#and if you’re going to give their (male) relative who has done a BUNCH of Fucked Up Shit excuses?

[sparky-is-spiders]

*sees interesting fic*: Oh hello

*fic describes female character we know next to nothing about as stupid/arrogant/a huge bitch*: aaaand goodbye!

[lurkingshan]

Only Friends and Engaging with Queer Male Media as a Cishet Woman

I’ve had some good conversations this week with friends as we’ve been unpacking our early reactions to Only Friends, which has only just begun getting into the messy dynamics we know the show is going to explore. One of the things that has come up in conversation is our different reactions to the scene between Boston and Top in the shower stall, and how we each read that in terms of consent, sexual coercion, and what it says about each of the characters. Some of us were relatively unfazed by the scene, finding it to be a fairly realistic depiction of a pushy aggressor and his conquest who is not that into him, but also not really opposed to getting sex anywhere and any way he can. Some were more uncomfortable, recognizing behaviors we might call assault in other contexts and wondering whether we should be condemning the character or the scene for the behavior depicted.

For me, this discussion brought up a lot of my previous fandom experiences, taking me all the way back to ye olden days when Queer as Folk (US) was airing and the majority cishet woman fandom spaces were scandalized, scandalized I tell you, by some of the aspects of gay male culture it depicted. It was not the first or the last show to do so, but it stands out in my mind as an important cultural moment at the turn of century as I was coming of age, when the internet was booming and the proliferation of online fandom spaces was rapidly accelerating. Because QaF did it all—casual sex, cruising, group sex, very public acts of indecency, aggressive boundary pushing and peacocking, open and polyamorous relationships, cheating and betrayal, age gaps—and it depicted it all quite explicitly, which made a lot of people uncomfortable. Especially women who were used to thinking about sex and relationships through two primary, and heavily socialized, lenses:

heteronormative romance, and

heterosexual rape culture.

Let’s take a moment to unpack those terms. Heteronormative romance is a big, broad term that I’m using as a kind of container for a lot of things, including patriarchal structures, misogyny, rigid gender roles, purity myths and fetishization of virginity, courtship rituals, promiscuity and respectability politics, the madonna/whore complex, sex as an act primarily for breeding and procreation, expectations of sublimating sexual desire in service of caretaking for others, and so on. Basically, all the bullshit cis women get jammed into our heads from birth that gives us so many hang ups about sex and love. With heterosexual rape culture, I am referring to the undeniable culture of sexual violence women also endure in a majority heterosexual society, in which we are in constant danger of having our boundaries transgressed, being physically and psychologically hurt, and then being told it doesn’t matter because our personhood has always been in question and never mattered as much as any one man’s power or pleasure. I’m not going to drop a bunch of citations for the above because this is tumblr and I have escaped the icy grip of graduate school, but if any of these ideas are unfamiliar to you, google is your pal (and please read about intersectionality as it relates to these concepts while you’re at it, because there are layers of identity that make these dangers worse for some, like our trans and BIPOC sisters, and all of this is undergirded, as ever, by white supremacy).

So, yes, engaging with media about sex is fraught for women, especially when that media does not conform to our heteronormative ideas of morality that have been shaped by all of the above, and particularly when we as individuals have not done the work to unpack and interrogate our socialized beliefs, which is often the case for cishet women especially. Many of us instinctively cringe away from unromantic depictions of sex. Many of us can’t stand cheating and betrayal in our love stories. Many of us shy away from media that depicts the unfortunate reality of grey and dubious consent. All of that is valid, to an extent, and rooted in the way we have been taught to think about this stuff from birth, and the ways we’ve had to adapt to survive. 

But, here’s the thing, girlies: most of those socialized hang ups I just talked about? Do not apply to a story by, for, and about queer men. 

Before you start yelling, here is your disclaimer: of course patriarchy and misogyny also hurt men. Of course rape culture also exists in queer communities, and of course some queer people engage in heterosexual sex, so these are not mutually exclusive categories of people. And, importantly, cishet women are not the only ones who struggle with these tensions—just the ones who are most relevant to this particular post. 

So, after that long and winding road, back to the point: this debate about the bathroom scene in Only Friends is the same shit that’s been debated in majority female fandoms around depictions of queer male sex since time immemorial. And whatever your personal feelings are on that scene, or the no doubt numerous other depictions of questionable romantic and sexual etiquette and dubious consent coming our way in this show, what it boils down to is this: can a majority cis woman fandom step outside of our own conception of sexual morality to engage with this show not with judgment, but with curiosity about what sex and relationships look like for queer men? This show has an entirely queer male writing and directing team. It is made with love by people of the community, for the community. They know what they’re about, they have resumes demonstrating they are damn good storytellers who understand safe sex, consent, sexual health, and sex work, and they are here to tell us a story grounded in their reality. BL has been moving in fits and starts toward depictions of sex that are more honest about queer male experiences, and Only Friends, spearheaded by the Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong (who demonstrated quite ably that he has a firm grasp on consent, sexual assault, and the damage that dubious consent can cause in The Warp Effect), is the next step in that evolution. The key point is that sexual activity simply does not mean the same thing or carry the same associations and hang ups for queer men as it does for cis women. With that in mind, can we try our best to process and critique this story on their terms, instead of our own?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Only Friends is not going to be a good time for people who are looking for romantic depictions of relationships and sex or invested in identifying heroes and villains amongst this cast of characters. This show is about deeply flawed people hurting each other, rooted in the lived experience of the Thai queer male community—and those of us who do not share all of those lived experiences may not understand the nuances of every single thing that is happening. We can be sure that the characters will all be wrong sometimes and they will all do things we think are stupid or reckless or unkind. Does that mean we can’t have empathy for them? Do they have to act in a way we think is morally “correct” in order to love them? You don’t have to be comfortable with the things these characters do, and it’s certainly valid to point out when you think lines have been crossed. But attempting to sort them into “good” and “bad” camps is pointless, and moralistic judgment of their behavior is out of place, particularly when it comes from a place of trying to force them into our own irrelevant frameworks for sexual politics. 

And with all that said, I am passing the baton over to my dear friend @waitmyturtles, because there’s an entire aspect of the intersectional cultures at play here that I have barely touched on—Only Friends as an Asian queer story that is building from a specific lineage of Thai queer media. I’m gonna let her take the mic for that part, and say thanks to her, @bengiyo, @neuroticbookworm and @wen-kexing-apologist for reading this over and helping me think through what I wanted to say here, and shoutout to @williamrikers whose post I also linked to above. 

[heyitsjooooanne]

To everyone who is fortunate enough to have a loving, and SAFE father/father figure in their life, Happy Father's Day to you. For others, it's not so easy. I am a young woman who is automatically wary of men. I mean, I'm wary of everyone because of my social anxiety, but with men, it's higher up the scale. But it makes sense with how I grew up. 

Think about it.

A shy, anxious young girl grows up around an adult male who made her feel unsafe because of his own mental health issues and propensity to violence (his first instinct was to grab a belt, or manipulate/threaten to get his way), and then when she gets to school, she feels like she has to "earn" the right to talk to a boy by being “pretty” even though the boys aren't all that attractive themselves.

On top of all that, she has to either stay single her whole life, or risk being subconsciously attracted to a toxic guy who is secretly like that male relative, and not realizing the truth until it's too late. Alternatively, she could be aware of what NOT to look for in a guy, and like a guy who seems kind, genuine, and secure, only to realize that he has no empathy for her and assumes she must've done something wrong if she doesn't talk to that male relative. So he's a covert toxic guy. And then she'll have to endure "BUT HE'S YOUR [RELATIVE]!" and a bunch of other stupid invalidations. Even worse, he’ll convince her to interact with that unsafe relative all in the name of “family.” Childhood sexual abuse growing up? Hit you with his belt to discipline you? Called you “worthless” and “fat”? Threatened to leave so he could find a better family because he didn’t like how you were acting? 

Meh, it’s in the past, and they’re still your relative. 

So in her mind, it's better to be single than to take the risk over and over again.

(Note: I didn’t go through c.s.a. growing up, but I wanted to show how toxic it is to force someone to interact with a person who makes them feel unsafe overall.)

People love to blame the child when they act out, or the now traumatized adult who doesn't trust anyone.

But the blame never falls on the parents/caregivers.

"You don't talk to your [relative/relatives]? Wow, red flag. So toxic."

vs.

"You don't talk to your [relative/relatives]? What happened? Oh... I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve to grow up like that."

It's an awful situation to be in because we didn't ask for it.

No one ever asks to be born.

And even if we did, I'm sure a lot of us would pick secure and loving caregivers over unsafe ones who control, manipulate, and threaten violence when we're young and powerless.

It's incredibly naive to think everyone should thank their parents for giving them life, regardless of whether or not that child lives with those same biological parents. So you're gonna tell that poor foster kid who's bounced around from home to home (and abused in some of them) that they should be grateful to be alive even though they're lost and alone? What about the kid who comes home everyday to alcoholic and violent parents, and has no choice but to be the "adult" and raise not only their younger siblings, but get a job when they're old enough to support their family because their parents won't act like responsible adults? Should that child be happy for existing only to be miserable?

Thankfully, I never had to deal with either of those situations growing up, but it drives me up the wall when people say this because it reeks of privilege and a lack of empathy. You might as well say "I grew up in a loving and secure home. Why didn't you?"

Yes, it's obviously the child's fault that they grew up in a toxic environment. It's not like they had no choice and were literally a child fighting for SURVIVAL, LOVE, AND APPROVAL!!!!

(gif from “Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus”)

If you think everyone should be grateful to be alive, I urge you to please take your privileged head out of the sand, and look up stories of child abuse. And not just physical, but emotional as well. There's also this thing called "Dissociative Identity Disorder" which is what happens when the child's brain perceives the trauma as so severe, it has to fragment into several personalities to deal with it. No, I don't have D.I.D., I just know that it exists.

Anyway, I still have to deal with that male relative today, but I grey rock him.

Funnily enough, the more I stand up for myself, the more he tries to silence me. That obviously says more about him than it does about me though.

Of course, I still have a lot of areas I need to work on. I get frustrated easily, I have no patience for nonsense from other people, etc.

But I guess fleas are the price you pay for growing up around unsafe people.

xx

[aerequets]

can you give me some webtoon recommendations? name some of your favorites! :)

i am here to answer folks 😎

all of these webtoons can be found on webtoons.com! I'm not sure about the whole daily pass thing they've got going on (which sucks tbh) but like,,, you could probably find it online illegally. NOT THAT I CONDONE ILLEGAL ACTIVITY HAHAHAHA ᵖˢˢᵗ ⁱᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ˡᵒᵒᵏ ⁱᵗ'ˢ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ

I'll split these up between completed and in progress :) most are still in progress though

COMPLETED

1) Gourmet Hound (166 chapters)

this is like, my all time favorite webtoon. it follows Lucy and her quest to find all the chefs that left her favorite restaurant, Dimanche! it’s a really heartfelt story and the food illustrations make you really hungry, so make sure you have a snack before you sit down to read it. each character’s name is also food-related, so that’s pretty cool too! and the diversity in this webtoon is AMAZING. it’s the only webtoon i’ve ever read that has a hijabi character in the main cast. the development is done really well and it explores themes of loving and letting go. all in all, it has a bit of everything. i personally love food-related things, and this centers around it, so i was set LOL

(also a bonus is that this webtoon has NOT succumbed to daily pass hell, so you can binge read the whole thing. legally.)

2) Hooky (200 chapters)

if you like stories of witches, this is the one! the summary and beginning chapters are deceptively lighthearted. DO NOT BE FOOLED! the story really develops further on and explores numerous conflicts, a big one being (if i remember correctly) witch vs. nonwitch. if you like to see struggles between two sides, not a good-and-evil but just people-who-want-the-best-for-themselves-and-their-loved-ones type of thing, this is good for that. also, sibling love! the two main characters are Dani and Dorian, and while there is someee romance, i like how this story centers around the siblings first and foremost. ALSO THE ART??? I LOVE HOW THE AUTHOR DRAWS SETTINGS SO MUCH and am unabashedly jealous because i am completely incapable of doing so   just like,,,, even if the story doesn’t pull you in, you can at least stare at each panel for long stretches of time.

(unfortunately succumbed to daily pass, but you can read it on mangaowl or manganelo!)

3) Spirit Fingers (167 chapters)

aww, this one is cute. Amy is 18 and lacking in self confidence (her family definitely doesn’t help). but HEY she joins a wacky art club!! without her parents knowing!! HECK YEAH!! unfortunately it takes more than joining an art club for her to learn to love herself (it is a long journey after all!). i love this webtoon because it explores the problems of multiple people, not just amy: her high achieving brothers, her mother who had to give up her dream, the different members in the art club, Amy’s girl friends. the art is unique and has a cool watercolor-y texture! and the main couple is just adorable, too. if you’re an artist especially, i recommend this because that’s a big theme and you get to see these characters expand their art styles! which is very cool!

(you can read this one fully on 1stkissmanga)

now here’s where the majority of my recs are:

IN PROGRESS (all can be read on webtoon.com)

1) The Makeup Remover (currently 71 chapters)

i look forward to this every tuesday and friday because oh man!!!!!!!!! idk about you guys, but i am thinking about beauty standards A Large Amount of the time, especially when i consume media. and this webtoon is all about beauty standards (specifically in Korea, but still applicable like. everywhere). Main character Yeseul ends up having to partake in this beauty competition and, with her experiences through it, she begins seeing makeup and beauty standards for the huge role they play in society. i said it already but i LOVE LOVE LOVE this webtoon because it really challenges you as a reader to think about your own perspectives. why do we find the things/people beautiful that we do? what shapes our perception? how much of it is marketing, and how much of it shows in our daily lives? what assumptions do you make about people based on how they look? AGHH im sounding like an essay prompt instead of a reviewer but man. if you like webtoons that examine society through a critical lens (gosh i sound like an english teacher), this is the one. 

2) Odd Girl out (currently 261 chapters; on season 2) 

okay, first and foremost: if you’re NOT into long winded drama, this probably isn’t it for you. i will admit im not a fan of long problems that get dragged out, especially in a school setting, but i did keep reading this webtoon and i am glad that i did! the character development here is amazing and ONE CRUCIAL THING is that the whole first season (which is many, many chapters. at least over 100) focuses on the friendship between our main 4 girls. if you don’t wanna wait for a romance storyline (which comes in season 2), then you’ve gotta have the patience of a saint. i loved this though because lots of romance webtoons cast friendships aside or use them to further the romantic plot. platonic relationships are great to read about and this one does it masterfully! main character nari is resilient and emotionally strong, and it’s great to see her ruin her enemies

3) Cursed Princess Club (currently 110 chapters; on break before the final season)

this is another one about beauty and societal expectations, but in a fantasy setting! it’s really funny and the cast of characters is heartwarming. Gwen is a princess, but she doesn’t look like the typical princess. she accidentally stumbles upon the Cursed Princess Club, which is exactly what it sounds like: a club for princesses that have been cursed and are trying to find their self worth despite not being conventional princesses! now that i think about it, this is like a lighthearted mixture of Makeup Remover and Spirit Fingers. although while i do say “lighthearted”, this webtoon has its fair share of mysteries and exploration of deeper topics. but its funny throughout

4) Brass & Sass (currently 83 chapters)

ahh this one is really cute and the art is cute, too! i also like how this has a diverse cast. high schooler Camilla kinda sucks at band, but dangit if she’s not passionate. Victor is some type of musical prodigy but he’s a brass-hole (hahaha get it. no that’s not original i ripped it from the summary). now i KNOW I KNOW, the whole “perky girl and asshole guy” is so overplayed BUT DON’T FRET! this isn’t the type of story where the girl “fixes” the guy, or where the guy is an asshole to everyone except the girl. believe me, the character development and relationship development in this story is SPLENDID. there’s no real antagonist. it’s just a bunch of high schoolers trying their best to make themselves and everyone else happy, and that’s hard! the story is carried more by the characters than by the plot, but it works well in this case since the characters are strong and each one has a presence. 

5) Surviving Romance (currently 10 chapters)

this one is relatively new compared to my other recs but it’s by the author of the Makeup Remover so yaknow i had to hop on it. BUT IT IS VERY DIFFERENT! first off, it’s a horror, so keep that in mind. the best way i can describe it is a mixture of the standard “girl falls into a story” genre, Groundhog Day, and zombies. Yeah. Bascially, Chaerin is our main girl and she’s in a romance story that’s she’s read a bajillion times, so she knows the day has come for her male lead to confess his love! except he doesn’t! because he becomes a zombie instead! hahaha well that sucks! it’s only got 10 chapters but i am very into it, and it seems to be taking an emphasis on platonic relationships, so i am very closely watching 👁👁

6) The Witch and the Bull (currently 60 chapters) 

another witch story! and the art is GORGEOUS. more witch + nonwitch conflict, too! our main dude, Tan, is the royal advisor and he’s hella bigoted against witches. our main girl, Aro, happens to be a witch. and Tan needs her help to make him into a human again (because he got turned into a bull. that is worth mentioning). this is a very barebones summary and there’s a lot more that goes on, but that’s the general gist of the beginning!

ANYWAYS. this got very long, predictably, and i rambled for each title, predictably. i’ve got more that i’m reading, but i really like these 9! i also made comments on the art for a lot of them, which might not matter to some people, but i feel like my art was very impacted by each webtoon i read. if you’re an artist i recommend finding a webtoon you like and studying the art; try implementing parts you like into your own style! 

anyways, i am FINALLY done talking. bye yall 

[robininthelabyrinth]

NHS ghost travels to the past and the only ones who can see him clearly are baby!NHS & NMJ

on ao3

“Would you believe that I’m a saber spirit?” the ghost asked. “Or maybe an ancestor?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said. He did not put down the exorcism talisman.

The ghost sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Before Nie Mingjue could do anything more, the ghost rushed at him – taken aback, Nie Mingjue flinched, and when he opened his eyes again the ghost was gone.

He still pinned the talisman onto the swaddling wrapped around his baby brother, who was grumbling in sleepy dissatisfaction at having been nearly woken up.

He wasn’t taking any chances with his brother’s health.

-

“I’m actually not dangerous,” the ghost argued. He’d figured out that if he hovered high enough, Nie Mingjue wouldn’t be able to get at him – though he still flinched whenever Nie Mingjue threw rocks at him. He must be a relatively new ghost. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but I’m here to help.”

“Sure,” Nie Mingjue said. There were plenty of pebbles next to the place where laundry got done, and he could grab one without being spotted whenever he dunked the clothing in. “I believe you. Come down here a little closer, I’ll believe you some more.”

The ghost sighed.

-

“Just give me a chance, okay?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“I have good reasons –”

“Don’t care.”

-

“If you come any closer, I’ll douse you in a male virgin’s urine,” Nie Mingjue said. “Ghosts are supposed to hate that.”

The ghost huffed. “Like I’m dumb enough come near you when you’re swaddling the baby anyway.”

-

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving! Just put Baxia down already!”

-

“You need more salt.”

“I thought ghosts hated that, too?”

“Maybe it’s rock salt ghosts hate?” the ghost asked, floating over Nie Mingjue’s shoulder. “I don’t think I have anything against proper seasoning.”

Nie Mingjue huffed, rolling his eyes, but he did add a little more salt.

“Ah ha!” the ghost exclaimed. “You are starting to listen to me!”

“That’s when the recipes says to put it in,” Nie Mingjue said. “I was always going to add some more of it in then.”

“I don’t believe you! You were definitely listening!”

-

“Listen, if I was a normal ghost, your father would have totally gotten rid of me, right?”

“Never said I thought you were normal,” Nie Mingjue said, soothing his brother to sleep in his arms with soft murmurs and a gentle voice that did not come naturally to him. “I said you were a pest. Did I ever say anything about being normal?”

“…no, I guess not,” the ghost conceded. “Damnit, I thought I was onto something with that. Also, shouldn’t a nursemaid be doing that?”

“Can’t be trusted,” Nie Mingjue said.

The ghost frowned, then blanched. “Right, right,” he murmured. “I nearly forgot, what happened with – uh, what happened right around that time. That would have been recently, too, wouldn’t it? You’ve always remembered it better.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t say anything.

“Still, you’re only seven. Even if they were scared to hire a nursemaid for fear of letting in another assassin, shouldn’t someone else be doing this?”

“I’m eight,” Nie Mingjue said.  

“The point still stands. Surely one of the servants..?”

Nie Mingjue sighed. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re at war,” he explained. “Everyone who can swing a saber is out fighting it, and that includes the servants.”

“I thought it was too quiet,” the ghost said, half to himself. “I haven’t seen anyone else in – okay, actually, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen anyone.”

“War,” Nie Mingjue said.

“You’re eight,” the ghost said. He looked upset. “How could they leave you alone like this? You make your own food, you do the laundry, you take care of – this is ridiculous! There must be people who are too old to go that could help…there must be other children! Where are the other children?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t say anything.

Nie Huaisang needed his sleep, after all.

-

“I refuse to let this go,” the ghost said. “Even if – especially if – a whole bunch of the other kids died or something, even if all of them died, which they didn’t, there’s absolutely no reason for you to be left alone like this.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. He’d hoped that the ghost would let it drop, but apparently, no.

Apparently, he was going to have to engage.

(Nie Huaisang waving his hands at the ghost, burbling happily, had nothing to do with that decision.)

“You assume they left me,” he said. “You have it backwards.”

“…what?”

“I ran away,” Nie Mingjue explained, and the ghost’s jaw dropped. “This place was abandoned because of the war – too awkward an outpost to be worth it for either side – and I took my brother and we came here, just me and him and Baxia. I’m planning on staying until the war’s over.”

“But why? You’re the heir.”

“Yeah,” Nie Mingjue said. “That’s why.”

“…what?”

“It’s ‘sang’ as in mulberry leaves, right?” he asked. “For his name? I heard you whispering it to him.”

“I - yeah, it’s mulberry,” the ghost said, blinking at him. “And ‘huai’ as in ‘to hold’…but you know that already, surely?”

Nie Mingjue shrugged.

The ghost stared at him. He didn’t blink, which was typical of ghosts, but still a bit unnerving.

“You named the child, didn’t you,” the ghost said. It wasn’t a question. “You take care of him, you raise him, you’re refusing to return home…it’s war, you said. Because of the massacre of the junior generation that everyone pretended was an accident but wasn’t, because of Mother’s death from that assassin pretending to be a nursemaid. People do things when they get angry, during war. What was going to happen to – to the baby?”

“Massacre at his conception, declaration of war at his quickening, assassination at his birth,” Nie Mingjue recited. “That’s three bad things; bad luck comes in fours, and we really can’t afford to lose this war. Newborns die easy as flipping over your hand, and maybe the next one won’t be so unlucky, won’t be a calamity star – that sort of thing. It was too dangerous.”

“Oh,” the ghost said. “I never knew.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Nie Mingjue said. “Who would have told you? I would’ve killed them, first.”

The ghost twitched, and stared at him.

“I like Huaisang,” Nie Mingjue said. “It’s a good name. Even if how you got it is a bit circular.”

-

“Someone murders you,” the ghost – Nie Huaisang of the future, as Nie Mingjue had long ago figured out, but it was easier to keep thinking of him as ‘the ghost’ – said, sitting with his back against the wall and his knees pulled up to his chest. It’d be a sad and pathetic sight, except for the way he was sitting on the ceiling. “I was trying to come back to stop it from happening…maybe even prevent our father’s murder, too, if I could. That happens when you’re fifteen, by the way. You have to inherit, and spend the rest of your life avenging him.”

“Do I succeed?”

“…yes.”

“That’s good, then,” Nie Mingjue said.

“Don’t you want to know more?”

“Why? Are you planning on going somewhere?”

The ghost uncurled himself from his dramatic misery to float down until his head (still upside down) was floating in front of Nie Mingjue. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Ghosts that resolve their business are liberated,” Nie Mingjue said. “Maybe I like having you around.”

“…oh.”

-

“One day you’re going to save the world,” the ghost told him.

“Today, you already have,” Nie Mingjue replied.

-

“Maybe I never went back in time,” the ghost said. “Maybe I’m just dead, and this is one of the eighteen hells, punishing me for everything I’ve done.”

“Are you having a bad time?” Nie Mingjue asked. He himself was having a good time: Nie Huaisang wasn’t crying, for once, and he had him sitting in his lap, a stick wrapped in his little baby hand (supported by Nie Mingjue, of course) waiving in the air in the rudimentary beginnings of proper saber forms.

“Well, no. But then again, ‘everything I’ve done’ wasn’t that bad, and all done in the name of filial piety – I even bought already-dead cats – well, except for little Mo Xuanyu. He deserved better than he got from everyone, me included.”

“None of that made even the slightest bit of sense to me, you know,” Nie Mingjue said. “But if you feel so bad about it, I promise to change it this time around.”

“No, you don’t understand,” the ghost said. “If this is the underworld, then you wouldn’t have the chance to change it. We’d just repeat this over and over again, forever!”

“How many times has it been for you, then?”

“Well, only one. But it could be the beginning of many times! Or – or – maybe I’ve forgotten the previous times!”

“Seems like a pretty stupid punishment if you just forget about it,” Nie Mingjue said.

“…hmm. Good point.”

“You’re prone to anxiety, aren’t you?” Nie Mingjue said to the Nie Huaisang in his arms, who made an expression that was clearly his best effort at smiling. He was still building up those facial muscles. “We’ll have to work on that, in this life.”

“Hey!”

-

“Okay, so, positing that this whole living in an abandoned outpost is a real thing that is happened and is still happening, which I’m still not convinced of –”

“I don’t seem like the type to run away?”

“…you were always very righteous.”

“Sometimes, righteous people do stupid things,” Nie Mingjue said.

“Remind me to tell you about someone called Wei Wuxian,” the ghost said, now thoroughly distracted. “He’s more or less the walking, talking incarnation of that…”

“Did he have a sad childhood?”

“What? I mean, I guess so? His parents died, he lived on the streets for a while, developed a fear of dogs, but then he got rescued by Jiang Fengmian and adopted, so – are you taking notes?”

“How else am I supposed to keep track of all these names?”

-

“Maybe you should go pick up Meng Yao. If you’re planning on changing things, I mean.”

Nie Mingjue squinted at the ghost, who was supervising the stew he was making. It was meat, for once – a pheasant that had conveniently gotten scared to death. The ghost had gotten very creative in how he could help out despite his general incorporeality. “Isn’t that the name of the person who eventually kills me?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why would I go help him?”

“…he had a very sad childhood?”

“If I adopt everyone you say had a sad childhood, there won’t be a junior generation anymore,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. “They’ll all be Nie sect.”

“And it would be better for them.”

“Annoying for me, though.”

-

“ – and that’s what demonic cultivation is,” the ghost concluded. “Why do you ask?”

“I have absolutely no reason to be interested in a type of cultivation specifically designed to make dead creatures do what I say, including shutting up whenever they’ve started talking in the middle of the night,” Nie Mingjue said, yawning. “None whatsoever.”

“It’s not that late, it’s only – hmm. Oops.”

-

“It’s not that different from what I do with Baxia,” Nie Mingjue argued.

“What you do with Baxia eventually kills you,” the ghost argued back.

“I thought you said I was murdered?”

“Through an existing weakness!”

“Without which the world will end, so it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine at all!”

“I’m just saying, it would be –”

“No! I am not letting you demonically cultivate with me, and that’s final!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

“Your older self is so annoying,” Nie Mingjue told Nie Huaisang after the ghost had stormed off. Through a wall, no less, and that was purely to be especially dramatic about it since Nie Mingjue knew that he knew where the doors were. “Such a pest!”

-

“If we’re going to do this – I can’t believe we’re going to do this – we’re doing it slowly,” the ghost said. “You hear me? Slowly. I don’t care how much of a cultivation genius you are.”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“And no one ever finds out about it, okay? No one. If someone happens to see me, you need to lie and say that I – that I’m –”

“A saber spirit?”

“Shut up.”

-

“Baba!” Nie Huaisang burbled, or at least something that sounded vaguely similar. He was probably a few months too young for actual speech, though.

“Da-ge,” Nie Mingjue corrected, just in case.

The ghost sniggered. “So much of my childhood is suddenly explained, you have no idea.”

“I think I’m going to tell him to call you mama,” Nie Mingjue said thoughtfully. “What do you think that’ll explain?”

-

“You’re depressingly good at this,” the ghost said. “I mean, everyone always said you were a genius, but you’re really good at cultivation.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged.

“I still think you should hold off on the demonic cultivation aspects.”

“We’ve already agreed to disagree,” Nie Mingjue said. “And knowing demonic cultivation helps me refine my cultivation of Baxia as well – I can filter out only the finest resentful energy for her.”

“You make it sound like cat food.”

“Since you also thrive on resentful energy, what does that make you?”

“A mouse, surely.”

“Nah. Hedgehog.”

The ghost acted as if it had been stabbed and fell over backwards.

Dramatic bastard.

-

“There’s a person outside,” the ghost said. “They’re at the edge of the boundaries.”

Nie Mingjue could feel his shoulders stiffen. “What are they wearing?”

“Nie colors. I would’ve taken care of it myself if it was a Wen.”

They’d had an incident with a Wen squad coming too close, once.

The ghost, strengthened by Nie Mingjue’s demonic cultivation and the bond he’d formed between him and Baxia, had ripped the cultivators in the Wen patrol squad to pieces before they’d gotten too close.

Nie Mingjue had told him that he appreciated the enthusiasm, but to try to keep the mess down a bit next time. All that blood had attracted predators willing to feast on human flesh, and Nie Huaisang was still small.

“What boundary?” he asked, and went to go look down at it from one of the windows. “Oh.”

“Is this going to be a problem?” the ghost wanted to know.

Nie Mingjue looked at the man walking up. “No,” he said. “No problem.”

“What does he want? Is he going to make trouble for Sangsang?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said. “Just for me.”

He waited outside the door, Baxia in his hand.

His father came to a stop a reasonable distance away. “What will it cost for you to return?” he asked.

It was about what Nie Mingjue had expected. They were a practical family.

Nie Mingjue didn’t have memories of his future life, and the ghost didn’t remember this period of his previous life: the months they had spent together in this abandoned fortress, the way Nie Mingjue taught him to smile and to crawl, fed him and changed him and slept with him to calm him, the life they had shared in the world without the ghost.

Still, he had asked the ghost the questions he had wanted answered, casually dropping names into conversation with the ghost to judge his response, and he figured out what his answer must have been in that life before.

He’d asked for the heads of those that had directly threatened Nie Huaisang, and an oath that the sect would honor Nie Huaisang as the heir, that he would be sect leader following Nie Mingjue. He’d gotten what he’d asked for, but what had been meant as a gift had in the end only been a burden – the ghost wouldn’t have been so desperate to come back to this time if it wasn’t.

He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

He smiled.

“I’d like to make some changes,” he said, thinking of all the people that the ghost had talked about – all the ones who had sad childhoods. Many were the children of the other Great Sects, which would make things tricky to start – most people didn’t want their children raised by outsiders – but he’d thought of ways to make it work, and he knew the investment would ultimately bear fruit. His father, ruthless as he was, would understand that part of it, at least, even if he didn’t understand the rest. “Back me in full, or lose me forever.”

This was even more of a gamble than what he had asked for in his past life. A few heads, even of loyal servants, didn’t matter much, compared to blood – a blank slate was a far more dangerous request.

His father looked him over, and Nie Mingjue knew that he was calculating whether it was worth it. Whether it was Nie Mingjue’s head that he should take, this time, since he himself was still young enough to have more sons. But Nie Mingjue had learned from the ghost all the secrets he’d known about his own future cultivation, added to it the demonic cultivation he’d deduced, and he was, in the end, a genius.

There was a reason he was confident enough to make the request.

“Very well,” his father said. “I will back you.”

-

They told everyone that the ghost was an ancestor.

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 4

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1, 2 and 3. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1-3. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Loghain sequences, where it jumps out of the HoF’s point of view to let the player see what Loghain is up to, were added quite late on in development. Some of the dream sequences (like the HoF’s dream of the Archdemon) were also probably added quite late. Those sequences were added as they felt that they needed to have more indication of the larger goings-on in terms of what Loghain was up to, since they had cut some stuff that was meant to have shown this. Cutting things can be funny like that as you’re then left trying to explain the holes.

An original Archdemon concept drawing had them as a lot more demonic as opposed to draconic, with blank all-black faces, a giant ornate crown, smoke, tentacles and a Cthulhu-esque feel. Things change a lot during the concept phase however. At the time, DG wasn’t sure if he liked the changing of the ‘demon’ into a ‘dragon’, but over time he digs it - it sorta implies some things about the nature of dragons in the world that they later decided “yes, that is probably the case”. They then worked that more into the lore so that dragons weren’t just there to be huge lizards. Given the difficulty the team had modelling things like tentacles and snakes, the original Archdemon concept would probably have been iterated on and would’ve had to become something else eventually anyway.

Having the party camp was probably always part of James Ohlen’s plan. Originally, there was going to be different camps in specific places around the map. They then made it a sort of ‘pocket area’ that the player always ‘took with them’, but here they had problems figuring out things like what would happen if the player rested while in an interior location as opposed to somewhere out in the wilderness, “like, does that change it?” For a while there was a complicated system where the party members would do things in camp that would give the player items and help out in such ways - like a party member who made potions, ones that could be interacted with and asked to craft, a whole crafting system relating to that, etc (this all got cut). This was supposed to act as a reason for the player to return to camp and have more interactions at camp; they didn’t want the camp just to be ‘the place you go just to talk to followers’. A good portion of the team considered dialogue to be boring and not an activity that was engaged in.

As soon as hair/beard hair came past the ‘clipping plane’ of the neck, they had real trouble getting it to move due to lack of proper cloth physics and the troubles they had with hair. Beards were rectangular strips that dangled from the chin with the beard texture attached to it. Sometimes certain points were connected to the chest which is why there’s the weird stretching if models move in certain ways. This happens with robes as well. The reason they did this is so that there’s no clipping. For some reason the BW animation team was so averse to clipping compared to other games from elsewhere which sometimes have a bit of clipping that they’re actually not fussed about. At one point they had a big fight on the DA team because the art team said “We need to make every entrance and doorway [including tents] about twice the size that it is, about Shale-size specifically, because of Shale” because they were worried that there would be scenes where Shale would clip through the wall, and about how this would look to players. Others responded that it’d be rare where Shale would be seen going through a door and also that nobody really cares (as in it’s not a big deal). DG half-seriously suggested that instead of making every door bigger, have it so that after entering the door’s texture at the sides and above it would look cracked and have an outline of Shale’s arms and head as if she’d just barreled her way through the stonework. In the end Shale’s size was reduced as a solution to this (so Shale was originally intended to be a lot larger). This is an example of a place where different parts of the team had different priorities in development. It was pointed out that in the end having giant doors may not have made much difference, as every interior in DA is massive in terms of floor and ceiling-space, as well as items (huge jugs of ale etc) anyway.

Weapons and staves hover on characters’ backs due to the team’s aforementioned aversion to clipping. Originally there were plans for scabbards and straps, but they didn’t have the resources for these and they were also concerned about staves clipping through straps, especially when being ‘drawn’ for combat, even though that would just be a second or so. So this is why we instead have floating magnetically-attached-looking weapons.

DG wrote Nature of the Beast including all of the Brecilian Forest, it’s possibly his favorite plot/questline out of the ones he wrote for DAO. It’s one of the plots that survived best from first inception to final result. One of the prominent cultural features of Ferelden is the werewolves, and so DG had to make ‘the werewolf plot’. All the initial plots were split up like that (the werewolf plot, the dwarf plot, etc). Originally there was a separate ‘elf plot’ but it got joined together with the werewolf one. DG had an idea for a being that was like male and female, terrible and kind, beautiful and horrible and so forth - both at once, like the way nature is. This was the vague initial idea from which this plot grew. The nature spirit encountered is the flipside of the being. The spirit of the forest is both male and female, or something akin to being bigender (both rather than neither). There’s not much difference between the Lady and Witherfang. DG finds it so weird hearing the DAO Dalish elves’ American accents (since their accents were changed for the next game). The American Dalish elf accents bugged DG enough that when they got to DA2, he said to Caroline Livingstone “can we just retcon this” and she was like “yeah”. “I think we underestimated how weird prevalent American accents in the game alongside the British ones would be”. Zathrian is voiced by Tim Russ (Tuvok from Star Trek).

The Cammen-Gheyna plot is a fairly ‘nothing-y’ sidequest relatively speaking, but is so complex in terms of how many options and paths through it that it has that DG got a big of a finger-wagging for it and some people were not happy. LE commented that this quest is “an extremely Gaider plot”, as the player can ruin everyone’s lives in it. Gheyna’s pronunciation of Andaran atish'an is incorrect. This phrase is one of the ones that got mixed up in the pronunciation guide and one of the ones that when they got to DA2, DG was like “ignore what we did before, here’s the new pronunciation files”. One of the first ‘images’ the team had of the Dalish was that they had reindeer-like creatures that pulled the aravels. In DAO aravels look more like standard wagons than the ones in the ‘images’, and they weren’t shown properly. Aravels are wagons but they’re supposed to have big sails (not naval-style sails on top) all over the place to catch the wind, so that they look like a bunch of ships being drawn across a field. They got closer to how they’re supposed to be in DAI. At one point the artists sat DG down and asked him what should set the Dalish apart visually. “Funny you should ask, I have some very specific ideas about what the Dalish should look like that have just never been done”. [I think here he meant hadn’t yet been implemented in the franchise] “Oh, we just thought they were ‘people with wagons’.” “Nobody reads documentation...”

The lamps in the Brecilian Forest are a bit random. They put light sources everywhere and it seems like the Brecilian lamp thing was art-asset use that boiled down to “guess it’s an elven forest?”. The Deep Roads were supposed to be properly dark. The team had a lot of conversations over how dark they could or should make the Deep Roads. They constantly had beams of light coming from above and it was like “this is supposed to be like a mile underground, why are there sunbeams coming through cracks in the ceiling” - the answer is it looks good and they didn’t want to do proper darkness. By DAI, they got closer to the ‘look’ the Deep Roads are supposed to have. This is a recurring theme in the DA franchise lol. “This was a weakness in our team and processes, that it took two titles before we got on board with each other and with the vision.” But they had plenty of good strengths too! DG wishes they had iterated a bit more on the werewolves’ look.

“Evil options” was always one of the big conversations that they had. DG wasn’t a fan of the evil options because they mostly boiled down to being a big jerk. The reason for this is a lengthy design discussion that relies on interface - proper, smart evil usually implies some kind of deception, and how do you indicate to the player that the option they’re about to take has a more cleverly-sinister aspect to it (as opposed to simple Intimidate options)? They didn’t really enjoy just letting the player run around being an asshole to people, “do we have to service this hyuk-hyuk-hyuk, particular type of enjoyment?” DG wishes they had figured out how to do the evil stuff a little better (feeling that in a game, doing good has less merit unless there’s temptation to do evil, and that evil paths should be more materially rewarding). 

DG wrote The Dawn Will Come with some help from PW and Karin Weekes. It was the first song he wrote. Trevor Morris sent him the tune and he listened to it many times and wrote out the lyrics. PW and KW helped him make it “less awkward and cringey”. “They’re very good at that”. PW is good at poetry, KW is more musical and knows more about music. “If you get something which is as ridiculous as it is memorable, it’s probably Sheryl. If you get something that’s beautiful prose, it’s probably Mary. Something in-between is probably PW.” The DAI bardsongs were written by an external party brought in specially to do so. This required a fair bit of review and revision to make sure they followed DA lore. “It’s a problem we’ve always had trying to work with third parties, they tend to think that anything that falls under the umbrella of ‘medieval fantasy’ would fit in DA”. (Here DG groaned a bit thinking about Orson Scott Card.)

On the Grand Oak and co: “After I finished writing this I totally regretted it. It’s a big dialogue and there’s a lot involved in this quest. Do you know how hard it is to make somebody rhyme in a way that’s not completely cringey for the entire dialogue? I was three quarters into it and I so wanted to stop but I was past the point of no return. But I did it! And it worked out.” The Grand Oak should have been a LotR-style ent-like being in terms of animations and presence. When DG sees the Oak’s stationary pose he’s reminded of Silence of the Lambs. When he finished the Grand Oak and hermit quest he was like “I make way more trouble for myself than I should”. The Hermit cycles through random animations outside of conversation because he’s supposed to be twitchy and weird.

The haunted empty camp side encounter was a pain for the tech designers to make work because there’s no NPC to talk to. It was a pain whenever companions had to offer critical information like in these sorts of parts in fact, as they had to write 9 versions of each ‘line’ (1 for each companion).

There are certain spells/abilities in D&D that can make a GM’s life frustrating, such as teleportation, telling the future, resurrection. The fact that death is not permanent, for instance, should be a huge thing that affects society and how the people in it view death. This is why they were thinking stuff like “If every low-level mage in the setting had a skill like ‘Charm Person’, what would non-mages make of that?” This ties back to discussions in previous part/s where there are lore rules like no teleportation. DA was originally envisioned as a low-magic setting, but this didn’t last long [this subject is also covered in previous part/s]. The rules of magic didn’t really change though, they just weren’t really communicated that well to the other teams in the early days. They slowly realized that it was incumbent on the design team to explain and sell to the other teams the vision, not just expect them to read documentation. They were also constantly fighting against their own presuppositions of “DA is like D&D”.

Desire demons were supposed to be genderless. DG isn’t a fan of how the Fade turned out in DAO. The quests themselves were too long; they couldn’t do all the original plans they had for them so there was a lot of iteration, “then we ended up settling for something not very exciting”. Another big fight the team had was about whether they should have permanent death since DA was a more realistic world? One side’s argument was that ‘if you don’t allow for resurrection then we can’t have death in combat’. DG wondered if there was a different dichotomy they could get to but didn’t want to dictate how combat should work or tell combat designers how to do their job, as he wasn’t the one doing that work.

One of the best moves they made when working on DAI was the concept artist consulting cosplayers. This was good work not only in a fashion sense but also in that it led to making outfits for characters that someone could actually wear (contrast those with Sebastian’s outfit, which DG remembers cosplayers having trouble making functional/wearable and putting together). DG really wasn’t keen at all on Cole’s hat. When designing the clothing-clothing in DAO, the artists were trying to get the most variation for clothing out of assembling pieces. For the sake of variation they allowed pieces to go together that really shouldn’t go together. This allowed for a larger number of clothing options to be made out of a smaller number of clothing models/textures.

In Neverwinter Nights they added a “jiggle mesh” to the engine, it was used in only one place (Aribeth’s cleavage).

Writers are the first ones that jump onto a project, so when last touches and polish is being added to a game they’re often not aware of it. Once the writing is more or less locked down for a game, they start working on the next project. On every project at some point they had to have what they called the “profanity meeting”, where they decide what types of profanity exist in that world, what level of profanity they’re accepting, establishing the standard on this front, etc. This leads to fun meetings where they go through every profanity that they know and try to create new ones. “Maker’s breath!” and “Void take you!” are some of these kinds of things. They needed exclamations akin to “Goddamnit” but which made sense in this fantasy setting (“Goddamnit” implies the context of God, and the concept of damning, for example, so it doesn’t hold up) and weren’t just word substitution like “frack” instead of fuck or something.

The Grey Wardens gained their trademark blue and silver uniformed look for DA2. When the new art director Matt Goldman came on before DA2, he wanted to re-approach a number of things such as the darkspawn (mentioned in previous parts) and the Wardens. He wanted factions like the Wardens to be more uniform and easily identifiable at a distance by silhouettes and colors. He wanted factions to be more visually distinct and to introduce more color in general, as DAO was very brown and muddy. This was something of a standing mission of his when he came onto the project. He disliked the idea that there wasn’t anything unifying or distinct or ‘easily identifiable as a DAO screenshot’ about DAO screenshots, other than that brown muddiness. 

Deciding how to design the Lady of the Forest was a long conversation due to the potential nsfw elements. It was a long haul to get her to look a certain way.

The thing DG found easiest/least painful to write was probably Zevran’s dialogue. He felt less pressure about it and had a bit more fun with it. Zevran has a certain story about trust that DG found pleasurable to build on; Zevran had grown up with a certain expectation of deceit and trauma, and when confronted with earnest feelings, that was the more puzzling part for [Zevran] to process. “When you expect everyone around you to deceive you, you’re kinda like, okay, this is life. But then to figure out, ‘oh, I guess it doesn’t need to be that way’, well how do you even... not?” DG remembers straight male players complaining on the forum after accepting Zevran’s massage tent-invite and not clocking that that was an invite of a certain nature. Overall Zevran was a more relaxed piece of writing for him. Shale came later but writing Shale was also a lot of fun. Like HK-47, “you can string together a few quirks that you find amusing and people will still treat that like a character and love it”.

In DA2 there was an entire subplot centered around the Carta and Varric. It spanned all three Acts. Mary Kirby had written it to completion and it was good. DG had to tell her it was among the cuts they needed to do because it was written a bit later relative to other stuff and because cutting it offered the most return according to the schedule and resources/subsequent downstream work. In cases like these they sometimes take the cut plotbeats and put it in a ‘box’, in the hopes that they may be able to use it for DLC or something later on. In practise this doesn’t happen very often at all. On DAO it did happen once with Shale. Shale was cut from DAO and had to be moved to become Day 1 DLC. Work on Shale therefore took place after most of the game had been finished. If they hadn’t done this, she would have been cut completely. It also sort of happened on DAO with Loghain. It originally had a whole plotline in Denerim involving him which had the player figuring out his background, motivations and interacting more with Anora. All of that got cut (requiring the cutscenes mentioned at the start of this post being added), and this is where the idea came of writing a novel (The Stolen Throne). This occurred in the period when the game had been delayed and DG particularly regretted that particular cut. He thought, “I could take this story that you were going to learn about the history of Loghain and his relationship with Cailan, and rescue it in a way.” [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[readyplayerhobi]

Flower | 01

; Hoseok x Reader

; Genre: Fluff, future angst, future smut

; Word Count: 2.8k

; Synopsis: You finally decide to take a dip into the world of online dating and find the Flower dating app. One of the top matches for you proves to be a guy who looks to be your complete opposite; tattooed, pierced, a metalhead and oh...incredibly handsome. What happens when you throw caution to the wind and reach out to him?

; A/N: This is going to be a drabble series. It’s not planned out, it has no planning. It will be written as and when I get the inspiration for it. The Flower app is inspired by the Bumble app in which women make the first move on it. This is just purely something to try and get me back into enjoying writing again so...please show it and me some love because I already love this Hoseok? I haven’t proof read lol

Flower Masterpost

“Okay...okay. Let’s do this...you can do this. It’s easy. Just...download the app and go. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Well you could get murdered. That would suck. But it would resolve a lot of issues I guess. On the other hand...I could meet the love of my life. I mean...is that likely?” The soft sounds of your muttering are probably barely heard over the soft playing music through the speakers connected to your television, YouTube playing mindlessly to itself on the screen.

Your focus though, is solely on the phone in your hand. Soyeon, your best friend, had been bugging you to join some online dating sites for a while and it had only gotten worse when your other friend Chungha told her that she fully agreed with her. Part of you felt cornered by them both but another part of you understood them.

They were just looking out for you. You were naturally quiet and shy, introverted and preferring to remain inside or on the sides if you were dragged to a party. An inability to engage in small talk meant that that you struggled to make conversation with people as well. That all resulted in a small circle of friends who understood you well but that was it, everyone else was merely acquaintances who would hang out with you simply because they were friends with your friends.

As such, it meant that you struggled with dating. And by that, you mean that you hadn’t been in a relationship for a long time. Nor could you do flings like some of your friends did, the very thought filled you with anxiety.

This was why they had suggested trying online dating, because you’d lamented to them about how lonely you’d started to feel. You were still relatively young, and you knew that relationships weren’t the be all and end all. But when you haven’t dated since college, it starts to feel like no one is interested in you at all. And that was a hard feeling to take in.

You wanted to be like your friends. To have someone to talk to about things without feeling embarrassed, someone who would enjoy being in your company and actively seek you out, someone to be intimate with. Someone to fall in love with. It sounded cheesy and stupid but both Soyeon and Chungha had taken your concerns to heart.

They’d asked if you wanted to be set up on blind dates but the very idea of that made you lose your breath with anxiety, the fear of failure or judgement from someone who has never met you before overwhelming. So Soyeon had suggested online dating and now here you were, curled up on your couch on a Saturday night, a glass of water on the side because you don’t like alcohol and the app store open to dating apps.

“Tinder...isn’t that just for hookups?” You murmur, frowning as you look at some of the reviews. There were probably people who had managed to get lasting relationships on Tinder, but the idea of having random people actively deciding whether or not you were worth trying simply from a photo or something was horrible. Not that you had any idea how it actually worked, but still…

A few other apps look to be the more traditional online dating route and you consider whether to download one of them. But then you see an app that attracts your attention, a small soft pink and orange logo with the outline of a white flower in it. The title is simply ‘Flower’ and you take click on it to read the description.

‘Find the perfect partner and watch love or friendship bloom like a flower! 

The Flower app asks you to set up a profile by asking you a series of questions to determine your interests and personality. We then set you up with a series of people we consider to be a good match and give you the opportunity to initiate a conversation!

Here at Flower, we want to make sure that dating is fun and most importantly, equal. As such, we allow women to be the one to initiate contact with their matches. This means that if you’re looking for a same sex relationship, then you can both reach out. The same goes if you don’t identify as female or male. If you’re looking for a heterosexual relationship, then you can reach out to your match and he can decide whether he wants to respond. 

We don’t tolerate any form of hate speech or intolerance and will respond with quick action against this. At Flower, we promote inclusivity, diversity and tolerance. We want the world to grow and bloom with love, one relationship at a time!’

The reviews for the app seemed to back up their description and you felt curious. An impulse takes over and you download it, tongue sticking out as you wait before loading it up once it’s done. The interface is clean and take a moment to chew your lip before clicking the sign up button.

Everything seems to be rudimentary at first, asking for your age and location, name and occupation. But then it starts to ask some other questions. Your favourite film genres, a list of favourite films, your favourite books, where you’d like to go on vacation, favourite music and songs and so much more. Some of it felt bizarre, like would you rather eat chicken or beef? Would you rather drive an Audi or a Ford?

You presumed it all had a reason though, and after what felt like five minutes of answering questions, you finally had a profile. Flicking through the gallery on your phone, you found a picture that you felt was flattering while still showing your personality. It’s from a few months ago and was taken with a Polaroid camera, giving it that distinctive filter that always seemed to be flattering everyone.

You were giving a small smile, eyes looking to the left of the camera while your chin was in your hand. Nose wrinkled slightly, a soft and fluffy white cream sweater covers you while a cherry blossom scarf is wrapped elegantly round your neck. And on top of all that...a bright yellow Pikachu hat sits on top of your head.

It had been your birthday and the girls had managed to coax you out for dinner before presenting you with a bunch of presents. They’d been a random assortment, as usual, but you’d loved it all. A skin care gift set, the Pikachu hat and a Pusheen stationery set. Your colleagues at your admin assistant job had given you the side eye when you’d added yet more cute and strange things to your already colourful and cluttered desk but you’d ignore them.

This picture had been one of the best taken of you recently and you smiled gently as you made it your profile picture. You didn’t like being photographed, constantly convinced that you were unattractive but your friends were convinced otherwise.

Everything looked to be set up and you wondered what you meant to do now, when a sudden notification pops up on the screen with ‘20 Matches Found’. Sudden anxiety makes you feel sick, stomach rolling with nerves as your veins practically fizz as you click on the view more button. These were people who the app had compared your own answers to and considered to be the best matches.

There’s a tiny moment of waiting as a tiny flower in orange and pink blooms and you sigh when it finally clears. The profiles are shown in descending order with those most matched to least. A tiny refresh button in the corner let’s you see that you can refresh your matches if necessary.

Each profile shows their profile image, their name, age and location. Scrolling through them, you note idly that you seem to have got a wide range of people that you had matched with. A 24-year-old swimming instructor named Kim Chaeyoung, a 31-year-old high school English teacher named Seo Jinwoo, a 29-year-old mechanic called Park Jisoo and more.

It was interesting to see the wide range of people that had come back and you perused their profiles carefully, reading the little description they’d written for themselves along with a few answers to questions similar to what you’d had to answer. The app seemed to pull a range range of questions for you read, with each person’s being slightly different.

You supposed it meant that you would need to ask for that information and you found yourself curious about one or two people, pressing the little button that indicated it would bookmark their profile for later viewing. Apparently you had a week to make the first interaction before it would vanish.

Humming lightly, you wondered if anyone would be interested in talking to you? 

Everyone looked so pretty on here and you wondered if you matched up to them. Would they consider you worth their time? Biting your lower lip, you shrug your shoulders and decided you had nothing to lose really. You didn’t know these people in real life and no one would laugh at you for simply reaching out and trying to make a connection.

You come across one profile that makes you pause though, your brow lifting in surprise as you wonder why on earth the app has matched you with this guy. The two of you don’t even look like you come from the same planet, nevermind have enough aligning interests to warrant being in your top 20 matches at the moment.

Clicking on his profile, you read through his basic info question while you purse your lips, making soft noises in your throat.

Jung Hoseok. 28 years old. IT Technician. 

He sounded pretty normal and you wouldn’t even give it a second thought normally, but his appearance did not match the casual job description he had. Maybe you were just being stereotypical here, but most of the IT people in your workplace were of the nerdy looking variety. And you only say that because every one of them wore some form of Rick and Morty or other pop culture shirts.

Which you were fine with, because you enjoyed most of the same things too. But no one looked like this guy.

The reason you were so surprised was because of his profile picture, and despite your earlier thoughts about just sending messages to everyone for the sake of it, you felt a well of anxiety rising again as you looked at him. This guy is quite possibly the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, the kind of guy that people only think exists when they’re rich and famous.

But he’s also completely unlike you. He’s evidently at some sort of event as he has a bottle of beer in his hand while his other hand is making the metal horns shape. One eye is closed to camera, winking while his tongue is poking out of his mouth on one side, white teeth visible beneath pink lips amidst gold skin. A silver ring pierced his lower lip on the right while a small ball is visible in his tongue.

His hair is jet black, gleaming in the crappy lighting in a messy state that looks slightly wet while his exposed skin has a sheen of sweat on it. A red and black shirt unbuttoned on him, rolled up to his elbows to reveal toned forearms that are completely covered in vibrant and bright colour.

The tattoos make what you presume to be full sleeves on both arms, his left arm appearing to be a swirling galaxyscape with brilliant galaxies, planets, moons and more interwoven with, bizarrely, dragons that are almost transparent. They look beautiful though, and you get an image of space dragons made of fine dust flying through the vast expanse of space as you look at them.

His other arm looks to be a mesh of things together, flames and flowers and skulls and ships. None of it makes any sense to you, but you’re positive it probably means something to him. One of the sleeves expands onto his hand, the one showing the horns and you eye the clock tattoo that takes up the space.

His tattoos look to expand beyond his arms as the black top beneath his shirt gives tantalising glimpses of the black and colour tattoos that obviously sprawl across his chest. Strands creep upwards, almost to his neck and you get the impression of something fiery, the soft wisps of red and orange looking like burning embers on his skin.

This guy...looked like he belonged in a metal band or tattoo shop. And he was...beautiful, way out of your league. 

Which was why you had to have experienced an out of body moment when your finger presses the message button, the screen popping up with an automatic message pre filled out for you.

“Hey, Flower shows that we’re good matches so I’m reaching out to you! If you would like to talk to me, please respond!”

Scowling, you deleted the message, deciding it would be bad manners to just send the template message to someone that you were attracted to. That thought gives you pause, acknowledging that you are in fact attracted to him. He looked like the kind of guy who would take one look at your profile and laugh himself home at the prospect of doing anything with you.

The man clearly thrived on social situations, enough of his profile gave that away and again you wondered why the app matched you together. Maybe he had some secret love of Pokemon or something. Looks could be deceiving, obviously.

And even if you’d never listened to a metal song in your life...you were always open to trying new things. If you were going to open yourself up to the prospect of online dating, then you may as well go fully out of comfort zone.

Swallowing, you carefully type out a short message and spend the next five minutes reading it over as anxiety and fear swirl within you. Indecision causes you to wonder whether you should just delete it all and ignore his profile, going for the safe option of someone who looks like they’d be more accepting of you on your list.

But the allure of something so unlike you pulls you in and you press send, watching the message swoosh away and changing his profile to a soft pink to indicate that you’d initiated contact. Almost immediately you feel sick, body going cold as you pant ever so slightly.

Oh god, he’s going to read that message and take one look at your profile then delete the message. He probably had hookups all the time, the kind of guy you shouldn’t get involved with. You had no interest in being a one night stand and- you shake your head, clenching your teeth and taking a deep breath.

Stereotypes are damaging to yourself and others, you tell yourself quietly. There’s no reason to paint him with a negative brush already when he’s not even had a chance to do anything. And so what if he only wanted hookups? It was the 21st century, men and women could sleep with who they wanted, as often as they wanted and they shouldn’t face the prejudice you’re showing him already.

Before you can even think anything else though, your phone sends out a soft, melodic note and you look down with wide eyes. The message icon has an orange notification on it, signifying that you have a new message on there. Hesitating, you wonder if it’s just one of those generic ‘welcome’ messages that you sometimes get when you sign up for sites.

But the name of the sender tells you very much that it’s not a generic message, and the cold fear mixes with nervous excitement and trepidation as you see Jung Hoseok’s name. He must have already been on his phone to have responded so fast, and you wonder if he’s just sent a polite ‘thank you but no’ back.

It would be awfully nice of him if he did. Embarrassing, but polite.

Opening the message, your jaw drops and eyes widen as you read what he’s responded with.

You: Hi. I don’t know how to use this properly, so I’m sorry if I do it wrong. You showed as a match and...well I guess I say I’m interested? Not as a friend, unless you want that. I mean...the other way. Feel free to say no! Y/N

Reading it back over, you cringe at how...you it sounds. Hesitant and awkward and shy. Dammit, why couldn’t you just seize the moment and sound confident for once? Say something bold that would attract his attention.

And then you read his response.

Hoseok: Hey Y/N. Thanks for reaching out. How are you tonight?

[sifeng]

Love and Redemption: Some Thoughts and a Comparison with Ashes of Love

So, I’ve been watching Love and Redemption (琉璃) and while there are some visible faults, I also quite like some plot points and characters. So here are some of my thoughts and also, if your an Ashes of Love fan I totally recommend you check this drama out! The themes are similar, the character setups are similar, the worlds are similar too. 

I’ve just finished the 35th episode, and I’ve gotten to a point where a flower creature of sorts has been forced to become Ling Long 2.0. I actually really like this idea because it shows that a lot of people become evil because of the people they are around, not because they are naturally evil, their personality is naturally cruel or anything else of the sort. Ling Long grew up around “orthodox” people that, while also imperfect, weren’t sadistic like Wu Tong. Because of that she became a person that liked to fight for peace and removal of evil from the world. However, when her exact same personality was placed in a different atmosphere without previous memories she became just as sadistic and cruel as the people around her. I think that actually fits super well with the overall theme of this drama, which is that good and bad aren’t black and white. Even a person who is “good” in the subjective sense of that term can just as easily be “evil” if placed in a different growth environment. Honestly I find it so interesting that Ling Long went from A Zhu to A Zi (Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils reference) in like one episode. 

A Comparison

When I first started liking cdramas, one of my first favorites was Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜), but I actually like this drama more. First of all, I think the pacing is better. The beginning of AoL was a little draggy now that I think about it, and Jin Mi only began to really show her feelings for Xu Feng around episode 30 (and it wasn’t even Jin Mi liking Xu Feng it was Saintess liking the King). In comparison, in Love and Redemption, we see from the very start that Xuanji likes Sifeng in a different manner then she likes, for example, Minyan, thus not only making it easier to ship them, but also being able to get to the tragic elements of the story faster. The CGI in Love and Redemption is simply amazing, beats 99% of cdramas honestly. I wish the cinematography was a little better because with this level of CGI, it truly deserves better camerawork. 

Also, I dislike when people call Xuanji stupid, because while in the beginning she is a little dumb, she really isn’t as bad as some other characters out there. She’s like what 20? And she’s never left home or her training place in her life. Why would anyone expect her not to make trouble? Or get in trouble? That’s like teaching how to memorize all the math formulas in the world, but not teaching you how to use them and then blaming you for not being able to apply them. I haven’t gotten to the really tragic part where Xuanji and Sifeng get separated, but so far I like her more than Jin Mi honestly. Xuanji might not be the smartest person, but I love how trustworthy she is of her friends and how high she holds her friendships. Unlike so many of the adults in this series, she actually uses logic to try to understand problems not just problematic and contradictory pieces evidence. Like when Minyan is accused of being betraying their sect, she doesn’t just go “oh there’s ‘evidence’? Then he must be guilty”, she actually thinks about his character and personality and how illogical it would be if he actually betrayed them. 

I also like Sifeng more than Xu Feng. When he was being accused of being a demon, he managed to bring up inarguable pieces of evidence that clearly proved he was not a demon, or at least not a problematic one instead of just going like “you should believe me because I’m so great!” (not that Xu Feng did that, but he did use ethos instead of logos, though, both apparently don’t work if you’re a male lead in a tragic xianxia). The tragedy of his character is done so well honestly. He died for Xuanji in 9 lifetimes. NINE. Please give him a happy ending. (Okay but I really dislike his second hairstyle with the two strings of hair hanging out and also Teng She’s hairstyle. Why can’t they just tuck that piece of hair in? It makes me feel so annoyed for some reason.)

No one likes Hao Chen, and I’m glad. He hates people manipulating Xuanji, but he manipulates her all the time. I do agree that if Xuanji is happy without her six senses, she shouldn’t be forced to search for them, but she isn’t happy and she wants to search for them. So why should anyone who actually likes her try to prevent that? But I actually think his character is written relatively well. As the ruler (or second in command?) of the heavenly realm, he has to put matters in front of romance, though that doesn’t mean he has to manipulate her. I understand why he does what he does and I don’t think his character is as illogical as Wu Tong, but yeah, I definitely don’t agree with what he does. In comparison, Run Yu is truly quite likable. He does try to keep Jin Mi to himself instead of letting her be happy, but overall his story is written really well and evokes our sympathy.

Oh and when it comes to friendships I also prefer the ones in Love and Redemption. First of all, it’s not just Xuanji and Sifeng who are cute together, I like that Sifeng is friends with Ling Long and Minyan as well, and they also become friends with Yanran (or Xiao Yinhua) and Ruoyu as well (though they could’ve avoided some tragedy if they hadn’t befriended him). I don’t know why, but I’m really excited to see what tragedy our OTP goes through later on, because I’ve seen the gifsets on Tumblr and boy am I excited for some tragedy!

But one thing that is better about AoL is definitely the acting. I think Cheng Yi and Yuan Bingyan did pretty good here, especially Cheng Yi, but Yang Zi, Deng Lun and Luo Yunxi (especially Yang Zi and Luo Yunxi) are more experienced and thus obviously better, especially when it comes to really emotional scenes. 

FInal Thoughts

One problem I have with Love and Redemption, at least so far, is that the evil demons have no motivations to be as evil as they are. I’m pretty sure I’ll get a reason, but so far I have to say that they aren’t really well done characters in that sense. Especially Wu Tong. Like this guy has no backstory whatsoever, but is extremely cruel and sadistic from the first second we meet him. Maybe he’s like really just insane or something, but his whole “sympathy story” for why he joined the demons makes zero sense. He wanted to murder someone because him cheating gets revealed and then gets mad that the father of the person he tried to kill wants to get revenge. His story also contains two (as of so far) unexplained plot holes: 1. why every single sect decided to chase after him and 2. why he managed to escape death despite a bunch of skilled martial artists running after him for like a really long time. 

Lastly, I like the fact that the orthodox people aren’t exactly “evil” but their goodness is what makes them annoying. They don’t mean harm when they tried to test if Sifeng was a demon or if Minyan is a betrayer, they truly are thinking for the overall good, but their constant paranoia and need to do “what is right” and not “what makes sense” is truly what makes them unbearable. They sometimes throw away all logic for love, or sacrifice their own daughter in order to “do what’s right” instead of actually thinking of a method to not only save the daughter and keep the world at peace. It’s because of their goodness that they are able to be manipulated into idiocracy by Li Ze Palace. 

Oh and one last thought. I don’t know if it’s on purpose, but the lack of people in the heavenly realm is really interesting. Like, maybe the producers didn’t have enough money, or shots of the heavenly realm with more than like ten people (not in war) don’t exist in the book either, but it creates the image that the realm is super empty. The human realm, despite all its faults and cruelties, feels so much more alive and full of life in comparison to the boring and cold looking heavenly realm. 

[ksyescribe]

𝐵𝑜𝑦𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑥 𝑆/𝑂 (𝑖.𝑒. 𝐿𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠) ♡

Featuring: Nishinoya, Tanaka, Bokuto A/N: I started these headcanons a few days back when I was in the middle of a rest/writer slump and just finished them today. They’re hella messy but I really enjoyed writing them and I hope that you guys enjoy reading them :))

Nishinoya

Y’all we’ve known that Noya is a Latin King himself like cmon now? Do y’all see his energy??

Anyways he would 1000% have a latina girlfriend like I just KNOW IT IN MY SOUL

You never have to feel embarrassed about your family with him because he’s just as loud as they are!!!

He literally vibes with EVERYONE in your family

The loud ass fuck drunk uncles? He’s vibing

Ladies in the kitchen making the traditional food? Vibing. He even offers to help!!!

Little kids playing the weirdest games with a bunch of chairs at the back of the party? Vibing. 

Noya would just fit so perfectly in those loud as hell hispanic parties like I can just imagine him being a visual learner and seeing everyone dance like bachata, salsa, and all the other dances 

AND THEN he grabs you and just starts pulling you to the dance floor to dance with him

He’s actually so good??? Like he literally watched for a few minutes and just started moving?? This mans hips? Wow they’re out here swaying from side to side be prepared

Wow I went off on the party but like, Noya would just be so happy to be dating you

He really doesn’t care that you’re a foreigner and what not, he just knows your personality, heart, and whole being are beautiful and that he’s so lucky to have you

I think the whole relationship would be filled with so much happiness and excitement because you’re both learning about each other’s cultures and stuff without even trying

Like you invite him over to meet your family one day and it just happens to be the day your mom is making Pan Dulce and like the most traditional plate of food from your country

And when he sits down to eat he just loves it so much!! Literally will not stop eating, your mom’s about to cry because no one’s ever eaten her food with that much gusto before

Idk bout y’all but my parents love to take pictures from ALL our family trips and we have hats and stuff from all that so pops would probably sit down with noya and show them all of that and noya just loves it!! Like so much his eyes are starry eyes (perhaps what inspires him to travel the world hmmm)

If you have siblings he definitely will play with them when he comes over.

Will probably do that plane thing that adults do where they’re just making the kids fly all around (your siblings love him so much it’s crazy)

Never one for giving too many lessons but if you ask him about something in Japanese culture he’ll probably look a place he can take you to show you more

His favorite times are when you ask about anything food related because it means he can take you on dates to restaurants where he gets to see your reactions

He loves taking you to like the Shonen Jump shops or anything similar because just watching you go through all the parts of the store and seeing all these things catch your attention would make him so soft

Probably grabs your hand and gives you a quick cheek kiss when he’s watching you

Would be 1000% down to go back to your home country

Loves you, your culture, and even tries to learn some Spanish for you

(but his accents so thick you laugh every time he tries to speak, it’s okay you give him a kiss and some sweets from your country as a thank you for trying)

Tanaka

*inhale* THIS MAN BELONGS TO THE HISPANICS I DONT MAKE THE RULES *exhale*

Right so

I don’t even know where to begin with Tanaka because I literally have like 75000 thoughts of him at a bull riding event going through my mind

BUT he’s a soft boy I know for a fact, loud on the outside but very soft.

With Tanaka I do see him wilding out at parties

Like imagine him seeing a pinata for the first time? 

Better have a separate pinata for him because he’ll go crazy swinging on that thing

Is even more surprised that there’s candy inside!!!! Like what?? He thought hitting it was super fun but now this?

Loves it, immediately wants to break open another one

But I also see Tanaka being super soft with your family

Like have you seen the manga panel of him floating around in an apron? 

Your grandma would probably give him one of her aprons and she’ll be teaching him how to make tortillas in such a soft spanish

And he looks so panicked?? Just glancing at you every single second, trying to figure out if he’s doing it right or not. 

Constantly asking you “What is she saying? Am I doin it right? Can you please tell her I’m trying my best?” 

God I’m so soft like I just love him so much

Your grandma loves him always rubbing his head and pinching his cheeks

He always blushes super hard when she does that and turns even more red when you tell him that she likes him and calls him “Mijo” now

She actually tells him stories about the olden days back home and Tanaka listens so intently even though he doesn’t understand but then turns to you as you translate the story

Warms up to the affectionate side of hispanic families really quick, like he kisses you on the cheek when he meets your family like second nature. He even did it to you one morning and then got all red when he remembered that they don’t really be doing that shiz in Japan

I feel like Tanaka would really really like the traditions hispanic families do or how much emphasis they put on holidays and family together

Like he’ll probably come over on the 24th for Noche Buena and just loves the atmosphere of the holiday and the connection with family (and of course the food) 

It’s a really big contrast to the quieter Christmas his family will be celebrating the next day

Will definitely bring a Japanese Christmas Cake from the fanciest store he can afford as his own gift to the potluck

I know we see Tanaka as wild as hell sometimes but I feel like in a hispanic setting he’ll just go soft, or maybe I’m just soft for him who knows

Bokuto

So for all my POC do y’all know when you’re at the store with your immigrant parents and they see a cute boy and they’re like “You see him, I want you to find someone as handsome as him.” (my mom says this to me literally all the time god damn bro pls im trynna live)

This is what every hispanic mother says when they see Bokuto

All the ladies in your family will literally get FLUSTERED when you bring him home

“Ay Mija he’s so handsome why didn’t you tell us”

(This happened to me once never brought a boy home ever again smh)

Anyways he gets the approval from your male relatives when he helps them lug all the heavy shit they work with with no problem

Like he just grabs something that’s 50 pounds and he’s like , “Yeah where do you guys need this?”

He’s so versatile, like I feel like he can vibe with any setting your family’s at

Loud party type? Vibing. Gossiping in the kitchen with your aunts and cousins? Man’s is INVESTED in the chisme! The guys in your family working on home renovations or on any other project? He’s helping them hands down.

Is the type to eat ALL the food that your family offers him. He will literally have a bite of everything even before you tell him what it is. Your mom is beaming when he eats her Arroz Con Leche

Cannot bake for ANYTHING!!! But he somehow cooks meat perfectly?? I’m so?? He literally cannot make any sweets but if you gave him some slabs of meat or a pork shoulder to roast he has that down perfectly.

Your mom actually asks him to come over and help her make the Pernil for special occasions because he’s the only one who can manage to make the skin as crisp as he does. The only one who knows how to do it better is your grandma

Will beg for you to bring him stuff back to your home country. He wants it all: souvenirs, shirts, candy, chips. He even tries to give you money but you brush him off.

Of all three of these boys I feel like he’s the most likely to actually go visit your home country with you!! Like he’s so excited to go out there and see the place where your family comes from

When he gets there EVERYONE will love him.

Somehow makes friends with strangers on the street (something that I’ve done irl when I go back home lmaooo)

He wants to try every single food cart around the area.

Falls in love with the people and food of your country. You’ll probably be on your first trip and he’s already asking you when you can go back. 

If you ever take him to all the nature filled areas or just like a random river that runs through a certain area he’ll be enamored!

Loves the country, loves the culture, loves you :)

[gayregis]

do you have any examples of the witcher subverting common fantasy tropes? (other than the obvious like ciri being the chosen one but doing evil actions, the male lead being a pacifist etc) i like the books but i have friends who don't wanna read it bc they think it's just another generic fantasy story based off the netflix trailer, i obviously am not gonna force them to read it if they absolutely don't want to but it always hurts when good works go unnoticed because of misinformation

okay!! i won’t give book quotes for this one, this is just off the top of my head, because i think including quotes would take a really long time and wouldn’t helo the point. also there’s probably things i missed here

geralt 

tropes: Icy Cold Killer / Witches Stealing Kids

actuality: is a very emotional man who was born into his profession of killing and never had a choice in the matter. doesn’t want to kill for a living, is a pacifist at heart. adopts ciri because he truly is a good father and loves her and eventually teaches her witcher skills so she has a form of self-defense.

yennefer

trope: Bitchy Witch

actuality: sincerely selfless woman who risks her life multiple times to save her child from harm, does many things to save her lover, only seems bitter and closed off to the most of the world because she has been hurt by everyone she knows and doesn’t let everyone in.

ciri

tropes: Prissy Princess / Chosen One

actuality: she is a princess for approx. 1.2 seconds and then she loses everything she’s ever known, and will continue to lose everything she’s ever known. 

as the chosen one, her powers don’t help her much, she’s super powerful but still super vulnerable and her life continues to be shit - she loses everything again because of her powers, which make her a target. everyone is after her for her powers, she’s the macguffin of the story, she’s been reduced to the holy grail because of them. being the chosen one is more of a curse than a blessing.

dandelion

tropes: The Coward / The Freeloader / Slovenly Bastard

actuality: okay yeah he’s all of these things never mind he demonstrates incredible bravery and loyalty (doing something even though you’re scared to death to do it is bravery), he keeps being by geralt’s side not as a nuisance or a leech, but because geralt genuinely needs him there as his best friend.

milva

trope: The Girl of the Company

actuality: isn’t just there to be sexy while shooting arrows, is not a love interest to any of the main male characters, literally just exists in the company as a woman and no one is creepy towards her because of it. pregnancy arc is handled relatively well and she is given actual story and emotions of her own instead of being reliant on any male characters for developent

regis

trope: Every Single Vampire Trope Ever (esp. being heartless/part of an evil organization)

actuality: “the epitome of humanity,” is a healer/medic/surgeon whose profession it is to preserve life, is kind and acts with goodwill. 

the vampires in the witcher don’t drink blood to survive like hungry beasts or out of evil cultlike activities, but instead it’s like alcohol to them and they face the same social issues as humans surrounding it. also of course every other vampire trope is broken, like sunlight, garlic, wooden stakes, running water, religious symbols...

cahir

trope: Evil Soldier of Darkness

actuality: he is a young man who was manipulated by his family and his society into service of an imperialist nation, he never wanted to cause harm to ciri but raher just sought honor for his family. he then spends the entire rest of the saga redeeming himself.

angouleme

trope: Shitty Orphan Does Crime For Fun

actuality: she’s an extremely young woman who has faced abuse her entire life and has stolen and killed out of pure survival. she is actually a genuinely good person and warns geralt of the attempt on his and his company’s lives.

the sorceresses who were on thanedd and of the lodge

trope: Vain Women Get Nothing Done And Only Think About Men

actuality: 10 insanely powerful women form a powerful political cabal, at least one is a lesbian, they unanimously decide to bar the organization from men because they speak about how men are too emotional and can’t be trusted, they are capable and dangerous as an organization and would have succeeded if not for freak accidents.

witchers in general

trope: godless fiends who thrive on violence

actuality: they were created as a profession to eliminate monsters as being threats to humans, but the threat of monsters has faded and now finding work is more difficult than ever.

sorceresses in general

trope: witches steal kids

actuality: sorceresses take in unwanted daughters, from families who gave them up, and if they show magical prowess they continue to be trained

the striga (princess adda)

trope: Horrific Monster

actuality: a 14 year old girl who has been mistreated all of her life

a grain of truth

story: beauty & the beast

actuality: the real beast is the beauty who tries to rip her boyfriend’s head off

the lesser evil

story: snow white & the seven dwarves

actuality: snow white is no princess, she has been forced into a life of killing which she has become comfortable with

the last wish (heading into the bounds of reason)

trope: love at first sight

actuality: electrocute your ass at first sight, yennefer and geralt fight in the last wish, and after they fall in love date for 4 years they inevitably break up again because love at first sight doesn’t exist and they’re both too immature to hold a sincere relationship until much later

the bounds of reason

story: a peasant can kill a dragon, dragons are beasts that attack villages

actuality: you’d need professionals to kill a dragon, and also the dragons were trying to protect their child and are sentient, intelligence, respectable, and beautiful creatures.

dudu

trope: Evil Doppleganger

actuality: dopplers are incapable of being evil, they mimic forms to survive in this world dominated by violent humans.

the aen seidhe

trope: Elves Are Pretty Boys Who Don’t Do Violence

actuality: these pretty boys do a lot of violence. they kill humans because humans have usurped nearly all of their territory and pushed them out.

the aen elle

trope: Elves Are Pretty Boys Who Don’t Do Violence

actuality: these pretty boys do a lot of violence. they’re colonizers and slavers who take over entire worlds.

unicorns

trope: Unicorns Are Pretty And Docile Creatures

actuality: unicorns and elves have been at war, unicorns are incredibly intelligent and sentient and are their own civilization

nilfgaard

trope: Evil Empire

actuality: it is an imperialist nation, thus it is evil, but there are many nilfgaardian POVs throughout the saga which demonstrate that even though they are committing atrocities they are still very much human. they’re not faceless evil.

geralt’s company

trope: Grand Quest To Save The World

actuality: geralt in the saga, i think as one of the sorceresses said, is just running around lost, getting upset. geralt running around with his gathered company in the wilderness is not a grand march towards power or fame, but rather the journey of how geralt becomes a better person and a better father, he finally accepts help, he finally becomes a leader.

the quest doesn’t concern power or being a grand hero, it’s not a beautiful march. it’s a bunch of idiots traipsing through the forests, grasslands, and marches, trying to dry out their boots and footwraps because the ground is muddy. 

the goal of the quest is not to save the world or find great power or complete a prophecy or save a desperate lover, but rather to just get geralt’s daughter back. his daughter. because he loves her and wants her to be safe. that’s all.

you can’t step two inches in the witcher without breaking a trope. they’re strewn everywhere, like crackers on the sidewalk. step, step. now the pigeons are eating the crumbs

i think largely you have to look at sapkowski’s personal history with writing and fantasy bc iirc he was a scholar or something about arthurian legend and also he was influenced by many polish folktales

[ninliane]

then say my name | osamu miya x reader

huhu i know i still have requests to do but i was working on this for a week in class and wanted to share it with you guys :>>

anyway i know i said i was falling for atsumu, but osamu attracted me more haha, he seems a bit ooc here but i’ll try to fix it in the future. for now my priority in writing will be requests!

this story has now been given artwork by vn_vannies on twitter! it’s after the story down below i commissioned her to draw one scene from this story :)) 

------

“What must we do to get you to play a match with us?” the captain of Inarizaki asked. 

“Sorry, we’re just too busy with other practice matches,” Kuroo responded. Taketora went up to Kuroo and whispered, “Hey Kuroo, aren’t they the powerhouse school of the Hyogo prefecture? We saw them at Nationals.” Kuroo sighed and faced him. “I really wish we could but after Nationals, a bunch of other powerhouse schools wanted matches.” 

The captain gave in. “Alright, it was worth a try,” he looked up to Kuroo. “It’s been a pleasure seeing you play, we hope to play against you someda-” 

“Hold on,” a certain blond holds up his hand. “Now now Kita-san, don’t say such things! I’m sure there are other ways on convincing the-aCHJ” 

“Don’t do anything stupid you dumbass.” a silver-haired male said as he wacked his brother's head. 

“I’m gonna kill yo-” 

“Our bus is here,” Kita coughed. “Goodbye to you, and best of luck.” Aran bowed as did the opposing team

All of them were boarding the bus and putting their stuff in until Atsumu was the last one outside. He stood up and looked back. “Get yer ass up here, Sumu” his brother called out from the window. 

“Oh, but I forgot something,” that only gained an irritated look from his twin. Thinking he was going back in the building the team moved aside. Smiling as he was walking he made eye contact with a certain manager, swiftly grabbed both of her arms, dipped her, and pressed his lips onto hers.

“?!”

The kiss lasted for quite a while, but everyone was too astonished to move. He swiftly pulled back, smiled, and winked at her. Kuroo’s face scrunched and by the time he yelled in surprise, Atsumu was back in the bus already waving at them. “See you on the court!”

The entire team screamed in shock. “WHATTT?!?!” Taketora screamed, “HOW DARE THEY ADVANCE ON OUR MANAGER!!” “(Y/N)-chan! (Y/N)-chwauwnnnn!!!” Lev ran up to her holding her should and having tears on his eyes, “are-are you okay?” “Oi! Kuroo-san and Yaku-san are going somewhere!” Shibayama yelled. “Someone stop them!” 

---

“Well, you’re welcome!” Atsumu said as he stood up in the bus, his hands up and eyes closed, “looks like we’re getting a practice ma-gehck!” 

“You actual stupid dumbass,” Osamu said after hitting him on the head. But oh he was not done as he kicked his stomach. “You didn’t have to do that to her.”

 Meanwhile, the team wasn’t doing anything about it because they did indeed think that Atsumu has gone too far. They felt lucky to have Osamu reprimand him for his actions.

 Coughing as he got up and weakly smiled and chuckled, “W-what’s it to you ‘Samu?..ya like her or someth-geCK” and the grey-haired spiker finished him off by kicking his face. 

“I’ll carry him home don’t worry about him,” Osamu said picking up the unconscious setter and placing him on his seat next to his. “Not like we were in the first place..” one of them spoke.

----

“Samuu…” the blond groaned. “Gimme the ice,”

 “You can get the ice yourself.” 

Osamu thought about what his twin had said though. Did he like Nekoma’s manager? Well yes, you could say that she was charming in her own way. So that’s why during the practice match between Nekoma and Inarizaki, he approached her with a calm and demure smile.

 “Oh, Miya-san,” their manager turned around. The spiker shook his head, “Please, call me Osamu, my idiot brother might get confused again.” he gestured to the setter. (Y/N) giggled, “Sure,” she flipped back the pages of her clipboard and tucked it under her arm. “So how long are you here in Tokyo?” 

“Around one more week, since we lost to Karasuno we’re here for a few more days,” “You gonna play at that time?” Osamu shrugged, “I dunno, maybe just a bit.” (Y/N)’s smile grew, “They why don’t I show you around!” Osamu looked taken aback, “Really?” She furiously nodded her head and grinned. ‘Cute..’ he thought. 

Returning with a soft smile he responded, “Yeah sure, that would be great.”

---

“Hahh, we’re finally done.” Taketora said stretching and turning around, “It’s only 1:30, you guys wanna go out?” “Sure!” Inoka said, “Yeah, why not, it would be a nice bonding activity.” Kai smiled. 

“Kenma, you’re coming,” Kuroo said looking at the setter who was trying to escape, looking defeated and all. Kuroo turned to their manager “(Y/N)-chan, you in?”. She showed a remorseful smile, “Awe, sorry guys I really wish I could but I made plans after practice.” “Oh? Going shopping?” Yaku asked. “Mm yes and no.” she shrugged. 

“Oh~? Is a date?” Kuroo teasingly asked. (Y/N) paused for a while as if in thought, giving a small smile as she spoke, “Yeah, if you think about it, kinda.”

 “Wait what.” Kuroo immediately went pale as did the rest of the team.

“EH?! (Y/N)-chan you’re going on a date?!” Lev asked, “With who??” Yaku followed up. (Y/N) frowned and reluctantly faced the door. “Mm, no! You guys are gonna get all weird if I tell you who the guy is. Besides it’s not like it’s a romantic date, I’m just showing him around..” Kuroo stumbled forward and grabbed (Y/N)’s shoulders. “Do we know him?!”

(Y/N) shook her head. “Ah, I mean yeah I guess you do but..” (Y/N) shook him off and opened the door, “If you guys are that worried we’re just gonna be in the plaza near the market. See you tomorrow.” the door closed.

Immediately after that action was done Kuroo turned around, “We’re going after her.” “Eh, why?” Kenma asked, “It’s her date we shouldn’t get involved.” “But what if something bad happens to her?” Kuroo shot back.

 “I think she’s smart enough to know when to flee a scene.” “I don’t like this either” Yaku frowned. “Me too!” Lev added in. “Argh, my sister just texted she needs help in doing the chores.” Taketora looked at his phone. “Okay! Lev, Yaku, Kenma and I will go!” Kuroo said standing up while grabbing Kenma’s hoodie. “What? But I said-” “Send in reports Kuroo-san!” Yamamoto yelled

----

“Oi, Samu, where are ya going?”

The silver-haired twin shrugged his brother off, “None of your business.” Kita walked into the living room and asked, “Osamu-kun, where are you going?” “Just out to the nearby plaza.” 

“Oh, so you respond to him you jerk.” Atsumu thought out loud. “Plaza? Why?” “Just meetin’ someone there, I won’t have dinner here, I’ll be back before 10:30.” and he left before the two could ask any more questions. 

“Going to meet someone? Who do you think it is?” Kita asked Atsumu, “Dunno, can’t be any relatives, we don’t have any here in Tok..oh my gosh.” Atsumu sat up in sudden realization and faced Kita and Aran who just walked in.

 “He’s going to meet the girl from Nekoma.” “The girl?” Aran asked. “Oh, you mean their manager, the one that you kissed and didn’t even apologize for which got us an earful from coach,” Kita spoke glaring at him. 

“Ya, ya , her.” Atsumu spoke unfazed. “I saw them talkin’ together a whole lot yesterday..she’s probably the one he’s meeting.” Aran smiled, “And why are you so worked up about it, Atsumu-kun?” Atsumu pouted, frowned and walked away to the shared room of the team, “I’m going out too.” “Don’t get caught,” Kita told him, not tearing his eyes away from the newspaper.

---

“I hope I’m not here too early..” he thought. He got off the train and made his way up the stairs that were outside the station. As he walked up the stairs he remembered, “Ah..I don’t think I got her number...what if I don’t find he-” 

“Osamu-kun!” a sweet voice interrupted his thoughts and he looked up to a girl smiling and waving at him. She was wearing a green beret on her head and her hair was parted to her left; a blue and white striped T-shirt that was covered by an unzipped white jacket, she wore a checkered skirt with brown shoes and white socks. 

It stunned Osamu for a brief moment. “Hey,” she said catching her breath, “Sorry, I’m really early to these things haha.” Osamu smiled and shook his head. “No worries, you look pretty.” 

‘What the hell did you just say,’

“Oh! Awe, really? Thanks! I just got this two days ago haha” she said smiling

‘Oh, she liked it’

“Well,” he started, trying his words, “where are we going, Ms. Tokyo?” (Y/N) giggled at the nickname, “Let’s go to the food stalls first! There’s this karaage chicken vendor that’s so so good!” The spiker nodded and followed her. While walking the two engaged in conversation, unaware that five other volleyball players were following them. 

“So, you don’t seem Japanese yet so speak it well, where are you from?” he asked. “Oh you noticed. I’m from  (country), I’m (nationality).” After they had gotten their food, (Y/N) hummed and took a small bite, and blew on it. “Cat’s tongue?” he observed while smirking.

(Y/N) rolled her eyes with her and jokingly elbowed him, only to earn laughter from the spiker. While munching on her chicken, (Y/N) asked. “Hey! There’s an amusement park here! You wanna go?” “Yeah sure, why not.” The pair threw their cups in a nearby trash bin, still unaware that they were being followed...well, the spiker had a hunch. 

This irked his mind and looked around, only to be pulled back to reality by (Y/N)’s voice. “We’re here,” (Y/N) spoke. Like a gentleman, Osamu paid for the tickets, even though the girl insisted. Once they were inside he turned to her. “So which one do you want to go to fir-” “Manager-chan!” 

‘I’m going to murder him.’ 

“Oh, M-miya-san!” (Y/N) said surprised, “What are you doing here?” “Yeah, what are you doing here, Sumu?” the younger twin emphasized. Not wanting to lose his cool in front of (Y/N), it took him every last nerve in his body to restrain him from beating the crap out of Atsumu. “Oh, I was just in the area and heard a pretty voice and decided to follow it.” winking at her. 

‘Don’t, Don’t, Don’t, Don’t, Don’t, Don’t-’

“Ah! (Y/N) you were meeting with them?!” 

‘You have literally got to be kidding me.’

“Kuroo?!” (Y/N) said now frowning, “What are you-” “(Y/N)-chan you’re okay!” “Lev?!” (Y/N) shook her head, “Okay is anyone else within the vicinity a volleyball player?!” Yaku and Kenma stepped out. (Y/N) put her hands on her cheeks, “You’ve gotta be kidding.” 

“Hmm, Nekoma’s captain..I thought you guys had a practice match.” Atsumu said, “And I thought you guys were too busy losing to still be here?” Kuroo challenged. The latter was engaged and the other three Nekoma boys had gotten distracted by a ride.

 Without saying a word, Osamu grabbed (Y/N) and swiftly pulled her through the crowd behind an empty booth. “Wha- Osamu-mmf” 

“Shh..” he whispered, covering her mouth with his hands.

 It was a very thin gap so the pair were much too close for “friends”. (Y/N) blushed in the process as he slowly removed his hand from her mouth. As if suddenly realizing what he’s done, he widened his eyes and stuttered. “O-oh my gosh, (Y-” he held back from saying her name, “I’m so so sorry.” 

(Y/N) laughed a bit and caught one of his wrists. Confused he just stared at her, an unkown certain heat slowly rising to his face. She didn’t say anything and only smiled and she ran out of the gap. 

They made their way through the crowds. Luckily the Ferris Wheel where she was headed to had a short line and she managed to get in a capsule as the door closed.

Once the two were in the capsule, they rested on opposite sides of the seat. “S-sorry, I saw them looking for us and this was the only solution,” she said laughing a bit. Osamu looked at her and kept silent; he rested his elbows on his thighs and bent his head down. 

“Osamu-kun?” When she had said that he brought a finger to her lips. “Osamu..just Osamu..” he breathed out. (Y/N) paused for a bit before returning the action of her finger on his lips. Taken aback the spiker looked and her as she smiled. 

“Then say my name.” 

“..what?” not moving from her original position she stated, “You haven’t said my name at all during this date.” The grey-haired teenager felt his heart race. 

‘She considered this a date?’

“Go on,” she encouraged. Unknowest to the both of them a string of sparks flew upwards and exploded right outside their capsule. Fireworks. 

This took (Y/N) by surprised as she yelped and instinctively threw herself and the nearest object to hold on to...which at that moment happened to be the spiker. She held herself to his chest, her eyes shut and Osamu leaned against the wall of the capsule in surprise, it took him a few second to figure out where to put his hands and after enough quick deliberation, decided on wrapping his arms around the girl who was sitting on his lap.

They were in that position for a good forty second before (Y/N) realized what position she was and pushed herself away but putting her hand on his chest, though still on his lap. “O-oh gosh, Osamu I’m so sorr-” 

He pulled her back to his chest, this time hugging her even tighter.

 He didn’t know how this would affect him after but right now he didn’t care, he was happy with this. “I like it..when you say my name..” his mouth that was now close to her ears muttered. She shuddered from the hot breath but relaxed soon after. “...(Y/N).” His doubts were eliminated as soon as he said that, as she hugged him even tighter and smiled to herself. 

They stayed like that in complete silence but both were happy. When the capsule finally arrived towards the lower levels, (Y/N) shifted herself away from the spiker and moved to sit beside him. “(Y/N)..” Osamu spoke. 

The manager would still get shudders every time he spoke her name. “I’m really glad I came to Tokyo, not just this but also for Nationals. I got to play so many more teams and it was honestly a once in a lifetime thing.” (Y/N) nodded, “Then I better see you next year as well,” Osamu gave a small smile and nodded back.

The pair had stepped out of the capsule only to find Atsumu waiting outside for them. “What the hell samu?! Why did you just leave-” “

That’s none of your concern, Tsum-Tsum.” he said putting a hand on his twins’ shoulder. He then looked behind and flashed a small smile at the girl, “Let’s go, (Y/N).”

----

heads up, every osamu story i write is in the same universe, they’re kinda like continuations of each other hehe. its not necessary to read the others and these can be read individually, but i promise you its worth it at the end :D

this is story 1

story 2

story 3

story 4

story 5

[queen-of-deans-booty]

The Devil You Know: Part One

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 2,466

Warnings: typical supernatural violence, language, angst, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

Before, you could understand Dean’s hurt at your betrayal of your family. Before, seeing him so upset actually made sense. Before, you were okay with him distancing himself from you. He just found out pretty upsetting news about how you killed your child without even asking him about how he felt. His feelings are validated, and you’re not trying to tell him they aren’t…

But enough is enough.

He’s taking this too far, and he’s crossing the line into dickhead territory. A part of you thinks he’s doing this just to get back at you like revenge of some sort, and the other half of you thinks this is how he truly feels still. The latter is winning, which is why you’re not taking drastic matters to try and force this upon him. If only he would just sit down and talk to you, then maybe you can start the healing process.

“Dean just listen to me!” you yell in the empty motel room.

If there are neighbors, they will surely hear this.

“I am done listening to you! I don’t want to hear another word out of you!”

“You’re being a fucking dick! Boo hoo, your feelings got hurt. Yeah, well, so are mine! You don’t see me throwing a fit whenever you walk into the room because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Forget us having a kid, you’re the fucking child right now! Do me a favor and grow the fuck up!”

Dean’s chest puffs out in anger at being called out on his bullshit. Yes, he does realize he’s being a bit dramatic, but how can he let something like this go so easily? He gives you a death glare and stalks over to you. It’s only when he gets an inch from you that he stops. His fists flex at his side, and he clenches his jaw in anger.

“Do it,” you say without hesitation.

“Do what?” he says in a low voice.

“Hit me. Punch me. Kick me to the ground. Do whatever you have to do. Whatever will help you sleep at night, right? Take your anger out on me because I know you want to. I can see it in your eyes.”

He stares deep into your soul, and behind the layer of anger and frustration, you can see the hurt and betrayal that’s left behind. He knows you can read him better than anyone else in the world which is why this hurts so much more. You know stuff about him that no one else does which is why this hurts so much more. He scoffs and turns away from you. He heads out of the motel room, letting the door slam behind him.

This relationship isn’t going to continue if things are like this. It’s up to you if you want to try and salvage it.

Following Pestilence’s trail is a lot easier said than done. He’s hitting town after town, and whenever you do get to it, you’re eating his dust. He’s infecting a lot of people along the way, but what you don’t understand is why he’s infecting people with things such as swine flu, colds, and other meaningless things. He has the power to unleash the Croatoan virus, so why isn’t he?

You can ponder on the unknown, or you can deal with what’s happening right here and now. Since Dean obviously wants to act like a child, then the only thing left to do is focus on the case. You’re at the hospital with the brothers talking with the head doctor who’s overlooking every case. In order not to contract the swine flu, you four are wearing doctor’s masks to block the infection from spreading to you even though your magic will protect you from it.

“Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the CDC is here, but what we really need is vaccine,” the female lead doctor says when she enters the main room where dozens of sick people are coughing and sneezing.

“You got that right,” Dean scoffs.

“Then, tell me, have you noticed anything unusual about the strain? Any signs of behavioral change, like aggression, maybe?” you ask her.

“Excuse me?”

“Have the flu victims shown any signs of, uh, homicidal tendencies?” you went in another direction.

“Uh, symptomatically speaking, we're looking at a relatively mild case of swine flu here. Probably add up to a miserable week off of work, and that's about it,” she chuckles nervously.

A male nurse approaches her with a clipboard, and she takes it to sign whatever paperwork is on there.

“So, nothing unusual?” Dean asks.

“A day and a half ago, we didn't have a single case. Now we're looking at over seventy—the infectious equivalent of a briefcase bomb. So, yeah, I might call that a little unusual.”

“Day and a half?” Sam whispers to you and Dean while she consoles with the male nurse.

“That's the same time those statues started crying,” Dean confirms.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“What was what?” you chuckle nervously.

“Did you just say a bunch of statues started crying?”

“What?” Sam laughs nervously. “No. W-who would--”

“Who would say that, huh? Crazy people,” Dean cuts off his brother.

“Exactly.”

“Which we’re not,” you add.

“Just get us some vaccine,” she says and walks away.

Dean lets out a relieved sigh, and he’s the first one to leave the area. You look at Sam and follow him out to the car. You take off your doctor’s mask as Dean pulls away from the curb, and you slide to the middle. Your dad did want to be updated on what was happening, so you pull out your phone and dial his number. He answers on the third ring.

“Let me guess, another steaming hot pile of swine flu.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn't make any sense, Bobby. Pestilence touched down here. I'm sure of it,” Sam sighs.

“My question is,” you voice your thoughts, “why is he infecting people with stuff like the flu when he has the power to deliver the Croatoan virus? I don’t get it.”

“It doesn't matter what the sick son of a bitch is doing. What matters is this is the fourth town he's hit—that we know of—and we're still eating his dust. Did you get anything? Maybe about where he’s headed?”

“No pattern we can see,” Sam answers.

“Okay, well, as far as I can tell, he’s headed east so head east.”

“East?” you, Sam, and Dean say at the exact same time.

“Bobby, we're in West Nevada. East is practically all there is,” Dean sighs.

“Yeah, well, you better get to driving,” he says and hangs up.

You put your phone away and slide back to your side of the seat. It’s better for you to be directly behind Dean so he can’t look at you while he’s driving. Sam’s got a better view of you than his brother. It’s weird to say, but ever since the secret came out, Sam has been very caring towards you. He knows how hard this is for you and Dean, and he’s trying his best to make sure he doesn’t make it any harder. Right now, you consider him your only friend since it’s clear Dean doesn’t want to be yours.

“Say,” Crowley’s rough voice comes from next to you, “I’ve got an idea.”

Dean slams on the brakes and swerves the car to a screeching halt. When the car finally stops moving, you and Sam go after the demon together. He uses Ruby’s knife, and you use your magic. However, Sam stabs the leather seats because Crowley is gone.

“Did you get him?” Dean pants.

“He’s gone.”

“Fancy a chat?” Crowley knocks on the back window with a smile. All three of you exit the car immediately, and Crowley backs away in fear Sam might actually kill him. “You’re upset. We should discuss it.”

“You want to talk? After what you did to us?” Sam yells.

He’s more pissed about Crowley than you are even though Ellen and Jo are just as dear to you as they are to him.

“After what I—what I did to you?! I gave you the colt!” Crowley shouts.

“Yeah, and you knew it wouldn't work against the devil!” you yell.

“I never!”

“You set us up. We lost people on that suicide run—good people!”

“Who you take on the ride is your own business! Look, everything is still the same. W-we're all still in this together,” the demon chuckles nervously.

“Sure we are,” Sam nods.

He attempts to stab Crowley again, but he teleports behind him. Sam looks around for the demon, and when he spots him, he starts to head over to him.

“Call off your dog, please,” Crowley begs.

Dean puts his arm out to stop Sam, but you can tell he’s close to snapping.

“Give me one good reason.”

“I can give you pestilence.”

“What do you know about pestilence?” you ask.

“I know how to get him. That's got your interest, doesn't it?”

“Are you actually listening to this?” Sam gasps when he gets a good look at his brother’s facial expressions.

It’s not ideal, but the sooner you get the keys, the sooner Lucifer gets put back in the cage.

“Sam—”

“Are you fucking nuts?”

“Shut up for a second, Sam!”

“Shut up, the both of you!” Crowley butts in. “Look… I swear... I thought the colt would work. It's an honest mistake. It's all part of the learning process. But nothing's changed. I still want the devil dead. Well… onething's changed. Now, the devil knows that I want him dead. Which, by the way, makes me the most buggered son in all of creation.”

“Holy shit,” you gasp as if you suddenly came to a realization. “We don’t care.”

“They burnt down my house! They ate my tailor! Two months under a rock, like a bloody salamander! Every demon on hell and Earth's got his eyes out for me! And yet... Here I am… Last place I should be, in the road, talking to Sam and Dean Winchester and Y/N Singer, under a fucking spotlight!” he gestures to the streetlight above, and it explodes. “So, come with me. Please. Do you want the horsemen rings or not? Yes, I know all about that. Shall we?”

“Lead the way,” you sigh in defeat.

First Dean and now Crowley. You can’t catch a break.

Apparently, Crowley lives in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. It’s a step down from the mansion that you and Jo broke into a few months ago. If he’s on the run, then he’ll want low profile places like this one. You’ve been in his shoes, actually, so you know what it feels like to go from something so “luxurious” to this.

“Here we are, my life on the lam. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Single-pane glass, used contraception in the fireplace,” he flicks his hand at the fireplace and the logs go up in flames. “The water damage alone—”

“My heart's bleeding for you. Now, how do you know about the rings?” Dean interrupts.

“Well, now… I've been keeping a close eye on you lot.”

“We got hex bags. We're hidden from demons,” Sam points out.

“All but one,” he motions to himself. “That night you broke into my house, our first date, my valet hid a tracking device in your car. It’s a magical coin that easily trumps your little bags o' bones. It allows me to hear things, too—and, my, the things I've heard. So, you want to cram the devil back in the box? Cunning scheme. I want in.”

“You said you could get us pestilence,” you keep him on track of why you’re really here.

“Now, I don't know where pestilence is per se. But I do know the demon who does. He's what you might call the horsemen's stable boy. He handles their itineraries and their personal needs. He's who you want, believe me. He'll tell us where Sneezy's at.”

“Well, how do we get him to spill? Rip out his toenails?” Dean questions.

“No. Nuts at his pay grade don't crack. We bring him here, then I sell him.”

“Sell him?” you scoff.

“Please. I've sold sin to saints for centuries. Think I can't close one little demon?”

“Fine, where is this demon of yours?”

“I’ll lock in his location, you get ready. It’s going to be one hell of a fight,” he chuckles.

He leaves the room, and you and Dean get the duffel bags ready. You two still aren’t talking, and Sam can see how this is going to be played. It’s either he talks to either one of you or he becomes a middle ground for your fighting. He doesn’t want to deal with the fighting, so he opts for the former.

“Why are we even listening to him, Dean? This is totally insane.”

“I don’t disagree,” he shrugs.

“What other choice do we have, Sam? We’ve gotten nowhere on our own, so I think it’s time to bring in some outside help. We have no clue where Death and Pestilence are. Crowley does,” you whisper the last part.

“She’s right,” the demon says when he enters the room. “One big happy family, are we, then? Fantastic.”

“You ready to go?” Dean asks him.

“Yes. Sam, keep the home fires burning.”

“Excuse me?” you stop him.

“Sam's not coming.”

“And why the hell not?” Sam gasps.

“Because I don't like you, I don't trust you, and oh, yes, you keep trying to kill me!”

“There's no damn way. This isn't gonna happen!”

“I’m not asking you, am I? Because you’re not invited. I’m asking you two,” Crowley points at you and Dean. “What’s it going to be?”

Since this is in regards to the case and the fate of the world, you and Dean make eye contact as if you’re considering this. He doesn’t hold it long, and he passes it to Sam who keeps it a lot longer than you did. Crowley takes the silence as his answer, and he backs away slowly to give you three more time to change your minds before he’s gone for good.

“Gentlemen, lady, enjoy your last few sunsets.”

“Wait,” Dean stops him. Sam looks at him like he’s crazy, but it’s the only choice we have right now. “We’ll go.”

“Sam, we have no other choice,” you say as you follow him.

“She’s right. What can I say? I believe the guy,” Dean shrugs.

“Just stay warm, okay?” you offer and leave with the two men.

Being with Crowley is a lot better than being alone with Dean because who knows what might happen if you two are unsupervised.

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[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Seven

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Wherein we... talk to the crew. I didn’t quite make it off the ship.

Still, a lot of words.

Aka the nearly All-Gif update.

Didn’t get a chance to play ME at all this week, so I’m going to spend a few hours this weekend (double-checking to make sure screenshotting works :p) and have some real updates later.

So making it back to the ship from Therum, it’s time to talk to the crew.  I maybe could have gone and talked to them after getting on the ship after the Citadel, but they don’t really have any unique lines then so, I usually wait til now to go chat.

First, let’s talk to Liara.

The thing that sucks about talking to Liara (or Kaidan, or Ashley, if you don’t want to romance them) is, you know, the accidental romance.  Making “picking the Paragon-place choices = romance by default with NO WARNING” design was very Not Good.  They fixed this in later games, well moreso in Dragon Age games than ME, (and Andromeda is done very well for this) but still.  In ME3, the BackOff mod does a great job of making romance dialog more obvious and intentional.  

Liara’s dialog choices I feel like are even LESS obviously flirting I feel like than Ash and Kaidan’s.  Honestly with Liara’s most of the lines can be read and even said aloud as friendship then BOOM, all of a sudden she wants a threesome.  I choose middle dialog options whenever possible with Liara just to avoid this.  I’m not interested, never have been, don’t want Kaidan to think he has any competition.  But seriously, it’s poor game design here that you literally have to be a jerk to a companion at some points to avoid having them think you want to bang.   God, half of the reason I’d love a remaster would be to hopefully fix shit like this to avoid some of the pitfalls.  

I hate that some people use this as a reason to dislike these characters more.  And I’ll admit, in my early days as a ME fan, I held it against Liara, too, until I realized how dumb that is.  I especially hate it when you get to the “confrontation scene” and people use Kaidan not wanting to be in a threesome as a reason to dislike him more?  It’s not a bad thing to want to be monogamous?  (And of course, it’s not a bad thing to NOT want to be, assuming everyone is open and OK about it.)

I just prefer to not get that scene at all now, and to avoid “leading anyone on” accidentally etc.  My Shepard knows early on what she wants, and sticks with him all the way through.

I was going to talk more here about my feelings about Liara in general but uh, I guess I’ll do that later.  This is already really long.

Here’s a great post about how to avoid romancing Kaidan while being rude as little as possible to him.  

Well since he’s right outside the medbay anyway, let’s go talk to the LT.  

Have I mentioned how much I hate the orange glow?  

So anyway, I thought maybe I’d talk here a little bit about Why Kaidan?

I will point out here that I am mostly a hetero woman, so my choices in video game romances lean towards men first, though I’m also very cool with doing non-m/f romances in games, and often do on subsequent playthroughs of games I love, but that’s almost never gonna be my primary romance.

I’d already mentioned my love for Carth Onasi, one of the most hated companions in video games, If You’re A Guy.

By today’s standards, even the Carth romance isn’t that great.  But at the time, it was the greatest romance I’d experienced in video games.  There were a few others that were really good -- Valen Shadowbreath in Neverwinter Nights: Horde of the Underdark was the other really great one, but we also got nightmare fuel like Anomen in Baldur’s Gate (though that gets better with mods + the final BG expansion) or just under-written characters or romances like Casavir in NWN2 (who was much better with mods) or hell, either of your choices in KotOR2 imho.  But I used to play KotOR over and over for many reasons, such as holy shit a Star Wars game(!!) and one where you can actually be a female main character AND has that great Bioware storytelling... but a big reason was Carth.  

A funny thing about Carth Onasi... if you play a male main character, you have a very different experience with Carth than if you play a woman.  And even I can agree that hoo boy Carth gets tiresome quick if you play a male, as a female you at least get to flirt and that calms him down and evens him out a lot. But the one time I tried playing as a male, I didn’t make it off Taris because.. yeouch I could actually see what the guys playing were so mad about.

But hey, that voice.  Raphael Sbarge, I love that voice.  So like I said early on in these posts, I immediately knew I was going to romance Kaidan the very second I confirmed he was romancable, before I even ran back into the ship and met anyone on the crew aside from Joker and Kaidan.

And... that only got confirmed more and more as I went through ME for the first time.  The character is smart, and capable, and respected you, and never questioned your command, but made his feelings pretty clear along the way.  He could be a little doofy but in an adorable way with some of the things he said, honestly there was almost never anything I didn’t love about this character.

I realized some time ago that I have a thing for the Paladin archetype personally. 

This is Casavir, from Neverwinter Nights 2, and in NWN2, there are two romance options for women.  An under-written Lawful Good Paladin in his late 30′s who is willing to buck his superiors to do what he thinks is right but also places you on a pedestal and holds back all his emotions.  He’s a romance option. Or....

Bishop, a chaotic evil ranger who insults you a lot, threatens to rape an NPC under your protection, and ultimately betrays you.  

Most people who played NWN2 seemed to prefer the CE Ranger.  I loved the paladin so much I wrote fix-it fic that I never have gotten around to publishing anywhere to retcon his terrible dumb ending.

There’s a fan-made romance mod that helps with the romances in this game, though I dislike a lot of what they did, ultimately I always use it.

In Dragon Age?

Ah yeah, the Templar-Warden.  Love him.  He does have that “Oh I’m so young and experienced tee-hee” thing going on that isn’t my favorite, (at this point mostly because I’m actually in my mid-40′s so uh, I’m just Old) but otherwise, yeah, love Alistair.

Dragon Age 2, I mean I usually romance Anders but... I’m not real excited about either him or Fenris, or even either of the ladies, though I have done Isabella’s romance (as well as Fenris’) and enjoyed it.  I’d probably romance Avaline (or Varric!), if she were an option.  But yeah, Anders mostly because he IS trying to do what’s right, even if he... well.  You know.  

But Dragon Age Inquisition?

Give me that Blackwall-angst.  That stoic guy trying to be a Warden who comes undone for you.  You’d think I’d go for Cullen, but hey this game gave us two paladin archetypes, though one is merely pretending, he still atones and becomes what he was trying to be, one way or another, if you let him.  I picked this paladin archtype first because I did not like Cullen based on interactions with him in DA1 & 2.  I like him well enough in DA:I but Blackwall is my guy here.

Out of all the many, many companions in SWTOR, who’s my fave?

If Aric Jorgan isn’t a Paladin-type I don’t know who is, especially since any romanceable Jedi are uh, all your female padawans (don’t get me started) until Lana (also female) comes along. 

Hell, in a very long-running 4e D&D game I played from around 2009 to 2014 where my character fell in love with our party leader’s son, married him and fought the final boss 4 months pregnant with our twins.  That character’s husband... was a paladin.  I mean look at this art my friend picked out for his character’s son:

I mean dang, who (of those who are attracted to men of this type) wouldn’t?

I always pick the Paladin.  The guy who is gonna Do What’s Right no matter what it costs him, the guy who’s gonna be loyal, the guy who may bottle up his emotions or keep them under control all the time but ultimately does what it takes to get the girl... that’s my fave.  And that’s Kaidan.

I will also say my second fave archetype is rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold, and that’s more of a Garrus or Varric (if only he were a choice!!! :( ) type.. aka my second choice in these games.

Well that was a lot more words on that subject than I meant to do, so I’m going to just say real quick here that what I love about this first conversation with Kaidan is that he’s already no dummy, he knows something is up, and warns you about it.

We’ll save talk about his backstory for another day.

Let’s head downstairs.

Yay for sped-up elevators!  What used to take like 20 seconds now takes like, four.

URDNOT WREX.

This another place where Shepard starts out just sticking their foot in their mouths completely.  I feel like this is something the game definitely has problems with here.  Shepard should know a lot more about the Genophage, like they should have about say, Spectres, even if the player doesn’t. So basically every response you can give to Wrex about the genophage and what his people are going through sounds really insensitive.  Comparing the relatively minor First Contact War with the entire galaxy more or less uniting to keep the Krogan from taking over after the Rachni war seems pretty dumb, and also like something Shepard should already know.

Loredumping on the Krogans a bunch with Wrex is necessary, but  I think it could have been done better.  Though I think there are a lot of questions about the Krogan and the Genophage that ultimately are important but go unanswered. I’m going to be honest, because generally I want my companions to be happy and ultimately I want the happiest ending I can get, I usually cure the genophage and leave Wrex in charge.  But also I don’t think that ends up with the happiest ending for the galaxy.  Everything about the genophage is terrible, how it works, how it was administered, what it’s done to the Krogan as a people, but let’s be honest, the galaxy will also be in huge trouble just from a resources perspective if each krogan woman can have hundreds (or even just dozens) of babies a year, who are gonna all live a thousand years.  There’s got to be a compromise that, eventually, hopefully Wrex works out if he’s alive at the end of ME3 or the council figures out with Wreav or whoever.  

It is kinda funny though that here, I basically met Wrex at C-Sec, told him I’d help him with Fist, sent him to my ship, and basically just kidnapped him to go help with the rest of the mission.  He wanted to be here, right?  I can only assume I’m paying him a lot.

Ashley!

I do love Ashley Williams.

I’m not going to turn this into a “Is Ashley Racist” thinkpiece.  I’ve read a lot of both sides of this argument and no, I don’t think she is.  Some pieces of her attitude do need to be kicked up a bit, for sure.  She’s got about the same issues with aliens as most of the species of the galaxy have with each other, which sometimes isn’t great, but she’s far from supporting Terra Firma.

She’s smart, she’s funny, a hell of a shot, she’s being held back due to her family name.  I would love for if someday a Wilshenko OT3 were possible.  I’d do that in an instant.  I despise the fact that you can only keep Kaidan forever if you lose Ashley forever, though I don’t see that changing even in a remaster.  Please Bioware, for the super ultra remaster?

I know I need to do another run through the game with Ashley alive. I don’t remember too much of what happens in ME3 when she’s there.

I also love that her story is so much one of family.  From her stories of her sisters, to the point that it’s her own grandfather’s legacy that’s holding her back.  She’s so grounded, she reminds us that there are civilians out there we’re keeping safe, a whole world we rarely see, up in space and in the middle of so much military conflict.

GARRUS.

First of all, whew Garrus looks amazing in the lighting and with the textures with ALOT/MEUITM.  Very handsome.

Interestingly, Garrus does not really loredump on the turians.  We absorb a lot of what we find out about the turians more naturally.  Garrus is more all about C-Sec and the general politics of the Council, of Spectres, of C-Sec.  Gonna be honest, I expected C-sec to play into the game as a whole a lot more than it did based on Garrus’ talks about it.  I mean it was always there, but Bailey ends up being the face of C-Sec 

Garrus’ Law vs. I Do What I Want attitude is a nice way to do a non-goody-two-shoes companion story without having to go evil.  I love that Garrus’ story kinda mirrors our own as players, how are we going to get things done?  Shove a blaster in people’s faces, accept collateral damage, and do whatever it takes to get it done?  OR play by the rules, compromise, and see if that fixes things.

The thing is though, Mass Effect actually is great at giving us the illusion of choice without making a huge difference in the end.  Like I mentioned before... not bringing Garrus to ME1 makes little difference in how he acts in ME2 outside of a few lines of dialog.  Lots of things are like that, like pick Ash or Kaidan on Virmire, and yes one is always gone, but 80% of the content is basically the same from there on out for either character.

There are games out now that do that choice better.  Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one I can think of.  Or Tyranny.  Things you choose can alter the endings of those games drastically, locking entire paths out of the game.  

I used to think that was what I wanted.  Until I played Kingmaker and locked myself out of things I really wanted without realizing it.  I stopped playing the game, sad that my LI dumped me and wouldn’t come back without reloading many, many hours worth of game.  Despite enjoying the game overall, I still haven’t gone back.  When I do play again, I’ll probably keep a lot of tabs open of walkthroughs and tips on how to keep things going how I want.  Kind of defeating the purpose of the game.

Anyway, I got super off track again.  The point is, Garrus is the companion that gives us the most Choice in who he is.  Which is cool.  He illustrates our Paragon vs Renegade dilemma.  And it’s neat that it does make changes in some of the things he says in the future, but overall, his story doesn’t change much no matter what you do (Unless you, ya know, get him killed in ME2).

And therein lies a problem with Mass Effect, and video games as a whole.  It’s neat to see the little changes, but it’s rare for anything to be an actual Big Change, because... that’s a loooot of work for a developer and how much more money is all that going to cost him.

At some point in the future I’ll point out how lucky we are for what we did get, though.

Heeeey it’s Chief Engineer Greg Adams!  I wonder how many people don’t even know he has a first name?  Anyway, thank you for your one short conversation in which you explain how the Normandy works (honestly, great job with explaining this, Bioware, even if the science is ???) and like three sentences on who you are.  Wasted opportunity to give you an actual character.  Glad you like Tali, though!  See you in ME3.

TALI!

Okay, I will totally accept that Shepard doesn’t know much past the basics of quarian society.  That makes a lot more sense than Shepards not knowing much about asari.  

The quarians are so much more of an original creation I feel like than a lot of what we’ve seen in the galaxy so far.  Krogan?  Basically Klingons.  Turians?  Space Romans. Asari?  Twilek/Space Elves but ALL Hot Ladies.  Qarians feel like something new though.

I mean, I guess before they had to live in suits they were pretty normal, but their entire culture doesn’t feel like something we’ve seen everyplace before.  I mean I’ve seen space (g-slur)  but, eh not really.  

And Tali herself is such a good character.  I mean, she does suffer a little from being Very Important with her father being one of five admirals in a population of six million people but, I’ll allow it.  Nobody else on the crew has Very Important Parents.  I mean Garrus’ father is a little high up in the ranks but that’s a non-factor, Ash’s grandfather was but he’s dead and never seen, Wrex’s father is a chieftan but none of those is central to their current story or as big as this one. I mean, Spacer Shep’s own mother is a captain of a ship.  Tali herself in-game isn’t that sexualized -- most of that was the fandom’s doing.  She’s young but also confident and has her shit together.  

She shoulda been a same-sex romance in ME2/3 though, damnit!

Joker. Is. Amazing. And uh, also shoulda been a romance option. 

Hey first of all, how great was it that they put in disabled representation in this game.  I have read a few posts on how it could have been better, and definitely agree, but it’s also been so important to have say, Geordi LaForge as chief engineer of the Enterprise and also Joker here, in space, being awesome on spaceships.  And he really earns his the right to his bravado in calling himself the best pilot in the galaxy.  

Also?  Casting Seth Green was such a great choice.  I couldn’t imagine Joker as anyone else.  I mean this is Bioware so we expect, and definitely got, great voice acting (except for... ugh you know, we’ll get there in ME3) but honestly Seth Green was a particularly good choice.  I don’t care that he’s covered with sixteen layers of plot armor, he deserves it.

He’s the companion that we don’t ever get to take in the squad.  (I mean, except for that brief amazing moment in ME2)

I only wish in ME1 he had as much to say as in ME2/3.  At least he gets cool snarky lines after all the major missions.

One last thing before we get off the ship for awhile, I love that the crew is actually comprised of both men AND women in ME1.  With different hairstyles and faces, and even skin tones.  It’s nice to see they didn’t just reuse the same guy over and over for the nameless NPCs.  

Well, I guess they get names in ME2. :v

Anyway, I would like to point out, that there are seventeen nameless NPCs on the Normandy.

Then there’s Adams, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, Kaidan, Chakwas, Liara, Pressley, and Joker.

That’s twenty-seven people and eight sleep pods.  Let’s remove the aliens, who couldn’t fit in a sleep pod (Garrus and Wrex), twenty-five people.  Are there people sleeping in the sleep pods now?  There must be, right?  Everyone can’t be awake when we’re on the ship just because we’re there?  How does that math add up?  Who is sleeping where, HOW DOES IT WORK!?  

Well, that’s their problem. I got my own bed.  Kaidan can share.

Also just... don’t get me started on how stupid this is.  I mean it’s nice having a shop on the ship but... the justification is terrible.  We all know it.  He was counted as one of the 17 nameless, btw.

Okay well, I was going to get off the ship this update but this is already stupid long and honestly I don’t have too much more content to post so, I’m gonna go actually play this game!

[onceuponawildflower]

How has your sexuality affected your religiousness? I know when I first starting following you years ago you were very involved in the church. Please feel free to ignore this question if it is uncomfortable/too personal/whatever. I just know many people who are afraid to truly be themselves because of the judgement that typically comes from their church families (among others I’m sure)

no it’s okay i don’t mind answering.

a few years back, back when i was v involved in the church, i also got v involved in nonviolent protesting and political activism (circa the noDAPL movement, Bernie, the big swing into immigration rights we’ve recently seen, the Syrian genocide, and the rise of Trump, etc). the more i got involved in those things, the more i became alienated by the church. i was asked to be part of worship less and less, some people distanced themselves from me. 

it eventually got to a point where i talked to the pastors multiple times, asking them what we were going to be doing to take a stance on human injustices. they told me that, i kid you not, ‘what you’re doing on the left end is as extreme as the far-right wing.’ they told me they wanted to stay centrist and not take a stand. in my last encounter with them they told me that they loved me as a sister, but they wouldn’t ever talk about the issues i was passionate about bc it would ‘go over peoples’ heads’. i left before the service that day and almost immediately after, i was excommunicated. like i lost my entire friend group and church family, i was taken off of worship, my pastor left one inflammatory comment on something i posted on fb and then blocked me. it was a whole to-do which really hurt. but also made me livid. but also i was exhausted, having tried so hard to encourage people to care for others as their religion had always encouraged and kept being met with comfortable apathy…

so while i was kicked out of that church and that was a whole lot to deal with on all facets of my mind, body, and soul, i also see it to be a blessing bc it opened up this whole new world for me, one that i never even gave myself an option to believe previously. i explored all the facets of spirituality and mysticism that i knew very little about other than the christian church saying they were sinful and demonic (purely bc they weren’t protestantism). i also began to explore sexuality beyond the purity garbage force fed to christians. and that’s where it probably started.

once i realized it was okay to dismantle the crippling system imposed upon people, mostly womxn but also men, that told them that sexual purity was of utmost importance but the same system that never provided any sort of guidance through anything sexual, ever, i started to heal my own wounds of trauma and naivety and began to love myself. like my whole self. not just as a physical being but as a spiritual vessel and goddess soul resting in flesh. 

i still have a long way to go and christianity really does fuck you up with ego and self-doubt and guilt and perfectionism, but it can be healed. i started listening to jamie lee finch and reading more about spiritual mysticism. i got into tarot and witchcraft and i know a lot of christians out there are probably rolling their eyes or laughing at me rn when they read this, but there is SO MUCH knowledge and wisdom around us in the natural world, much more than a book written by a bunch of men thousands of years ago. women hold so much power and goodness and wisdom and divinity, but christianity has all but wiped them out and done all it can to invalidate and eradicate the feminine divine. 

that feminine divine however, is what gives me life. it fuels me. it reminds me of my agency. it reminds me of my power. 

while all of this awakening was happening spiritually, so was my sexual awakening. it came in little nudges, like i would see womxn and want to cuddle them or hold them or kiss them or have what i thought was platonic relationships (nonsexual, intellectual, emotional lifelong partnerships). it scared me at first. a lot. i actually remember actively denying it. but also kept asking my queer friends about this sensation. i didn’t want to be pan at first or anything not straight. i actively opposed it bc i couldn’t imagine having to go through that transition with my family or my own self. i have been pretty emotionally exhausted for years now, and i didn’t think i could take that on too. while i was lgbtq+ friendly and an ally, it can be a totally different experience when you realize you’ve been suppressing something deep deep down unconsciously for decades. it’s really hard to explain really, and it’s still relatively new to me so bare with me here, i’m still feeling it out. 

the more i ignored it however, the stronger it came on. at one point i surrendered to it. i couldn’t help but just embrace it bc otherwise i was lying to myself. i allowed myself to be open and honest with myself and that was terrifying, but also very liberating, just getting it out there and allowing my sexuality to exist in the same space as me. i tried to figure out what exactly i was feeling and if i could categorize this to help create some clarity (virgo here). what resonated most with me was pansexuality. it wasn’t like i was attracted to men and women and that was my marker. it was more like i was drawn to someone’s energy before i even considered their sexuality/gender. someone’s emotional presence and aura drew me in and everything else came second. it didn’t matter to me if they were mxn or womxn or something more fluid and in between. i just was there for the energy. 

so i’ve been ‘out’ to my friends for a few months now, but i don’t think i’ll ever tell my parents, at least, i don’t think i will. i just know them and while they love people they love them through that christian lens. i’m very jaded still and forgive me for that, i will definitely need to go to therapy once i get insurance to help move beyond this. they still have a lot of resistance with lgbtq people, and that makes me really sad. i can’t imagine even nodding to the subject bc i know that we’re not going to meet in the middle. both of their kids are really liberal and not christian despite their best efforts, and they have become slightly less conservative since i was young, but now they’re just where that church i was kicked out of was, right in the middle, unbudgingly. 

i suppose it works out for us now, since i am openly pansexual/queer and my partner is a heteronormative male (though not entirely cisgendered and he’s comfortable being whomever he wants to be and i love that about him). from the outside, we look like a heteronormative couple, which is cool and convenient for my family. honestly, since i left christianity, i’ve had a different relationship with my parents, and i miss how close we were. but i know it’s not going to change bc i have 0 desire to return to that religion and they have 0 desire to explore anything outside of it. what relationship we do have now is nice, in its own scope. i just wish i could be real and honest and open and deep with them and that they would go there with me. but that’s okay… i have friends who can meet me there and a supportive and open partner and so this is really the best it can get for me realistically. i am v grateful for the people i have in my life. 

i don’t stay in touch with literally anyone from that church. no one talks to me anymore. they’ve all cut me out and as they know they can’t pull me back in they’ve exited altogether. that’s the christian agenda though, no? it’s all about bringing people in (at its best). just like door to door sales, if they know they don’t have a chance of making that sale, they’ll stop wasting their time and move on. bigger fish to fry. it hurts that i was only a (black) sheep in their flock, but at the same time, i have grown so much since i realized i could think for myself and be okay and not crippled by lack of a deity. i have no desire to return, and if those people couldn’t accept me then, they sure as hell won’t accept me now. but i don’t want that sort of energy in my life. i want authenticity. i want realness. i want vulnerability and openness and unconditional love. if you’re not willing to bring that, then i don’t really want to invest in you. simple as that.

now i’m not saying the way things went down for me are how it should be for anyone else, but i do encourage you and anyone else out there to feel your feelings. don’t be afraid of them. walk into those murky waters, if even with trepidation and wariness, at least move forward. bc otherwise you’re stagnating and stagnant water is dangerous (and smelly). foster a community of those who want to join you in your journey, who love you without any agenda. it is hard and can be incredibly painful but i do believe it’s worth it to live a life true to yourself rather than lie to ourself to appease the comfort zones of others.

that’s all i got. 

[southern-continent-skies]

Mirror Barrayar

I’m not writing this fic, but I wrote out a bunch of world-building/bios for a Barryar Mirror Universe while I was trying to write something else that ended up being too dubcon to fit into canon, and instead went sideways into this.

The concept of Mirror Barrayar is basically like the Star Trek version. The main difference is that the Terran Empire in Star Trek is inherently atomized and selfish; everyone is murdering/sleeping their way to the top on their own, with no personal or community ties except to The State. Mirror Barrayar still has the feudal aspect to it, so it’s different, in that you do have some residual notions of Family, Honor, and Loyalty (especially loyalty), but there’s a great deal of F You I Got Mine, as well. 

Generally, the Vor see an obligation to their proles and liegemen, but its the same way you might see an obligation to a pet. It’s reprehensible to, say, chain them outside with no food, or beat them for personal entertainment, or abandon them. But it’s also reprehensible to just let them do what they want, because they’re animals; if they snap, it’s because they’re poorly trained, and if they’re obese, it’s because you overfed them. You have absolute authority over their lives, so you need to step up and exercise that authority responsibly. But you don’t go through the motions of making sure your terrier wants you to pet it, that’s ridiculous. If it doesn’t growl, it’s fine - and if it does growl, obviously it needs more training. Keep them well-fed and happy, but never make the mistake of offering them respect.

Bios behind the cut because Long.

Emperor Gregor is recognizable, but much more Ezar-like; sharper, less concerned with ethics and more concerned with keeping power. Vordrozda was a much more conscious ploy to smoke out any actual disloyalty of Aral’s; he knew what Vordrozda was doing, and he played both sides against the middle. He didn’t want to execute Miles, but he would have done it without an existential crisis; he’d rather keep the campstool than his cousin. Not only is the position of Emperor intrinsically valuable, but it’s the only way he stays alive. Ride the tiger, however many of your friends it eats. 

He’s still depressed (neurotransmitters are a bitch), but his saving grace is duty, which he knows he can do better than anyone else - he took a swan dive on Komarr primarily because he was temporarily convinced otherwise. He wants to avoid civil war, because that needlessly endangers proles and civilians, but he’s not remotely above strategic assassination. He found Cavilo entirely attractive, and very Vor, but he didn’t really want to sign up for a marriage where he’d always have to watch his back. He doesn’t really want a partner, either; feudalism doesn’t understand the concept. Sorry, Laisa; you (and his conception of Kareen) are more like chivalrously-accommodated pets. It’s less male/female than political combatant/civilian, but the distinction is definitely there. He respects and relies on Alys, but he watches her like a hawk because he knows she has ambition. He almost wishes Ivan were a woman, because he’d hate to have to execute his favorite social General for treasonously plotting his replacement. Maybe they can come to some arrangement anyway...

Aral Vorkosigan really is loyal, because he recognizes Vorbarra authority as legitimate and therefore voluntarily submits to it. However, he’s more apt to seize power himself as a “last” resort if he feels Gregor couldn’t keep it in his own right; better, in his version of honor and duty to Ezar, to have Gregor as a puppet than a corpse. He’ll be glad to step down as Main Power Broker in Gregor’s favor, but mostly because that shit is exhausting and he’d rather retire than die. The post to Sergyar is less a compassionate sinecure and more a board-clearing move on Gregor’s part, that happily also allows him to avoid killing them (he really does like Aral and Cordelia, but you can’t make compromises on power). On a personal level, Aral is the “switch” he sort of is in canon, except he’s not remotely that self-aware, and just chalks it up to Authority Moving As It Should, i.e. Sempai Is Always On Top - which is also why he and Ges were so explosive. Technically Aral, as a Count’s heir, outranked Ges, but they weren’t in each other’s chain of command, feudally or militarily, so they had to continually fight about it. That’s what made their affair so transgressive, not the m/m aspect.

Ges Vorrutyer needs no alterations. 

Neither, for that matter, do Ezar and Serg. Really, this is just a universe where Barrayar never socially progressed beyond Dorca’s Game of Thrones bullshit, except that now they have spaceships and fast penta.

Cordelia Naismith ran ALL the way out of fucks to give after Mehta, and is much more convinced that nice gets you killed. She still wants to be nice, if it’s possible, but she’ll shank you pdq if you might be a threat. Her advice that Aral execute Carl Vorhalas was on purpose, here: show them you’re ruthless enough to kill their sons, and they’ll fall in line. And if they fall in line, they won’t threaten our own children, so win-win (except for Carl; sorry Carl. But not too sorry). Aral’s “fountain of honor” is, uh, a very relative term. (And then, of course, her Carl Vorhalas ploy backfired horribly, because that sort of relentless back-stabbing is what the Mirror Universe attitude generally gets you in the end.)

Piotr Vorkosigan died much earlier on; Cordelia isn’t taking those chances with her son, and Bothari knows which way his bread is buttered, too.

Miles Vorkosigan is much more like the caricature of himself that he and Gregor feed Cavilo, except not nuts; that same scene happens here, but it’s full of a lot more barbed back-and-forth between them, with Elena watching not in incredulous giggles but in the kind of silence that means you’re storing up actionable intelligence for later use. He loves Admiral Naismith because it gives him a stage for the plots he’d be executed for in Vorbarr Sultana, and Gregor likes it because, again, he can make use of his family members without having to execute them for being themselves. Miles nearly gets executed for his Memory falsified report business, because if Gregor can’t trust him absolutely then he just has to die. He definitely sleeps with Bel; if he can’t swear it into his service personally, establishing a sexual pair-bond is the next best thing - and besides, it’s a willing subordinate and it’s hot. Likewise, the Elli/Miles relationship is much more fraught, and Miles’s involvement with other people is much more pointed in her general direction. Elli has too much non-Barrayaran self-respect to take the hint and *submit* to Miles, but she likes him enough to put up with way too much of his power-dynamic shenanigans anyway.

Elena Bothari is much more ruthless. She leaves Barrayar because she’s tired of the barriers put in place on her gender AND her class. She wants to play the game, to be a combatant and not a civilian, but on Barrayar she was born unarmed and would be trampled sharp-ish. And that’s why she wouldn’t ever marry Miles; she wants to be an officer, not a pet. And even though she has to leave the Imperium to do it, she’s still very much operating in the Barrayaran style. Baz, the poor puppy, still doesn’t quite know what hit him; but for a pardon, a Vorkosigan connection, and a kickass, gorgeous wife, he’ll do whatever she wants.

Lady Alys is the reigning domme of Vorbarr Sultana. She rules the entire social scene, and social ladder, with an iron fist, tastefully draped in very plush velvet. Marriage contracts for the High Vor go through her first, or good luck getting an invitation to any of the Residence events this year - and she absolutely insists on her version of droit de seigneur. Unlike in canon, she is very much not in a hurry to get Gregor married off, because then she’d have to step back, and fuck that noise. She may have sabotaged a few potential matches by fucking with their gene scans. If Ivan were a woman, that dynastic loop would have been closed yesterday. As it is, she’s been hinting since forever that it might be a good idea for him to cultivate a, ah, “closer” relationship with his cousin, ifyouknowwhatimean. And her relationship with Simon Illyan is equally pragmatic, though no less enjoyable for it. After all, if Gregor dies without heirs, who would be better placed to pull her son’s strings right into the campstool? “Dowager Empress” has a ring to it, don’t you think?

Simon Illyan, Negri’s student in every way, has internalized enough Barrayaran class sensibilities to accept, and even enjoy, reflexively submitting to the Vor - as long as they’re at least as competent as he is. He’s loyal to Aral, and to Gregor, as he was to Ezar before them - but in a much more “I have weighed the pros and cons and come out on your side” sort of way. Aral and Gregor both take proper care of their vassals, after all, and better to be 2IC in heaven than to scrabble for a fighting chance in hell. If Gregor died without heirs, he would have some serious problems trying to decide between Aral and Alys (i.e. Ivan), but until that happens, he is more than happy to let them both think him Their Man. If they require assurances of such in bed, he’s more than happy with that as well. 

Ivan Vorpatril still has the whole “no ambition I prefer my head thanks” vibe, but it’s more pointed this time, because this Gregor would actually execute him if he put a toe out of line. He doesn’t want to get married, not only because then he’d have to deal with a wife, but also because it would put him in the middle of his mother’s schemes and potentially at odds with Gregor, and no thank you. The Arquas’ “analysis” in CVA that he’s been kept in the capital on purpose is actually accurate here; Gregor won’t risk such a photogenic descendant of Xav anywhere he can’t see him, and/or shoot him if necessary. Definitely potential Gregor/Ivan sequel here, in case this one doesn’t have dub enough con for you. Ivan generally tries to make himself as small a target as possible on that end of things - but he also does a great deal of “swiving” of his social inferiors, because he’s the Emperor’s cousin and he can. The Vor/“high prole” young women don’t like him very much, primarily because he expects something for nothing, but it’s easier to go on a few dates than to try to refuse. The “low prole” women who end up in bed with him… don’t bother to complain.

Laisa Toscane is as ruthless as the Barrayarans - all the Komarrans are. They cut their teeth on cutthroat capitalism, after all. Adapting to the feudal structure of the Imperium has meant some sacrifices, mostly of their pride - but pride doesn’t earn shares. She’ll bend both her knees if she can win her children, and her conglomerate, advantage in the process. Gregor’s not a bad husband - and the more he underestimates her, the more she can slip by him. Her gene scan came certified from a Komarran doctor straight to the Emperor’s personal physician - no Vorpatril fuckery possible. She hasn’t yet acquired the social capital to tell Alys to fuck off, but she’ll get there; she’s one of those Toscanes.

Duv Galeni is at least as ruthless as Laisa. He left his academic post for the Imperial Service Academy, because of course he did; he knows which way the bread is buttered, and he wants as much butter as possible for himself. His father was a naive idiot; fighting an overwhelming force for “principles” gets you nothing but pain. Duv, having learned from that experience, will do what it takes, whatever it takes, to get his. Bend over for the Butcher? Why not? It works for the Vor.

Byerly Vorrutyer only has one hand of cards, for the moment, but he plays it really, really well. He’ll suck anyone off for the social capital - and then promptly sell their pillow talk to ImpSec for extra points. Fuck you, pay me - twice, if possible. He may not be a high-level player yet, but give him a decade and a metric ton of blackmail material acquired along the way, and then we’ll see. Loyal to Dono, and to Gregor, to the extent Gregor can spare the attention; he’d gladly serve his Emperor in any sense of the word his Emperor wanted. Byerly’s attracted to power - in other people. What he wants for himself is security. His ideal endgame is to level up out of the game entirely, and just be someone’s pet - but he’s having difficulty finding anyone who would keep him in the style to which he would like to become accustomed. Dono doesn’t count - they both have had it up to here with the Vorrutyer penchant for incest, thanks. His second choice is to acquire enough cards to be untouchable in Vorbarr Sultana. Failing those, his contingency plan is to retire to the District on Dono’s pension and play court jester, but they both hope it doesn’t come to that.

Oliver Jole, bless his heart, is a junior prole officer whose competence is more military than social. He still has enough stars in his eyes to be dazzled by Vor authority, and he hasn’t been spoiled by having to serve a bad boss. On both a personal and a professional level, he’s completely in love with the idea of submission to the Vor - but whereas Simon is doing the same thing in self-awareness and as Part Of This Complete Strategy, young Oliver actually considers it some combination of personal choice and cultural obligation. It’s a good thing he’s pretty, and that Cordelia takes him in later, because the ingenue never quite grows up in that regard.

Admiral Kanzian, as a likely irrelevant-to-the-hypothetical-fic side note, is an absolute dragon of a superior officer. He got his position on the General Staff through both merit and social savvy (and, in his younger years, a bit of, uh, “personal competence”), and he’s not giving it up this side of the apocalypse. Junior Vor members of his office staff reportedly have to suck his dick before they start work, just to get them in the properly subservient frame of mind, for once. Rank hath its privileges - especially on Mirror!Barrayar.

[datarevived]

   -- Ⅵ : ʟᴇᴀʀɴ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʟᴠᴇs PT.1

The Tower was set aflame, and the howls of wolves rang from its' peak in celebration.

An uncanny sight to behold, to one who was not familiar of customs. The lighted pyres and torches that illuminated the City and its' Tower, decored in festive crimson silks and ribbon that seem to traverse the open. The mighty sound of a gong echoes throughout the compounds of the EDZ, and ever so often after, the battling cries of wolves raise their neck in tribute. The alpha, resting beneath a shaded tent in settlement of the Tower at the highest peak.

" This is incredible. "

" Isn't it? You're gonna see a 'whole bunch of people flooding in these next few days. "

" S'really that big of a deal? "

" Oh, you have no idea. "

The sound of arriving ships continued to pile on the noise and fumes, as did the overclocked elevator from those arriving through the City upon their sparrows and foot as the Tower began to fill with ample Fireteams far and wide. Guardians upon Guardians upon Guardians, those of multitude descent and that of the Dark Ages and forward -- some old, some young, some a mix in between. Faces seemed to be endless in the swarm of activity within the Tower, and at their current height, like boat resting upon a battling sea, the two in company eagerly observed the chaos at hand.

" This happens... how often, again? " Selene's head tilts, her arms crossed over the railing above the landing zone within the Courtyard, back arched and legs slightly spread as her balance dispersed. Her Ghost, Data, quietly observing from behind her shoulder as the other two stood/floated in company.

" I'd say uh... once... once a month? Something like that? But with the War going on -- I think it's been nearly going on three since his last visit. Hence the crowds here -- trust me, it's never usually this bad. Not uh... not that I remember, anyway, " Bex responds, both hands gripped at shared railing as golden optics attempt to trace at any familiar by-standers. " Y'know, I think I've fought that guy before. Real power house -- oh, oh -- and that one over there? Never fought him, but hear hes' a God among men when it comes to snatchin' scopes outta your hand. Hate ta'get in huggin' range on'em, ya'get me? "

" And this is just another brand of... Crew... Crewsis? "

" Crucible, " he corrects, nodding. " It's like... say for instance, Crucible is the training. The practice. The real one' two. But Iron Banner? It's like... the qualifier. The real scoreboard, with all the big leagues. "

" So it's just another way of showing off? "

" Noooo-- Nonono, it's... agh, it's hard to explain, " the Exo shakes his head, releasing grip from the rails and shaking his hands. " Some people believe, that, those best of the best, right? Followin' me so far? -- That, the best of the best are approached by Lord Saladin on the side, and have a chance at becoming an Iron Lord. Part of the pack. The real front line out there! "

" But... isn't everyone considered front line? " the Awoken slumps, resting her head against arms now as she stares upwards toward the other. " Guardians are the front line, right? So what makes these guys special? "

" You're killin me smalls, " the male sighs, slapping a hand across his face in theatrics. " Have you even stepped foot in Crucible? "

" The fighting arena? Not a chance - Cayde's still teaching me how to even shoot. "

" You wanna learn fast? You hit up Crucible and you'll be a pro in days! Hours, even! "

" Some reason I doubt that. "

" Yeah? Well!... Don't uh, don't knock it til you try it! It's a treat, for sure! " the Exo pouts, crossing his arms aggressively at his chest before taking in a breath -- only to unfold and set hands out aside again. " Point of the matter, green leaf, is that Iron Banner is a display of brute strengths. It's a similar system to what Lord Shaxx runs, but it's... more intense. Tactical. A prove of worth. "

" Sooo... you're gonna participate? "

" Me? Like, me? Right here? . . .  Have you seen me? I'd get popped by seven foot three muscles' down there in a snap. "

" So you're calling yourself incompetent? " the Hunter cracks a grin, head remaining in lazy placing.

" I'm not --! I, look. I know what I'm about. And that? Great to watch! Fun to cheer! But me? In it? To win it? Spoiler alert, I don't win, " Bex bickered, optics and voice highlights flickering in various notions, his hands doing most of the dramatics for him. " Back in the past? I tried it, I did. But it takes more than just a good arm to stand a chance in there. Ya gotta have a team that's capable, just like any of the rest. "

" Team not so good? "

" Team didn't really exist. Not for Banner, anyway. We had some fun times elsewhere, though. "

" You'll have to tell me more about them some day, " Selene smiles, hoisting herself back up from poor posture before giving herself a stretch. Eyes highlighted upon the swarm of people beneath them, ever examining the thick and thin of the lot. " ...Heck, maybe even some day we can finish our team. "

" Someone with a better functioning ship, hopefully. "

" Oh, definitely, " she giggles, attention relatively laxed before turning towards the pointed visor of the Tower. The position in which Zavala frequently stood -- this time, occupied by he and one other. A man whose armor stood out against the rest, as did the strain in his voice against the crowds. From such distance, almost looking as if the two were arguing. " Hey... Bex. Over by Big Blue... that part of the celebration? "

" Is what part of the celebration? " head tilts, following the Hunter's gaze before tracking in on the other individual and Commander. A sudden flick of memory aching his head - causing the Exo to wince. " That's uh... no, not necessarily part of it. Looks like someones' just throwing a fit. "

" You think he's a Titan too? "

" What, the blonde?... By the looks of his armor, it's a good possibility... "

" Doesn't look like he came here to participate in the Banner, that's for sure... " Selene noted.

" No... not it does not. In fact, he's... "

. . .

" ...He's...? You good there? " the Awoken tilts, leaning her head in front of the other with confused expression. " Bex? "

" --Ah, Sorry, " his head shakes, golden optics dilating themselves back into concentration. " I... don't know what that was about. But uh - yeah. Titan...guy. His armor - it's familiar. The colors, I mean. "

" Familiar? "

" Yeah. They're the colors of an old fireteam back in the Dark Ages. Group of Guardians who called themselves the Ward. They uh... s'long story. But, they were good guys. Guys who didn't wanna be part of the pack, I guess, " Bex explains, resting his left hand back against the railing as the other rests down at his side. A squinting stare towards the two Titans in mid-discussion... his memory blanking on vague details he coulda swore were once there. " ...Back in the day, y'know. There was the War Lords, Iron Lords, and little spurs in between. The Ward was one of those in betweens. Though I didn't... think there were many of them left. "

" How many were there? "

" Twelve, I think? Not very many. Kinda like a cult thing, now that I think about it. "

" A Guardian... cult. "

" Well, I mean, when you say it like that -- "

In the span of their bickering, exchanged judgmental glare and jokes, the exchange beneath the havoc seemed to progressively show more heated. The nameless figure, having ripped a symbol from his Mark before forcefully returning it against the Commander's chest. Had it been anyone else, surely would have resulted in something more violent -- but Zavala, a man undefined by that of cooling nature or lack of confrontation - it was incredibly hard to tell whether or not such event came off as... threatening. 

Pensive features worn across the blonde's face now, turning a limb and stomping off towards the Hanger. It was a mild of undetected curses that slipped through his lips before disappearing into the crowds - only the brief shine of white on blue illuminating his presence.

" Doesn't look like it went well for him... " Bex hummed, shrugging it off.

" He looked angry. "

" Don't all Titans? "

" I... guess...? " Selene's voice leans, unable to respond confidently on whether or not it was the proper agreement on hand. " I don't really see anyone else wearing the same stuff, though. Maybe he's alone? "

" Or they're dead. "

" Or they're ... are you serious right now? " the Awoken squints, perplexed features trying to wrangle the deadpan weight of her companys' words. Seems he hadn't caught on.

" What?... What did I say? "

" ...N-Nothing. Just... Iron Banner things. You said its a qualifier for becoming one of those Iron Lords? "

" Well, not directly. Not at all, really, it's just a fun rumor that travels anywhere Lord Saladin makes his mark. The age of Iron Lords is at rest, aside from the man himself. He and his wolves. "

" Wolves... like those who go into the Banner? "

" No, no. I mean wolves. Like uh... dogs. Big dogs? Wolves? Jesus, Selene - tell me you know what a dog is -- "

" I know what a dog is! " she exclaims, puffing her cheeks. " He has wolves? Like, right here? In the Tower? "

" ...Yeeeeah? "

" Let's go. "

" Pardon? "

" Let's go! "

" Go where??? " the Exo shrugs, thoroughly confused.

" To see the Wolves! "

" ...You want me to... take you to Lord Saladin... to see his dogs? "

" Yes. "

" ...You owe me one. "

" I'll go into Cruicible right after! "

" Done. "

" Done! Now let's gooo! "