oni Lee was mentioned before and now... Bakuda. Baku- makes me think explosions from Bakuha, so it could be explosions-based?

Seems to be a new member, anyways.

Armsmaster nodded, “Not surprising.  She’s new.  What we know about her is limited.  She made her first appearance and demonstration of her powers by way of a drawn out terrorism campaign against Cornell University.  Lung apparently recruited her and brought her to Brockton Bay after her plans were foiled by the New York Protectorate.  This is… something of a concern.”

Damn, terrorism against a University and a conforntation with the New York Protectorate? She seems to have some infamy even before joining

“What are her powers?”

“Are you aware of the Tinker classification?”

I started to shrug, but remembered my sore shoulder and nodded instead.  It was probably more polite, too.  I said, “Covers anyone with powers that give them an advanced grasp of science.  Lets them make technology years ahead of its time.  Ray guns, ice blasters, mechanized suits of armor, advanced computers.”

Oh sweet

So tinkers are the inventors, the tech-based superheroes who use futuristic technology and all kinds of high-specs gear, and that is their superpower?

Oh I love technology-based powers so much.

“Close enough,” Armsmaster said.  It struck me he would be a Tinker, if his Halberd and armor were any indication.  That, or he got his stuff from someone else.  He elaborated,  “Well, most Tinkers have a specialty or a special trick.  Something they’re particualrly good at or something that they can do, which other Tinkers can’t.  Bakuda’s specialty is bombs.”

I stared at him.  A woman with a power that let her make bombs that were technologically decades ahead of their time.  No wonder he saw it as a concern.

So Armsmaster is a tinker! Makes sense with his impossibly-amazing plasma spear-axe, lie detector and super armor. I suppose a tinker’s threat can vary a lot depending on prep time and current gear. I like them!

Super-advanced explosives? Oh boy, that sounds like potencially a fucking nightmare

“Now I want you to consider the danger involved in taking the credit for Lung’s capture.  Without a doubt, Oni Lee and Bakuda will be looking to accomplish two goals.  Freeing their boss and getting vengeance on the one responsible.  I suspect you’re now aware… these are scary people.  Scarier in some ways than their boss.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t take the credit,” I said.

“I’m saying you have two options.  Option one is to join the Wards, where you’ll have support and protection in the event of an altercation.  Option two is to keep your head down.  Don’t take the credit.  Fly under the radar.”

Yeah I could see how Taylor could become the target of these two underlings, which would probably be more than she can handle.

So Armsmaster is offering her the possibilities of

a) Joining the teenage super-squad and take the credit for Lung or

b)Keep going solo but maintain your involvment in this a secret

I wasn’t prepared to make a decision like that.  Usually, I went to sleep at eleven or so, waking up at six thirty to get ready for my morning run.  At my best guess, it was somewhere between one and two in the morning.  I was emotionally exhausted from the highs and lows of the evening, and I could barely wrap my head around the complications and headaches that would come from joining the Wards, let alone having two insanely dangerous sociopaths coming after me. 

Aand one of those options is already giving Taylor a headache

On top of that, I wasn’t so ignorant as to miss Armsmaster’s motives. If I opted to not take the credit for Lung’s capture, Armsmaster would, I was sure.  I didn’t want to get on the bad side of a major player.

....True, politics could be at play here

Athough I don’t know if Taylor has just a bad view of power structures in general, considering she thought that autobiographical book she read was probably all propaganda

...Which could be true, and the whole system could be corrupt at least a little, and Armsmaster is offering her two options where he hopes he gets the credit and the glory

“Please keep my involvement in Lung’s capture secret,” I told him, painfully disappointed to have to say it, even as I knew it made the most sense.

He smiled, which I hadn’t expected.  He had a nice smile.  It made me think that he could win the hearts of a lot of women, whatever the top two-thirds of his face looked like.  “I think you’ll look back and see this was a smart decision,” Armsmaster said, turning to walk to the other end of the roof, “Call me at the PHQ if you’re ever in a pinch.” He stepped off the edge of the roof and dropped out of sight.

He seems very pleased at her decision, which reinforces my belief that he did want to get the credit after all. Or he’s happy she doesn’t get in trouble. Or both.

Armsmaster seems like an ok guy, probably a little vain, or glory-seeking, but in a way, all superheroes are a bit like that. I have defintely seen much worse examples.

You get a thumbs-up, cool plasma-spear man

Call me if you’re ever in a pinch.  He’d been saying, without openly admitting, that he owed me one.  He would take the lion’s share of the credit for Lung’s capture, but he owed me one.

Before I was all the way down the fire escape, I heard the thrum of his motorcycle, presumably carrying Lung towards a life of confinement. I could hope.

Oh true! Nice, you can call in a favour of a team leader of the superhero mega-alliance! Good start to your superhero career, Taylor!

And he just took away Lung so it seems she was indeed the push the situation needed to get him into custody! Yes!

It would take me a half hour to get home.  On the way, I would stop and pull on the sweatshirt and jeans I had hidden.  I knew my dad went to sleep even earlier than I did, and he slept like a log, so I had nothing to worry about as far as wrapping up the night.

It could have gone worse.  Strange as it sounds, those words were a security blanket I wrapped around myself to keep myself from dwelling on the fact that tomorrow was a school day.

It could have gone worse is a good mentality to have!

Let’s hope the three bitches aren’t too insufferable tomorrow.

[solara-bean]

My OC for B3

Name: Helena Celeste Lightsongale

Age: 26

Height: 5'3

Race: Mixed( Black and European)

Parents: Dawna and Amberose Lightsongale

Eye color: brown hazel

Skin tone: in between light and dark( but closer to a dark brown)

Hair: thick, poofy,curly, dark brown(almost black), comes to her shoulders(would appear longer without shrinkage), is normally in a low ponytail with a few strands loose by her forehead and ears

Attire: yellow v neck, lavender cardigan, matching lavender sneakers and light blue jeans

Love interest: Klaus ('cause why not Klaus;)

Origin summary(sort this will probably be long):

Helena lived a relatively peaceful life with her mother, father and dog Shadow( now deceased). She was a mild mannered girl and preferred to be on her own or at least with a small circle of friends. Her reason for keeping to herself was mostly due to her constant feeling of being different, feeling like something was wrong with her. The main sign being that she could feel things before they happened depending on the severity of them. This was usually for small things like knowing when to dodge an oncoming football or getting bad vibes from a stranger on the bus.

However, it got stronger overtime, the worst incident being when she vomited from a sudden nausea the night before the Great Collapse happened. Thankfully, her family lived in Chicago and she was currently at school in San Francisco to become a veterinarian like her father. But things only got worse from there.

She kept having random headaches that were followed by blurred memories she didn't recall. Her senses heightened, causing her to be on edge 24/7. She could hear every voice, see every detail and smell everyone's distinct scent. It was driving her crazy, so her roommate suggested that she stay home. She remained in her room, under the covers for days blocking out everything.

Then it stopped.

All of a sudden she felt normal again, better even. Deciding that she was long overdo for a shower, she went into the bathroom. Then she was stopped by her faded reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were gold with orange, cat-like pupils. Even worse....she had fangs.

After that, her mind flooded with repressed memories. The time she broke a kid's arm in kindergarten with a single push for bullying her. The time she fell out of a tree at nine, which should have given her multiple broken bones, and walked away with a few scrapes that healed in minutes. The time her mom screamed after finding her crawling on the ceiling. The time she woke up late at night and found her dad in the living room, lights off, crying, his eyes glowing a deep dark blue, and a pair of white fangs being shown everytime he sobbed.

And they all ended the same way. Her dad taking her aside and singing his lullaby to her, eyes glowing.

Thankfully, she managed to figure out how to keep her fangs retracted and her eyes normal. At this time she had already graduated and found a possible job back in Chicago. Her former plan was to stay with her parents for a week at least, tell them the good news, and get an apartment with the money she'd saved. Now she had to throw confronting them for years of lies and kept secrets into the mix.

This went about as good as you could imagine. Her father already knew that she knew the he'd opened the door. He could feel her new power and anger coming off in waves. Her mother noticed once Helena refused to hug her. After moments of silence, Helena bursted with questions and accusations.

While her mom tried to calm her down, her dad remained stoic with little signs of guilt. When he finally spoke, he explained to her that his voice could be used to hypnotize and erase memories of humans, which he apparently wasn't. She asked what he was, what they both were, but he continued saying that his plan was for her to live a normal and happy life as a human. However, overtime he began to feel her power grew, and he knew that one she'd break his spell.

Her mom said that they wanted to tell her but the time never seemed right. She said that they were just trying to protect her, but she didn't listen. She continued to ask questions only for them not to be answered. She said things that made her mom cry, but her dad remained motionless and unwavering. This only put her off more because he was normally a very expressive and open person. But now when she needed him most he was the exact opposite.

She left and flew back to San Francisco in the morning. She spent the next few months trying to get answers from books and the web. The closest creature she got to was a vampire, but that was absurd. Even working to be a vet, she was weary around blood let alone drink it. Not to mention that the sun gave her energy rather than try to burn her alive. This was all true for her dad as well from what she could gather.

At month six she decided to visit her parents again. The guilt had been eating at her ever since the night she'd spent in the airport. Of course she was still a little mad but she loved them. She knew that deep down they were trying to do their best. So she flew back.

But something felt more and more off the closer she got home. She later found out why when she went to the house, door unlocked and no one was home. She tried calling them but it went straight to voicemail. She asked the neighbors but they all couldn't recall the last time they saw them. The same was said by her parents' coworkers, friends and her mom's family. The police weren't any help either. With absolutely no evidence in the house or any witnesses, their hands were tied.

She stayed at the house and moped. She looked for anything that could help but came out flat. Then she found a blank business card with only a phone number on it in her old desk. On the back was ' call if anything happens to us ' in her father's handwriting.

She called and was answered by a man named Lucky. Apparently, he knew her father since before she was born and was just as baffled by her parents' sudden disappearance. He told her that he'd call a friend of his and text her their number. Although, she couldn't use his number again after that so his friend would be her only hope.

Exactly 24 hours went by when she got the number followed by ' good luck kiddo. everything will make sense soon. don't give up.' She then immediately called the number. They picked up after the third ring. She was met with a wonderfully deep voice, which only added to her nervousness.

" Who am I speaking with?" they, who she was certain was a man, asked in a calm yet authoritve tone.

" T-this is Helena Lightsongale. I was informed by your friend, Lucky, to call you." she responded as steadily as she could manage.

" Ah, yes he told me about your situation, Ms. Lightsongale. My team and I would be happy to help you, but there is one thing I'll have to ask of you."

" And that would be?"

" You'll have to move to where our headquarters is: Hellsalems Lot."

Oh shit. Anywhere but there.

He assured her that they'd help her find a place to stay and even a job. All she had to do was go to the assigned rendezvous where she'd be picked up. Which would have been easy enough if a kid hadn't been blown in front of her by an explosion.

Fast forward later, she was finally able to meet the man behind the voice. Klaus was not who she was expecting at all. Not that she was complaining. She just couldn't get her eyes off of those fangs or stop sensing his powerful aura.

Fast forward again to after the chaos had settled. She was holding her cardigan to Klaus' side after Leo and Zapp went after the threat. He thanked her. They eventually got to the subject of how she was able to dodge the attack so quickly to save her and Leo. She told him about her weird sixth sense, leaving out the part about how she was probably not human.

It may have seemed unnecessary, but she still wasn't sure about the details herself. That and her habit of keeping to herself hadn't left. But if the situation did call for her to open up, she would. Maybe they could help her find answers. He did have fangs too after all.

Klaus then mentioned how such an ability could aid them. He did, however, remind her that they would be able to find her a much safer job. She wouldn't have minded that, but today had been interesting and she wouldn't mind seeing what happened next. Before she knew it, she was apart of Libra.

The madness was only beginning, and so was her new found strength.

[fantroll-purgatory]

Skurvi Meeday

Alternian gal for yis

@ancientvacation

Goooood as usual your trolls end up leaving me paralyzed just bc there’s so goddamn little that I actually want to change! What a good fucking troll!

Name: ’Skurvi’ is from the disease scurvy which ailed sailors due to a lack of vitamin C from citrus. ‘Meeday’ is from Artemiidae which is the taxonomical group for Brine Shrimp. It also evokes Artemis slightly, who was a God that travellers could pray to for good weather. It also sounds a little like ‘mayday’ which is a way to alert to a problem, often on ships and aircraft. All in all, her name is a reference to explorers and sailors as well as dangers they present and face.

Strife Specibus: Spadekind. The reason she uses it is because she thought it was a neat lowblood thing to have, and decided to use it to show off her ‘exotic’ weapon to others. It’s also telling that a seadweller would use a ground-based tool. Furthermore, actual monks often used a kind of spade as a weapon, as it could bludgeon, cut, and dig for remains. It’s a subtle way to tie to her light theme of S.E.Asian spirituality.

So to clarify, this is basically a character based on like, rich white women who have just been getting soooo into ayurveda recently without regard for the racial and cultural history behind those practices.

I love her as a character and if I met her in real life she can catch these Tamilian hands.

Fetch Modus: Namemodus. Skurvi thinks this is some amazing prayercirclemodus that requires you to sit down, meditate and really spiritually focus on the item before it’s summoned, taking great skill to do so. In reality, it’s a lowblood con that just releases the item upon it being named. Jokes on her.

Blood color: #7F007F -Violetblood, fits with the nauticality and exploration kind. Plus the type of people she’s lambasting are generally upper-class so it felt appropriate.

Ehhh I still don’t know if we have variants from the canon 12 colors unless they’re mutantbloods so if you wanna keep that compliant it’s better to bump it to #6a016a to be sure. But yeah she’s def a seadweller.

Symbol and meaning:It’s mainly meant to be a Brine Shrimp-like shape with the Violet language. It also resembles the symbol she uses in her quirk. I’d rather not use an extended zodiac sign.

It looks like, a little closer to indigoblood sign language than it does to violetblood? I’ll see what I can do to keep it with a few tweaks!

Trolltag: freshBodhisattva - ‘fresh’ is just a reference to freshwater, a subtle way of showing how much time she spends inland away from seawater. It’s also a way of saying ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ which is something Skurvi would do. 'Bodhisattva’ is a but more fun of a term. It’s a term for someone who has achieved Nirvana but remains on Earth out of compassion for those suffering. This fits Skurvi extremely well, or at least how she sees herself; someone who’s completely spiritually 'chill’ and 'humbled’ but also goes around visiting those lesser off to 'be with them’ when it’s really just fuelling her own delusion. This isn’t even the first time 'Bodhisattva’ has been used this way; my favourite Steely Dan song of the same name is about a Western business man looking to the East for quick and easy spiritual enlightenment, conflating all of Asia into one big exotic fantasy.

Went on for a bit there, but the tag is about how Skurvi mainly perceives herself, both her spiritual zen and her 'fascination’ with landwellers.

I think if you wanna hammer home the fetishism I’d suggest freshKarma, mainly bc like…Bodhisattva is still a term that means a whole lot to some folks? Whereas like…at this point most Indians I know make a distinction between “kuhrmuh” and “car-ma.” The latter’s a white people concept that’s basically like “if you do something bad today then bad things will come to you tomorrow” whereas the former is a fairly simple concept: if you do not follow your dharma, then you are implicated in the consequences of that choice, even if such consequences only turn up in another life.

I kinda like that tag more because it basically immediately shows her whole ass.

Quirk:She replaces 'tT’ and any 'en’ sounds with ’¥’ the Yen sign. This is mean to be a joke to people who get tattoos of things like Chinese characters without knowing what they mean. Similarly, Skurvi has adopted this 'super cool symbol’ into her speech with the joke being to us is that is’s actually a completely mundane symbol. Symbolism aside, it resembles her symbols and horns somewhat, as well as a little 'v’ for victory sign on top. Really, the symbol and horns could use some editing.

Man yeah I like that enough that I wanna preserve the feel of your symbol to keep the quirk.

Special Abilities (if any):None.

Lusus: Seamomkey - A loving if distant lusus. This is because when Skurvi was still rather young, her lusus went into a state of Cryptobiosis, a real process Brine Shrimp can go through which is how they can be packaged and sold under their more popular name, Sea Monkeys. Because of the lack of a parental figure in her life, Skurvi has been travelling in order to make up for her lack of valuable Life experiences by creating her own. 

Awwwwwwwwww

Personality: Skurvi as she is right now is rather safe for a Violetblood. She doesn’t command authority, at least explicitly, nor does she intimidate others into doing what she wants, at least she doesn’t feel like she is. On outward appearances, Skurvi’s a rather friendly and outgoing troll, if a little privileged and caught up in her own bubble without really thinking about everyone else all that much.

Skurvi sees a value and mystique in the 'quaint’ way landwellers live, especially lowbloods. This outward and overt interest in them has made her somewhat antagonising in whatever school, couldn’t resist the pun, of other seadwellers she hangs out with. They call her an 'air-head’ because of how much time she spends on land. Skurvi doesn’t mind this name and actually embraces it, considering it a nice epithet of her story.

The actual meaning of the label isn’t wrong because as well as antagonising, zen, and amicable, Skurvi’s also kinda dumb. Like, gullible really. She’ll believe a lot of things you tell her if you add the caveat that it’s some 'ancient landweller secret’.

Skurvi’s based off a certain type of people that I’m not sure may be present all around the world? Before you head off to university in my country, a lot of people elect to go on a gap year in order to travel, explore and see the world much like Skurvi does. What this often actually involves is going to South East Asian, stroking a drugged-up tiger, getting a nonsense tattoo, buying harem pants and coming back so 'enlightened’ and 'spiritual’. Drug use is also pretty common.

I think her personality might need some more nitty-gritty to it, but this is what I have so far.

NO I FUCKING GET IT.

There’s a girl that used to be peripheral to my friend group who would jet off to various countries each summer and would like, come back from a fucking ashram and talk about how she truly understood how the other side lives. Nah, this is a well-rounded character because tbh that was her entire personality. Still is, a little bit.

Interests: Skurvi’s chief interest is voyaging, going out to land and finding people or places to meet and greet. She likes experiencing the landweller way of life in eating their food, going to their hives and making herself comfy. She’s often a little insensitive and somewhat patronising with her trips however, either antagonising the mid to highbloods she meets and often intimidating the lower bloods based on her high noble caste. If some noble barged into your house to be entertained, wouldn’t you be panicked?

Other than that, she often documents her trips on her blog. These often focus more on herself, how she experienced things, felt about things, and perceived things, so there’s rarely a name on it other than her own. She’s immensely proud of her blog and sees it as a shrine of sorts, a testament to how much she’s 'grown’.

Speaking of growing, she likes cultivating plants, and often decorates her house to try and replicate the zen and order she feels in landweller hives. Her sense of Feng-shui isn’t exactly refined and the plants she grows aren’t exactly traditional. Her use of them is 'spiritually medicinal’ but she really just gets baked out of her mind and falls asleep with reality TV reruns on.

I think her current interests are very rooted, sorry, in Life and could perhaps use one or two more 'out-there’ ones to not just simply have 'hippie stoner troll’.

I think if you want to add another aspect of hers, maybe she’s like…really into holidays? Like the kind of troll who knows it’s Alternian Pancake Day and of course she has the decorations for it! It also gives her a means to justify her zest for travel; she just loves joy, and loves collecting joyful experiences whenever possible!

Title: Page of Life, actively serves herself Life - After her lusus entered it’s catatonic state, Skurvi has been in a state of arrested development that she was very aware of at the time. She started travelling as a means to remedy this, taking active control of her own valuable growth experiences by going on 'enriching’ trips to better herself. Over time, she thinks that she’s been able to perfectly grow and mature as a person, achieving a zen state of being, hence her chill demeanour. In reality, she’s made little to no progress on escaping this arrested development, as she’s not really 'learning’ anything from her trips. They’re just a way for her to believe she’s gone on an amazin enriching quest where in reality she’s just barged into a random lowblood’s house, inadvertently intimidated them to spend time with her, 'teach’ her things and more often than not eats their food whilst taking a memento back, even if said memento is the lowblood’s only bowl for instance.

Right, I forgot that you and I use difference verbiage for classes! I typically think of Pages as an Exploit class, and given the verbiage you use I think I’d personally classify her as a Thief of Life? Like she’s suspending the growth of everyone around her to benefit her own, and is passively utilizing the rules of Alternian society to facilitate that.

D/Ancestor: I have a concept in mind for her dancestor, a person who travels to classify and examine Life as opposed to making experiences for her own. The dancestor is definitely more of a scientific explorer than a leisure sailor, like Charles Darwin 'hence the Seamonkey lusus’. As for the ancestor, I’ve got nothing clear honestly.

For the ancestor how about literally just the Darwinan, doing exactly what you just said?

Land:Nothing so far

How about Land of Permafrost and Parthenogenesis (LOPAP)? The permafrost pretty much effectively leaves her landlocked and drives home her lack of development as a person! Which leads to her second word: Parthenogenesis, a method by which brine shrimp reproduce without fertilization. In her case, I think we could actually do something similar to paradox cloning to repopulate the planet’s citizens? i like this because it’s a case of borrowing from an existing duty with a purpose, stripping it of its context, and repurposing it for her own growth and development.

Dream Planet:Also unsure

I think she’d think she’s a Derse, but she’s a Prospit. She’s not leading any mass changes, nor is she even changing herself all that much.

Speaking of not changing all that much….I futzed with the symbol and horns and made some color adjustments but otherwise she’s good to go.

Thanks again for this woman! She’s awful but like. In a really good way.

-TR

[mixedtrxsh]

Adonis Golden Ratio Review

Adonis Golden Ratio Review

Adonis Golden Ratio Review

Adonis Golden Ratio Review

Adonis Golden Ratio Review

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOYKT3izSDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZvlF5T3-oE

https://steemit.com/adonisgoldenratio/@alwaysus/adonis-golden-ratio-review-adonis-golden-ratio-workout-review-or-or-adonis-golden-ratio-workout-secrets

We men are pretty vain creatures, irrespective of how abundant we insist on the contrary. When at the gym, we tend to pay almost as much time checking our muscles out in the mirror as we have a tendency to do lifting weights. We love the manner our muscles look, and work laborious to provide the muscles the “ideal” form. In line with the Adonis Golden Ratio program, it’s attainable to get the “good masculine physique” using the diet and exercise tricks taught in the book. Is it realistic? This Adonis Golden Ratio Review takes a look underneath the hood to seek out out if the program delivers… What is Adonis Golden Ratio? The Adonis Golden Ratio program is intended to help men get the “excellent” physique. The term “perfection” is outlined by the Adonis Golden Ratio as a formula for the body shape that can be most subconsciously attractive to women. It sounds like a fascinating concept, but I’m a touch hesitant to just accept it. The Minds Behind Adonis Golden Ratio: John Barban and Kyle Leon John Barban is the identical man who contributed to the Venus Factor, that we tend to have reviewed full here… In step with John Barban’s official web site:     My formal education background could be a Masters In Human Biology and Nutrition from U of Guelph, where I spent 3 years as a varsity strength and conditioning coach for the ice hockey team.     I did any graduate analysis and taught exercise physiology at the University of Florida. I’ve taken a bunch of non-public training certifications, all the same old ones like the NSCA CSCS, ACE PT, CSEP, etc. He has worked with or taken part in the creation of brands like:     MuscleTech     NxLabs     Slimquick     ADS     BlueStar Nutraceuticals     Empowered Nutrition Product Kyle Leon is the person behind the Customized Fat Loss program, which we tend to have reviewed full here… He is a fitness trainer that markets fitness products, and has definitely become well-known due to the comes on which he has put his name. He may be a nutrition specialist, a personal trainer, and a fitness model – having appeared on the covers of a number of fitness magazines. He conjointly serves on the fitness advisory board at BioTrust Nutrition, and acts as a spokesperson and senior product development consultant at a company named Blue Star Nutraceuticals. Of course, if you Google “Kyle Leon” or “Kyle Leon bio”, you discover very very little information on him. Click here to read the video presentation of the merchandise A Examine the “Adonis Golden Ratio” Package Naked upper body of a muscular man perofrming an exercise with an EZ Curl bar. Upon getting the Adonis Golden Ratio package you are sent a NADA folder with nine PDF files. The Adonis Effect Index Manual This book is the intro to the Adonis Golden Ratio program, and it gets you started down the road to “perfection”. It starts out by explaining what the “Adonis Golden Ratio” is, detailing how women of different ages and from completely different parts of the world can notice the same body attractive. Consistent with the book, anthropologists are looking out for the rationale behind this perception of attraction for “years”, and it is a mathematical equation that governs this law of attraction. The mathematical equation is named the Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio is one:one.618. What will this mean? Well, in keeping with the example cited in the book, the space between your head and your navel is 1:1.618 of the gap from your head to the tips of your fingers. The Golden Ratio was employed by artists like Leonardo da Vinci and architects like Le Corbusier to define the ideal male body. Sculptures were created according to those measurements, and it is these measurements that girls find most attractive.     The purpose of the Adonis Golden Ratio books is to assist you achieve that “perfect” ratio of broad shoulders, defined chest, a tight waist, and well-outlined arm and leg muscles. The book goes on to list the advantages of being enticing (a terribly shallow concept, in my view), together with:     An easier time getting a job     Being happier     Attracting additional women     Individuals’s perception of you changes The 3 Adonis Index Nutrition Programs The book lists the three totally different programs used in the Adonis Golden Ratio package: Burn The focus of this program is on burning fat to the extreme, serving to those who are very overweight to lose weight and getting in smart form. Build and Burn For those who would like to tighten up their muscles and acquire rid of those previous few pounds of fat, this is often the option for them. Lean muscle is made, and most fat is burned. Build This program focuses on people who would like to pack on the pounds of muscles, primarily hardgainers. It aims to market a high-calorie diet and fitness program that builds muscle mass. See which program you should opt for Calculating Your “Good” Body Size Naked higher body of a muscular man performing exercises with two dumbbells. The next section of the book helps you calculate what your current body ratio is, plus that program you are purported to use. This can be where things get a small amount sophisticated. 1st, you use the equation provided in the book to help you figure out what your current waist to shoulder ratio is. Then, you peruse the charts to see which of the three programs you'll use. You have to seek out your waist ratio on the 3 charts, matching your height.     For example:     I am six' half-dozen.         If my ratio is between 35.one and thirty six.half dozen, I would be on the BUILD program         If my ratio is between thirty seven.44 and 39.seventy eight, I would be on the BUILD & BURN program         If my ratio is between forty.56 and 43.68, I would be on the BURN program Once you discover your place on the chart, you have got to decide on the proper program consistent with your height. Every of the 3 programs come with 3 choices, each for a different height category.     Possibility 1 is for those shorter than five' 7?     Option two is for those between five' eight? and six'     Choice three is for those taller than half dozen' 1? Complicated, right? I grasp it took me a whereas to wrap my head around it, and it might take you a couple of minutes of careful reading to figure out which program you belong in. The Adonis Golden Ratio Workout The workout program detailed during this program was actually quite an attention-grabbing, distinctive one that fascinated me. The workout is largely divided up into four rep ranges:     five reps of very heavy weights     eight reps of significant weights     13 reps of moderate weights     twenty one reps of sunshine weights This comes from the Fibonacci number, which is supposed to be the perfect variety sequence. Primarily, every range is the total of the 2 numbers before it. The sequence of numbers is as follows: 0, one, one, 2, three, 5, eight, 13, 21, thirty four, fifty five, eighty nine, 144… The workout uses these numbers because the “excellent” number of reps for your workouts, though why they’re ideal is left unexplained. Whereas studying for my Certification as a Professional Trainer with The National Federation of Professional Trainers, I stumbled on this data:     White slow twitch motor unit failure is achieved through the four to six rep vary. These are the muscle fibers that expand, and they are the ones that provide you noticeable muscle definition.     Red slow twitch motor unit failure occurs within the 12 to 15 rep vary. These are the muscle fibers that offer you stamina and strength and a few definition.     Red quick twitch motor unit failure happens within the 20 to 25 rep vary. These are the muscle fibers that give you endurance. The Adonis Golden Ratio workouts mostly fall into this rep vary, but the 8-rep workout plan will not engage either the white or red slow twitch motor units properly–which means less definition and growth for each of these muscle units. There are some tips to help you complete your workout properly, and you’ll notice that you can get started with the workouts easily. Every of the three programs–BURN, BUILD, and BURN & BUILD–is meant almost precisely the same, with identical structure and content. The Workout Manual Every program comes with its own workout manual, complete with:     A list of exercises to try to to with each workout     A weightlifting workout to try to to 4 days of the week     A cardio intervals workout to try and do a pair of days of the week     Advice on how many reps to do per workout, relying on the cycle you're researching     Three cycles–Growth, Lean Muscle, Definition–every lasting 4 weeks It’s a nice, complete fitness program, and you’ll find that it takes the mystery out of your daily gym session. Just print out the PDF file, and take it with you to the gym to know EXACTLY what to try and do and how several times to try and do it. The Diet Guide All three programs come back with a diet guide to assist take the mystery from how and what to eat. Right off the bat, you get 3 nifty tips to urge you started. 3 Simple Rules to Live by:     Eat breakfast no more than 30 minutes once waking up     Eat each three to 5 hours     Eat your largest meal or have a protein shake immediately once working out The initial 0.5 of the book is devoted to a complete meal arrange consisting of fifty six days’ price of menus. The recipes are all incredibly simple, however are undoubtedly delicious. You’ll notice that all of them use ingredients that you can realize anywhere, and anyone will prepare them irrespective of how limited your skills in the kitchen could be! The book gives you a protracted grocery list, complete with everything that you will need to prepare the meals on the menu. It even breaks down the grocery list by week, so you can apprehend specifically what to induce and when. Definitely taking the mystery out of the entire process! The book has you list the things that inspire you to get in form, and it’s type of a fitness journal that you'll fill out as you go. There’s a whole section dedicated to helping you discover your motivation, and also the content is very inspiring and positive. One terribly necessary section is the massive Goals and Little Goals section. All people set big goals, but it’s often hard to succeed in the massive goals as a result of they’re just therefore huge. The ebook helps you to interrupt it down into little, attainable goals, making it easier for you to work towards that giant, overreaching goal. The ten Steps for Success We can’t provide you all 10 steps, however here are a few:     Track your success     Use “Before” and “After” photos     Arrange ahead     Reduce temptation The tips given are straightforward and easy to follow, however they’ll help keep you not off course to your fitness goals. The world’s Most Fashionable Diets Grilled meat next to a cup of BBQ sauce. This is often an interesting section of the book, as it takes a take a look at widespread diets like:     ZERO Diet     Atkins Diet     Low Carb Diet     VLCD Diets It explains why these diets don’t work, and how you can get better results via the Adonis Golden Ratio program. Additional Data The books give a lot of helpful info, like:     The science of how fats, protein, and carbs are digested and used by your body     The truth behind sensible and dangerous fats     How water, vitamins, and minerals play a very important role in your health     How insulin and glucagon affect your blood sugar levels     How fat affects your appetite hormones     Tips and tricks for cooking     and abundant additional… Truth be told, the Adonis Golden Ratio program is fairly complete and comprehensive! Click here to work out what’s in the program What We have a tendency to Think of the Adonis Golden Ratio Program I was a small amount skeptical once I started reading the program, but at the completion of my review, I find myself with a much additional positive outlook on Adonis Golden Ratio. Whereas there are some things that I’m not sold on, overall the program appearance like one that's value the price. We’re Not Fond Of The Complicated Program It took me a while to figure out the program, and it’s fairly complicated to understand till you check it a few times. For people who wish a quick-fix program, this one positively takes a heap a lot of reading to understand. Lack of Rationalization of the Adonis Golden Ratio Why is that the program laid out the manner it is? The diet set up is made clear, however the workout isn’t as clear. There’s no rationalization on why the specific range of reps were chosen, and there could be a small amount a lot of information on why the program helps to build the “ideal” body. We tend to Love The Complete Information The Adonis Golden Ratio program takes you from start to end, and you get all the help you need in every area of your life. From diet to workout to lifestyle, this is often a whole program. Comprehensive Program You have got a diet menu with 56 days of 6 meals, plus a twelve-week workout program with vi days of workouts per week. That’s a ton of comprehensive information laid out and straightforward for you to absorb. Conclusion All in all, the Adonis Golden Ratio program appears to be a good program. Considering what you pay for a whole lifestyle guide, it’s price it.

[raeyvies]

“Push and Pull” pt. 5 // VxMC fic (based on day 10)

If you’ve been following this fic until now, you will notice that I actually gave this story a title now! It seemed pretty fitting especially considering the future plot ^^ Thank you to everyone who had been supportive of me with this story and has been patient with me! So surprise, I’m updating twice tonight :D

How would you guys feel if every 4 chapters I write a summary so that if you want to read from a certain checkpoint and forth you can know what happening? This is catering more to the people who are just now stepping upon this story ^^

For this part, remember that MC begins to feel trauma from her experiences since she arrived at Mint Eye. Little refresher from pt. 4: MC wakes up in V’s arms to see Saeran’s face in Saeyoung’s place. I hope you enjoy!!

Pt. 1 // Pt. 2 // Pt. 3 // Pt.4 // Pt.5 // Pt. 6

Length: 2196

Part: 5/?

Pairing: VxMC

Warnings: None

Sorry for any grammatical mistakes ^^;;

Get away from me.

Those were the words that remained trapped in MC’s throat she stared daggers at Saeyoung who was utterly confused. He was able to register the fact that she seemed terrified or arguably traumatized, but what had he done to her? He could not recall a moment that would cause her to fear him but it undoubtedly pulled something in him that made him feel uncomfortable. It was a feeling that felt like a parasite almost that he wanted to get rid of as soon as possible. The last thing he wanted was to be the cause of someone’s pain and terror, so Saeyoung did what seemed appropriate and made an attempt at soothing the shocked girl in a serious yet joking way. “MC you're okay. Everything is okay, it's just me Saeyoung. Please don't tell me you got amnesia from fainting earlier. Oh what do we do?”

That tone of voice cued MC’s recognition of Saeyoung rather than Saeran much to her relief. It was a rather distinct voice that would be hard to mistake and for that she was indescribably relieved. Whatever trick her mind had been playing on her vision had subsided and MC was pulled away from her trance. However, her heart was still racing and Jihyun could feel its beat emanating from her chest against his body. Instinctively, he wrapped his free arm around her waist to assure her that there was nothing to be afraid of, though he was unsure of what made her so terrified all of a sudden

MC was now becoming aware of her surroundings as she felt Jihyun’s arm on her body. At first, she did not know who it was much less why someone was in bed with her until she looked away from Saeyoung and met Jihyun’s eyes. Blood rushing to her cheeks, MC’s face became almost vermillion like Saeyoung’s hair in contrast to her pale complexion. Although the two met eyes for a short moment, it felt like an eternity.

If she was being honest, she could not even discern what day it was much less the hour. Still unaware of what had previously happened, MC searched for her memories of last night to know why she was lying there with Jihyun. Yes, she presently had feelings for Jihyun but she knew she did not want to make it obvious knowing that he was not in the best situation. None of them were. She had no interest in forcing herself into his life after the kind of circumstance they met under, but MC could not deny that feeling him so close like this was so warming and pleasant. However, Jihyun was still injured and recovering, so she immediately pulled away from him, careful to not hurt him, and mumbled several apologies that only he heard.

Jihyun could only imagine what was going on through her mind as she woke up unknowing of any previous events. But her flushed look told him that she was embarrassed, though, that was not the only thing he perceived. She must have fallen for him and this only confirmed it furthermore. Even though he was falling for MC too, he felt rather unready to try anything with her. He was downright certain he would hurt her. His inner demons wanted to keep her close, selfishly, but his conscience told him to pull away before something undesirable happens. It left a bitter feeling in him when MC pulled away from him. Don’t apologize MC. Stay by my side as long as you want. Jihyun never voiced those words and rather sat up in bed, laying a soft hand on her back with a small smile.

MC winced as she felt her IV tug at her skin while she rubbed her eyes, hoping she would stop feeling so groggy soon. There was some commotion among the RFA as they came closer to her bedside but all she could do was to form a list of questions because nothing made sense to her. Why was there an IV in her arm? What time was it and why was she still at the hospital?

Finally, she formed words, her voice sounding raspy and breathy, “Ugh...my arms hurt. What...wait, did you say I fainted, Saeyoung?”

Propping himself onto the bedside, Saeyoung gave a nod and confirmed to her, “That is what I said but I wasn’t here when it happened and I’m so sorry for leaving you here alone. I shouldn’t have done that to begin with because I lost the hacker’s signal anyway.”

MC still could not shake off the feeling that Saeyoung kept reminding her of Saeran. They both looked so similar, she could even say that maybe Saeyoung was Saeran, but she threw that idea away instantly. There was no way that Saeran was in this room.

“But why though? I was just fine a moment ago,” MC continued searching for answers. How could she faint when she thought she was fine? She did not remember that she was utterly dehydrated and hungry. However, her stomach growled, drawing a moan from her lips, as she bashfully looked at Jihyun who was seated right next to her. “I was looking after you when you woke up, but why um...why am I in bed with you?”

“MC, I woke up last night. It’s two in the afternoon right now,” Jihyun explained, worry manifested in his voice. Seeing the shock on MC’s face proved she really remembered nothing. Only Jihyun and Jumin knew what happened, and they knew they had to explain everything to her. “You don’t remember that you woke up about an hour ago, either? I was walking around and you came looking for me, and you wanted me to lay down next to you.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to worry you. Th-That wasn’t supposed to happen. This is so embarrassing I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything at all.”

Before Jihyun could say anything as he saw MC’s eyes became glassy, Jumin chimed in as he brought the bag of food forward and sat on the couch next to her bed. “You weren’t eating enough and you were dehydrated, so I suggest you put something in your stomach before anything else. Jihyun asked me to bring this for you. I hope you like it.”

The two friends continued conversing while MC ate the seaweed soup. She did not want to say anything about not liking seaweed soup but the gesture meant so much to her she could not decline it, and her stomach was crying out for food. She laid against the now inclined back of her bed and ate slowly, trying to down the distasteful food without showing any signs of revulsion. Admittedly, it tasted a lot better because she was starving but on any other occasion she would have declined it. Jihyun had left her side to go for another walk with Saeyoung. MC watched as they left and only wanted to join them but after having woken up to be at his side, maybe he would have liked some space in the end.

Jumin saw how MC would not let Jihyun out of her sight until he left the room. It was still surprising to him how much she had connected with Jihyun but he could not help but think that she was making a mistake. Maybe the only reason she seemed to be so attached to Jihyun was for finding her at Mint Eye and calling for Seven to rescue her. Maybe she was not falling for him for who he was but for what he did, and if it was because of that, Jumin would make sure to protect her from what can turn out to be toxic.

Having completely consumed the seaweed soup, MC searched for any garbage can to throw away the disposable bowl. As she pulled the blanket away from her lower body, Zen was quick to help her onto her feet seeing how her legs were trembling as her feet touched the icy floor. However, feeling the frigid floor under her was a relief for her since she had been under warm covers all this time. MC appreciated his help but was quick to tell him that she could walk just fine. “I only fainted Zen. Thank you though, but I think I can get to the trash can on my own.”

He was reluctant to let her go but seeing as she was making her steps fairly balanced, his worries died down. That did not mean that the three RFA members in room averted their eyes for a moment, and MC saw that, causing her to feel bashful. She truly hated drawing attention to herself and although she was thankful for their concern, it made her feel uncomfortable so much so that she had no idea what to say or how to start a conversation with them. This was not how she had imagined meeting the RFA in person. She assumed it would be at the party where she would have been dressed up nicely but from what she could tell, her appearance was very disheveled. Her hair was tangled and parted unevenly to one side; her clothes we're still the same from the day she escaped Mint Eye, except that they were faded by now and wrinkled.

When she returned to her bed, MC sat on the side, letting her short legs dangle off the edge, and she remained silent, unsure of what to say. Thankfully, Zen and Jaehee were much more talkative and took the load to conversation themselves, sparing MC from an awkward silence. The two told her about Zen’s adventures with taking care of Yoosung who was actually dropped off at his apartment, and then the subject of the party came about.

“We can just finish tomorrow cleaning up the venue. At least we got to meet MC!” Zen was definitely looking on the positive side of this whole situation which made her blush.

“It's not exactly how I thought I'd meet you guys though,” MC added jokingly. “It's so weird you know. It's like meeting an internet friend for the first time.”

“That's exactly what it feels like! But you're a lot shorter than I thought you'd be. You're still cute though. I knew you'd have a good fashion sense too,” Zen gestured at her outfit, but she only pulled her skirt slightly to cover her knees.

“Actually I hate this outfit,” she enlightened as she looked at herself. The outfit was all blue with a dotted skirt and her shirt was revealing of her shoulders. It was actually given to her by Rika, though, MC had no say in the choice of her clothing. “I really don't understand why Rika made me wear this. I’m not a fan of skirts either.”

At the mention of Rika’s name, the atmosphere became gloomy and sullen. If Yoosung were in the room, it would be a total mess there. It had dawned on MC that she triggered an unwanted memory possibly, which seemed strange as the RFA was already aware that Rika was still alive.

“I'm sorry. I touched on something I shouldn't have.”

“It's not that, MC. Something happened last night around one in the morning. Jumin got a phone call from Rika,” Jaehee began to explain, hoping to ease MC into the news she was giving. “After hurting Jihyun, Rika seemed to turn manic. She said she was regretful of everything she did. For hurting Jihyun, for attempting to brainwash you, for coming back into our lives. She was in her old apartment and…and– Oh god I don't know why I'm like this.”

Even Jaehee was surprised when she found herself tongue tied, unable to express the worst of the events. Jaehee knew that Rika was unstable and she needed help, and that nothing she did to them was justified, but she was a friend. It was hard to erase the person she was before her supposed suicide. She was a friend, a close friend, and Rika had helped Jaehee find happiness in her life among all else. Jaehee was human, and it was only natural to feel mournful of her late friend. “Her apartment...the bomb…she died in the explosion. She said her goodbyes to us but I don't think this was right.”

MC’s mouth dropped open upon learning about Rika’s death, and although she felt neutral about her death, it pained her to see that the three members were all struggling. She felt sympathy for them but not for Rika. Their old friend deserved to pay for her errors in life and for letting herself be consumed by her ideals, but she should have gone silently. The RFA should not have had to find out she died this way.

MC could not imagine what Jihyun would do when he would learn about the tragic incident. Although he was hurt over and over again by Rika, she was still a major part of especially his life. As much as MC disliked her, even hated her, she knew her opinion was one to keep to herself.

To be continued...

Pt. 1 // Pt. 2 // Pt. 3 // Pt.4 // Pt.5 // Pt. 6

[kestrelsansjesses]

Halloween prompt!! person a and person b perform an exorcism after a ouija board session gone wrong... I see Vega on this... the mexican heritage can be fun for that XD or Shakarian ;)

“Let me get this straight. We use this board to communicate with spirits. Dead people. Uh huh.” Garrus’ drawl continued on for two beats longer than was necessary.

Dressed in her favorite N7 sweats, the sound system playing the sounds of a thunderstorm through her cabin on the Normandy, Shepard shook her head in mock despair. “It’s for fun, Garrus. We’re not going to channel actual ghosts, though if you’ve got someone in mind…” Faces passed through her mind, each flickering almost too quickly to hold onto, and it must have showed in her expression, the way her forehead wrinkled.

Leaning forward, Garrus covered one of Shepard’s hands with his own, moving both of them towards the planchette in the middle of the board. “Hey, it’s okay. Let’s try it. I’ve done worse. You remember that firefight back on-”

“Garrus, we can’t commune with the spirits if you just keep talking.” Fondness and exasperation both crept into Shepard’s tone as she positioned herself to read the ouija board better, two fingers resting lightly on the center, by all appearances taking this seriously, save for the quirk at the corner of her mouth that said otherwise.

Following her lead, Garrus laid his talons as carefully as possible on the opposite end from her fingers, the broader side of this little pointer that was supposed to somehow, magically speak to the dead. At least his visor and his scars made it difficult to see where his brow lifted, though it couldn’t hide the tilt of his head. This would be, at the very least, interesting.

With a swipe of her omni-tool, Shepard dimmed the lights, grinning at her own trick. “Spirits who might be aboard the Normandy tonight, we invoke you. Speak to us through this board. We call upon you, oh spirits, and we reach out to you with welcome in our hearts.” Her eyes half-closed, lashes faintly fluttering, she nudged Garrus slightly with her arm, bumping him just enough to let him know that it was his turn to speak.

Struggling to think of anything more he could add, Garrus settled for mumbling, “welcome.” A distinct chill seemed to fall over him then, and the wild idea that Shepard’s little idea could actually work settled into his brain, refusing to leave. There were far too many people that both would prefer to never see again that could come pay their own visit.

Something in the cabin creaked, and the planchette began to move. “Garrus, you don’t have to humor me,” Shepard began, just as Garrus was saying, “Honey, this joke has gone on-”

R-E-V… It was truly moving now, independent of any of their fingers, the word the board seemed to be spelling out familiar in all its simplicity, yet neither could look away, needing to see what was said, the chill only increasing, and…

The door to Shepard’s cabin abruptly opened, letting in ambient fluorescent light and sending both to blinking rapidly, unable to see who had thankfully interrupted them. “Shepard, am I interrupting something?” The dim glow of Tali’s eyes could be seen beneath her helmet before she suddenly froze, limbs growing rigid, head canted backwards to a sickening angle.

And then Tali seemed fine, though the cant of her head was still subtly wrong, a difference in degrees that made Shepard’s stomach make strange, slow lurches even as she stood up as quickly as possible, reaching a hand out to the quarian. With a hiss, Tali lurched away. “Sheepppardddd.” Her voice was all wrong, too low. Exchanging a glance with Garrus, Shepard took another step forward.

“No clossser. I have the girl.” This wasn’t Tali at all.

“Shepard, what the hell did you do?” Garrus seemed content to stay back in his corner, looking increasingly panicked. Husks? Sure. Rogue Cerberus agents? Of course. Mechs? Just another day in the life. A possessed friend? No. No way. Nope.

“Me? We both did it!” Still caught between disbelief and fear, Shepard slumped against a wall, the cool metal of it against her back bringing her back to the present. Okay. Time to take stock. The Tali-thing seemed content to do nothing more than stand there and sway, seemingly unable to coordinate its limbs just yet, as long as Shepard didn’t approach or try and touch it. They had a small period of time to take advantage of this.

Walking backwards, refusing to take her eyes off her friend, Shepard kicked the ouija board into the corner. Stupid thing. This had been an awful idea, and she had no one to blame for it but herself. “I’ve heard stories like this.” Well, she had seen movies. Same thing, right? “If you don’t close the channel properly, the spirits can leak in and possess someone. Spirits or a demon or something.” Something they didn’t understand, somehow more unknowable than the Reapers. What a perfect ending to what should have been a perfect October night. “We have to perform an exorcism.”

Garrus’ laugh was a short, humorless bark. “And how do we do that, Shepard? Or did I miss when you became a priest?”

“Not the time, Garrus.” He had a point. Shepard’s religious knowledge could be adequately summed up with ‘there’s a book about it somewhere, isn’t there?’ It had never seemed important when she was running with the Reds, or engaged in Alliance battles. After coming back from the dead, it seemed less important than ever. She had been into the great unknown, and she could say what was there already- absolutely nothing. “Shit, shit, shit! Okay. We don’t have holy water but we have vodka brewed by elcor monks, which should be able to do the trick.” Same thing.

Fumbling through her liquor cabinet, Shepard got the bottle in question, opening the top and pouring some into her palm, marching forward to begin flicking it onto Tali. “Uh, in the name of the Father, the son, and the holy rollers, I banish you, foul spirit.” That didn’t sound right, but ‘close enough was the order of the day.”

Suddenly, Tali collapsed in a heap, the sound she was making a keening shriek that was not dissimilar to… laughter. Tali was laughing, clutching her sides as she rolled on the floor helplessly. From the sound of it, she had been reduced to helpless tears, sending Shepard to taking a swig from the bottle, a long one that lasted several burning seconds.

From behind Shepard, Garrus was making a similar noise, sitting down on her bed as he laughed to tears, head buried in his hands. “You should have seen your face, Shepard,” he choked out. “Very nice improvisation on the holy water.”

“This was a prank?!” Another swig of liquor and Shepard was debating whether she was going to kill the two of them or congratulate them. It really was fifty-fifty either way.

“What is that you humans say?” Tali asked, managing to stand, still holding onto a stitch in her side. “Treat or trick!” Close enough.