#and his lack of communication is STELLAR

[lizzybeeee]

the language being stripped of lore specific terms made it so much worse in retrospect. fr tho Davrin calling Eldrin "Uncle" Eldrin instead of Hahren, like it's okay Davrin you can use elvish around my Rook I won't judge :( I haven't romanced him does he at least call you vhenan??

I could get the use of 'uncle' if Davrin was trying to explain it to Rook who was not elvish (since all elves in this game seem to just instinctively know elvish) since it would make sense to make a connection between the dalish role and familial role for an outsider:

Rook - "Who are we seeing?" Davrin - "Hahren...Uncle Eldrin." Rook - "Hahren?" Davrin - "It's elvish - they're storytellers and caretakers in the clan." Rook - "So...not your uncle." Davrin - "Close enough. He raised me."

Does Davrin call you 'vhenan'? I could have sworn he did in the final love/petting over clothes scene but I did a look up because I couldn't remember...apparently its just my wishful thinking - but don't quote me, maybe it's only in a specific dialogue option? :(

That fact that I can't recall it off the top of my head is telling -> Solas calls Lavellan 'vhenan' so much its burned into my brain, the same with other endearments from other romances. I played as a shadow dragon elf so I was hoping to be able to say 'amatus' - didn't get to do that either.

Which is one reason that the romances in this game really fall flat for me. I loved how different characters had different endearments for you, it made it feel more personal! Bull with 'Kadan', Dorian with 'Amatus', Solas with 'Vhenan', Leliana with 'My Love', and Sera had a 'pick your own' that wonderfully reflected her character!

I assume they were trying to make the language more accessible for new players, but it was never a barrier for me in any of the other games? If anything it always made me more interested/curious in what was going on when I encountered a phrase that I didn't understand. It added to the idea that these characters were from different nations and cultures - they had their own languages and phrases that reflected that -> the world felt bigger because of it!

Even if I didn't understand something, the voice work was always so stellar that even if the exact meaning wasn't understood, I got the intent that it was being said with.

Best examples being Solas and the Arishok - I understand certain words and phrases of each language, but I'm not a translator like some very talented people on this website. Even if I didn't get what was being said I absolutely understood the intent from the emotion and nuances in voice work. Top tier example is Solas and Sera in DAI:

Solas: Our people used to be here. Sera: Pfft, you say that everywhere. Solas: It is more true than you want to believe. Sera: I bet, right? Who wants to think about stepping on dead elves. Solas: Din elvhen emma him? Sera: Oh, you felt that one.

The way that line was delivered was incredible. Didn't understand a word but you could absolutely feel the repressed fury of what Solas was saying - his disgust at what Sera said. Once again, Gareth David-Lloyd coming in with incredible voice work! <3

It's such a strange choice to just...remove that immersion - to have so little of it in-game. Does it require extra work to make certain that the characters language reflects their history and culture? Yes! But what it adds is so immense to the world. I can't imagine not having Solas call Lavellan by elven endearments or having Andrastian characters not say 'Thank the Maker!' or 'Maker's breath!' It was cool worldbuilding! Just like how we say 'oh my god' there's a Thedas equivalent that communicated the very same idea!

Hearing lore specific words and phrases makes me know that I'm playing a Dragon Age game. Playing DATV which severely lacks in those words and phrases made me realize I'm sitting on my swivel chair and looking at a computer screen.

[purplelupins]

Lamb

|Midnight Mass |

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

Father Paul Hill/John Pruitt x fem!reader

Word count: 11k

Summery: An entire life of being a good girl was a difficult cross to carry...especially in a tiny town with 127 residents on a good day. You kept the town fed and spirits as high as you could, but when a new face steps off the afternoon Breeze, things around you start to change; you don't even know you're in the eye of the storm.

Warnings: nsfw, reader is religious, religious symbolism, ideology, explanations and general conversations of religion, age gap (like this man is 80 technically and he watched reader grow up, and can remember reader as a little girl so if that’s creepy to you then go no further), stalking, manipulation, murder (hello have you seen the show?), drinking of blood, hunting of a person, grief, description of animal death, reader is described as blushing, character death, non consensual help showering, guilt and god maybe more but I think that’s it…this is not really a fix it fic

Notes: There’s a little Easter egg in this chapter for any Hamish fans…let’s see if anyone clocks it.

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Crickets were the first to make a sound.

For days, that speck of an island was silent. Birds either flew away or hid in their nests. They didn’t chirp, or caw.

Bees slowly began to appear again too after a week.

Flowers began to open.

Months passed and finally things looked almost as they used to.

Buildings repaired, town cleaned up.

Only now the island looked abandoned during the day.

You had never liked summer. Too hot and humid. You still didn’t like it.

John was used to hearing the Crockett Island community wander the island every night.

He was used to the occasional sound of your screams, too.

It wasn’t often, but sometimes your fortified house lacked, and you were forced to run into the night and hide until sunrise.

John pursed his lips bitterly the first time he had stopped them from finding you on the abandoned spit on the west side.

They claimed they just wanted to help.

Wanted you to be at peace and be a part of the community again.

Those words stung like poison; hearing his own justification used back at him.

He’d seen you run past him on one of his walks, not even knowing he was there as he stood amongst the skinny trees. Eyes like little pinpoints in the darkness.

A predators eyes.

A wolf’s eyes.

When he had only wanted to be a Shepard.

Though of course that had been the issue. He would have had to have wanted to be a fellow sheep for him to see just how wrong his actions were.

Now there he was, just one of the wolves watching their token sheep run for her life.

You were so resilient. Determined to stay alive. Hope incarnate. But you were not delicate or wispy like most imagined hope to be; a foolish thing. Your hope was bruised and battered and exhausted from having to get back up again after surviving another night.

You still prayed.

He heard you at night when he would walk past your house and listen close to one of your boarded windows. It was mostly to check that you were alright.

It was a little because he found your heartbeat soothing.

But hearing you pray was what helped him continue. That you hadn’t lost your faith. He didn’t care who you prayed to…just that you had faith.

And that faith had you.

You tasted copper as you ran.

It had been months since they had last managed to get inside your house, and you had begun to get comfortable with the couple knocks at night and the pleading to come out. But over the last week, the knocks had turned to pounding, and tonight the pounding turned to splintered wood and you bolting across Crockett as fast as your exhausted body would carry you.

The best shot at safely was the thick woods on either end of the island. You used to keep a boat in the Uppards for emergencies, but they had found it and taken it one night.

Now you had become stellar at losing them, but tonight something felt different. You had noticed clear medical baggies of blood in trash cans just a few weeks following…following that night. You assumed they used Sarah’s medical connections to have shipments of blood brought to the island at night.

You wondered who Bev had to bully to have that done. Not like it was hard.

But you wondered now if perhaps the latest shipment wasn’t received, and now the islanders were…antsy.

Not that the reasoning mattered to you greatly as you passed by one of the abandoned buildings. What mattered was that they were closer to you than usual, and you hadn’t slept properly in weeks. That, and your terror that they winged bast might still be prowling around looking for a new body to drain.

You pushed yourself to go faster but you couldn’t put distance between you and them. That feeling of fear began to creep back into your tissue. It was only natural; it didn’t matter how at peace you were with death. A lamb being hunted was a lamb being hunted.

And wolves never stopped being terrifying.

John sat, book in hand inside the rectory.

Collarless.

He heard your heartbeat from a half mile away, and it was fast. Too fast.

He stood, and walked to his door and opened it to step out onto his porch. You didn’t usually come this way, but as fate would have it - or your great misfortune- you did. John could hear feet following you- a few sets by the sound of it.

John walked out into the middle of the cemetery.

He waited.

Sure enough, a few minutes later you came up the hill; your adrenaline being the only thing that kept you going.

John called your name.

It was the first time since Easter that you had heard his voice. It made you take such a quick breath that you stumbled a little. It felt like you had been sprayed with ice water.

He looked down the road where the small militia was chasing you, then back to the rectory- door wide open. You stood there for a moment, and you wanted to keep running. But those footsteps were close and you figured it would be easier to fight off one instead of several.

You could feel your rage start to rear its head over the fear, but you knew it would only get you killed.

You ran towards him, and he began leading you inside. The warm glow of the rectory enveloped you, and John shut and locked the door as soon as you stepped onto the floorboards. He closed the curtains and turned off most lights aside from a reading lamp, and began taking you to the far end of the house. As you approached you stopped short and shook your head.

“What are you doing?” You whispered, eying him wearily.

He knelt down and lifted a part of the carpet in his room and lifted a small door.

You stared at him hard.

And he stared back. “It was built for me decades ago for storms.” He said simply, and calmly.

You were apprehensive. Even more now than just being in his presence.

Uneasy.

Terrified.

Cold.

“Please…they won’t find you.” He whispered a little harsher- you couldn’t hear them but those footsteps were getting closer now. Just cresting the hill.

You might have resented the monster before you more than anything, but you did need help. And you didn’t have a plethora of options. You walked over to him and sat down on the edge of the opening- feet hitting the steep stairs. “I don’t trust you.” You said, staring down into the dark room. You could see a lamp there.

“I know.” He nodded.

You blinked, and didn’t look at him as you began to lower yourself. John grasped your arm to help you, but you wrenched it from his grip, “Don’t touch me.” You snapped.

He immediately dropped his hands, and had to almost sit on them to keep himself from reaching out to you to help.

As you hit the ground, you reached into your pocket and pulled out a small fishers knife to show him.

“If you don’t let me out, or try anything I’m killing myself and braving Hell, Father.” You shot at him.

Again, Father Pruitt only nodded in understanding, “The lamp is fully changed. There’s a blanket on the shelf.” He said, then looked suddenly back towards the front of the house.

You flicked the light on, and when you stared back up at the preist, he quietly shut the door.

You watched it for a moment, then slowly took in the space. A very small room that looked more like a bomb shelter. There was a small bed and a shelf with some canned food. And indeed there was a thick blanket there. You sighed, and went to settle in only to jump a little when you heard voices. You stayed still and tried to listen as close as you could…but then it went quiet, and you only heard one pair of soft footsteps.

John opened the door to see a handful of fairly new parishioners standing there on his stoop.

“Evening Father…she ran past here a few minutes ago did you hear anything?” One of them asked.

She.

You didn’t even have a name to them anymore.

John sucked on his teeth, “I’m afraid not. She’s quick.”

Another one nodded, “G’night Father.” They mumbled and began walking away- eyes scanning the trees and brush.

He watched them for a moment, then walked back inside and locked the door again. He might have gone out that night for a walk or to visit someone in the community. While he didn’t fully count himself as a priest anymore, he was still the guide to many of his flock. They were even more lost now than ever.

After that first night, many turned to the church for help. His heart ached that still his parish turned towards God for help; that he hadn’t driven them away from their faith entirely.

Many resented him.

He didn’t hold any blame towards them.

But still, when he held Mass, many came. Many still confessed to him. Many still asked for his aid.

But John Pruitt was less of a person now, and more of a symbol.

A tool.

He kept to himself- accepting his passive segregation.

Unwanted, but needed.

With no need for food, John felt a sudden panic when he hadn’t given you anything fresh. He strode back to the little door and gently opened it; the lamp was still on, but even in the low light he could clearly see you sitting against one of the walls breathing deep, heart rate slow.

You hadn’t used the blanket, he noticed. John knew you were strong willed, but he didn’t know how stubborn you were. Perhaps a trait you hadn’t discovered until he ripped your life apart.

John carefully lowered himself down into the little cellar, and crouched down in front of you. He gingerly eased his arms under your knees, and pulled you to his chest, then hoisted you up and carried you back to the main level.

John didn’t care if the others heard your heartbeat. He didn’t care if they came to his door. He knew they wouldn’t dare try to get you while he was there. He had been turned for longer than them, and was much stronger, and much faster. For the ones who were present when Sturge had shot Sarah, they knew he wasn’t incapable of beating a man bloody.

He laid you down on his bed, and slipped your boots off carefully; he caught the knife that fell from your left one, and rolled it over in his hand.

He had pushed you to violence. Self-defence, but violence all the same. He tarnished that ray of sunlight he had seen that first day he returned.

John smiled bitterly. He supposed it was only fitting that you were sunlight and he would die if he touched it.

You were so limp as you slept- your exhaustion taking over and forcing your body to rest. John brought the blanket over you, and left you there to sleep.

The bed laid unused most days.

It wasn’t as if he truly slept anymore.

The first thing you were aware of was the great sense of comfort that enveloped you.

The second was how that feeling horrified you.

You knew you had slept in an uncomfortable position, so why was there a pillow under your head and a blanket over you.

The third was how well rested you were.

You instinctively reached for the knife you kept in your boot, but then that came to your forth realisation: you weren’t wearing your boots.

You bolted up, and took in your surroundings. You were back in the rectory. You felt fear start to creep back into your flesh as you realised just how deeply you had slept. Your hand instinctively reached for your neck and shoulders so ensure you didn’t have any marks. You checked your arms and then you saw the flicker of metal out of the corner of your eye- your knife sat comfortably beside you on the bedside table. You snatched it up, and slipped your feet down onto the floor as quietly as you could-

“I made you some coffee if you’d like it.”

John called to you; he had heard your heart rate spike as you awoke. In an effort to not spook you too much, he waited to speak from his place in the living room until you were fully up.

You crept to the door, and tentatively pushed it open, knife clutched tight as you surveyed the room.

The curtains were all drawn, and two lamps were on. If it weren’t for the man who lived there it might have been a very inviting home. But you saw the man in question sat at his desk, writing.

John paused, and looked up from his paper to you.

“How are you?” He asked, genuinely wanting to know. It was a loaded question- he knew- but he truly wished to know any ounce of your mental state that you would provide him with.

You looked around once more- ensuring you were alone.

“Don’t worry, they all think you’re in the Uppards.” He said, turning a little towards you.

You stood there. And stared at him. You didn’t even know what to say to him.

“A shipment was late.” You finally said.

His brows perked up, “Yes.” He nodded, “Yes there…there was an issue. Has been pushed back but it’ll be here by tonight, not to worry.”

You nodded.

John sucked in a breath and exhaled, “I’m sorry-“

“You’re not ashamed of what you did, Father?” You cut him off, voice breaking more than you would have liked. Finally meeting his eyes properly for the first time in months.

Father Pruitt placed his pen down and leaned onto his knees, staring up at you, “I believe I…I do feel shame yes. For my actions, but even the good intentions that I attempted were misconstrued, I never meant-“

“But it happened,” You shot back - eyes starting to sting, “You were selfish. You just…assumed everyone would want what you wanted.”

He nodded solemnly and stood slowly, and suddenly you were a little more afraid. You didn’t know what he was fully capable of anymore, and you did not want to find out. As if he could sense your apprehension, John backed away and leaned against the kitchen counter.

“You’re welcome to stay if you have questions-“ he started, trying to give you an open space.

“Questions? I don’t have any questions, Father,” you did. But you wouldn’t admit that yet, “I am alone, and I will live alone and I will die alone. I don’t need to know much more if it won’t change that.” Your voice shook.

He nodded and looked down- brows pinching together as he began to feel the weight of your burden, “I’m so-“

“Please don’t.” You said, tears forming in your eyes.

John raised his gaze to look at you, and he pursed his lips that you once thought were so pretty. A moment passed as both of your gazes were trained on one another.

John watched your beautiful eyes well up the longer you looked at him, and he clenched his fists to stay put lest he try to comfort you. He had only just gotten you to open up the tiniest bit to trust him for a few hours that night, he didn’t want to take one step forward and three back. So he didn’t try to defend himself. He didn’t try to make you stay or understand.

He hoped there would be a time when he could, but he knew that it wasn’t time yet.

You took a shaky breath, and turned to the door, and left.

Once upon a time you might have looked back and maybe would have waved goodbye. Might have said that you'd see him tomorrow.

Might have wanted to stay longer.

Might have flushed in his company.

But you didn't look behind you. Not anymore.

If you had, you likely would have caught sight of the preacher in the window where one of the curtains was pulled back a sliver; you might have seen how he let the sunlight fall over his face; how he let the sun burn him as he watched you.

John listened to your heartbeat fade as you walked further away and out of his sight. His chest ached just as his skin did. And that ache churned and curdled down into his stomach and out into his fingertips. He felt that thing that he had once been so thankful for not feeling- guilt. It felt like so long ago that he had sat across from Riley and told him about how God had moved through him and how remorse had never come after Joe...Now he felt sick when he dwelled on his delusion. So selfish he had been. So utterly desperate.

Sometimes he could still hear that record you had played for him...how you had reminded him of his youth. Your vibrance had overthrown him, and drawn him in. That memory alone made him feel younger than the blood he drank.

The warm summer air immediately made you feel sticky. Humidity filled your lungs as you took a few settling breaths. Then as you reached the bottom of the hill, you finally allowed the tears in your eyes to fall. You sobbed quietly as you walked past the general store. It was an unwritten rule that they kept out of there- that was your space during the day. Most of the time they abided by the understanding.

Sometimes someone got hungry and waited to see if they could sneak a bite of you.

You had to laugh a little though- it was always a dead giveaway if it wasn’t safe to enter the store. All you had to look at were the windows.

Covered: not safe.

Uncovered: safe.

They kept the store stocked enough for you. Sometimes you felt ill at the thought of them just doing it to keep you alive. You bet they thought it was a mercy. You wondered if they fought over it; end the food supply to make you starve and beg them to turn you vs. keep you alive because you didnt deserve their fate.

You went to the shop everyday knowing that one day you wouldn’t have food stocked. Shelves and fridges empty.

Waiting for the day that they finally broke and had enough of keeping you alive.

You passed by more houses...Scarboroughs and the Flynns, and you didnt dare look up at the buildings. You never did anymore. It hurt too much.

The families you knew well used to leave you things…food they made out of boredom…flowers…Annie used to write you the odd letter. Then after a while they stopped.

Back in the later spring sometimes someone would be stupid and run out of their house to try and grab you...The smell of burnt flesh was still engrained in your nose.

No one tried anymore.

You wondered who was still there. You wondered if Ali was still there... you wondered how he was. You wondered how Leeza was and if her family was okay. You wondered if Bev was pulling the strings.

You missed that routine you used to treasure. You missed seeing your friends and neighbours. You missed talking.

It was like some sick joke that the first person you had spoken to in close to 6 months was the very man who had done this to you.

When you finally reached your house, you felt your heart sink even lower as you took inventory of the damage. The broken doorframe and smashed windows were going to be an issue.

You sighed and walked to the small shed at the back of your house to retrieve tools you had accumulated and set about fixing your home. Hours passed as you tried and tired again and again to make sure everything was fixed and strong. But the longer you worked, the lower the sun settled, and the less time you had to ensure you would be safe. But as twilight began to set in, you sighed; you were done. The inside of your house was almost pitch black with all the windows boarded up over the broken glass. You stretched and locked your doors, then began up the stairs to wash yourself after the previous night. But then as you walked past the spare room, you stopped breathing.

You had missed a smashed window.

The wind blew against your face as if it was taunting you of your mistake.

Your gut tightened as you began weighing your options.

You didn’t have many.

And the most feasible one made your eyes glaze over as you contemplated every life choice you had ever made.

With one look out that window, you knew you didn’t have time to think of anything else. So against your better judgement, you grabbed a large bag from your room and began shoving anything you might need, showered and bolted out your door within ten minutes with your hair still wet.

You weaved through the island's foliage and kept off the main road lest anyone be watching from their windows. The last thing you wanted was for anyone to know where you were going. As you crept through the trees past the marsh, you crouched down and stared up at the rectory in the distance. There was a warm light coming from the building like a beacon; your gut clenched at the memory of Easter... how you had thought the exact same thing for St. Patricks.

The sun was just a sliver of light now on the horizon, and you knew you had to decide quickly if you were going through with this or finding a tree to hide in tonight. You closed your eyes, and took a deep breath.

I’m here to help

Those words of his…they still rang in your ears from that first day. He was sick. Selfish. Egotistical and manipulative and…

You sniffled.

You had really thought he was a kind man. You had let him in and he had made a home of your soul. Healed you and guided you and aided you, but all for himself.

You pursed your lips. You hated that you needed his help. But you did.

With another deep breath, you began stalking up the grass, and hurried a little more when you heard voices down the road. You hadn’t even noticed it was properly night time and worry spiked in you as you stepped up to the door and went to kno-

“Come in.”

You jumped at the sound of his low, soft voice calling out to you from inside. You slowly opened the door, and took a tentative step inside.

John Pruitt was stirring a cup of tea by the kitchen counter, and looked up at you- a weak smile on his face.

“Twice in one day, to what do I owe the pleasure, young lady?”

You clenched your jaw at his honeyed words. So gentle and honest-sounding.

“They destroyed my house. I didn’t have time to repair it completely. Didn’t feel like being dinner.” You murmured, then looked at the cup he seemed to have forgotten he was holding.

John followed your gaze, and nodded, “I heard you come up through the trees 10 minutes ago…I hope you don’t mind, but I made it for you just in case.” He extended the cup out to you, and you eyed it wearily.

You didn’t see him make it. Anything could be in it.

John knew that look. The same one you had given him when he ushered you inside the previous night. He retracted the offering and placed it on the counter.

“I apologize for their brutality …many of them don’t know better. I will speak with them tonight at Mass. They won’t harm you again.” He assured you like he used to when you thought his last name was Hill. “It’ll be fixed by tomorrow.”

Your gaze snapped up to his, “Mass?” You asked.

He nodded in realisation that you likely weren’t around when service happened, “I- it’s…well…it wasn’t my idea…it’s- everyone is so lost and they need something to hold onto…I cannot undo what I did. And I know they will never give me forgiveness, but many of them are still very close to God and some have become closer in their…confusion…and I’m just…I try to keep them on the right path. The path I should have been on..stayed on. Your path.” He pushed his hands towards you as he spoke so sincerely.

You pursed your lips as you listened. You wanted so badly to believe him…but the last time you did it had been the worst decision of your life.

The silence stretched between you. You didn’t want to ask for his help, but it was too late to not ask-

“You are welcome to stay here again.” He added, trying to get you to engage. Like he needed you to speak to him.

You nodded, “My warning still applies.” You reminded him of how he’d better play nice or you’ll be dead before he can do anything.

John sighed and nodded. His brows pinched and his eyes drooped, “Of course- I- Mass is in a couple hours…but I can stay-“

“I’d rather you weren’t here, Father.” You said quietly, looking down as guilt started to creep into your gut. He was so wonderful at making himself seem small. Non-threatening. You forced yourself to remember how easily he had restrained you in the church; how his hands had held you without making a mark yet you couldn’t pull away…

“I understand.” He muttered, then something seemed to catch his attention outside as he almost jerked up from the counter and looked towards the front window. You twitched at his reaction, and already knew there was someone nearby before he said it.

“Come on, let’s get you settled.” He said almost to himself as he began back towards the small door in the floor.

You followed behind him, and gripped your bag’s strap a little tighter as he crouched and opened the hatch. He shifted away a little to make room for you to get by, but you saw how tightly he clenched his fists. Whether it was to keep himself from reaching out to help you or to grab you, you didn’t know.

As you descended, you noticed that it was far cleaner down there, and had an extra lamp.

“Knock twice if you need anything.” He said softly. Earnest.

“I won’t.” You stopped looking up at him as that guilt started to return.

“I’m sure you won’t. But everyone needs something sometimes.” He finished, and offered you a tight little smile.

You stared up at him, and neither of you moved.

“Goodnight, little one.” He murmured.

The endearment made your stomach flip upside down and your throat constricted; you ached from how much you missed...well...everything. You missed being called "Hun" by the fishermen and being hugged by Annie and walking Leeza to church and sitting among the pews and enjoying your morning walks and you missed your life.

Before you could say anything, he closed the door, and you heard him lay the carpet over top. There were no footsteps though- not for a few minutes. You listened close, and felt your eyes unfocus when you heard him muttering a prayer over you.

You almost shouted up to him to stop it.

That you didnt need his protection.

But your mouth went dry when you realized that you did.

Why else were you letting him hide you?

Several minutes later, you heard his long strides move throughout the rectory, then the door shut, and you were left in silence.

Mass.

Sadness flooded you in mourning of your beloved routine, but jealously quickly took its place when you realized you were the only one being deprived of your time of worship. The jealousy startled you. Anger was understandable, but jealousy was new.

You closed your eyes, and focused on why you were there. Safety.

The feeling slowly left you, and as you calmed, you turned on the lamp. It was cold, and with no extra warmth, you shuffled onto the cot and grabbed the thick blanket that sat folded there. As you settled in, cocooning yourself in it, and laid your head on the pillow, you felt your eyes start to droop. You found yourself breathing in the smell of the blanket, not even noticing that it was the smell of the man keeping you hidden that you were inhaling. It comforted you…like smelling your mother or father. Somehow familiar.

It was early when you awoke the following morning, not that you could have told that by your surroundings. Your sleep could have been five minutes for all you knew. You laid there for a few moments, listening. The last thing you wanted was for it still be night and for Pruitt to have a visitor. You paled at the thought of Bev being there. But when a few minutes turned into several, then you were certain there indeed was no additional company.

It was silent.

You gingerly raised yourself up out of the bed, and made your way up the ladder- bag in tow over your shoulder. You didn't even make it up to the top to knock before you heard shuffling and footsteps above you. The door was pulled open, and you stood stock-still for a moment as fear clutched your heart for a moment. The light from the lamp below you caught his eyes and made them glow in the darkness of the bedroom. Indeed it was dim in the space around him which only seemed to accentuate his dark features and made him appear as more of a creature than a cursed man. You swallowed.

“Good morning, young lady.” He greeted you with a hand outstretched.

You clenched your jaw, but took his offered hand tentatively, and he pulled you up with far more strength than he should have had. You got your footing, and noted the light illuminating the drawn curtains- it was bright enough for you to leave.

You didn’t say anything, and chose instead to dig your nails into the palm of your hand.

“They put in new windows and fixed your door…I’m so sorry that happened…I spoke with them and they will do better.” He murmured gently, as if he didn’t want to scare you away.

You nodded; mouth clammed shut. There once had been a time where you would have bared your heart to him, and poured your soul into his hands, but now you found yourself unable to find much more than a few words to utter to him.

“Did you manage alright? I know- I know it’s a bit cold down there…” His voice was a low rumble as you adjusted your bag.

“Just fine.” You whispered, looking away from him. You couldn’t stand that he cared.

“I can-“

“I’m fine, Father.” You snapped. He looked like you had slapped him; to his credit he also looked like he understood it. “Thank you.” You added when the pain in your chest twisted unbearably.

He nodded, seeing your unease.

"Goodbye." You whispered as you gathered yourself and headed to the door.

He so deeply wanted to tell you to stay and let him explain everything, but he supposed if he needed to force you to say, then his apology would be hollow and selfish.

Days passed quietly again. A few knocks on your door was the most disturbance you got. Things had calmed considerably.

He must have been right…that shipment did come.

Something itched in the back of your mind as you sat in your fortified house one night. It had been over a week since you had last been hiding in the rectory, but something he had said stewed inside you.

He still held Mass.

You wondered if that had been something agreed upon by everyone…they must have felt so lost…

It had been close to midnight when Father Pruitt had left for Mass that night…and it was just past midnight now.

You wondered if…if you could just climb up one of the trees and listen. If he still preached with the same vigour as he used to you were certain you could hear a little. It was silly and dangerous- you knew that- but it had been so long with just yourself and your thoughts…you craved just a little bit of something else.

You slowly walked downstairs to your front door and listened. It was silent outside.

You very slowly undid your several locks, and gingerly pried it open when you still heard nothing.

Indeed, there was not a single person in your field of sight- not that there were many who ever came down your way that far down the island. You opened the door a little more, and stepped out into the night air. It was refreshing when you weren’t running for your life.

You shut the door just as carefully as you had opened it, and quickly knelt down to check that you had your knife in your boot before starting to walk as softly as you could towards the bushland. The tall grass that had been bleached by the summer sun rose up around you the further you walked and helped to hide you while you trekked across the island and through the marsh and into the skinny trees that slowly grew thicker until you were on the same hill that you used to walk up everyday.

You could see the back of the church, and the bright light that shone through the windows. You had been right- you could hear them sing. It would have been so easy for you to just go back home, but you moved without thinking, and began towards one of the older trees behind St. Patrick’s and jumped up to the lowest branch, and began to climb.

As you grasped each branch, climbing higher and higher, you began to sing along; your throat was tight as tears threatened to fall, and you let them.

John felt a little tick in the back of his head that made him twitch slightly as he began down the aisle. Something off. Something he wasn’t used to during church. The people around him sang their hymn, and as he listened closely, he recognised a sound that he hadn’t heard in so long.

Your singing. Broken by your cries.

John’s sinuses stung as tears rose that wouldn’t fall, and he nearly stopped service right then to go and find you, but he was stuck.

You sat above the church, and leaned your head against the trunk of the tree as you listened to the preacher. You could have sworn he was louder than he used to be… though he wasn’t so much about revival, as he was about reconciliation and guidance. His words no longer made you uneasy. You didn’t want to admit it, but it did indeed sound as if he just wanted to help. Finding the light in the dark.

Mass finished, and you watched the islanders leave slowly…and saw the tall figure you knew wellstand at the front to bid everyone a blessed night. It was so strange to see it all from your viewpoint then- truly a stranger looking in. You perked up when you started to recognise some faces and felt your throat grow tight all over again. Your eyes burned from the tears that wouldn’t stop.

The church grew empty, and John waited until he couldn’t hear footsteps before finally turning back inside to shed his chasuble. His thoughts preoccupied him as he moved quickly and placed the fabric onto the table in the vestibule and walked out the back door. He hoped he wasn’t too late…that you hadn’t left yet. Then as he stepped into the chilled night air, he knew you were still in your perch.

That sweet smell of your skin…the gentle thump of your heartbeat.

John slowly followed the sound, and stared up at the trees until he spotted you. He stood down at the bottom amongst the roots, and cast one last look behind him then back up at you and extended his hand for you.

You stared down at him, and while he was the last person you wanted to help you down from that tree…he was also somehow the exact person you wanted, too. His sermon had made your hardened shell break a little, and you gradually climbed down to him. You sat on that last branch, and tentatively took his outstretched hand; he closed his fingers around yours and you jumped.

Your feet hit the ground with a soft thud, and you quickly looked around out of habit.

John still held your hand in his, and he gazed down at you so softly that you thought he might weep. Instead, he slowly brought his free hand up to your cheek and wiped away the remains of your tears.

“God loves you…” he whispered earnestly.

You felt your nose sting, and your lips pulled into a small, bitter smile as a tear fell and caught the corner of your mouth, “Just not enough to save me.”

The man before you pursed his lips at that, and looked down at your hand in his. He didn’t show it, but you felt a single drop of water on your thumb.

So he could cry.

And he did.

His eyes were red from holding them back once he did finally look back up at you.

Neither of you said another word before you took your hand from his grasp and left him. You took off into the brush and kept low, and didn’t look back even as you felt that prickle on the back of your neck like you used to after Mass.

September brought with it a crisp wind.

Colder weather meant you prayed harder that no shipments were delayed or you would have to hide out in the cold if they got inside your home. The autumn that you once loved was now a marker for your extreme isolation. You knew snow would eventually come, and winter storms that would knock out the power.

There was one night when you were delirious with loneliness that you actually walked into the main town. You walked along the beach. You knew most islanders would be at Mass, so you strode to the marina and sat on the shoreline. You stayed there for hours, and found yourself not caring when you heard voices of people passing by on the road. It wasn’t until you heard a couple familiar old voices that you looked up at the doc. Leeza and Warren were standing at the edge of the platform looking out over the water.

It was Leeza who stopped talking first. She stalled, and looked down sharply and you stared up at her. She looked as if she saw a ghost, and you didn’t blame her.

You were practically like a unicorn on Crockett.

You watched her elbow Warren when he asked her what was wrong, and he looked down at you with the same expression. You waved slowly, and offered them a small smile.

They looked behind them, then back at you and waved back.

They didn’t come down to see you. And they didn’t tell anyone where you were.

You stayed and watched the slow approach of the Belle that they now used for shipments. It tore through the waves of the Atlantic, and you watched as it docked. You wondered how easy it would be for you to sneak aboard, but you knew that was next to impossible. You didn’t know who sailed it, you didn’t know who intercepted the shipment…for all you knew you would be offering yourself up on a platter for Bev to serve to the community.

The sky began to brighten, and you still remained where you were as the boat sailed away.

You almost started waving your arms and screaming for them to come back.

Almost.

The sun was still down when you stood up and brushed off your pants. You sighed and turned to start back to your house for a needed cup of coffee, but when you looked up to the main road, you went still.

His dark eyes bore into you. Father Pruitt stood on the edge of the road staring down at you. You wondered how long he had been standing there. You hadn’t heard him.

He had that same pained expression on his face that he seemed to have every time he saw you. Like you were even more of a reminder of his sins than the turned islanders.

You stared back, and shivered when a wind picked up. You could feel the sun start to rise behind you, and you wondered if he was going to stay there looking at you until he burned.

It seemed like he wasn’t quite ready to face his wrongdoings as he slowly turned and began to walk away. You stood there alone as the day came and embraced you.

And once again, the island was silent.

Another day alive.

Another day alone.

November was cold. So cold.

During the day you could sometimes see sheets of ice floating on the top of the shore. Frost on the trees. Complete silence.

You had been trying for weeks now to map out the arrival and departure of the Belle and who sailed it, how long it stayed, if there were any moments when it was left unattended. Anything.

You could feel yourself start to lose yourself. You looked at old recipes you used to love making, and considered trying them out…but your shoulders would sag when you remembered you had no one to feed and a shortage of ingredients. You listened to every vinyl in your house and had started several books. Your internet connection was horrible as it always was but you tried to learn something new when you could. You were jamming your brain full of information so you could ignore the hole in your heart that grew everyday.

You knew you couldn’t stay like this forever, but if you were honest you didn’t know what else to do.

You were afraid.

John pulled his long coat a little closer around his collar as he began his trek back up to the rectory. He waved at a family as they passed him, and he found that he now received small smiles from people instead of grimaces. That change alone had him humming a little as he ascended the hill, but before he even started, he stopped short.

Those sensitive ears of his prickled as he picked up the sound of a rapid heartbeat.

He listened carefully to see if it was just an animal in the trees, but it was much too strong. He began to follow it, but after only a few strides, a sense of dread filled him.

It had to be you.

And you hadn’t come this way in months.

With your heart beating that fast, you were either terrified or exhausted. Or both. Neither was a wonderful option. John hurried his steps and walked up the pathway to the rectory when he slowed again just shy of the steps.

John had to steady himself.

The stench of blood confronted him like a wall, and he felt that repressed hunger inside him rise, but the last bit of goodness in him beat it down like a heathen. It was then that his sharp ears picked up the sound of several pairs of feet walking on gravel…perhaps 50 meters away. They were coming that way, fast.

John stepped up to the door, and noticed then that the door was ajar. He never locked it- it wasn’t like he needed to. But it wasn’t the open door that made him even more compelled to move quickly, it was the drop of blood there on his doorstep.

You were actively bleeding.

John pushed the door open, and scanned the dark home. It was so still inside. If it weren’t for his heightened senses, he could have missed what was wrong. The Monsignor, however, did know very well that there was something or someone in his room. The man slowly made his way back to the dark room, and his eyes lowered to the floor at the edge of his carpet.

Little bloody fingerprints were imprinted on the floor and smudged onto the fabric.

John knelt down and gingerly gripped the edge of the hidden door, and pulled. If it weren’t for his stellar sight in the dark, John wouldn’t have seen a single thing in that cellar. But as he stared down, he remained calm and refrained from making any sudden movements.

You were there against the furthest wall, curled in on yourself, eyes just barely visible in the sliver of dim light from up above; blood soaked your visible clothes and you trembled terribly.

“Don’t you dare come any closer!” You cried in a strained voice.

You were in pain.

“What happened?” He asked gently, crouching a little more to get a closer look at your shaking form.

“You lied that’s what happened!” Your voice was strong despite the tremble from fear and pain.

“How did I lie?” He asked. The Father tried to keep his voice as level as he could without begging you to tell him who did this. However, he took a very slow, very cautious step down onto the stair and that was not the right move.

“I said-…I said don’t come closer!” Your edge was lost as fear began to take over.

He held his hands up and knelt there on the first step, “You’re clearly hurt, I just want to help-“

“That’s what you said before! And the time before that! But if you had meant what you said about telling everyone to leave me alone then I wouldn’t be here!” You were almost crying- throat growing tight and heart beating faster as anxiety set in.

Father Pruitt felt his fingers itch with want to carry you up to his home and care for you, but he couldn’t risk scaring you before expressing his submission. Disbelief settled in as he looked over your tattered and bloodied clothes.

“They did this…” he said aloud to himself as he came to terms with the carnage, “I told them very clearly that you weren’t to be bothered I promise you-“ he started.

“Even i-if you’re not lying they didn’t listen…” You curled in tighter on yourself. Your weakening voice strung at Johns heart.

John swallowed and made to take another step down to you as he tried to quell his rage.

“Hey- shh…okay. I’m- listen to me sweetheart I’m-“ John paused then. He could hear those same footsteps he had heard before now just outside the rectory and he had a sneaking suspicion that he had what they were seeking, “I’ll be right back.” He whispered and lowered the door again.

John slowly straightened himself up and stood to his full height; he began walking to his door, but as he grew further from you, his calm walk turned into a determained stride that was in no way welcoming and anything but docile.

He wrenched the door open and without missing a beat he stepped out in front of the small group of islanders who were now half stumbling back from him.

Johns nostrils flared and his eyes lacked any semblance of the gentle man he was. His eyes glinted in the light from their lanterns, and his shoulders hunched slightly like he was ready to attack. In that moment, John was thankful that you couldn’t see him in such a state- he was certain he would never lay eyes on you again if you did.

“Did I not say that that young woman was off limits?” He bellowed, teeth bared as he snapped, taking another step forward off the porch.

There was a small gathering there, but not a single person had been prepared for the Father to burst in such a way. The attack on you had seemed like such an insignificant thing for them- like they were trying to catch a stray cat.

“Hey now! I-we- well you know how- I- it was-“ the man at the front floundered.

“I gave you all specific boundaries to abide by. I might as well have said nothing because now I have the last creature on this island that deserves Gods grace, and she is halfway to meeting her maker.” John paused and looked down at the stomach of the man then back up at his face. There was a large bullet hole there just above his bellybutton that had a ring of blood surrounding it, “Did she do this?” He asked, still seething, cold and direct. His tone quieted as he spoke now.

The man nodded, “Y-yeah she blew me right off-“

“Good.” John nodded and shifted back up to his full height, “You know what this is good because now you all know the consequences of disobeying your limitations. Daylight is one of your limits, and this girl is now too. Get that through your heads or god help me I’ll hand her the gun next time myself.” He didn’t wait for a rebuttal before he was slamming the door and locking it.

John barely broke stride as he turned and marched right back to the door in the floor and opened it back up to peer down at you. You were still there, and still cowering in the corner.

“I’m so sorry…They’re gone…I- please let me help you…I can keep you safe here but you’ll bleed to death if you don’t let me help you.” He pleaded with you.

John watched you for a few very long moments. When you didn’t respond, he felt a jolt of dread spear his chest and he was suddenly flooded with the memories of his sister on her deathbed; how he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. It only intensified when memories of Sarah’s limp body flashed in his mind.

He had lost his sister.

He had lost his love.

He had lost his daughter.

Now his eyes blazed as he decided he was going to help you whether you let him or not.

You were not going to die.

Johns eyes prickled as he pushed those memories away and leapt down the remaining steps to you and gathered you into his arms. You weren’t completely limp, but you weren’t doing well. You must have gone into shock from the attack, coupled with the freezing cold night and your lack of proper clothing.

As he pulled you up with him and gently laid you on his bed, he finally saw why you had come to him.

On your shoulder was a very deep bite. Whoever had done that to you had not wanted to let go- looked as if the perpetrator had almost taken a chunk of flesh right out of you. John felt that anger in him start to seep into his veins as he thought of someone maiming you so brutally- he nearly considered finding that man who had done this to you and-

No.

No he was better than that. That man would meet his fate when it was the right time.

John sucked in a breath despite not needing to, and went to his small bathroom. He searched frantically for a small medial kit he remembered he had there, and almost tore it open to find what he needed. He took a moment to gather himself as well. Certainly he was well stocked with blood, and he wasn’t hungry, but there was always something about fresh blood that made that beast inside him claw at its bars.

But this was you.

And he would be strong for you.

When he returned to you, your face was buried in the blanket there, hugging it to yourself. John pursed his lips, and ripped open the disinfectant wipe and gauze. He wetted the material in the sink, and began dabbing at your wound.

“Holy Spirit, please come like a dove…Shield and protect now the one that I love. Cover her wounds with Your grace feathered wings…Shield them from sorrow, breathe hope songs within…”

John’s voice began to shake as your wound came clean; as he prayed for you, all he could think of were how many times he was unable to stop Gods plan of taking those he loved. How he was perhaps still foolishly trying to stand in His way.

“Tend with Your goodness the pain that she bears. Heal now her sickness with miracle care. Carry her high far above till she sees...”

He pulled your night dress down over your shoulder to clean the rest of the dried blood. He swallowed as his mouth began to ache. His teeth itched at the sight of such fresh blood- flesh already broken…so easy…

But he pushed it away.

“Your rainbow of promise, real hope lies ahead. I love her so dearly, so help me to be. All that you, would give out through me.”

John gazed down at your sleeping form and felt his chest tighten. His last little piece of hope. His ray of sunshine that burned him to touch but he couldn’t let go. Even with your skin clean, your clothes were still sodden with blood and sweat. He knew that if you stayed in them you could risk getting ill, and worsening your recovery. He sobered at the thought.

John looked up that the cross on his wall, and closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh God, in beautiful ways, you created and redeemed mankind. Give us steadfast minds to resist the allurements of sin so that we may attain the joys of eternal life. Hear us, Oh Lord. Amen.” He muttered quietly, and slowly as he focused on the words, he found that his thirst ebbed away slowly and the ache in his mouth dissipated.

After a moment, John carefully unfurled you from your position and pried your hands away from the blanket. Then as tactfully and quickly as he could, he gripped the edge of your dress and pulled it up. He kept his eyes glued to the fabric in his hand, then once it came away, he stared only at the wound you had; to keep your warm, he pulled one of the blankets you had bled on up over your body. John wiped and dabbed as gently as he could, chastising himself when he would accidentally watch one of the droplets of bloody water run astray and trail down your collarbone over your clavicle. Your skin was coming clean, but there was still the grime and sweat on you.

John hung his head- his forehead touching your arm.

“God help me…” he murmured. If you got a fever because he didn’t clean your wound and body fully then he would fret and stress even more than he already was. It would torture him just as it would torture you.

After contemplation, John made the decision to hold you under a gentle shower steam- just something to wash you a little better. If he had dwelled on the idea a little longer he might have talked himself out of it and spiralled for a while, so instead he chose to act quickly. He strode into the little washroom and turned the tap. Waiting until the stall was filled with steam that would warm you up.

John stared down at you for a long minute- wondering if there was some other way to do this. When he didn’t come up with anything, John trained his eyes on a point on the wall to keep from accidentally seeing your bare skin, and gathered you into his arms as gently as he could, and carried you into the shower. As soon as he stepped in, the water began to drench his clothes. The warmth permeated the small space and cocooned both of you as the water soothed your filthy body. John was mindful to not constantly hold you under the direct spray; he slowly let your legs down to hang limp and he dangled your arms around his shoulders as he swayed with you under the spray like a doll. With his height, your feet didn’t even touch the ground as he held you, and it seemed to make things easier as he could manipulate you enough to rinse off most areas of your skin without needing to jostle you too much and cause more bleeding or wake you up.

The longer he stood there with you, he began to realise that there was something so tranquil to stand there with you in his arms. Relaxing and hypnotic - the warmth of the steam invading his senses. The intimacy of having someone’s body against his. John found himself humming, and his thumb drew small circles on your back. It was selfish to say he enjoyed it. Sinful too. But he did. He could feel your soft breath on his neck, and your heart beat against his soaked chest.

He felt young again.

Human again.

John basked in the rejuvenation.

After several minutes, he carefully stepped out with you, and cradled you to his chest as he grabbed his towel from the back of the door. He sat with you on the lid of the toilet and did his best to wrap you in the towel while barely looking at you. He praised God for the halted bleeding, and while he was still dripping he walked back into his room with you.

John positioned you on the bed, and rubbed the towel against your damp skin until he was satisfied. He then pulled any hair away from your shoulder and placed a large bandage over your wound. He paid attention so as to not irritate any small cuts from the bite. It would scar, but you weren’t going to turn.

Then as he pulled away, John could feel his soaked clothes cling to him, and he stood quickly to not get the bed any wetter. He needed to change you, but if he was going to keep you dry he needed to deal with himself first. He grabbed whatever he had folded on the edge of his bed and went back to the washroom to change. As he removed his shirt, he paused when it clicked that now he had to dress you while you were completely bare. He swallowed thickly, and quickly settled into the mindset that you were his patient, and he was giving you care. Nothing else.

If he was honest he wished the earth would swallow him up.

What time was sunrise?

Maybe he could go for a walk and just disappear forever in the wind. The thought was fleeting but so tempting at that moment when he straightened and quickly changed. Even the dry clothes didn’t fully dissipate the sweat breaking out on the back of his neck.

The Monsignor returned to your side quickly albeit timidly now. He eyed you wearily as he gathered some clothes for you, and had to muster up some courage to continue. He stood there just feet from you, and watched you breathe for a moment.

You looked so calm.

Serene.

Beautiful.

But he couldn’t stand there forever. And he knew it would be so much worse if you woke up in the current state you were in versus dressed.

He bowed his head and crossed himself as he muttered a prayer, then inched over to you and gingerly sat beside you. Father Pruitt slipped an arm under your back and rolled your torso into his lap. He focused on the top of your head as he fiddled with the shirt he was now getting over it, and cursed to himself when he had to look for your hands to bring them through the shirt. His ears would have flushed pink if he had been human. He told himself it wasn’t his fault for catching sight of your nipple. It was his fault for noticing that it had become pert in the cold.

John finished with your top as fast as he could, then he guided you back further onto the bed and rested your head on his pillow before glancing down where the towel was draped over your legs. He gripped the sleep pants in his hand like a vice and he gulped down the saliva that pooled on his tongue. The good Father’s hand shook as he took the towel away and instantly looked down at your feet where he started to hook the pants onto you, slowly sliding them up. Up, up, up until he had to finish the last of it a little roughly as he looked away.

The intimacy of it all had his head dizzy. It had been such a strained relationship with you for months now that having you in a state like this made him feel like a perverted old man taking advantage of your state. Of course he knew he wasn’t and that he was just taking care of you, but the guilt remained.

John looked down to inspect his work, and sighed with great thanks that the stressful task was over.

You were washed and dressed and you weren’t bleeding out as badly.

The Monsignor carefully placed a small towel under your head for your damp hair, and brought the thick blanket up over your body; he retrieved an extra one for good measure and laid it over you too. He petted your head for a moment- smoothed his thumb over your forehead to draw an invisible cross there, and read a prayer for your health and forgiveness. He was well aware that he was undeserving, but they prayers came out of habit, and soothed his anxiety of what he had done.

John then pressed a kiss to your temple and left you there to sleep. Your gentle breaths filled the room, and the Father sighed. No doubt you would be spitting fire at him tomorrow, but for now he could admire how innocent and peaceful you looked.

He cast one last look at you as he shut the door, and his mouth twitched into a small smile.

Sunshine.

Hours passed. John watched the sun rise and began writing, then read, then he checked on you, then prayed. Then began the cycle over again. If your shortness of breath and rapid heartbeat was any indicator when he had found you, you must have ran very quickly across the island…that coupled with your blood loss must have exhausted your body. You needed rest.

He had stood guard outside the rectory until twilight began- hand clenching and unclenching. Digging his rosary into his palm. The scales were out of balance, and he hadn’t wanted to rectify that so badly until now. Wanted to find the man likely still healing from the bullet hole in his stomach and make him feel the same fear you felt.

John briefly wondered where you had gotten a shotgun from. A pistol wouldn’t do that damage. Though he supposed it wasn’t entirely foreign that you had one.

He heard you stir and move from inside, and abandoned his post to return to your side; wetting a new cloth to lay on your head.

Now, he was sat on the small couch, and waited. He filed away several passages from the Holy book in his hand- ones that he may enlighten you with should you need it. There he remained until he heard your heart rate pick up again, and the blankets start to rustle. John slowly placed the Bible in his lap, and stared at the pages as he waited. It took a while until you slipped from the bed and your bare feet hit the cold floor. He really should have put some slippers there for you.

He heard you scramble for a moment, most likely grabbing something to throw at him or something to defend yourself with. He understood both. The last thing you likely remembered was laying in his dark cellar as you bled. Now you were in his bed and changed.

Johns suspicions were proven correct when he felt a pair of scissors fly at his head and nick his ear.

He didn’t blame you for a second.

“Good morning.” John murmured calmly as his flesh stitched back together.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

@littleredwritingcat @zaunite-leo @f4er1e-g1rl @purplemotif @vampyre-kin @hamishlinklaters @spacechupss @pansexualpamandabear @ebiemidnightlibrarian @erialuna @nilla-bear @vintageglassheart02 @ethanhoewke @dancingisdangerouss @cherrysugarx @daisychainsinknots @thesoundresoundsecho

[blogtaculous]

I really want to give a shout-out to the Mobile Frame Zero community for the really, really cool work they’ve done since the following work was made possible by their efforts.

So, I watched all of Evangelion and was like “wow, mechs vs monsters is so sick like for real”

So my next Lego project is going to be mechs vs monsters in a micro city, thus continuing my trend of projects that stretch my collection instead of building on it.

While Brikwars shenanigans continue I have been building the mechs.

Here they are, a handsome little collection.

I wanted to write this post to expand on the lore of each machine but also to give credit to the excellent mech and frame builders I copied from. I think I have a real talent for castles and landscapes but machines and space builds still don’t feel right, so I’m thankful for others who have paved the way.

From left to right:

—

W-024 “Ancient Ode” is one of the original War Class mechs before the expansion of their battlefield roles, and is now one of the last to operate. It owes its longevity to numerous upgrades given its stellar combat record across conflicts and operators. It keeps its original colors, an homage to the Army it used to serve.

This one is based on principles from Josh's Super Chub Marines, though I've multiplied the legs and made some significant changes to the arms and shoulders. This mech was originally going to be a melee focused machine, but the super chub legs have some balance problems when posing, and I was frustrated by the lack of articulation in the ankles.

The solution came to me in a dream (Armored Core VI). I doubled the legs for a quadrupedal design, inspired by the success I had using them against Sea Spider. Now it stays upright effortlessly and I could also use more sand green (one of the best Lego colors). In general, the four legs allow for beefier body parts and the back-mounted rocket launcher.

“W-class” refers to a time when mechs were first used for warfare instead of construction or manufacturing. Today, Ancient Ode would be referred to a BL-Class (Battleline), but owing to its service record the original classification sticks. Ancient Ode is the Ma Deuce of battle mechs. I enhanced the build with stickers from the Avatar sets, though I was disappointed when the sand green on the stickers clashes with the brick color.

—

A-094 "Distant Oath" was one of the first artillery class mechs produced, as such the it was outfitted with a now-obsolete shoulder-mounted heavy cannon. While heavy cannon mounted in this manner such as the LM-15 Ultra Sonic have gone out of fashion in favor of much larger cannon or shorter range missile pods (a precursor of which is mounted on the right shoulder), it has been impractical to repurpose A-class mechs like Distant Oath.

Distant Oath is heavily based on the MF0 frame Uhlan Marine by skroberto on Flickr. I had to figure out most of it from his photos and other resources on the MF0 Facebook page. It's a great frame, but I made some internal changes to make it suitable for physical construction. Unfortunately, it is the least stable mech in the collection because the “knee” joint is a round tile using opposite anti-studs to hold the legs together.

Given the stability problems and its size I decided it would be an artillery piece. I added some stickers from a Mindstorms set, and the “A” in “A-class” was derived from the stickers. The cannon has one that says “Ultra Sonic” so that’s the name of the cannon. Distant Oath was almost a shade of blue, but I was using Orange while I designed it and decided I loved it too much to change.

—

S-62-2 “Wild Eyes” is a strike/support class mech designed for air superiority missions. These machines are among the newest frames produced, with boosted legs for softer landings and a lighter exoskeleton to let the booster engines really shine. They are useful for sustained flight and boosting directly into engagements.

This is a combination of concepts from -SuspendedAnimation-'s Rigel II and Andromeda MFO frames that use their X-11 core.

Wild Eyes is a strike/support class because I’ve decided that machines that are smaller and more mobile can have so many different roles that it would be impractical to classify them all different. The color chosen for the only soft blue that includes the chest piece and the shoulder bricks. Wild Eyes is a little lanky after I modified the arms to be more posable and it looked very “flight” to me so I gave them a real set of boost engines designed to fly around and harass.

I used more mindstorms stickers since they are transparent, but I was able to find some for the fund that say “Danger, Jet Blast” in a Marvel jet I could cut apart to fit.

—

S-973 No Survivors is a strike/support class mech designed for sustained ground operations. It's outfitted with stronger than standard armor and a booster engine for mobility to offset the additional weight. Additionally, it's equipped with a utility launcher for tactical munitions or a short range pile driver. Often, this style of S-class mechs carries a melee weapon, and No Survivors wields an RES (Rapid Energy Sword).

This one is a modified version of -SuspendedAnimation-'s Comanche core. I changed the shoulder and elbow assembly because I don't like how fragile modified tiles and taps are, something I also did for Wild Eyes and Ancient Ode. The rifle is their design as well.

Once again, the mech’s numerical designation is derived from the stickers. This one uses several unmodified from a Marvel jet. Like Distant Oath, No Survivors has last resort munitions in the chest. The RES isn’t a static blade like a lot of other mech settings, as that would be impractical when trying to fight in between buildings. It operates a little bit like a lightsaber, activating when necessary, and the energy isn’t all that stable. It explodes out from the handle and is closer to a giant lighter than a true sword.

—

I’m excited to get the city built for the mechs to romp around in. I have a few buildings mocked up already, but I don’t have space for more until I can block out the roadways. I love how AC6 cities are laid out and will be taking lots of inspiration from there. I also want to do some retractable structures like Tokyo-3.

Anyway, have a good day, thanks for checking out my work.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

[narrans]

Stellar Allies | Part Four

GT July | Stellar Allies | Part Four

Words: Sweet Tooth, Honey, Gamble

Plunged into darkness once again and aching from head to toe, Ol’oih stayed crouched in the corner of the box with his addon curled around him. His one shot had failed and now all of that energy had been lost. It was a miracle that his addon hadn’t broken, fractured, or, worst case, amputated instantly.

That boy had grabbed him so fast. He was so powerless. There was nothing he could do to try and defend himself. The experience was a jarring one, and he had no idea whether his plea for open communication would be answered.

Ol’oih curled in closer and continued heaving in breath after breath. He was starting to get drowsy. The heat was starting to have an affect on him and the lack of sustenance was making him weaker by the moment.

How could I be so stupid! I waisted my one chance. I shouldn’t have rushed. I should’ve just stayed calm. Just that one touch was probably enough. I could’ve tried harder to demonstrate what I was about to do. I rushed and now they’re probably going to end me.

Ol’oih flinched as he heard the sounds of stomping pass by.

They’re probably going to experiment on me. There’s no doubt. I caused harm, so they have every right to do the same. Oh Ove! Juthez! This is bad! This is so bad for me!

Ol’oih leaned over and laid down on the makeshift cot the humans provided which he thankfully had pulled over to the corner where he was huddled. As he laid there, he cleaned off the bits of skin from the end of his addon.

If this is the end, I’m not going out as a monster with blood on my hands or my addon.

Slowly, his eyelids were starting to get heavier and heavier. Ol’oih didn’t even bother illuminating his surroundings. It would take too much energy to do so, and he couldn’t spare it. All he could do there was stay prone and hope that his end would be quick and merciful.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. What he did know was the sound of footsteps approaching disrupted his rest. The sound of muffled voices nearby told him that those same two boys were nearby and possibly alone, keeping him in a precarious situation. If there was someone new, he could maybe prove himself to that new person. Those two boys, however, had probably already made a determination about Ol’oih’s demeanor and would proceed from there.

Once again, the light flooded into the box and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust as he looked up into the faces of those same two boys. His entire body thrummed, making him nauseous, but the one thing he clung to from his observation was the fact the boys didn’t look malicious. If anything, they looked determined and calm.

Moments earlier, Jax and Cliff had approached his room and had one last verification of the plan.

“So, give him the food and water, talk, and then hopefully not get poisoned or controlled by the alien leading to the domination of our species. Super simple,” muttered Jax.

“Yeah, super simple,” echoed Cliff. He sighed and started to remove it when Jax got his attention with a nervous cough.

“You know… it’s not too late. I’m not trying to chicken out or anything, but this feels like something that is way over our heads. I just… are you sure you want to try this again?” asked Jax.

Cliff sighed and stared at his bandaged, throbbing hand, part of it coming loose from him tugging at it. “Yeah, I think so. The other option is calling the government or some other authority. I’m not ready to do that, so I’ll take my chances.”

“Okay, but just to make sure he knows, maybe make it clear that we’re not messing around?” proposed Jax.

“You want to threaten the six inch tall alien?” asked Cliff.

“I mean, yes and no? Dude, I just don’t want to see you get hurt again,” said Jax. Cliff closed his fist and bumped his friend on the side of his leg.

“I don’t think it’ll happen, but thanks man. Now, let’s stop being chickens and let’s get excited. This is for science! Commence Operation: First Contact. Well, Operation: Second Contact. At the very least, I might go down in history as the first person to be kill murdered by an alien in our day and age.” Cliff’s attempt at a joke was ill received as Jax’s face fell. As Cliff led the way into the room, he heard his friend behind him.

“Not funny,” Jax grumbled as he led the way into Cliff’s room. Together, they entered the room and crouched once more by the sealed plastic box to attempt communicating once more.

Ol’oih, now once again face-to-face with the human boys, leaned his back against the hard edge of the container behind him. He didn’t have the energy to fight anyway. His body thrummed nervously and, sadly, his emotions were easy to read. He noticed his ciferi shifting from color to color with every emotional whim his mind and body experienced.

The one boy who had grabbed him turned his eyes away for just a moment, looking at something Ol’oih couldn’t hope to see, and turned his attention back to him. There was something in his hand and, instinctually, Ol’oih curled in tighter to himself, shying away from the arm extending down into the box a few inches from him.

What’s he grabbing? What’s he grabbing! He didn’t seem malicious. Neither of them did. Juthez! Was I wrong?

His fears, however, shifted cautiously to curiosity and relief as he saw that what the boy had in his hands was some kind of cup with a clear liquid inside of it.

Water!

The glass came up to Ol’oih’s waist and was more than enough to drink for the next few days. The boy quickly removed his hand, leaving the cup behind. Ol’oih scrambled up to his feet and approached the glass, gazing at the life saving liquid, when he stopped short.

These boys… what if they’ve poisoned the water? What if they tampered with it? I can’t take the risk. Not without testing it first.

Jax and Cliff watched, entranced and fascinated, as the alien paused for a moment as he eagerly gazed at the water before stopping himself. Then, from one of the pockets in the flight suit he was wearing, he pulled out a rectangular box and dipped it into the water, careful not to get any of the liquid onto his skin. He reached into a different pocket and pulled out some other small item which he poured into the water.

Then, he sat and rocked the box back and forth, swirling whatever he poured into the box with the water.

“Are you… testing the water?” asked Jax suddenly, making the alien jump a little.

Yes, not that you can hear me. It’s a basic test. I don’t mean offence by it, but I need to know you’re not trying to kill me. Wow… devolving into talking to myself. I guess it does happen faster than you think. I shouldn’t have besmirched all those stories they made us read in basic.

After a minute of swirling the solution around, Ol’oih examined the water and saw no change in color.

It’s pure, and it’s not been tampered with. Thank Ove!

With that, both Jax and Cliff watched in surprise as the alien grabbed onto either side of the cup and plunged his head directly into the substance.

“Wait… hang on! Cliff, he’s not drowning himself, right?” asked Jax as he went to reach into the container to pull the alien out of the water. Just as he did, however, Cliff reached forward and grabbed Jax’s extended hand.

“Wait! I don’t think so. Look. The water level is going down. I… think he’s just drinking,” stated Cliff. Jax scrutinized the water levels further and saw his best friend was right. The water levels were merely going down and, after a few more seconds, the alien pulled his head out of the cup.

Water dripped down his shoulders and over his body. He reached up and slicked back his liv, looking completely relieved, before turning his attention back to the two teens. Already, he felt rejuvenated. With water, he was sure to last twice as long compared to the few meager days he might’ve had without rations.

I can’t even thank them, thought Ol’oih, feeling a bit disappointed.

“Good?” asked Jax. He looked into the alien’s face and noticed how the coloration of his scaled skin had slowed dramatically and was hovering between the blues, grays, and blacks now. “Well, we hope you like these then. Sorry in advanced. We… had to guess. We didn’t know what you’d like, or what you could have.” Jax reached over to the tray once more and grabbed the five little dishes he and Cliff had prepared.

Unsure of what this or any alien would eat, they had a healthy debate in the kitchen and settled on five different items: tiny slices of ham and turkey, cream of wheat, honey, Greek yogurt, kale. It covered most of the main food groups and offered variety. Also, at the very least, the two teens thought that it would show they were trying to be considerate.

And Ol’ioh was beginning to get that impression.

They don’t know what I eat, so they brought a few things. At least they were up front about their intentions, and he even apologized for not knowing; not that they would. What… is this? Did they tamper with this? They didn’t tamper with the water, but perhaps that’s meant as a false sense of security?

Better safe than sorry.

Ol’oih pulled out a different testing container from his side pocket and approached the cream of wheat. Though the substance was foreign to him, it did look sustenance he and his crewmates had eaten for years in basic training. From consistency to scent, it was something he was most likely to trust.

Once again, he scooped a little into one of the containers and poured a mixture of solutions over it, swirling it around for thirty seconds until he was satisfied that it wasn’t contaminated. He crouched by the dish and, as he’d done all his life, scooped up a portion into his hand and smeared it onto his head.

Both Jax and Cliff’s jaws dropped as they watched the little alien take a handful of cream of wheat and smeared it into his hair.

“Wait! Ah, man. Does he think it’s meant for cleaning?” muttered Jax, which interrupted the alien briefly.

Is this… not how humans eat? Ol’oih wondered. Then what’s that stuff on their head? Are they not receptors for nutrients?

“I… no. Woah! Look,” Jax said as he pointed to the side of the alien’s head. “Cliff, I think that’s how he eats. See? It’s being absorbed. It’s drying out and vanishing. That stuff that we thought was hair has got to be something else.”

“I guess that gives the whole saying ‘brain food’ a whole new meaning,” grinned Cliff. “So, are they more like villi then? But more intense?”

“Then what’s his mouth for?” Jax wondered aloud.

Great… a couple of funny guys. I know enough about your language to know you’re poking fun at me. At least you’re making a joke about how I’m eating. And what is a “mouth”? That thing you keep using to disrupt the air waves around you? Ol’oih remarked quietly to himself. Though he thought the two boys gawking at him replenishing himself, he wasn’t about to complain outwardly. They’d found sufficient nutrients for him, which was more than he could’ve hoped for given their first interaction.

He was starting to get a better sense of these boys and honestly starting to believe that their first interaction was simply a misunderstanding. The nausea was finally starting to subside, much to Ol’oih’s relief, but there was a scent that he was detecting that was beyond pleasant to his senses.

Leaning forward, he extended his senses and inhaled deeply, realizing it was coming from the golden liquid in the center of the nearby dish. He approached and inhaled again as a sense of nostalgia hit him.

Ucos! Dear Ove! How did they get a hold of this? We haven’t had this for years back home. Ol’oih gazed at the golden, viscous substance longingly. They guessed right for this. Amazing. Even between our worlds, there are still similarities.

I wonder if it’s the same. The scent is the same, but what about taste? Ol’oih reached back and snagged his testing equipment once more. The edge of the tube was almost touching the surface when he paused. A thought occurred to him, and it was a risky one.

If I test everything, they will think I don’t trust them, which I don’t. At least, not entirely. I need to show them I’m willing to trust. It will do so much for opening a dialogue between us. Actions speak louder than words, and consuming something without testing it will show they’ve done something good. If this ends me… well… so be it.

Cliff felt his heart skipping in his chest like a stone across water. He watched the alien reach for that little kit that was in one of his flight suit pockets, nearly use it, and then deliberately put it to the side before leaning over the dish filled with honey and, like before, taking a handful of it and smearing it into his “hair.”

The sticky substance slowly vanished after a few moments of being on the alien’s head, and suddenly he looked like he was feeling better. When they first reopened the container to give the alien food, the little guy looked a little unwell. Maybe the food was doing that, and maybe it was because he wasn’t supposed to be in complete darkness for extended periods of time.

Whatever the case, the little alien looked like he was feeling better.

Whad’ya know. This little guy has a sweet tooth Cliff thought.

Now was the moment of truth. Their plan of giving food and then attempting to communicate again was onto the second part. Cliff prayed silently the whole third part about world domination and possession wasn’t even a possibility. Putting his trust in his instincts and in his scientific logic, he broke the silence that had settled over them.

“Feeling better?” asked Cliff. He watched the blues that dominated the alien’s scales shift subtly to the grays and blacks again, fragments of yellow flaring from time to time. His guess was that the alien could understand. Cliff hoped so anyway. He was going off of everything he’d witnessed so far and was relying on his intuitive leaps to guide their interactions. Now Cliff was stepping out on a limb with his conclusions, putting his own body on the line, and was eager to know if he was right.

When there was no response from the six inch tall alien, Cliff decided to continue, knowing his nerves would get the better of him if he were to stop now.

“I hope so, and I hope you’re not hurt or anything. I’m… well… we’re really sorry about our first interaction. We didn’t mean to hurt you and grab you. We were just a bit startled… and scared. We didn’t know what to expect, so we’re sorry about that,” apologized Cliff.

Sorry? What does… Ah! Apologies! It must mean apologies. They’re remorseful about everything that happened. Ol’oih thought, feeling cautiously optimistic as he looked between the two boys. He watched the one moving his head up and down, which he could only assume was a physical confirmation or agreement with what the speaking boy was saying.

“Honestly, I’d like it if we could start over. You know? We got off on the wrong foot and we want to apologize for our actions. We didn’t mean to hurt you and I’m sure this all has to be pretty scary all things considering,” stated Cliff. “And, if you want, we’d like to try and talk to you again. So…”

Cliff inhaled shakily as he pulled the bandage free from his left hand. The little plug where the alien’s tail hadn’t quite stopped seeping yet. If he was lucky, it would be a cool scar for years to come. If he was unlucky… well… he didn’t want to think about that.

Looking back at the little alien and then to his hand, he once again splayed his fingers and lowered his hand into the base of the plastic container as he said, “Hello, my name is Clifford Neilson, and this is my friend Jaxon Warner. It’s nice to meet you.” Cliff’s heart was pounding harder with every passing second. His eyes were fixated on the figure, whose breathing had seemingly increased, just like his. Cliff suspected he was nervous, and Ol’oih had every right to be.

The last time he’d approached the boys and attempted communication, he’d ended up flung in the corner of the box he was in and could have lost his addon. A great many things could’ve gone wrong, and yet they didn’t.

They could’ve ended me before, and yet I’m still here. They apologized, which makes me a little less nervous. It could be a trick. The food and water could’ve been something to lead me into a false sense of security.

At the same time, they obviously have the power and strength to not care. The food and water is a gesture of good faith, and they’re trying intentionally this time to communicate. They know how it happens this time, and they’re willing to try it again. Ol’oih glanced between the two boys and, try and he might, didn’t sense anything malicious from them. They were being genuine.

I’m here as a liaison. My specialization is communication. I studied their language for years for a moment like this.

Just as before, Ol’oih raised his hands in an almost surrendering motion. He kept his eyes specifically on the one whose hands were out of the container, considering it was that one who had grabbed him. His body thrummed with increasingly intensifying emotions as he approached the human boy’s hand. 

If he was right, the human was just as nervous as he was because of the jittering Ol’oih noticed in his fingertips. A surge of guilt came over him as he stared at the puncture wound he had left of the boy’s hand from before and saw the considerable plug that his addon had taken when he was forcibly removed. 

It gave this moment all the more significance. 

I’m getting a second chance. I have to be patient and slow. I can’t rush this. At least they know a bit more about what’s going on this time and what I intend to do. Juthez! This is bad if I mess this up twice. I’ll definitely be an experiment if that happens. I have to take the gamble though. I have things I need to find out and questions that need answering, and they are probably my best chance at the moment.

Ol’oih was once again inches from the boy’s fingertips. Just like before, Ol’oih’s addon curled around and in front of him. He continued to make eye-contact with the human boy as he pressed the tip of his addon against his flesh. This time, he paused and looked to his addon and then back to the boy for confirmation, which he received with that same up and down shaking motion of his head.

Here it goes. 

Ol’oih stepped forward and placed his hand on the base of his addon before pressing it further into the fleshy part of the boy’s hand, twisting to follow the ridges on the end. The boy audibly winced, making Ol’oih second guess his decision, but felt like the connection was secure. He saw the place where his addon had torn a hole out of the boy and guilt compressed his chest. Sadly, he couldn’t think about that now.

Now that he was here, he finally had his words sorted. That was what mattered.  

He was ready to talk. 

Cliff, in the meantime, winced again as he felt the pencil lead like tail tip push its way into his hand, but this time he was absolutely determined and kept his hand still as he watched the little alien secure his tail and then step away, hands once again raised in surrender. A weird sensation tickled the back of his mind before, after a moment, that sensation developed into that same voice he’d heard before. 

“I, too, would like to apologize for my actions.” 

Cliff’s eyes widened and every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Jax glanced at him anxiously, but Cliff gave him a subtle thumbs up with his free hand which he hoped the alien couldn’t see. 

“So, it was you who I heard,” said Cliff, speaking aloud. “Do… do I just think back to you? Or do I have to speak out loud?” Cliff started thinking really hard about saying “if you can hear me raise your right hand,” but nothing came of it. Instead, the male alien voice returned in the back of his mind in a direct, clear tone. 

“I do not know. I think you may not have the ability to path back to me, so speaking aloud is your only option, as pathing is the only option for me to communicate to you,” Cliff heard the alien say in the back of his mind. 

“Woah,” he grinned, already feeling his scientifically geared mind coming up with question after question. 

“What? What did he say?” asked Jax. 

“He said he thinks that me talking out-loud is the only option to communicate with him, just like this, what did you call it? Path? Well, this ‘path’ method is the way he can talk to us.” Cliff felt weird being a translator, but his excitement was overriding the awkwardness of the situation. He couldn’t stop smiling from ear to ear at this fascinating experience.

“That is correct term. Path. That is what we call it. But I digress. I want to apologize for injuring you. It was not my intention. My eagerness to communicate and overrode my reasoning and I acted irrationally. For that, I am sorry,” Ol’oih pathed. “I should have better communicated my actions so you were not alarmed.”

“What did he say?” asked Jax. 

“He’s saying he was sorry for hurting my hand. He was just eager to try and talk to us and jumped the gun,” said Cliff as he directed his attention back to the alien. “I don’t think you said your name. We… kind of interrupted you before. You said something about Ensign?”

“Yes! Right. Apologies. I should have started with that,” Ol’oih pathed as he gave a customary dip of his head before snapping to attention as he’d done so many times before during his basic training. “My name is Ensign Ol’oih Namniels. I am a linguistic specialist, specifically analysis and translation, and am here on an informational expedition on our ship, the Rielkoh. I also did not thank you properly for finding me and my escape pod.”

“Ol’oih?” echoed Cliff as he thought about how the name perfectly reflected the little alien.

“Wait, how do you say that?” asked Jax under his breath. “Phonetically I mean.”

“I think it’s pronounced ‘all-o-ee,’ right?” asked Cliff as he glanced over at his friend and then back to Ol’oih, who nodded in agreement as he attempted to copy the human boys’ movements to better adapt to their communication style.

“The pronunciation in your language is a bit different than our home world, but translated to your tongue you said it perfectly,” pathed Ol’oih.

“Thanks.” Cliff felt a swelling of pride in himself as he glanced to his friend and then back to Ol’oih, whose sleek black eyes continued gazing up at the two boys. Cliff’s mind was whirring with dozens of possibilities now that they had reliable communication with Ol’oih, but the alien beat him to the punch as his voice once again emanated from the back of his mind.

“I… do not mean to sound ungrateful and am more than willing to answer your questions, if you have any, but could I ask you some direct questions? I… need to know a few things,” pathed Ol’oih. He hoped the boys would be compliant and helpful. They had opened a dialogue after all.

“Yeah, sure. We’ll try and answer them if we can,” replied Cliff.

“He has questions? For us?” asked Jax. “We’re not even going to do the ‘you ask one then I ask one’ scenario?”

“Seems only fair that he gets to go first,” shrugged Cliff. “Olive branch and all that.” Jax huffed a bit, but relented. Cliff knew immediately that his friend was feeling left out of the conversation, but it couldn’t be helped. Ol’oih only had one tail to use for communication and it wasn’t like they had a splitter they could use.

Jax will get a turn, Cliff thought. I’ll make sure of it.

“Okay, what are your questions?” asked Cliff. Ol’oih, for a moment, almost looked like he was bracing himself for what he was about to ask. Body thrumming all over, Ol’oih had one primary question that he was terrified to know the answer to but knew it took priority over all others.

Nervously, he looked to the ground to stabilize himself before looking back up and asking, “Do you know what happened to the rest of the crew?”

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Continue

Previous

Beginning

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

@gianttol #gtjuly #gtjuly2024

[theidiotwhowritesthings]

Congrats on 2130 followers!!! I absolutely love your writing, especially your AFS series, it's one of my favorite fics I've ever read! It's seriously so good.

May I request Din Djarin + 11? Thanks so much : )

[a/n: Funnily enough, I got two separate requests with Din and prompt 11!]

Din Djarin x Reader

Warning: Mourning, the loss of a loved one, lack of closure, angst, angst, angsty angst

Word Count: 453

Dialogue Prompt #11: "I miss you." + "I miss you too."

You had started the habit with a little marker. It sat on the small recessed shelf of his bunk on the Razor Crest. For months, you’d leave a doodle on the back wall before erasing it and creating a new one for him to spot. Eventually, Din started using it to leave notes for you. When he’d have to tangle himself away from your limbs in the early morning or late at night to leave for a hunt, he’d write you a small note. You’d leave it on the wall until he returned safely. 

The last note he wrote you was a simple three words. ‘I miss you’. Din wrote the words, pressed a kiss to your forehead, and then left for his hunt. Knowing what he knew now, he wished he had written something else. A different three words. He wished he hadn’t left at all. Din should’ve stayed wrapped around your body in the safety of the bunk. 

But he didn’t. Din left.

When he returned to the Razor Crest, you had messaged him on his communicator that you went out for supplies. He crawled into the bunk to rest while he waited for you to return, and his lips curled into a smile when he saw the words ‘I miss you too’ written under his own in your handwriting. 

You never came back from the town’s market. 

Din tore apart the galaxy apart looking for you. He had a stellar track record as a bounty hunter, yet he could never find you. It was like you had never existed. In fact, the only thing he had to prove that his time with you hadn’t just been a dream were those seven words on his bunk’s back wall.

‘I miss you.’

‘I miss you too.’

Din clung to those words like a lifeline. Eventually the smell of you had disappeared from his sheets. The memory of your touch a whisper he struggled to recall. But the words remained. They always remained. A year had passed, and Din had met Grogu. Late one night, when he spotted Grogu staring at the wall from his hammock, Din told the boy stories of you. The two of you would’ve gotten along. Maker, Grogu would’ve adored you. 

Then tragedy struck.

Everyone constantly asked him why he missed the Razor Crest so much. They told him he could find a better ship. They told him that the loss of his weapons and belongings, though an inconvenience, could be replaced. It was hard for him to explain what watching the Razor Crest explode had done to him.

Din felt like he had lost you all over again.

And this time he wasn’t even left with your ghost.

[nikethestatue]

honestly i'm tired of SJM and her bs. she's not grrm and acotar isn't the cultural reset that asoiaf books are. authors aren't machines and they deserve a break but that's not the case with SJM coz she's had a long break now and the thing is even when she does have the opportunity to give something, just anything, to the fans she doesn't. she writes a book that she hyped up so much and it's just some rubbish slop giving the fans none of what she promised.

you're telling me we had 173929 moments of nesta having mommy issues and rhys yelling at her like a crazy man but we couldn't have gotten a single elriel crumb? a ship that's gonna be canon next and have a book for them didn't even make an appearance in a very hyped up crossover?? what stupid marketing is this? idk but as a fan who's been looking forward to these characters and their stories i feel like i'm being clowned now. is nesta vs the world all she can give us now? i'm sorry but nesta has already had her story told and her conflict with rhys serves literally no purpose in the story anymore. they both ended on a good note in ACOSF so what was the point of unnecessarily dragging this nonsense again instead of giving readers something that actually makes them invested in the series? like it infuriates me that HOFAS was such a nothing burger. we didn't even get any sweet nessian moments just nesta being the rebellious emo child getting scolded by a rhys. if anything it makes these characters look less appealing now and if that's her purpose then she's definitely won coz cassian looks like a loser to me now who can't stand up for his mate, nesta looks stupid and dumb and rhys extremely insufferable. sorry for the rant but i just think that SJM is being really cheap now.

Listen Anon, it's not like I am gonna argue with you!

It's extremely frustrating. Extremely. Not the lack of book--the know how long it takes sometimes and considering the stakes with this one, I would imagine they'd want to do the best possible job with it (hahaha), however, absolutely no communication about anything is bullshit. No updates, no timelines, no newsletters, no nothing. Even about the HOFAS paperback. It's crazy behavior.

I was happy to see Nesta and Azriel in HOFAS--the only parts of that craptastic book that I managed to read--but SJM made them look less than stellar. Like stupid Bryce who couldn't figure out that Danika's been lying to her for 5 years is just so stealthy and smart that she could steal Azriel's TT, outsmart them all, understand all the carvings on the walls and bypass the beasts? Please. It's so stupid it hurts my brain.

Frankly, they ALL look like losers. Rhys is this unhinged screamer, Azriel is a bumbling idiot, Elain and Feyre don't exist, Amren knows how to read apparently, and SUDDENLY remembers all this info that she somehow didn't share with anyone for the past 500 years, and Cassian who? I think Nesta mildly showed up, but not much.

The whole thing is incredibly frustrating.

And the funny thing is that no one is talking about ACOTAR anymore. I follow a couple of bookish creators, and I've not heard any mention of ACOTAR from them in months. Other than like a vague 'if you liked Rhysand, read this book, because the MMC is even better!'

So I don't know what she and BB are thinking but clearly it's not very wise.

[racefortheironthrone]

sorry to send an ask about such an old post (loved it by the way!!!), but do you have any citations for charles' education history? (tumblr dot com / racefortheironthrone / 650366189549338624)

its kind of become a running joke among charles obsessives (theres dozens of us! dozens!) that he's actually just adding degrees to a list whenever he needs to seem qualified 😭 bc he's always assigned this long list of degrees, but its so hard to find individual confirmations of them in the text! and even when you think you've found one, there's a detail that contradicts a different supposed confirmation. but he IS clearly, to reference your stellar phrasing, superfluously educated

thanks! + thank you for sharing a perspective on 616 charles that is interested in who he is as a person — we desperately need more of that 🥲

Hi, not a problem - always happy to chat about Xavier and X-stuff.

I got the info about his educational background from the Marvel wikia (which is a very handy resource for anyone who's into X-stuff, btw), so I would look to the footnotes there.

It's possible that Xavier's engaged in credential fraud; that happens quite a bit in elite higher education. As I said in the post, however, I think it's more likely that:

"Charles has difficulty with social interactions, because he didn’t have much in common with his chronological peer group and spent a lot of his life in a bubble of other academics."

As a coping mechanism for his social awkwardness, he became a perpetual student and then a perpetual academic, so that he could stay in his bubble and avoid having to grow as a person by interacting with people with different backgrounds and life experiences.

And this tendency is quite common in the Marvel Universe: T'challa has 5 PhDs, Hank McCoy has 6 PhDs, Reed Richards has 18!

Now from a Doylist perspective, this is just due to the fact that comic book writers don't understand or care about the economics of academia and are just looking for a simple way to communicate "this character is a genius."

But from a Watsonian perspective and an insider perspective, it suggests a lack of self-confidence and sense of direction, such that rather than going out on the job market, getting a job and having to show their intellectual community that they can drive a coherent research agenda, these people just want to stay in the psychological womb of studenthood where they can keep trying to "find themselves" with disconnected dissertations in different fields.

[justafandomfollower]

Next Five Fic Recs (#19)

New fics!

9-1-1: build me up, break me down by dumbdpaus / @ayotofu. Ongoing work, currently over 5k, M, Creator Chose Not to use Archive Warnings. The absolutely stunning beginning of a sequel to the absolutely stellar sweet child, you are a blessing (poor child, you have been cursed).

Dead Boy Detectives: The Case of the Fantastic Box by @jeff-yoshi. Ongoing work, currently under 1k, T, Graphic Depictions of Violence. An intriguing work with a unique format starting off as a casefic.

Dead Boy Detectives: Case Officially Closed, Job Officially Jobbed by Mayarenerose / @acediscowlng. Single drabble, G, No Archive Warnings Apply. Humorous case fic aftermath in a hundred well written words.

Chronicles of Narnia: save him all his suffering by sara_wolfe / @forlorn-kumquat. Ongoing work, currently over 1k, T, Creator Chose Not to use Archive Warnings. A rewrite - nearly twenty years later! - of the author's absolutely stunning AU wherein Edmund was the first to enter Narnia.

Stranger Things: only i must wander by Aslee. Technically an updated fic, but as I haven't rec'd it before, it's going in the new fic list! Ongoing work, currently over 120k, E, Graphic Depictions of Violence. A Stranger Things-Grimm fusion (not a crossover), wherein Steve is a Grimm and certain members of the Hawkins community are Wesen; a post season 2 fic.

Updated fics!

Dead Boy Detectives: got through chapter 5 of (I Just) Survived In Your Arms Tonight by @ahyperactivehero.

Re-reads!

Psych: Thanks For the Memories (Or Lack of Them) by EclipseWing / @shadow-of-the-eclipse

[augment-techs]

My less than stellar feelings about The Return #4. Oh, and SPOILERS.

-Is this...disgust...I'm feeling? I mean, I get wanting to keep the kid safe, but wow, Kim; tell us how you really feel.

-FLIRTING. Flirting in SUITS.

-But pray, dear child, HOW DID YOU GET THE DAMN MORPHER BACK??

-Oh, good, she got the impulse control--or lack thereof--from both of her parents.

-Okay, this is new. A member of the family that gets right to the point~

-Why...why does this make me so uncomfortable. I don't understaaaaaaand. Q_Q

-Nevermind, this answers that question. Tommy and Olivia BOTH look like Kim's kids. And I am suddenly having flashbacks to poor Clone Tom, what the fuuuuuuuuck.

-In what dimension does the COMMUNICATOR do the teleporting? Great execution for a heart to heart, but now the teleportation bullshit from the moon to Earth pisses me off more.

-I sincerely hope that Zack and Billy go home together after this and sleep for a year. Jason can take Tommy out for his first beer, and Kim and Olivia can have a conversation about the pressures of being the only girl on a team of men that all think they somehow outrank her. This is a soft snapshot, but only if you don't think at all about anything afterward.

-Nope, nope nope nope. No. No more mystery mongering bullshit. Fuck Off.

[thomasthewest]

RPGs, Imsims and You(r player character)

Part 1

I dislike genre discussions for video games.

Mostly because half of it is dogma. If a game is branded by a community or developer as something, it’s that something forever. Genre isn’t a discussion about its gameplay content or design, it’s about how fans vibe with an idea of a genre.

Specifically, it’s a pet peeve of mine how the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is treated. It’s not my favourite game, or even my favourite Elder Scrolls game, but some people have taken to bashing it for not being an RPG.

It's an odd thing to bring up, since there’s plenty to criticise the game for. Yes, it does lack a lot of the technical fidelity of its predecessors. Yes, the writing is inferior. But why is Skyrim (and its immediate predecessor the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) treated like this? What’s great about the third title of Morrowind that everyone hails as a cornerstone cRPG? What is about Morrowind that makes it an RPG and everything after it a not-RPG?

The truth is, nothing.

Morrowind is my favourite Elder Scrolls game, and one of my favourite games full stop. Its archaic, rough around the edges, and has its fair share of warts. But it has stellar writing and has one of the most engaging settings I’ve ever played.

I’m half-blinded by nostalgia but it is genuinely a great game and a great example of adventure in games done right.

But the gameplay differences between it and its successors are superficial. Many Morrowind fans are probably chomping at the bit right now, seeing red over how one could suggest the masterpiece that is Morrowind could ever be compared to the Toddslop that is Skyrim or Oblivion. But the truth is, while some of Morrowind’s features were streamlined in later titles, the core gameplay remains the same in every TES title since Morrowind.

Morrowind has plenty of technical fidelity. There are lots of ways to kill things in the world and move through the world. It’s fun. It’s great. But having more ways to kill or move doesn’t make something an RPG (or at least I would hope so, otherwise the definition for an RPG would also include Skyrim).

Morrowind’s capacity for character roleplaying is pitiful. Choices And Consequences are some popular buzzwords cited for why Morrowind is better in RPG discourse. This is a meaningless argument in favour of Morrowind, even when compared to the Choices and Consequences available to players in Skyrim.

For the first encounter available to the player in Morrowind, you meet an elf who is missing his ring. The big catch: you picked this ring up in the tutorial!

Okay, good so far. You can do something selfish and tell him you don’t have it or do the right thing and return it. It looks like you already have a little bit of the first C in those Choices And Consequences we were talking about.

Now, in the local pub nearby, you can meet a guard. This guard is an absolute prick, he wants you to find out where the elf hides his gambling winnings and take them for himself. Okay, we’ve already made a choice before, there should be an obvious option to defend the elf and do something about this corrupt guard, if that’s what we want our player character to do, right?

The game certainly gives us a choice: finish the guard’s quest or don’t. The choice here is do the quest or do nothing. It doesn’t really sound like much of a choice at all, does it? Do something that doesn’t fit your character or just skip out on content. This is the rule for most of Morrowind’s quest design.

Some people might kick up a fuss, saying I want my character to be able to do everything on one character, like a stupid Skybaby, but I want the opposite! I want to be locked out of certain outcomes, I want to suffer consequences and weigh up opportunity cost. I want my precious Choices And Consequences.

But Morrowind doesn’t give them. The choice is to follow a thread to its conclusion or don’t. That’s not an actual choice! There’s no actual opportunity cost; it’s all or nothing, that’s a terrible opportunity economy.

On the surface, Morrowind has more choices to make, like how you can kill anyone you want, while Oblivion and Skyrim have a pesky system that doesn’t let you kill NPCs tied to quests.

You may think this makes Morrowind the clear winner for having more Choices and Consequences, but the actual outcome for killing people is usually nothing happening. Related quests can’t be completed, and you might get a bounty, but that’s it. The only consequence is that you now have less stuff to do. It’s a false choice, just like the quest above.

Now, there are some examples of quests and encounters where you still can make choices! However, from a design perspective, there was not a studio-level convention for quests to provide those choices. It simply wasn’t a priority for Bethesda Softworks in 2001 to provide that. Or in 2006. Or in 2011. And probably not in 2030 or whatever year the Elder Scrolls VI is releasing.

By design, Morrowind’s game engine was not designed for this. Having been a modder for the game for many years, I can say firsthand the game’s dialogue system was not built for handling complex decision trees that react to your actions. It’s possible, but when you try and implement it, you can see why Morrowind’s team prioritised single-choice encounters that start at point A and end at point B.

Morrowind’s design simply doesn’t value those Choices And Consequences, and that’s fine. That’s not what it’s trying to do.

So why does a game like this get the RPG badge and Oblivion and Skyrim don’t? A lot of fans might point to the different skills available to the player. Morrowind has 27 skills, while Skyrim only has 18! Surely that means Morrowind has better roleplaying?

A lot of those skills are just flavour. That isn’t a bad thing, but optimal martial builds in Morrowind are decided by what kind of high-level weapons there are available for a weapon skill, not for any strategic reasons. Whether opting to become a swordsman or an axeman is generally a matter of preference than one that would offer a significant strategic advantage or disadvantage.

Some weapons hit faster, and some do more damage, but hold on…that’s something embedded in Skyrim’s combat as well. Except that Skyrim removed a lot of its weapon skills in preference to a one-handed two-handed weapon skill dichotomy, which had more mechanical significance than the differences between long blade, short blade, blunt, axed or polearm weapon skills ever did.

It is fair to lament the comparative lack of technical variety with Skyrim’s magic system, but this is partially made up for with other toys players can use in combat. And Skryim still preserves some of the fun of magic, and if anything, gives players a lot more combat flexibility to mix and match weapons, shields, and spells in their hands.

My point isn’t to decry Morrowind as a bad game, but to highlight its lack of narrative and role-playing fidelity. Again, if all it takes for a cRPG to be a cRPG is to have a player with variable stats and different ways to kill or move, Skyrim should be an RPG.

Which brings me back to my main point of why I dislike this genre dogma in gaming. Morrowind is lauded as this shining example of what cRPGs should be. While I think Morrowind is a great adventure, it’s an adventure that reads from left to right and then it’s over.

Morrowind writer Douglas Goodall even remarked on Morrowind’s lack of roleplaying fidelity[1]. The game puts words in player characters’ mouths, it doesn’t let you create your own character outside of how it kills and travels. The world isn’t built to react to your actions in any meaningful way, as it simply wasn’t designed to do that.

You can see it spelled out in old RPGCodex discussions. At one point Morrowind was Skyrim to Daggerfall fans! What changed except for the community’s attitude?

To try and make a point out of all this bellyaching, how can we make better role-playing experiences if we can’t get a baseline down? How do we learn from this? Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but people criticise Bethesda Softworks for the degradation of their game design and writing, but Morrowind was the first TES game to have one ending![2] People were so happy with Morrowind and its lack of player agency in storytelling that Bethesda has been rolling with it since.

And now that it’s apparently too far gone, we’re all scratching our heads wondering how this happened. Why do people get in all of a huff when the history is there? You can very clearly see the lineage of TES gameplay when you look at the progression from Morrowind to Skyrim.

We seem to be sentimental about what an RPG is; sometimes it might just be games that make you feel clever, or games that you played as a child seem to be the ones you give those labels to. To be an RPG is a good thing, and it makes you a smart or good person for playing them. Games you personally don’t like aren’t RPGs, because if they were it would mean you wouldn’t be as smart/cool/clever for just having played other so-called RPGs.

I think this double standard between Morrowind and its successors bothered me less so about how similar all 21st century TES games are, but moreso about how much we lack a baseline for what an RPG is. Is it a boring and reductive method to try cramming RPGs to a definition? Or does ‘RPG’ just need to be a sort of axiom for other relevant video game discussions? I’m not sure but I am not satisfied.

[1]: It’s well worth the academic interest to look at the interview with Goodall. Apart from the interesting takes on Morrowind’s writing, it gives a very honest and personal account of working in the games industry.

[2]: Perhaps slightly unfair to bring up, Morrowind’s development timeline was short and the fact the main quest had one ending was more due to time constraints, than an active design decision. However point being, people accepted this and still think Morrowind is a shining example of RPG storytelling despite it (and almost every questline in-game) having only the one ending.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Quick Thoughts on Nimona

Based on the graphic novel by the creator of that She-Ra reboot no one likes anymore, Nimona is a movie that is well-worth the wait.

For those who don’t know, this WAS originally a Blue Sky Studios produced movie intended to be in theaters. They got about...80-90% done before Disney shut down the studio and forced Nimona to be indefinitely shelved until someone wanted it.

And it turns out that Netflix wanted it. And boy...Blue Sky REALLY dodged a bullet with this one.

Oh, not because the movie is bad. Again, it is VERY well-worth the wait.

The animation is stellar, having a unique style that sets it apart from other animated movies, as well as having fluent movements and bombastic facial expressions. The most it shines are in the action sequences, which are fun to watch even if there’s not many of them (really wish there were, though).

And the characters are also pretty decent. Ballister has a very tragic beginning to his story, as well as a character arc that’s pretty endearing.

His boyfriend Ambrosius is also endearing, having a decent conflict that makes you understand his side and why he’s always willing to go back and forth on what to do.

And the main antagonist, who is a surprise that’s cleverly revealed halfway, is a great villain representing the flaws of authority and why the people who make the laws actually have zero value on human life. It IS easy to tell they’re the twist villain, and their motivations are a little lacking, but you can let that stuff go if its thematically appropriate, which it is.

But then there’s the real star of the film: Nimona. At first, I found it a little weird how she’s top billing with how much of the story’s conflict is based on Ballister, but the film really picks up with Nimona, who is the heart of the movie. She’s definitely that character who some are going to love while others are going to hate, but I find her wild and violent tendencies entertaining and her chemistry with Ballister to be on point. Plus, her backstory and attitude towards how people see her really helps to endear her.

Seriously, I wasn’t expecting too much drama from Nimona, but BOY does it deliver with a few heart-clenching scenes that almost got to me a few times.

Not to mention that the themes of...I guess anti-police is the best way to put it. It’s made pretty obvious that the knights and their director are to represent the police system, and the movie does well to illustrate the flaws of it. Not EVERYTHING is perfect, but it’s...good enough.

Any real complaints I have towards the movie is the pacing and the jokes. The movie knows when to slow down for when it’s important, but there are some scenes that fly by, particularly some bonding moments between Ballister and Nimona and the development of their relationship. And the jokes can be hit or miss. When it hits, it’s REALLY funny. When it doesn’t, it’s REALLY awkward.

But that’s about it...So, WHY do I say that Blue Sky dodged a bullet with this one?

Because this is a movie that’s very against police and VERY supportive of the LGBTQA+ community. Nimona makes it clear that the bad guys are the ones who kill what society deems as monsters, even though some of these monsters got that name because all they did was exist.

If Disney didn’t kill Blue Sky, the amount of homophobic and conservative parents demanding that Nimona got pulled from theaters WOULD.

People already aren’t alright with the gay and mind-changing stuff that’s on TV nowadays. Hell, I saw on Twitter that a guy destroyed his sons Funko pop collection AND TV just because the kid was watching THE OWL HOUSE. There are VERY bad parents out there who would do anything to “protect the children,” and Blue Sky would have undoubtedly went down for a VERY brave stand to take.

Which is a shame because Nimona really is that good. It’s a solid 7/10 film that left me entertained throughout and should be seen by everyone. Bit of a warning, there’s a bit of an attempt to self-harm/suicide near the end...but thankfully it was only an attempt.

Still, check out Nimona. It’s fun, it has heart, and it’s pleasant on the eyes. You won’t be disappointed by this one.

[polin-erospsyche]

Alright! Let’s talk about those rumours for part 2. First I'll preface by saying these are rumours, nothing has been confirmed, so let's all breathe before we jump to conclusions.

So rumours come from an article are circulating and people have been speculating that he will go back to the brothels or that he will (in whatever way) look at someone else. So here is my TED talk as to why this would be worst writing decision they could ever make and thus will probably not happen unless they want to intentionally shoot themselves in the foot.

So from what I know from spoilers and such, part 2 mirror part 1, just things are more ramped up and the stakes are higher. So far they seem to have the same beats at the same place. Episode 5 sets things out, episode 6 is fun and games until it all comes to a grinding halt when Colin learns of Pen’s identity so episode 7 is dealing with the fallout of that and episode 8 is the resolution. Seems to me like the Lady Whistledown reveal beat is paralleling their first kiss beat. Episode 3 now for me was the most chaotic, because what do you mean they kiss each other like that and it takes them two whole episodes to get their shit together? Ah yes, it’s all the awkwardness and lack of clear communication. Now if in ep7, he thinks of being unfaithful at any point it would mirror him going back to the brothel in ep 3 and honestly I would personally feel like it is lazy writing (not that the writing is stellar by any stretch of the imagination to start with).

So let's get into ALL the reasons why Colin cheating on Pen in ANY way is like the worst writing decision (tbh I can't even believe I wrote out that sentence).

This is a romance show, catered I'm guessing to a large female audience and in which they sell us the male lead as the epitome of "down bad crying at the gym" as soon as they realise they have feelings for their counterpart. Colin, from what I understand, represents this more than any of them. So not only would that decision be so incredibly out of character, it would also essentially ruin the Bridgerton experience and what we're paying for. There is literally no realities out there where cheating would ever be perceived as sexy or attractive. It would be drama for the sake of drama and it would be badly handled drama because they'd only have 1 episode to save the thing and make us believe in their love story again.

It would kill their male lead. And that is just laughable. A romance show building up their romantic leads, having to deal with backlash, having to deal with an audience which they know is already, even before the season started, angry at Colin, only to kill him in the second to last episode. I'm sorry but this is just plain stupid and it's not selling me a romance show, maybe a drama show at best. I was the first one jumping at defending Colin when the first rumours of brothels came out before part 1, defending intimacy and the difference between those and his scenes with Pen. I was in fact correct. But this? In part 2? When a lot of people are still dissing on Colin? It's character and season suicide. No one, not the fans nor the general audience would ever forgive him.

It would be against everything they have sold us so far. They’ve been selling us something incredibly romantic and swoon worthy. This choice would be the complete opposite of those things. It would make no sense whatsoever. So unless they find it incredibly amusing to sell us something and giving us the opposite of what they have tried so hard and spent so much money on building up, it's not happening.

Now I think it’ll be incredibly angsty and with good reasons. He has every right to feel betrayed and cheated. The women he trusted and got vulnerable with and was honest with 1) hurt him badly, 2) didn’t dare show the same level of honesty. And that’s why it just doesn’t sit well with me that we get a reveal at the end of ep 6. We’re running out of time to deal with a lot of things and it will not help the choppy or rushed feeling of this season. And do I trust them to give us a scene where they have clear, honest, open communication? Not really no, because for some reason show runners think that a scene without drama is a boring scene. Although that conversation is really what is needed. So I know we’ll get an angry and incredibly hurt Colin. I’m hoping we’ll get arguments. Hell even a moment of doubt where the engagement is put on the line, because yes it would make sense for them to go « Do we keep going? Is it worth it? Are we going to work? ». The distance will add to the angst. And for something much bigger than them (the queen, the crown) to push them back together. And for Colin to decide that he will see this from her perspective and even if he doesn’t agree with it, she’s still Pen, and his Pen and she tried the best she could given the circumstances and that her actions, no matter what they might have been, still came from a place of love.

I’m ready to accept a lot from this season but cheating or god forbid someone spoke of rough sex is out of the question. It’s not them and it’s not what they’re selling us and it would be character and season suicide.

[jadzio-writing-prowess]

PP characters and their scars:

imma put some tws, cause this feels heavy enough to warrant em, here so beware: tw eating disorder, tw scars, tw mentions of suicide attempt, tw mentions of past abuse, tw of trauma and ptsd

Inspector:

His body is deteriorated. He has always been a bony person, thin with skeleton hands. But ever since he lost his most recent job and got to work at the border, he has been disappearing in the eyes.

His ribcage started to slightly show. 

It's easy to not notice. Winter had hit in its full swing, during that time. It was easy to hide it all, under layers of clothes.

His skin was slowly getting more pale. He got more tired with each day, and went to bed sooner.

He feels faint a lot more and his voice gets weaker.

He shivers in the cold more, from the lack of protective fat.

He got more unfocused at his work, which only made his problem worse.

Altho in January things finally started getting better financially, he couldn't help, but feel more and more pressure.

He usually managed to wave off most concerns, by giving from his plate to his kids and other family members. Or by just storing some of the food ‘for later’, so it can be eaten by someone else.

He fought his hunger by drinking lots of water. It's cheaper than food.

The only scar on his body is on his right hand, from firing, from his killing gun, for the first time, during the terrorist attack, when Elisa came. His inexperience with weapons and much heavier caliber hurt his hand.

Calensk:

He has small scars all over his hands, from working different manual jobs.

Anyone would be hard pressed to see more than that.

He wears long sleeves and sweaters, all the time. Prefers ones with golf covering his neck. Not an unfamiliar sight, with the rather colder climate.

In bed, he shys away from intimacy.

He is not the best at communicating his discomfort and anxieties, with his wife. This only deepens the already existing wages in their relationship.

Under his clothes, he's hiding a plethora of big and small scars, he collected from all over the place.

Some he got from work. Something fell on him, something went wrong when handling machinery. Not an unfamiliar sight in Arstotzka, known for its less than stellar labor laws.

Some were carried from the war. He wasn't serving for the whole war and thankfully never got hit as hard as Sergiu, but he got a bullet or two in the arm. The living conditions were the biggest contributor to his scarring. Bullet wounds got infected often. The brutal terrain and unhygienic conditions, caused a leg or an arm to get cut and scar weirdly. He was glad that at least, he never stepped on any mines.

Some were smaller or blended well with others, indistinguishable as different among everything else. But these carried the most pain.

Calensk's childhood wasn't easy. Filled with labor helping around the family home. Easy to get a cut here and there, not a big issue.

But his parents. They weren't much different than most, but that didn't change much, did it. But they taught him the way of life and to keep it all to himself. For the only thing left that would show, was his body and skin. And that was easier to hide, to excuse. The teachings came in handy in the war anyway…

Sergiu:

Got a lot of scars all over his body, from the war and constant attacks at the border.

His arm and side didn't have time to properly heal before Elisa came, so he started to wear long sleeved shirts, all the time around her.

Tried his best to not flinch in pain, when she hugged him too low, tugged at his arm too hard…

Did his best to keep the wound clean, after Calensk's intervention. He kept hiding in the bathroom in the evening.

But the biggest scars decorate his psyche.

Thankfully he didn't need to hide those as much. Elisa dealt with the same war pains as him.

Loud sounds, gunshots at work and screams, are so easy to trigger him.

Nightmares and guilt waves hit him hard.

His hands tremble sometimes for no reason, destroying a lot of things that were in his hands at the time.

Sometimes all of this is just too much. He wants to just curl up with Elisa and disappear.

Sometimes the smell of gunpowder makes him feel sick and dizzy. It makes him wish they used tranq guns, like the Inspector. Sadly, that's not an option for them.

He has a scar from trying to kill himself during the war, before he met Elisa. He will never tell anyone what it's really from.

He'd like to forget that. He genuinely thinks he moved on from this now. Finding purpose in the people he loves.

The scar is an ugly reminder that stares at him in the mirror.

[livelaughghoul]

Future of Daniel Ricciardo

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment purposes only, nothing observed or taken away from this should be considered fact. As a reminder, I know fuck all about Formula 1, I just like fast cars (DALE EARNHARDT LIVES ON IN MY DREAMS, GOD BLESS AMERICA). 

This was requested by an anonymous, who is curious about Daniel’s future. It sounds like there are a lot of rumors (I promise guys, I am trying to learn about F1, there’s just like, a lot), and his luck doesn’t seem to be super favorable. Unfortunately, his actual birth time is unknown (I will be petitioning them to release the actual time of birth), so we are using 12:00 PM UTC in place, his chart is not 100% accurate, but gives us a close depiction of what it should be. 

I’m sticking with a two-card pull for this since we are mainly focusing on what career, future, and luck I wanted to keep my questions relatively vague and open-ended. My first question is how can I tell if I’m on the right track, and the second is how has my past influenced my current career path. I think that these questions can answer a lot of those questions people might currently be having about his luck, where things are going, and maybe why things are going the way they are. 

Right away, I think pulling two Pentacles here is a moment, and leads me to believe that he values his career, and is incredibly hardworking. Pentacles can also be super grounding, which leads me to believe that he is a source of comfort and stability to others, even if he feels his shit is super off balance, he isn’t going to let that impact how he shows up for others. 

How can I tell if I’m on the right track? - 3 of Pentacles, reversed.

I don’t love that this is in its reversed position, especially because the card itself is focused on teamwork, planning, competence, and balance. In its reversal, I think that there is a lot of conflict with some of these core things, and in the sense that determining if someone is on the right track, this tells me that no, we are off track right now. I think early on, yes, he absolutely was on the right track and things went well, but in the current positioning, there is a lack of effective communication, and teamwork is becoming difficult because there is no coordination between the moving parts. Is it possible to find this balance and teamwork again? Absolutely, there is. I think that it is going to take a lot of work, and finding faith in the team and self again.

How has my past influenced my current career path? - Two of Pentacles.

Two of Pentacles is being able to adapt and keep things balanced, working with others, and being open to change. I know nothing of his past career, so this could be totally off here, but I believe that his past has likely set him up for huge success in terms of being able to adapt to less-than-stellar circumstances. I think that there has been a continual balancing act being done here, keeping others happy at his own personal sacrifice. I believe that we are seeing the burnout with this though, the balancing act has been going on for so long that we are finally reaching that breaking point, where it’s no longer healthy to continue keeping things in balance when so many things are stacked against you. I believe his past has set him up to be an amazing source of balance and cohesion, but I think we are reaching the point where the load is becoming too much. 

What I find interesting about his birth chart: 

Jupiter in Gemini:

Jupiter in Gemini is hilarious for me because this is communication-heavy, which leads me to believe that the filter? It doesn’t exist, we’re a PR nightmare and proud of it. It’s also a sign of financial and career luck in more than one field, and it’s my understanding that he has a clothing line and wine as well, right? I get the sense he may be branching out because one of them is coming to an end, it’s not super uncommon for a Gemini Jupiter to change careers completely at some point in their life. 

Tenth house Sun and Chiron:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Tenth house Sun is literally the best house. It’s the natural ability to fit into the career and succeed, to be a natural talent. I definitely think that it kind of plays into the cards above, with becoming too involved in the career and forgetting those other aspects of life. 

I don’t think I’ve talked about Chiron before, but we’re talking about Chiron now. Chiron is the wounded healer, how we handle and adapt to trauma and pain in our life. In the tenth house, I really am not the happiest with this, because this tells me that instead of addressing and handling some of the trauma that may be there, he instead throws himself into work and focuses on that instead of addressing the things that need to be addressed. 

Jupiter opposition Uranus:

While oppositions are usually not that great, I personally love this opposition because it’s so fucking petty. Once the patience is gone, this man will verbally terrorize you in such a passive-aggressive, petty way. The outspokenness is intense, usually petty, and can be brutal. Absolutely do not recommend pushing the patience with this man. 

[madame-ellunas-moonlit-readings]

May 8 - Foul Bauble Of Man's Vanity

Re Dracula/Dracula Daily

So, I got distracted and now I'm behind by about a week. So be it, I'll catch up. Starting with this one.

Serious props to the voice actors here. Jonathon's stressed venting over being trapped and in danger, and Dracula's fervent rant over his people's history were excellent. I was drawn right in. They really set the tension and the tone. There were no skipped bits this round, so just a reaction to the podcast today. And a little definitions bit at the bottom for the words I had to google.

Jonathon has stopped turning his back on his ill feelings and the numerous red flags, grateful even for his older descriptive journal entries to refer upon and determined to keep clear record onwards. I guess not seeing someone in the mirror and getting choked out would be too much for anyone to hide from. That and his destructive tendencies.

I like how he takes the time to feel gratitude for the rosary and the woman who gifted it, wondering on the manner in which it works. Also the little tangent, 'now I can't shave! how annoying!'. Coping skills 101.

He's not just kept older fears to heart but has started actively looking into things as well. Thanks to that he knows that there are no servants, only himself and Dracula, that the man hasn't consumed anything and that there's no way out. All the doors are locked and his window just leads to a precipice ending in rivers, chasms and forests, all easily seen from the castle. It's no wonder the poor man ran about the place in a panic.

Jonathon is taking care with his interactions with Count Dracula too, planning ahead, how to react, how to behave, what to, what not say. He's even gone with so bold a move as to dig out personal information from the man himself. And wasn't that interesting.

Count Dracula fell for it, hook line and sinker. He fell into a fervent rant over the histories, follies and glories of his blood, his people, his land. He ranted on wars and battles, dismissed more pacifist and communal behaviours, which showed a lot into his personality, his priorities and his attitude towards others. He even clued Jonathon in on who he is was, when he came from, his role in the past, when he went on about his achievement against the Turks.

Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! what good are peasants without a leader?

Overall, it was a stellar success on Jonathon's part. It could even make for a historical record there. What a thing for a historian to get their hands on.

Jonathon has a point though. This, like with the other nights, didn't end til morn. He compared it the beginning of the "Arabian Nights" or the ghost of Hamlet's father, ending at cockcrow. Not very comforting comparisons.

It was an interesting chapter. Very informative. Love the building stress, the increasing urgency and the worldbuilding.

My little definitions page, in the order they came up. Almost all are directly copy pasted, with some hyperlinks for clarification sake.

Diffuse: lacking clarity or conciseness, verbose, wordy, longwinded

Prosaic: without interest, imagination, and excitement, prose lacking poetic terms and verbosity

Demoniac: possessed or influenced by a demon

Boyar: a high ranking member of Russian aristocracy, serving under the prince

Szekelys: Székely people are ancient Hungarians, living in Transylvania in Székelyföld (Szeklerland), situated in Romania

Ugric: Ugrians or Ugors were the ancestors of the Hungarians of Central Europe, and the Khanty and Mansi people of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug of Russia.

Scythia: or Scythica was the region of Eastern Europe corresponding to the Pontic steppe. The Scythians were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people.

Attila: Attila the Hun was the leader of the Hunnic Empire from 434 to 453. Attila the Hun is used as a figure for an extremely vicious fighter or cruel person, especially in political contexts.

Magyar: The Magyars were horsemen from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Their people make up the majority of the Hungarians.

Lombard: a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774. They originated from Scandinavia.

Avar: a nomadic equestrian people from central Asia who built up an empire in the area between the Adriatic and the Baltic seas from the 6th century.

Bulgar: The Bulgars were Turkic semi-nomadic warrior tribes that flourished in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Volga region during the 7th century.

Arpad: Árpád was the head of the confederation of the Magyar tribes at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. He was a ruler of what we now call Hungary.

Honfoglalas: the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin

Cassova: or Kosovo. Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo is a landlocked partially recognised state in Southeast Europe, lying in the centre of the Balkans.

Wallach: the people of Wallachia, now Romania

Voivode: a local ruler, governor or military commander, especially the semi-independent rulers of Transylvania, Wallachia, or Moldova before c1700.

Mohács: is a town in Baranya County, Hungary, on the right bank of the Danube. The Battle of Mohács was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács.

Hapsburgs: aka the House of Austria. One of the most prominent and important dynasties in European history.

Romanoffs: or the Romanovs. The Russian imperial family in control from 1613 to 1917. Famous for the murder of the Romanov family wherein Princess Anastasia went missing, presumed dead.