#and this style itself (in this case. the shading). I loved it and I intend to use it more :]

[mel-loly]

-Fluttershy is still “completely unaware that they're basically a couple”..

Thanks to @hyia for helping me, also- I'm sorry for being so late and if it wasn't completely like the dynamic you choose, still, know that I at least tried! ^^" And yes, this is a redraw of the drawing I did on 2022, hope you guys like it! <33

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Because of your polls, I've been comparing what I like about the PoR sprites vs. the RD ones. I like the RD art style better, I think, because it seems more fluid and polished, but seeing the sprites side by side, the PoR ones have a whole lot more personality. Like Sanaki, for example. Radiant Dawn she looks kind of blank, but in Path of Radiance she looks like a smug mischief maker. What do you think?

That's cool to hear! It's something I had been doing/thinking of, which is why I started making polls. I'd been wondering how other people saw the designs as someone who prefers Ranger Ike's design the most out of all his designs. I had a feeling his RD Hero and PoR Lord designs would be more popular, but that's why I was curious. Seeing people's tags has been helpful too!

I do agree that PoR's designs look a lot more colorful and lively. They have a lot more personality and individuality. RD's designs are definitely more polished and you can see that extremely well in the armor shading. A lot of PoR's shading just looks like a solid color slapped on to make up for shading. I don't totally mind it because it feels like a stylistic choice too, but you can tell there was a lot of improvement between the games.

In some cases I think the designs for RD were handled perfectly, like you mentioned Sanaki. I think her design in RD actually makes her look more grown and mature, which reflects her character. Then you have like, Tanith where you get basically nothing out of her design as far as character, and it's more at that point whether or not you prefer the image itself.

Like for me I love both of Shinon's designs, but his PoR design reflects his personality in that game perfectly imo, and then his RD design does imo actually reflect that he's matured and chilled out a whole lot. He still retains a lot of the same traits in his appearance as far as being able to match it to his character/personality, but you can also see character growth imo in a lot of the RD portraits.

RD definitely made a lot of the characters look more generic compared to PoR's style, but I always wondered if that was intentional. In RD everything is a lot more serious immediately. From start to finish, RD has a much darker undertone. All the designs look more mature. Gatrie for example seems like "the same guy" but less carefree/casual.

Haar seems like he takes his job a little more seriously and has grown from his experiences, but you can also tell he's the same guy as in PoR. Naesala is extremely similar to Haar in that you can kind of feel his growth in his design. You can still feel the same core character and see that some things are the same, but you can also see the changes in their personality without having to directly see their dialogue yet.

It's also pretty interesting for me how extreme Ike's design changes are from Ranger to Vanguard. I do genuinely get the feeling that he really did not want to lead an army again. He wasn't going to be mean to Sanaki about it, but he made it clear he didn't actually want anything to do with that. He took on a job for Ranulf because they were close friends, but he didn't intend for everything to turn out the way it did and end up leading a whole army again. Since he was only a hired sword for the Laguz Alliance, that kind of pressure wasn't there.

You can see maturity in his design, and he's grown and takes things more seriously (seriously as in, for instance, he's less emotional in RD, as if both growing up and all the warring has given him a thicker skin. He's not as prone to emotional outbursts, which he had a fair chunk of in PoR). You can tell you're not following the story of a 17 year old anymore.

Comparing his Hero portrait to his Vanguard portrait, he genuinely just looks tired. Like so much has happened since the prologue of PoR and he's been through so much emotional weight that it's taken a huge toll on him. Tbh, I don't really blame him for his ending. He tried to return to a regular mercenary life and ended up going through the same shit all over again, except like, ten times worse basically with humanity almost ending.

Things were going fine when he took the job for the Laguz Alliance originally, but I think ending up in a continent wide mess was too much for him. Both in his dialogue and in his portrait, I feel like that really shows. Something people who hated his ending seem to forget is that he was only in his early 20s when that happened, and it was the second time he'd been thrown into a war as the army commander when he was openly against being in that role.

I know it might sound a bit wild to say all that just from designs, but I really do see it that way when it comes to the differences in the designs between the games. I can't look at some of them and see the exact same characterization. When I look at Reyson I see a more mature, relaxed, less hateful person. His portrait in PoR is much more upright in posture, and he has a much more proud overall atmosphere to his design. In RD it's more serene and like he doesn't feel the need to put on that front anymore. Tibarn meanwhile looks more serious, as if to reflect not his character which is overall the same, but the gravity of the war and his position in it (which is, in his personal case, a pretty big deal considering what happened to Phoenicis).

I also think PoR did a perfect job at looking colorful and fun without being over the top. One of the biggest issues people seem to have with Engage is the designs, and I can understand that because I think they are a little too colorful in that they pop out too much and seem mismatched in a way. I've always loved looking at the Greil Mercenaries' designs as a whole because I'm always like "I love them, they're so colorful!", but with Engage it feels more... distracting? PoR's colors feel like a perfect mix of fun but not hard on the eyes and too distracting from the game. I think it's also because it's a VTuber style due to the artist being a VTube artist or some such, versus a more traditional RPG style.

I pretty much agree with you about how you feel about both art styles, and I don't really have a definitive "I like this one more" either. Some I prefer in PoR's style and some I prefer in RD's style.

or you could just say for rd's style that they've all seen some shit and that about perfectly sums up why they all look so dead inside

[echo-of-sounds]

accessibility in fanfiction and fandom

Disclaimer: I am only one person. I have ADHD, a pending autism (with a notable sensory processing disorder) diagnosis, photophobia, and chronic migraines triggered by sensory stimuli (especially lights, flashes, and certain colors). My experiences are not universal. Not everyone with these diagnosis struggle with the same things. But I do know others do have difficulty with many of these.

Writing in all one ‘style’:

Bold text and italics are great for emphasizing certain points and phrases. I do it all the time. But when there are entire blocks of bolded and/or italicized text, it’s incredibly hard to read. Bold text blends together as black lines. Italics swim in my vision. Use them when necessary for their intended effect. 

Don’t write an entire drabble in that all small font for the sake of ‘style.’ That’s not a style. I don’t even know why or when this became popular. It’s incredibly hard squinting at my laptop screen to decipher what it says. It’s straining and causes headaches. Writing style comes through in what the words say, not in the font and typeface of the words.

(Also, if your blogs theme makes font small, many are never going to be able to read your posts. Small strains and hurts many. And I know if I click on someone’s blog and see that, I’m clicking right off again. I don’t care about your work at that point.)

The same goes for bubbly, curly, and otherwise ‘fancy’ fonts. If you have a point to make, make it visually clear so everyone can read it.

Don’t write entire sentences with capslock on and please capitalize. 

One: It’s so damn difficult to read. The words blend together and look irregular/jagged (to me anyway). 

Two: Though I can’t find them now, I’ve seen posts about screenreaders having trouble with capslocked words. It was something about how screenreaders will read out the letters individually and not the word itself, which defeats the purpose of a screenreader. (If someone knows what I’m talking about, I’d love to know so I can add it here!)

Use capitalization! Grammar is important! When sentences don’t start with capital letters, it is literally impossible for me to read. You could be the next biggest author in the world, but I won’t read anything you have to say because I genuinely cannot read it.

Colors and Setup:

Many blogs use Carrd links. Others have a ‘masterlist’ or a pinned post that has a million different links for different things. Sometimes, it gets to the point where these are incredibly difficult to navigate. There will be huge blocks of text that I can barely read. Links are tough to spot. Gifs with flashings light and bright lights/colors can, in some cases, be dangerous to photosensitive people, triggering seizures, nausea, and/or migraines.

It’s gotten to the point where I no longer click on people’s Carrds and links because I’m afraid of what it leads to. My brain struggles with oranges, yellows, pinks, and some reds. It depends on the shade, tint, and brightness. Sometimes, it is impossible for me to read on a blog because there’s blinding yellow everywhere or barely legible colors mixed together. 

One blog had flashing banners, and I immediately clicked off, seeing the bright pink flashing lines in my vision for ten minutes afterwards. If you have rules, ‘before you follow,’ and/or a ‘do not interact’ on your blog, everyone should be able to read it. Do not make it inaccessible because then their entire point is defeated as people will not read it.

Basically, make sure your color contrast is legible. It’s best to use simple colors for Carrds. Here’s a good guide to reference: (source)

Along the same lines: Design:

Make any designs you have legible, whether for your carrd, about me posts, or when you posting drabbles/headcanons. ADHD and autism causes people to see everything. Every little part. Our brains don’t filter out the ‘unnecessary’ parts yours may. Excess punctuation, fancy fonts, rows of emojis, weird/needless/gratuitous stars/sparkles/whathaveyou, and crazy colored text are all incredibly distracting. Every single thing on that page is taken in, and by the time I get to your work, I’m burnt out, and don’t want to actually read it. Reading more is the last thing I want to do.

Gradient text is also difficult to read for some. It’s also not screen reader accessible. It’s always best to provide alternative text for those who cannot read gradient text.

I keep my posts simple. This list, for example, has bolded subheadings then bullet points under each one. I’ve bolded sentences that are the most important. When I post drabbles/headcanons, I keep the beginning simple. For example:

[ID: A picture of the top of one of my previous posts. At the top is the title in big text, reads ‘waking up.’ The next line, in smaller text, reads ‘Small headcanons of how waking up with Aizawa, Toshinori, Hizashi, Fatgum, Gang Orca, and Hound Dog would be like.’ The next line is bolded, reading ‘Warnings: nothing incredibly explicit, but a couple of these talk about sex.’ A gradient grey to blue line separates the next text. ‘Aizawa Shouta’ is written in big, bold letters. The next line is the start of the headcanons. /end ID] 

I put what’s needed: a title, maybe a gif, a brief summary, a warning if necessary, and maybe a short author’s note. They’re on separate lines. The title is on top. Warnings and A/Ns are bolded. Then I have a simple color break before the headcanons. 

I’ve seen some posts that litter their beginnings with pictures, stars, tiny text, text designs, etc... I’m not saying you can’t personalize it. By all means, do that. Have fun. But again, when you clutter the text with many unnecessary parts, our brains see all of it, every little bit, and it’s overloading.

Think of when you go to some website and adds are popping up: two on the right; one on bottom, flashing and moving around to get your attention; one on top that takes up half of the screen; and videos keep loading offscreen, playing annoying music. It’s a lot for anyone to handle. But we, ADHD and autistic folk, experience that with your tiny and swirly text, long heart and sparkle designs, and colorful, flashing banners. We can’t read what we actually want to (your work) because everything else is shooting into our brains. 

Misc:

Misspelling words on purpose for some ‘cute’ effect. I’ve noticed ‘blease’ and ‘somft’. It’s not cute to have to read your sentence three times to understand what you’re saying. It also messes with screenreaders.

Replacing a letter with a number/symbol makes it very hard for people to read. For example: n5fw, t3rfs, p3dos, r@cists, etc... I understand the point in theory. Truthfully, I don’t get the point of actually typing like that. Not only does it make reading them nearly impossible and screenreaders cannot read them, but it also doesn’t do anything in terms of ‘hiding’ the word. People can read it. They know what the word is. Just type it out.

(Also, do not, under any circumstance, tag your posts with r@pe when you mean rape, or any other tags you may ‘style’ like that. It completely defeats the purpose of blocking the tag when people just tag it as something different, essentially guaranteeing their posts will show up because they didn’t tag them properly.)

I don’t usually do this, but I encourage you to reblog this. Other content creators need to see this to help us. Those who struggle with reading, be it because of autism, ADHD, visual impaired, disabilities, neurodivergences, or any other reason, deserve to read fanfiction and participate in fandom as well. You don’t have to change your entire style. You can use cute designs and gifs. I’m just asking you to keep in mind how ‘simple’ things to you, are a challenge, difficult, and sometimes inaccessible to many others, making us feel alienated in the fandom because we cannot read and engage with your work.

[marshmallowprotection]

Kait’s Emotional Crisis and Analysis on Saeran’s After Ending

That’s right. it’s here folks! You’re here because we’ve managed to survive the waiting period that has been two-years in the making. Are we all happy that we have made it this far and survived the wait? Yes, yes, we are. You wouldn’t still be listening to me babble about how much I love Saeran Choi if you weren’t. We all know what we’re here for, so let’s get down to business. 

THIS IS A VERY LONG POST. I’m not even joking this time. It’s a very long post. 

Spoilers for Ray Route and Another Story!

I’ve been having to control the flappy hands when I see this photo so forgive me if my thoughts are all over the place as I talk about everything that has been on my mind. I literally had to pinch myself when I woke up to a flood of messages on the matter. 

It’s him. It’s my boy. It’s my boy.  It’s my boy! Mom, holy fuck! It’s my boy and he looks great. I’ve had a lot on my mind since I first saw the title screen so let’s get down to what I have to say about that. First of all, I’m in love with MC’s outfit. I’d wear that, that’s the fucking mood tonight. I’ve been frothing at the bit to be able to draw my MC wearing this outfit and I didn’t even wanna start doing something like that until they gave the official release to us. 

What can I say? I’m a sucker for really frilly tops. Those pink jeans are a really nice shade of pink too. It’s not hot pink, it’s a nice bubblegum which is a good contrast to Saeran’s hair, haha! I just like seeing all the pinks around this boy and his MC, of course, has to be cloaked in those colors as well. It just makes me really happy. I love some of the other outfits that MC gets to wear in the game but oh, God, oh, Fuck. This has to be my favorite outfit that we’ve been able to wear thus far. 

The little necktie? Perfect. Those sleeves? Iconic. The hand-holding? PURE AS FUCK. THE VIBES? CHECKED. 

Now that I’ve covered my bases with MC, let’s go onto the Choi brothers and talk about them. I actually like that they’ve been drawing Saeran in more brown and pink outfits. It just feels very right for him. 

It goes to show that his mental state is much better than it was in recent years, like, from Ray to Suit Saeran and to Unknown, we all know that they would dress in black and darker themes if they were given the chance. Ray’s outfit was given to him by Rika to wear, and Suit Saeran was the one that picked his suit out to wear. Unknown walked out of the clearance bin at Hot Topic and added those cowboy boots to enrage me. But, I digress. I’ll fight Unknown at a later date about that. 

The natural and earthy tones that they’re going for here with him are very nice to see. He seems like he’s a lot comfier with himself here. He’s got a cozy little old sweater on and his posture is better than I’ve seen it in many photos. If his style is just cozy sweaters, then, well, I can vibe with that. I can see him working in the garden wearing that and I think that’s the point that they’re making with this style of his. 

The loose collar is also nice. I’m used to seeing his clothes buttoned up and out of the way, making sure that he isn’t showing his body. So, seeing him play with his style and wearing something much looser against his body is a good thing as well. I think I saw someone call him a comfy grandpa in one of the posts that I’ve seen floating around. I chuckle at that mention. 

Saeran doesn’t care that much about fashion, to be honest with you. He would, of course, choose something that’s minimalist and comfortable. These browns work with him very much so. I’m happy to see it! It’s in line with the style that I’ve had in mind for him after the Ending! 

Can you see the way that he’s gazing at the player, though? Can we talk about the way that he’s looking at us?

The longing in that gaze... the way that it looks like he’s been getting some good sleep for once in his life because the discoloration of purple is gone! The way he has that tiny smile that only we know is a smile because he only shares that side of himself with us? His MC? God, I’m in love with you, you fucking bastard man why is your smile making me cry so much?

I could talk about his smile for hours. His expression. The longing. The way that I love you cannot be contained in words, Saeran. It’s far too strong. Just know I’m the person that can feel what’s going on his body from looking at him. He looks to be in a good place. 

Anyways, onto Saeyoung. 

Oh, my darling, Saeyoung. I’m used to seeing you in green palettes. It’s just a tried and true theory with your red hair and you lean heavily into being a walking Christmas palette. It’s rare to see you without your glasses, and I’m sure that a lot of people are swooning over you for that. You know you’re handsome and you will use that against those MCs that love you. I don’t have a lot to say about his outfit but I do think it’s really fitting for him. 

It seems like a muted pull-over and some worn jeans, which seems in line with everything that I would style him in. He knows plenty about style himself and he knows how to make my head spin. 

What is this somber look in his eyes? There’s a smile on his lips but there is this feeling to me that it doesn’t meet his eyes. Is he happy that we’re with Saeran or is he weighed by the fact that he wasn’t the one to save Saeran? Does he know what happens with Rika? Does he feel angry over that? What are we going to tell the RFA and him about this? I know that he would be happy that we saved his brother...

But the guilt in his heart is nothing to scoff off. He always blames himself for what happened to Saeran even though Rika is the one that broke his trust for good and forever. I feel like there’s something bittersweet in his eyes. Does he think that Saeran and the player are going to live happily while he’s not there? 

I always intended to imagine Saeyoung living with Saeran and the player, because they can’t be separated again. 

But does he feel like a weight and a third wheel? I don’t know. I’m scared to think about how he may feel like Saeran is happy now without him and he’ll try to pull away instead of adding anymore trauma onto Saeran’s life. I know that it’s not going to easy for recovery for either of them, but I want to have faith and care for the two of them. 

Saeyoung, you better not self-deprecate. I’ll smooch your forehead too. I just really don’t know how I feel about that look in his eyes. It’s just matching the smile in my opinion. 

I’m still screaming. I’ve been a pit of screaming for nearly three hours now and I know that I’ve still got plenty more to say today on the matter. But, I know why you’re here for real, you want me to analyze what I see in this picture and what I think will be in the AE from what we’re shown. I’ve had a few days to think it over and I’ve got my ideas. 

Where are you Saeyoung? This title screen is not confirmation that Saeyoung is alive. For all we know, this photo could be more inspiration for the theme and the emotion that takes place in the After Ending. 

I have to remind people that when we first played Saeyoung’s AE, it was a rouse and we were treated to a happy dream sequence that sought to talk about Saeran living with us and Saeyoung as he made a toy store. There’s a possibility that in the midst of the search for Saeyoung, we’re confronted with dreams and nightmares on Saeran’s end in regards to his brother. 

It’s my biggest fear that Saeyoung isn’t alive. We don’t know if the Prime Minister took him or if an enemy took him, or if it was the agency, or a combination of all three of these options. I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve considered that we won’t have the answer until the After Ending itself comes out but I’m interested to know what the answer is. 

If it was Saejoong, well, I fear for Saeyoung’s health if we do find him alive. His emotional state... God, that was always his biggest fear. His and Saeran’s biggest fear that their mother always whispered. She was a monster to the two of them with her abuse but the unknown of what their father would do to them had to be even more frightening. Their mother always said that Saejoong would kill them if he caught them. 

But, he could have honestly done a lot of horrible and twisted things. They could have become political pawns and a sob story that Saejoong could have sold if he wanted quite easily, and their mother could have been killed to silence that story. There was a lot of worse case scenarios. Saeyoung knows and has thought of all of them. 

So the idea that he’s living his worst nightmare? 

The fact that Saejoong could have killed Saeran without him being able to protect him?

The fact that he’d not be able to talk to V? 

He sent a frenzied message to the chatroom for us to contact V for him. This only implies that he was trying to warn V to protect Saeran at the last minute, so it feels like it could only be Saejoong that took him. He panicked hard. He had to make sure that Saeran was protected even if he died. I think that was what he did with his message in the chatroom. 

But, we all know how it turned out. 

I felt like that sacrifice of panic on his part was.... it still hurts me to think about all of it. 

My worst case scenario is a dream sequence and Saeyoung not... not being alive anymore. I don’t know what that would do to Saeran. He wants to make things right with his brother, he really does. The gaslighting and manipulation done by Rika is going to take some time for them to work past, and I know that he can make progress in therapy and as he challenge his intrusive thoughts as we stand by his side. He can see it through. 

He is hopeful for his brother. 

However, it’s going to be tested when he actually faces his brother in the game and that’s the real test. Therapy is one thing. Facing your fears is even harder than talking about them. Saeran is going to... be overwhelmed with everything and he may need to step away when push comes to shove. 

I want Saeyoung to see us together holding hands and let him have that moment realization that even though Saeran went through a lot of harm while they were separated, he wasn’t alone through all of it. He never wanted Saeran to be alone in any way. If Saeran has to step away, then well, that would leave us with his brother in the process.

I can’t say how much I’d choke up if he thanked us for loving his brother. The guilt in his eyes as he cries and we reassure him. I think that’s one thing that I want the most with Saeyoung. I want him to know freedom from his chains and I want to help him too. There’s a lot that I want out of that and there’s so much of this potential that we can talk about in the AE.

There’s a lot with Saeyoung that I want to think about but so much of it makes me wanna cry. 

I also fear for V and I’ve discussed many of my fears on that matter. I’ll repost my thoughts right here.

Now, in regards to what I sincerely don’t want is a repeat of what went down with V’s After Ending.

I’ve shared my feelings on that matter before and I understand that Cheritz was going for that moral high-road that many people take where they say that it’s better to forgive on your path to healing, and while that can be good for some people, it can leave a sour taste in the mouth of people who don’t pick to forgive the people that hurt them.

I don’t choose to forgive the people that hurt me in many cases. That doesn’t make me a bad person. The problem with the Forgive/Judgement ending is that it can make you feel ashamed for not forgiving someone who quite literally, took funds from the RFA’s first two parties (that’s the only way she could’ve gotten the money to fund Mint Eye, even coercion and manipulation of people on the level that Rika does wouldn’t give her that much ability), manipulated and gas-lit Ray and Saeran for years, deceived and drugged countless people, so on and so forth.

I hate that she’s never punished for her actions. She needs to be rightfully punished for what she did. I want her to get therapy, and I want her to learn that she was wrong for what she did to everyone. I want her to be able to get better for her own health, and I don’t think she should ever be contact with anyone in the RFA ever again. But, that’s up to the RFA if they choose to speak with her or interact with her, not mine. I don’t want her to die, I want her to learn what she did was wrong.

It’s not Mika (Rika Behind Story Spoilers) who went through the cult. Rika had every chance to stop while she was ahead but she kept doing it. I would not forgive Rika, and I would never want to be around her ever again if I were in the position of the RFA when the truth is made known.  

The only action that Rika ever took that could be looked at with the filter of self-defense was when she panicked when the boy’s mother tried to get close to her and harm her in a drunken rage. She acted to protect herself in that situation, but that’s the only thing that she’s ever done that someone could look at and say, she was protecting herself. She felt threatened. She panicked, she blacked out and protected herself from harm.

Don’t get me started on V. I love V, he’s not perfect, he fucked up a lot and he shouldn’t have gone back to Rika. It feels like he saw us love, forgive, and stand by Saeran and thought that he could be able to do the same for Rika, but that is not what will help him or Rika. They don’t need to be together again. They need to be fair away. Rika and V literally burned down the boy’s childhood home and V was wearing his sunglasses, so I can only presume that Rika harmed his eyes after he went to her.

Saeran himself says that he wants to tell everyone about Rika and V, but he needs to be able to discuss it with V. Even Saeran understands that V is a victim to some degree and he wants to help him. 

That was a big fucking comment on his part and I was proud of him for that. 

But, V left for Rika and we don’t know if we’ll ever see him again. So, I really don’t know how that’s going to be handled in the slightest, Anon.

I don’t want Rika and V together, like, ever again.

I want Rika to be punished for her actions and caught. I want V to get away from her and start to learn to love himself again and grow. I believe in him but he’s in need of someone to cheer him on when that abusive relationship ends. I really don’t want a repeat of V’s After Ending.

Don’t make me forgive Rika. 

Don’t make Saeran forgive her, either. 

That’s my worst case scenario fear. I want Saeran to be able to grow and get healthier, for sure, but his final confrontation with Rika should be the last time that he ever thinks about her. He made his mind up and he made it clear that she was wrong and he would never be tricked by her again.

I want him to stand his ground on that. I’ll stand by him no matter what he chooses to do, though. So, I want this to be about Saeran and Saeyoung coming together again, and helping V get out of that relationship with Rika, as well as Rika facing punishment for her actions. 

But, that might be asking a bit too much, haha.

Ideally, I want Saeran and the player to be able to reach out to V and help him get away from Rika as she’s taken down as well. We don’t know if she left Mint Eye for sure, we don’t know if she and V ran away. Who is running the Cult? Is the cult put to a stop or did Rika put somebody else in charge? It’s hard to say on that front and I’m still not sure how that’s going to end up. 

V can open up and work out everything that’s going to fall out here as it did in the events of V Route with Rika. He’ll need to work out everything with Jumin and the others, but I have hope for him to be able to face what went wrong and not only get the help he needs, but get the support of his support circle behind his back as everyone rallies behind him. 

I would love he and Saeran to be able to work out everything, Saeyoung as well, because even Saeran is willing to work with Jihyun. Rika to get some therapy, get punished for her actions and that to be dealt with is great. It never happens so. That would be a nice change.

Saeran knows that V is a victim in all of this too. So, it remains to be seen how this is going to be handled. I can only pray that Jihyun is able to be rescued as we rescue Saeyoung (hopefully, fingers crossed.) I’m still so proud of Saeran for doing that. 

God. 

I’ve talked about Choice and Saeran before in regards to the Secret Ending and his Good ending and... well, I’ll direct you to that post. To read about how important it was for Saeran to be able to choose what  he wanted to do with his life instead of having options forced on him. 

Can we discuss this photo as well from the Special Believer Box that I’m nearly about to buy at this point with whatever comes out with AE cause I need it?? I’m gonna go fucking broke. For you. Saeran. For you. I was saving my money for Christmas and now I’ve got a reason to live. 

I still don’t know if this is the implication of what will happen in the AE or if it’s something that will just exist as a standalone image. I still don’t know why Saeran would be dresses as his brother for some reason, unless there’s a twin switch-a-roo plot somewhere in all of this? I mean, bold choice, but I don’t know. I just think I needed to say again how cute that I think Saeran is in Saeyoung’s outfit. He’s so tiny and slender in comparison to his brother. 

I’m gonna fucking smooch his forehead. I don’t know, I want the CG title screen and this photo here to imply that the Choi boys will be alive and happy together once all is said and done. I can’t say that I know where we’re heading but there is bound to be an adventure to hunt down Saeyoung, but I’m not sure where it will take us. 

A wild-goose chase alongside whatever mystery is left. I can’t wait. 

My ideal ending is one where we get to live in a little house by the sea with a garden with Saeran and Saeyoung where we can visit and chat with the RFA whenever we want. But, we’ll have to see what happens. If you want to read more about some of the things that I think he wants to do with his MC now that he’s free check out this post. 

Anyways. 

Kait’s gotta go cry now. 

[party-of-rpg-muses]

A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of: Cheat Slayer

This one is different from most of the stuff I take a look at. This one is actually fairly recent; about a couple months ago at the time of posting this. We’re taking a look at a manga that was intended to be a series, but ended up being relegated to a single chapter. Today, we’re taking a look at... Cheat Slayer!

Cheat Slayer (full title being “Killing the People Reincarnated into the Other World: Cheat Slayer” is a manga written by Homura Kawamoto, creator of Kakegurui with illustrations by Aki Yamaguchi. It was released on June 9th, 2021 and published by Fujimi Shobo as a part of Monthly Dragon Age magazine. It was also described as a revenge story “coated with hate and desire”.

Since there was only one chapter released, this post will go over the synopsis of the single chapter.

In this world, skilled wariors who came from other worlds arrived to fight against the Demon Lord. These warriors are known as “Reincarnates”, as they “Reincarnated” into this world, acquiring special “Cheat Skills” that give them inhuman powers. The story itself follows a young villager named Lute, marveling at the Reincarnates and their skills and heroism, wanting to be just like them, talking about them with his childhood friend, Lydia.

However, the two suddenly find their home village on fire. Before they could do anything, one of the Reincarnate heroes, Louis Crawford, appears and snaps Lute’s neck before attacking Lydia. Somehow, Lute is alive, but unable to move, but sees Louis... “using” Lydia’s body after killing her while two other Reincarnates, Honda Yuya and Don Will Dead, admonishing Louis for his sloppy behavior, telling him to be sure to clean up.

Some time later, a witch revives Lute and asks for his assistance in killing the Reincarnates, knowing he desires revenge. The witch reveals that each of the heroes, or as she refers to them as “pieces of trash” were just ordinary people who were given special powers when reincarnated.

Not long after, Lute arrives as a dance hall of some sort, looking for Louis to bring back to the witch so she can kill him. Louis himself is being entertained by two women, flirting with them until he gets handsy with one of them. When he starts acting forceful, she resists, only for Louis to point out that he could kill everyone in the building in seconds and no one could stop him and if she understood, then she should “start sucking”. But upon seeing Lute still alive, he immediately rushes to confront him and is just about to kill him until he refers to Louis as a “NEET bastard”, surprising Louis. The last line spoken being Lute saying “Why don’t you come have some tea with me? After that, I’ll kill you.”

The manga may be short, but the art style is interesting, making good use of shading. It also helps whenever the scene’s tone suddenly shifts from light and friendly to dark and foreboding. Some of the panels even seem like something out of Kakegurui.

And while I highly doubt this will mean anything, here’s the Final Recommendation: Never Let Go Of It||Get It||Hold Onto It||Try It||Consider It||Stay Away From It

As mentioned before, this manga only got one chapter, being cancelled shortly after release. As for why; in case it wasn’t obvious, it’s because of the plagiarism with Japan having very strict copyright laws. And even then, the Reincarnate parodies are very close to their originals. Obviously, Honda is a parody of Subaru from Re;Zero (and his title is “Looper”, referring to Subaru’s Return by Death), Don Will Dead is a parody of Ainz Ooal Gown from Overlord with his title being “The Undead King”. And obviously, Kilt is Kirito from Sword Art Online, with his title being “The Dual Wielding Black Knight”, referring to Kirito’s expertise and perchance for dual-wielding.

Other parodies include Louis “God’s Mistake” Crawford, who is a parody of Shin Wolford from Wise Man’s Grandchild. Funnily enough, Louis is known for having a sword that’s powerful enough to kill gods, while Shin has no such sword, merely a vibration blade. There’s also Flare, who, despite sharing the same name as the princess from Redo of Healer, is actually a parody of Aqua from Konosuba, with her title being “Fallen Goddess”. Imerda Pinata, the “Daughter Villainess” is a parody of Catarina Claes from My Next Life as a Villainess. Roro Sendiger, the “Named Slime” is Rimuru from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Yukiko Shijo, the “Otherworld Restaurant” is Aletta from Restaurant to Another World. Finally, there’s  Anastasia Melokva, the “Young Demon”, a parody of Tanya from The Saga of Tanya the Evil.

To be honest, I find this to be needlessly edgy and dark. And the fact that the bad guys are basically characters from other Isekai series makes it feel somewhat antagonistic and petty. And from what I understand, the parodies, or at least Louis, is practically nothing like Shin.

Nowadays, Kawamoto is working on a new isekai series known as “Humanity's Existence Depends on Love Gambling with Another World's Princess”.

Now, before I sign off, there is one thing I want to mention. Fuse, the creator of That Time I Got Reincaranted as a Slime, was actually upset with the evil parody of Rimuru, but was actually annoyed he wasn’t contacted in the first place. Apparently, he liked the idea of an evil Rimuru and would have enjoyed brainstorming ideas.

[ficsilike-reblogged]

Blood in the Rivers: VII

A/N: I apologize for the wait. I hope you guys still like this little story of mine.

Pairing: Oberyn Martell x Ellaria Sand x F!Reader (Tully)

Rating: T (Maybe M??) For Blood, allusions to smut, my continued overuse of italics, poorly written, soft confessions of feelings

Word Count: 8.3k (Someone please take my computer away)

Read Chapters I-VI here! Or on Ao3!

Chapter Seven: The Price of Happiness

All of Dorne was a delight to the senses. The food was better, the wine more tart, the air itself smelled sweeter and punctuated with the scent of salt of the ocean and the heat of the sun-warmed walls. It was paradise. Never in her life had she met a family more loving and open with their affections—or their squabbles. The Sand Snakes welcomed her with open arms and quelled most of the fears that turned Y/N’s stomach.

And having the company of Sansa and Arya gave Y/N an immeasurable amount of joy. Simply knowing they were alive and well and within her reach let a small bit of weight lift from her shoulders. All of them melded together into a strange camaraderie that Y/N quickly grew accustomed to. Arya trained with Obara, Elia, and Obella—and little Dorea would sometimes sneak away from her mother and Septa to try to keep up with the older girls. And Arya was insistent that Y/N join them at least three times a week. Sansa would sup with Nymeria and Tyene and would drag Y/N along when she wasn’t occupied with Ellaria and Oberyn. They would read to little Loreza to help her sleep. Sarella was still in Oldtown but had sent a raven with a kind word, welcoming Y/N into the fold.

All of it was…perfect. So perfect that Y/N was waiting for something terrible to happen to knock her from the pedestal of the happy life she’d created at Sunspear.

“You are quiet, My Tully,” Ellaria said as they sat together on the sand of the strip of beach just outside the fortress’ walls. A handful of handmaidens waited to be called, standing in Sunspear’s forgiving shadows, with a half dozen guards. Ellaria had stolen Y/N away from Manfrey Martell’s lessons. Oberyn’s cousin was the current Castellan of Sunspear and had been teaching Y/N the proper way of keeping the household and surrounding city running smoothly, as it had for centuries.

“I am enjoying the view,” Y/N replied as she watched Ellaria tie her skirts a little high around her waist as she wanted to wade into the water. Her four daughters were all laughing and splashing a few paces away, without a care and nearly infectious with their joy.

“We agreed to not lie to each other, My Tully. Nor keep secrets.” When she was finished tying her own, Ellaria pulled Y/N to her feet and made quick work of tying her skirts, too. She grasped her hands and led her out to the lapping water.

It was warm and clear—a far cry from the usually-muddy waters of the rivers around Riverrun. Ellaria continued to lead her in until their bundled skirts were in danger of getting wet from the shallow waves but did not release her grip even as they slowed to a stop. She pulled Y/N a little closer and brushed a kiss against her shoulder, exposed in the Dornish style dress Nymeria’s favorite seamstress had tailored especially for her in a pretty sky blue. The ugly scars from the arrow were exposed but very few paid them any mind.

“Tell me what is burdening you.”

“You will think me foolish,” Y/N murmured.

“Never.”

Y/N sighed and squeezed at Ellaria’s hands before wrapping her arms around herself. “Everything here is so…lovely. A paradise.”

“Just as I told you all those moons ago at that wretched wedding; I knew you had the right heart to make Dorne your home.”

It was almost as if Ellaria was trying to banish whatever gloomy thought Y/N had with kisses as she stole one from Y/N’s frowning mouth and then another as she started to smile. “And I am grateful to be here, to have you in my arms now—you and Oberyn both. To be welcomed to happily by your family. But I am worried…the gods have only afforded me this happiness to rip it away from me. Surely I cannot be this happy for the rest of my days.”

“Why do you think that your happiness must have limits? The gods delight in their creations. Why should we not delight in them as well?” Ellaria smiled and looked like a goddess herself in the sunlight and surrounded by clear, sparkling water. “Your happiness does not have a limit because the gods deem it so. Only you can determine how happy you are in this life. I have chosen to take every opportunity to seize happiness, joy, whenever I can. You have brought me such joy, My Tully. I want you to have the same—but you must let yourself.” Ellaria pulled Y/N close again and pressed another kiss to her mouth. “Will you let yourself?” She asked against her lips.

“I will try,” Y/N answered with a laugh.

A sudden splash of water had her sputtering and Ellaria chuckled. “You will,” Ellaria stated, wet fingers trailing against Y/N’s cheek.

Ellaria tasted like saltwater and sunshine when Y/N kissed her again. “I love you,” Y/N said, the words bubbling out of her throat before she could even think to stop them.

“My heart has been shared between you and Oberyn since I saw you at the market. I love you, sweet girl, and I will remind you of that fact every chance you give me.”

**

“You travelled through the Kingswood during a battle?” Y/N could feel her throat tightening with each passing word. Word had come to Oberyn that the Lannisters knew Sandor had been seen in Dorne. Ellaria’s words about embracing joy—and the fact that Ellaria loved her—had lifted her mood for the past handful of days but the news had quickly soured her disposition. She asked plainly what had happened on the way to Dorne with Sansa and Arya and expected to hear that he had taken the most benign route possible and then be on her way. That was not the case. “I told you to take her to safety-”

“The little bird’s alive, ain’t she?” Sandor griped. “She’s fine.”

“Thank the Seven,” she retorted, face still contorted with rage. “I cannot fathom your reason for endangering her—you know the Stone Crows-”

“Aye, the Stone Crows,” he mimicked, remembering the Mountain Clan men Tyrion had brought to King’s Landing and used as reinforcements around the castle during the Battle of the Blackwater. “Stupid bunch of brats with swords. They bleed just like the rest of the Lannister’s cunt forces.” But he dropped his voice and leaned close, letting the scent of blood orange he had on his tongue waft over her. “You were right to leave her care to me. I would never let any hurt come to her. Do not doubt that again.”

Y/N scowled. “And Arya? You were just letting her run about, killing people?”

“She is a little beast. There is no taming that one. You’re lucky I got her here without gagging her.” His burnt face twisted. “I’m sure you taught her that.”

“The only thing I tried to teach Arya was how to use a bow.” Y/N grumbled and rubbed at her temples. “But, thank you for seeing them here—safely. It means a great deal to me.”

“Did you truly kill Gregor?”

The question surprised her, as did the soft tone (as soft as Sandor could be, anyway). “I did.”

“Was it quick?”

“Not as quick as I would have liked.” Y/N sighed. “I am sorry I took that from you, your revenge.”

“You did what you had to do. He deserved what he got.” He glanced at the door to Sansa’s chambers. He had been assigned, by a smug Oberyn who knew that Sandor wanted to leave, to be Sansa’s sworn sword. “The Little Bird would say the gods were kind or some other stupid shit.”

“Are you certain seeing his rotting head would not quell some of that rage? To see he is truly dead? The Silent Sisters haven’t taken it for cleaning just yet.” It was still sitting in a box in one of the fortress’ undercrofts. (Arya had poked at it with the end of a quill and Sansa had steadfastly refused to look at the decomposing lump of flesh when Y/N had told them about her own ‘adventure’ in King’s Landing.)

“No,” he said, final and direct.

“Very well. But I am sure you will lay your eyes upon it eventually. Oberyn has said he wants it dipped in gold and strung up in chains within the throne room once it is clean.” Y/N looked at Sandor, truly looked at him. “Please, be kind to Sansa. While she is learning the ways of the world at Prince Doran’s behest, she still has a gentle heart. And she is very fond of you even if you and I both know nothing will come of this childish infatuation of hers.”

Sandor’s eyes narrowed but he did not say anything.

Y/N took a small step forward, knowing she needed to say this if only to sate the small bit of fear she had in her heart. “But if I ever catch you breaking her heart or using her as your brother intended to use me, I will make sure your skull sits next to his.”

“My lady!” Daisy dashed into the hall and barely cast a glance at Sandor. “Prince Oberyn is waiting for you in his solar.”

Y/N nodded and looked one last time at Sandor and received a half-hearted glare in return before she let Daisy lead her through the gilded, warm halls even though she had traversed this path too many times to count, often in the dark of the night. She tried to shake off the foreboding feeling of the Lannisters knowing Sandor was in Dorne and the annoyance that the swordsman also put Sansa and Arya in harm’s way with minimal success. Daisy left her side with a smile as they reached the opened door and Y/N sighed as she spied him sitting at his desk intensely focused on whatever task was set in front of him. Bits of parchment were scattered about. A well of ink was precariously perched near the edge. The entire room was draped in shades of ruby red and highlights of orange that shimmered in the sunlight that streamed in from the large windows, opened to let in the salted air from the ocean below. Sumptuous cushions were piled beneath the western window and a small table with a cyvasse board was set up across the room near the door that led to his bedchamber. He almost seemed to be a work of art she was fortunate to look upon—a god at rest captured by the finest artist the world had ever known. While she had readily admitted her love to Ellaria, she could never seem to find a time to say it to Oberyn. She knew she loved him, loved him like she loved Ellaria. But it seemed inappropriate to blurt it out over a meal or in the heat of some tryst. (And Ellaria found the entire situation hilarious.)

His head snapped up as he heard her footfalls and his lips pushed up into a smile as he set down his quill and waved her over. “Come here, my moonlight.” He reached out to her with ink-smudged fingers and pulled her into his lap as she laughed.

“What are you working on?” She asked, pulling the bit of parchment he was scratching at off the desk. It looked to be a correspondence to his brother Doran—at least that is what she assumed before Oberyn took it from her grasp and flung it over his shoulder.

“Nothing of importance.” He pressed a kiss just below her ear just to hear her laugh again as his grip squeezed around her waist. “I do have something from home for you though.” He patted at her thigh to have her stand and then he strode over to the single trunk in the corner and opened it. Something blue was clutched in his hand and his smile was contagious as he turned toward her. “Come, my moonlight. Let us see if it will suit you.”

Y/N did as she was bid and walked to his side. Blue velvet unfurled from his grip and she unconsciously reached out for it and let her fingers trace over the delicately embroidered, inky black trout at the center of the cloth. Small, red Pentoshi towers lined the hem in sparkling thread. As she pulled it closer, the faded scent of evergreens and her mother’s perfume met her nose.

Oberyn carefully pulled the cloak from her grasp and then set it upon her shoulders and fastened the aged silver clasps, fashioned to look like fish scales, onto her dress. It fit perfectly. He smiled as he said, “your father said it was the cloak he had made for your mother when they were married. Her bridal cloak—now your maiden’s cloak.”

Y/N flung her arms around his neck and held him tight. “Thank you. Thank you for this.” She knew exactly what it was when he had first pulled it from the trunk. Her mother had always wrapped her in the cloak when the air turned cold within the halls of her father’s keep. It would drag behind Y/N’s little legs to the delight of her mother who would then chase after her and scoop her daughter up into her arms. The cloak would be wrapped around her tightly to escape the chill by her mother’s careful hands. It was like she could hug her mother again in a strange sort of way.

Oberyn laughed as he returned the embrace. He pulled back just enough to press his lips to hers, delving his tongue into her mouth with ease and delighting in the happy sound it coaxed from her throat. His sneaking fingers slid to grab at her ass and smiled against her mouth as he did so.

“But I have a question for you.”

“And I shall answer.”

Oberyn looked at her, dark eyes shining in the sunlight but…the smallest bit of trepidation also seemed to color his face, too.

“What is it, my prince?” Y/N asked, voice soft.

“Is this truly what you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“I realize that I have pressed this all upon you like a man half-crazed. I did not even ask if you wanted to be married—or if you would prefer a life like Ellaria—or a life outside of Dorne and free of me when this war is over. I only had the agreement drawn up after you told me of Tywin’s intentions. I could have stolen you away after your betrothal to him was made public but I knew it would cause bloodshed—and you, my moonlight, have a gentle heart.”

Y/N smiled as she looked at him, heart squeezing. Knowing he further delayed his want for vengeance because he cared for her meant more than words could say. Her thumb swept across his cheeks and she savored the warmth he exuded. “You have a gentle heart, my prince. And I am blessed by the gods to know it.”

Oberyn kissed her softly. “My own mind can be a cruel place. And Stark—Robb—had mentioned how you never spoke of marriage when you were young. It was not something you ever wished of.”

“I was blessed by parents who loved each other fiercely. And Uncle Hoster knew he could never bring a match forward that my father would approve of so he did not try. A child loved as much as I was would only demand the same love in a marriage. It was made increasingly apparent that a loveless marriage was what most women had, especially women of my station. I would not marry if I did not love them. If I was not sure that my heart was safe.”

She could almost taste the words bubbling on his tongue as he opened his mouth, “and I know that I have hurt you-”

“I want to marry you, Oberyn.” She said with a smile, feeling silly, happy tears sting her eyes with Ellaria’s words once again ringing in her head. “I want to call you my husband and I want to be your wife.” Her heart was light and singing in her chest. It was true. She knew that with every fiber of her being.

“You do?”

“I do.”

“You love me,” Oberyn breathed. And then he was smiling at her as if she had hung the sun and stars.

“I love you.” And it was so easy to say.

Oberyn’s warm hands cradled her face and he pressed his mouths to hers. This kiss was the softest he had ever given her, almost reverent. “You love me,” he whispered into her panting mouth as he pulled her ever closer. “Tell me. Tell me again.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.” The words were hummed, happy. “I will love you forever.”

And she believed him.

**

Y/N woke when she heard a tapping at her door.

“Y/N,” the voice whispered on the other side. “Are you awake?” The door creaked open and a small figure slipped in. Arya climbed into her bed and slipped beneath the silk sheets when Y/N waved her forward.

“What is wrong, Arya?” Y/N asked, pulling the younger girl close and trying to keep her eyes open. Dinner with Oberyn and Ellaria had lasted well into the night and was filled with sweet wine and spiced foods and heated kisses that seemed to eat time. The realization that they all loved each other left them drunk on each other’s presence and the wine certainly did not help. Her throat was sore from overuse and she could still feel phantom fingers between her thighs. She must have only been asleep for an hour before Arya knocked.

“Bad dream.”

Y/N hummed and pushed her fingers through Arya’s hair. If she was being honest, Y/N was almost surprised it took Arya this long to crawl into her bed. Sansa had done it at least a dozen times since Y/N had arrived at Sunspear. But Arya, genuinely, kept her hurt close to her chest so Y/N did not blame her for taking the time she needed.

“I keep seeing the Freys toss Mother’s body into the river.”

Y/N instinctively tightened her hold. She had not realized Arya had witnessed the Red Wedding. Sandor must have taken her to The Twins in hopes of reuniting Arya with Robb and Catelyn—a bloodbath greeted them instead.

“I see it over and over when I close my eyes. I want them dead. All of them. Every single Frey needs to be dead-”

“They will be. I’ll make sure of it.” Y/N pressed a kiss to Arya’s forehead. Despite her exhaustion, she meant her promise. All of them would meet The Stranger for their crimes. The joy Ellaria spoke of, that Y/N was quick adopting, seemed to have stretched to vengeance. There would be joy to see their enemies bleed. There would be joy to see them dead. “Even if I have to do it myself.”

“The Boltons, too,” Arya said, voice starting to tighten with unshed tears.

“Oh, yes. We’ll rip them out. Root and stem.” The traitorous Northern house would see a gruesome end, too. No matter if they were holding Winterfell or not.

Arya let herself cry then, curling farther into Y/N’s hold and Y/N rubbed her back with soft hums, letting the young girl finally express her grief. But, eventually, Arya’s sobs quieted to even breaths. She had fallen asleep on Y/N’s chest just as another knock came at the door. Sansa slipped into her room and Y/N found herself between the Stark sisters as the moonlight shone through the balcony opening. “A bad dream?” Y/N whispered as Sansa snuggled into the overstuffed pillow beside her.

Sansa shook her head. “I am happier than I have been in a long time. And I owe it all to you.” She reached out to grasp one of Y/N’s hands as it still rubbed at Arya’s back.

But Y/N shook her head. “You survived because you are strong, little one.”

“It is because of you that Arya is here, that we are alive. We are safe. Together.”

Y/N squeezed her hand. “You and your sister both have been through great and terrible trials. You must be there for each other.”

Sansa pressed closer and tightened her grip on Y/N’s hand. “Can you sing to us? Like you did when we were children?”

Y/N wanted to say that she and Arya were still children—just grown too quick by the terrors of the world. “What would you like to hear, little one?”

“Jenny’s Song. You sang that the night before you left Winterfell.”

“That is a sad song. Are you certain?”

Sansa nodded.

“High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…”

**

Daisy flittered about her chambers, gathering a handful of dresses and chemises and folding them neatly into a pair of saddlebags. Prince Doran had sent Y/N a raven and requested that she, Oberyn, and Ellaria travel to the Water Gardens so he could make her acquaintance. “Truthfully, I have written Oberyn several times inquiring when I would meet you but he has taken it upon himself to hoard your time. If you are agreeable, I would have you visit the Water Gardens and would host a feast in your honor. Lords and ladies are already arriving so I hope to see you soon.” He signed the missive with a flourish.

When Y/N asked Oberyn about ignoring his brother’s requests to visit the Water Gardens he smirked and kissed her. “It is not a crime to want you all to myself.”

Y/N chided him with a smile and said she’d already sent a raven back to Doran stating that they would be there the following night. The palace Doran called home was only three leagues away along a pleasant, coastal road. Oberyn knew it well as he usually visited his brother once every fortnight. (“But I have been preoccupied, my moonlight!”)

“I can pack my own bags, Daisy,” Y/N said, noticing a strange rigidity to her friend’s posture as she went about her unnecessary task. She tugged at Daisy’s skirts like a child, slowing her from her quick pace. “Something is troubling you.” And then poor Daisy nearly collapsed in tears and Y/N hurried to wrap the other woman in her arms, shushing her sobs. When her cries quieted, Y/N held Daisy’s wet face between her hands. “Tell me. Let me help you.”

Daisy sniffled. “Daemon wants to marry me.”

“But that is happy news?” Y/N asked, genuinely confused. Daisy and Daemon seemed more in love than ever since coming to Dorne.

“Father will never allow it.” More tears trickled from Daisy’s eyes.

Seeing her dear friend so distraught pulled a heated type of anger from her chest and Y/N curled her hands tighter around Daisy’s face, making sure she listened. “Your father didn’t say anything when we were trapped during the Battle of Blackwater. He did not send a raven to see how you fared. He did not inquire after you after I moved you to Dorne out of a selfish desire to keep you by my side, to keep you safe. Tell me: do you want to marry Daemon?”

“I do,” she hiccupped. “More than anything. He even sent a raven to his lord father for his approval.”

“And he gave it readily, did he not?” she asked, already knowing the answer and watched as Daisy nodded. “Then you have no barrier. If Lord Allyrion requires a dowry, I will pay it. I will pay for the entire wedding if it means you smile again.” If Y/N was allowed to be happy then surely Daisy was, too. Her good, sweet Daisy.

“But Father-”

“Your father can come to Sunspear and speak to me if he thinks to stand in the way of your happiness.”

Daisy sniffled again and pushed out a shaking breath. “I would never ask you to-”

“You didn’t ask, Daisy. But I am telling you that I will not allow your father to keep you from being happy.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Daisy’s forehead and felt a bit of tension leave her shoulders. “You and Daemon are traveling with us to the Water Gardens. We can celebrate your betrothal alongside mine.”

Daisy’s smile was watery but sincere and she suddenly lunged forward to wrap her arms around Y/N in a tight hug. And Y/N was simply happy to see Daisy relieved of her turmoil—at least for a moment. And she meant what she said; she would fight Daisy’s father for her to marry Daemon. And she knew she would win.

The Stark sisters and the Sand Snakes met them at the gates of Sunspear and wished them a pleasant journey. “Please give Prince Doran my regards,” Sansa said before they departed. Y/N knew she missed Doran’s company and teachings, he had sent her away from the Water Gardens to Sunspear when he’d been given word that Y/N was coming to Dorne. And while Sansa liked not having to sneak through the halls to avoid Myrcella, Y/N knew she adored Doran and everything he taught her.

The ride was enjoyable and short and Y/N took the opportunity to let her mare run through the shallow waters. The horse was a gift from Oberyn, a traditional Dornish betrothal gift. Sand Steeds were a point of pride for the Dornish; could run for a night, a day, and another night without tiring or floundering. Most were treated as dotingly as children. The horse was as dark as night with a burnt orange mane and tail—Y/N had named her Qēlos, the High Valyrian word for star. She was the most beautiful horse that Y/N had ever seen and the smoothest ride she’d ever experienced.

But soon the palace of the Water Gardens crested on the horizon, rising from the sand with white and yellow stone and brining the scent of blood orange groves. Lush greenery spilled over the walls as did the sound of trickling water. The golden gates were opened by a pair of hooded guards who bowed as they passed. Servants lined the courtyard to welcome them and handle their horses and bags, each of them bowing in turn as well. Y/N barely had time to admire the beautiful, arching architecture of the palace before Oberyn and Ellaria both grabbed at her hands and all but pulled her inside. She craned her neck and looked everywhere she could as she was pulled this way and that, down a hall, around a corner, further into the shadowed halls by her eager betrothed and paramour. The entire palace seemed to hum with life. Chambers and apartments were filled with visiting lords and ladies. Servants were slipping by, arms filled with dresses or linens or food. Music whispered from around some other corner.

They eventually slowed in front of a beautiful white door banded with bronze and two guards nodded at Oberyn before pushing it open. The solar was filled with more white marble and fluttering white curtains that overlooked the manicured gardens and a handful of pools and fountains. The furniture was a warm, golden wood and every surface had a bowl of some sort of berry or wine or golden trinket or statue. A man in a wheeled chair was sitting behind the perfectly organized desk and looked up from his work with a smile as he heard the door open. His face was kind and greying black hair was cropped to his shoulders. Robes of orange hugged his thin shoulders and sparkled with golden thread.

“Doran, this is-”

Doran waved a hand and dismissed Oberyn’s introduction. “Lady Tully. We meet at long last.”

Y/N quickly curtseyed and placed her hand in his when he reached for her, smiling when he pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. “It is wonderful to meet you, Prince Doran.”

He patted her hand and then wheeled himself around the desk. “You are early. I would have met you at the gates.”

“We never keep your time tables, brother.”

Doran chuckled affectionately. “I know. But you are all here now. I will make the proper introductions at the feast tomorrow. I want you to enjoy my home before the wedding.”

“You will come to Sunspear, won’t you?” Ellaria asked with a smile.

Doran nodded. “I will be there next month for the festivities. I would not miss my only brother’s wedding. I would have preferred to have it earlier,” there was a pointed look at Oberyn who only smiled, unperturbed, “but I understand that Oberyn wanted you to be ‘settled’ in Sunspear before making you a Martell.”

Y/N smiled at Oberyn without thinking. It had been Oberyn’s idea to hold off on the wedding and she was grateful. Having the stretch of time, letting her heart settle, before her life changed again in another way was a quiet kindness that she would always hold dear.

“Did little Loreza enjoy the book I sent for her nameday?” Doran asked.

“She did,” Ellaria answered, “insisted on having Sansa read it every night.”

“Sansa sends her love,” Y/N quickly added.

“She is a fine lady. I was lucky to have her here despite the unfortunate circumstances.” It was said so earnestly that Y/N couldn’t help another smile splitting her face.

A quick knock at the door revealed Daisy, escorted by a beaming Daemon, carrying a familiar wooden box. They both curtseyed or bowed in turn before carefully setting the box on the edge of Doran’s desk and then excusing themselves, Daisy winking as she went and letting Daemon curl his hand around hers right before the door shut in its frame again.

An anticipatory silence stretched through the room as they all looked at the box. It was simple. No embellishments or special cuts of wood. It was just a box. But Doran reached out and dragged a finger across it like it was made of something precious.

“I shall like to speak with Lady Tully for a moment,” he said quietly without taking his eyes off the box.

“Of course,” Oberyn said before pressing a kiss to Y/N’s cheek. “We shall just be at the pools,” he added, mostly for Y/N’s benefit so she could know where to find them.

Ellaria also kissed her cheek before following Oberyn out, providing some comfort, and soon Y/N was left alone with the ruling Prince of Dorne.

Doran rolled back around his desk and gestured for Y/N to take a seat in the ornately carved chair across from him and she quickly settled onto the white linen cushion. She was equal parts nervous and hopeful as Doran gave her a soft look she couldn’t quite decipher. “I will admit that I had my reservations when your raven first arrived. Fostering your little wolf was not a part of my plan but it was a welcome surprise. Lady Sansa is quite the student. She would have made quite the formidable Princess of Dorne.”

Y/N cocked her head to side at that, wondering what he meant, but he pressed on.

“And now you have brought me a wonderful gift.” He opened the box, sliding the wooden cover off with ease and then reached inside. The oversized skull had been dipped in gold only a few days prior and glittered in the bright sunlight as Doran held it aloft. “To know he is dead has brought my soul a small reprieve of the ache it has felt for decades.” The sound of the skull hitting the desk as he set it down was low and heavy. His fingers spanned over the cap and his nails bit into the gold. “Oberyn has always been the viper in the grass—ready and willing to strike at a moment’s notice. A willful little brother who seemed to outshine the sun whenever he was happy and burn anyone who tempted his wrath.” Doran fixed her with his dark gaze. “But I am sure you have seen that firsthand.”

“I have,” Y/N answered.

Doran nodded and did not move his hand from the dead man’s head. “You are like him, aren’t you? A burning rage just simmering beneath your skin. But you are able to hold your wrath and ruin back to play the game.” He hummed and Y/N tried not to fidget in her chair like a child. Doran was more perceptive than almost everyone she had ever met and she was waffling between being impressed and being innerved. “If you can kill a beast like this and still be gentle, you will be a fine Martell.” His fingers finally lifted from the skull to reach out toward her again and Y/N readily placed her hand in his and smiled as he squeezed her hand. “Whatever you need, simply ask. I will make sure you receive it.”

**

The feast was a decadent affair. Filled with food and wine and music to delight every sense. And the assembled crowd had roared when Doran introduced her as, “Lady Y/N Tully—Slayer of the Mountain!” Oberyn kept a hand over her leg, dragging his fingers against her thigh and growing more and more bold as the night continued on until he was all but cupping her through the flowing blue silk of her skirts. Ellaria pressed berries against Y/N’s smiling mouth as she laughed, knowing exactly what Oberyn was doing.

The sticky night air had her pulling off the thin cloak she had about her shoulders, letting the golden Myrish lace pool around her waist. A few of the guests let their eyes linger on the scars on her exposed chest and back—or the thin bit of scarring across her cheek and then asked if she’d be willing to tell her story. Stating “I was shot by a fool” was infinitely less riveting than “I was able to evade The Mountain’s blade” but both stories gained her a bit of fanfare regardless. The golden skull was displayed in front of her on the table like a shining beacon of how she, a lady, brought a small bit of vengeance on behalf of the ruling family of Dorne.

“The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children.” It was something Manfrey had told her during her studies, face solemn and sad. And Y/N watched almost every person revere the gold-dipped skull in a sort of wicked appreciation before they were formally introduced.

The only person who seemed unnerved by it was Princess Myrcella, tucked into the arm of Prince Trystane. She was too polite to wrinkle her nose at the display of carnage and vengeance but pointedly did not look at it even as Trystane marveled at how large the skull was.

“Dorne suits you, Princess,” Y/N said to Myrcella knowing the young Princess was just as much out of her element as Y/N had been in King’s Landing.

“You as well it would seem,” Myrcella said with a small smile. “I hope to speak with you about…about your duties here. Prince Doran has said you’re very capable.”

Y/N nodded with a smile of her own. “I shall answer any question you may have, Princess.”

Trystane, heir to the throne of Dorne, was definitely his father’s son but seemed to have inherited a bit of a flirtatious streak from his uncle as he managed to snag a berry from Ellaria’s bowl while getting Y/N to agree to a dance. He winked as he walked away with a furiously blushing Myrcella still on his arm and Oberyn laughing into the night air.

“Careful, my prince, it seems Trystane is trying to steal our Tully,” Ellaria mused with a sly smile.

Oberyn leaned close to press a kiss against Y/N’s throat and smirked when she shivered. “Is it true, my moonlight?”

“Oh, yes. You’ve found me out. It was all a ruse to marry a too-young prince and have the Riverlands invade Dorne.” She gasped as Oberyn pinched at her inner thigh, pleasant ripples shooting up her leg and coiling in her stomach.

“Careful. Careful.”

The mischief that sparkled in his eyes made Y/N smile and she placed her hand over his and squeezed, for herself more than him she supposed, and she grasped Ellaria’s hand, too. “The gods could not take me from you both. I promise you that.”

But then Harmen Uller then swept her into a dance, not necessarily waiting for her to accept his hand before pulling her out of her seat, and drew a hearty laugh from her throat as they nearly bowled over other dancing couples. Ellaria then stole her for a dance of her own and then Trystane proved himself to be a graceful dancer, too.

It was all so…perfect.

Y/N pressed a kiss to Ellaria’s cheek as Oberyn danced with little Lady Coryanne Uller, Ellaria’s niece. She was a girl not but five and already named the heir to Hellholt after her father.

“I just need a moment to catch my breath, my love.”

“Do not be too long. I do believe Lord Allyrion is waiting his turn for a dance,” Ellaria said with a chuckle.

Y/N smiled and promised she would be back soon and then started toward one of the side doors of the grand hall, passing Doran as she did and squeezing his shoulder as she went. A servant opened the door with a soft smile and a small bow, letting her out into one of the halls. She slipped through and heaved a sigh when the door closed behind her. The music was muted and the air cooler against her heated skin.

A soft noise caught her attention in the quiet of the hall and her curiosity led her to peek around the corner to see Daemon and Daisy wrapped around each other. Again. Y/N stifled a laugh and turned away, continuing down the hall in the opposite direction. A handful of guards were stationed along the wall, each of them acknowledging her presence in one way or another as she found her way out onto a portico overlooking the still water pools. The blood orange trees swayed in the cool night breeze and brought the scent of citrus to her nose. She leaned against a carved column with a hum, resting for just a few breaths.

“My lady.”

Y/N stood straight and looked out into the night.

A short figure emerged from the shadows, dressed in a hooded cloak and walking with a limp. They reached up to pull off the hood and-

“Tyrion?” The name was pushed out of her in a rush.

The Lannister cautiously moved closer to her on the pink marble of the pools’ terrace. “My lady, I have come to warn you-”

“Warn me? Your family would be insane to think they could come to Dorne and leave unscathed.” Tyrion pursed his lips—it was then that she noticed how bruised his face had become. Molted purple and blue skin covered half his cheek and arced over his eye. “What did she do to you?”

“Cersei has never been fond of me,” that was all he said. “I am sailing for Essos. But I needed you to understand—they know.”

“Know what? Now is not the time for riddles-”

“They know that Dorne has sided against the Crown.” His bruised face flushed with a vibrant blush she could see even in the dim light. “They are coming. And Cersei and my father are determined to hurt you.”

“They won’t make it through the Bone Way. If the Targaryens and their dragons could not conquer Dorne, a tired army from the Westerlands cannot.”

“My lady, please, listen to me. They are not coming with an army—not yet. I told you—they want to hurt you.”

“Let us help you. Oberyn can-”

“My lady?” Daisy’s voice echoed in the hall and reverberated out into the night air. “My lady?”

Y/N turned. “A moment, Daisy!” But when she turned back, Tyrion was gone.

Daisy stepped out onto the portico with a frown, lips swollen from her rendezvous with Daemon. She glanced out into the dark, looking for what Y/N had been seeing. “What is it, my lady? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Y/N cast one last glance out into the dark terrace and saw nothing. Tyrion was gone. “It must have been the wine.” She needed to speak to Doran. Now. But she refused to spoil Daisy’s happy night. News of her betrothal to Daemon had been met with joy and cheers just before the feast had begun and Y/N wanted to let her friend have as much happiness as she could.

“Prince Oberyn is looking for you.”

She nodded and let Daisy lead her back to doors of the grand hall before shooing her way. “Go. I know Daemon is waiting for you in the shadows.” The happy and embarrassed blush that bloomed on her cheeks made Y/N laugh before she skittered away, back into the arms of her love.

Y/N sucked in a deep breath and smoothed her skirts. It would do no good to run in screaming that the Lannisters were coming. She had the most tenuous grasp on belonging here, in Dorne.

“Are you well, princess?” One of the servants asked, hand on the door and ready to let her in. He was young, she could tell. Probably no older than Arya.

“Not a princess just yet,” she said with a smile and trying to ignore how her heart was in her throat. “But I thank you, yes. I am still acclimating to the heat, I am afraid.” It was an easy explanation.

“Shall I fetch you some water?”

Her smile grew. “No, no thank you. What is your name?”

“Gyles, princess,” he said with a tip of his head, dark hair shorn short.

She chuckled. He seemed insistent on the honorific. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Gyles.” She turned to the other servant, not wanting to be rude. “And you? What shall I call you?”

“Ilyn, my lady.” There was a sickly sweetness to his tone and his smile a bit too wide for his face.

Something about him turned her stomach within an instant but she smiled regardless, the perfect lady. “Pleased to meet you, Ilyn.” She turned to Gyles and nodded, letting him push open the door. Y/N slipped in and quickly moved to find Doran but was swept up into a familiar embrace.

“You mustn’t slip away without a word, my moonlight. You are the guest of honor.”

She turned in Oberyn’s grasp and felt a small bit of relief at the sight of his smiling face. “My prince, I must speak to you and your brother.”

His smile faded. “What has happened?”

She shook her head, letting her hands slide across the golden brocade of his robes to grab at the leather of his belt as if that would keep her mind from spinning. “I cannot tell you here. Please, my prince, please.”

Oberyn’s lips drew into a thin line and he nodded once before grabbing her hand and leading her toward Doran.

**

She did not sleep.

Ellaria had to pull Y/N from Doran’s solar and put her to bed like a child when she had started to sway on her feet. But all of them, every single one of them, were so sure that the Lannisters could not touch them.

But Y/N could feel a terrible, creeping sensation engulfing her entire body. She wanted them to be right. She wanted the Lannisters to be too weak or foolhardy to actually hurt the Martells. But something in her stomach told her to be wary.

So, she sat on the edge of her featherbed and looked out the open window and into the night sky. Watched the water lap in the pools while the air smelled of the lush gardens. She hadn’t readied for bed aside from kicking off her golden sandals, staying in the blue silk dress Oberyn and Ellaria had insisted she wear tonight. They liked her in blue. “We will have all the time in the world to dress you in our colors, My Tully. For now, we shall see you in blue.”

The din of the feast eventually faded as guests retired to their chambers or fell asleep in their seats in the grand hall, bellies full of good food and drink. None of them knowing of the threat of the lions. As the dark sky started to turn pink with dawn, she heard it.

Someone was whistling.

And she knew the tune.

And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a cat of a different coat, that’s all the truth I know.

She slipped off her bed and over to the door, taking care to open it slowly to avoid the creak of the hinges.

In a coat of gold or a coat of red, a lion still has claws, and mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours.

She stepped out into the hallway and listened. There was nothing. Nothing except for the whistle.

And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that lord of Castamere, but now the rains weep o’er his hall, with no one there to hear.

Y/N followed the sound across the fortress, hearing it grow louder with every step. Her heart roared in her ears. Her knees knocked together like a newborn foal. She was not brave.

She was scared.

Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall, and not a soul to hear.

A figure slipped around the corner and she pumped her shaking legs, willing herself to go faster, to please go faster as she followed and Y/N realized with a terrible sense of dread that the only door in that hallway led to Prince Doran’s personal chambers.

A scream rang out.

Y/N pushed open the door in time to see Ilyn standing over Doran, bloody knife in hand. Trystane was huddled behind his father, sitting in a pool of blood. Doran was clutching at a gushing wound across the top of his chest, eyes hard and defiant.

Before she could even think to do something rational, Y/N ran at Ilyn and tackled him to the ground. The marble was unforgiving to her legs but she barely felt it as she struggled with the man over the knife, climbing over him in an attempt to gain the upper-hand, to keep him subdued. Her hand closed over the blade as he shoved it toward her throat and she felt it cut through her palm, tearing skin and muscle from the bone. She hadn’t even realized she was screaming until Ilyn slammed his other fist into her throat and rendered her silent for just a moment. The blow shoved her backward and off him just enough for the would-be assassin to scramble up to his feet and dart back out into the hall.

Y/N scrambled over to the Dornish princes, trying to see if they needed help but Doran waved her on, pressing a fist against his wound. “Go!” He said through gritted teeth. “Get him.”

And Y/N did as she was told. By now, the halls were filling with people—some wondering why people were screaming and others seeming to know exactly what happened.

“Stop him!” She screamed, pointing her bloody hand at the fleeing Ilyn as she continued to give chase. “Stop him!”

Ilyn heard her scream and sneered at her over his shoulder just as he made it to the entry hall.

She wouldn’t catch him. She knew it. He was too fast but she could run until her legs gave out. “Stop him! Stop him!” She continued to scream, praying someone would.

Just as Ilyn stepped into the growing sunlight, he stumbled. A choking, gurgling sound escaped him and Y/N ran to see what had stopped him. It was Oberyn—the head of his spear buried deep in Ilyn’s stomach.

Oberyn’s mouth was moving, she could see it. He was coaxing something from Ilyn even as blood dripped from his mouth and spattered against the marble floor. But all she could hear was the thump-thump-thump of her heart and the blood pumping through her veins.

Y/N jumped as Daisy grasped at her uninjured hand. The poor girl held up her hands with a shaking smile, like she was trying to help a feral cat. “My lady, I need to tend to your hand.” The words were muffled.

Y/N let Daisy lead her back into the great hall where the remnants of the feast had not yet been cleared away and slumped into the chair deemed hers the night before. She barely winced when Daisy started to clean her angry wound. She barely noticed when the maesters came in to help.

What she did notice, however, was a box placed atop her forgotten dinner plate. Her name was written on a bit of parchment in a familiar scrawl.

Her fingers shook as she reached out for it.

“Don’t, my lady,” Daisy hissed. “You don’t know what’s inside!”

But Y/N unlatched it and pushed open the lid. Her scream choked the air from her lungs.

Sitting inside the box, on a golden cushion, was the head of her father.

A/N: Welp. Please let me know what you think. :)

Beautiful people who asked to be tagged: @roxypeanut​ @lostinwonderland314​ @fandomreblogsnoshame @arianawills​ @nyrnerosmartell​ @5hundreddaysofsummer​ @honestlystop @huliabitch​ @youhavemyfantasticbeasts​ @karmezii​ @thesadvampire​ @sarcasmisakindofmagic​

[passionate-reply]

Do you “fucking love” science? Have you ever been blinded by it? Well, it doesn’t really matter, because that goofy little number isn’t really supposed to be on Thomas Dolby’s debut album in the first place. Find out about all the awesome OTHER stuff that’s actually meant to be here, in this new installment of Great Albums! Transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about a stellar album by one of those artists who have gone down in history as “one hit wonders,” despite producing a deep catalogue that’s often more impressive than that one song they end up known for: it’s The Golden Age of Wireless, the debut LP of Thomas Dolby. Chances are pretty good you’ve heard his big hit, “She Blinded Me With Science,” before...at least, if you’re American.

Music: “She Blinded Me With Science”

Like I said, if you’re American, you’ve heard this one before. If anything, it’s oversaturated! But if you’re from elsewhere in the world, you might not know it. Growing up in the US, I went through the whole gauntlet of alleged “one hit wonders” of 80s synth-pop, and a great many of them turned out to be British artists who had perfectly respectable careers in their native UK: Gary Numan, Soft Cell, and OMD, for example. Thomas Dolby is also British, but he’s apparently more famous here than he is across the pond--which is still not that famous.

He really ought to be, though, because The Golden Age of Wireless is a true masterpiece. Or, at least it WAS, in its original form. It’s actually a tough album to talk about, insofar as it’s hard to pin down what exactly constitutes “The Golden Age of Wireless.” It’s had quite a few different pressings, and a variety of different track listings. And the original version of it does NOT include “She Blinded Me With Science.” While I’d never argue that it’s a bad song, since it is insanely fun, and catchy to the point of being irresistible, it really does not belong on this album. I’m sure it helped them move copies of it, but its inclusion kind of ruins the vibe, to be honest. Its in-your-face and flamboyant hooks make it feel like a very unwarranted intrusion on an otherwise fairly serious and contemplative LP, which seems to have been intended as a fairly tight and thoughtful concept album.

Aside from that glaring issue, there are a few other tracks that have appeared on later versions of the album that weren’t there from the start, namely, the two tracks from Dolby’s first ever-release, a double A-side of “Urges” and “Leipzig,” as well as “One of Our Submarines,” the B-side of some versions of “She Blinded Me With Science.” All of these tracks are excellent, and mesh with the thematic and sonic character of the album quite well. “One of Our Submarines” in particular is often considered one of the best tracks of Dolby’s career--melancholy, claustrophobic, and stinging in its poignant sense of tragedy. It captures the misery and futility of modern war, as well as the sunset of the British Empire after the Second World War...and there’s a sample of a dolphin, too. It’s easily the track that I most wish had been included from the very start.

Music: “One of Our Submarines”

But now that that’s over with, I’d like to drill down and talk about how the album operates in its original form, as the artist intended. Like I said earlier, The Golden Age of Wireless is best understood as a concept album, and I think of it in a similar league as classics like the Buggles’ The Age of Plastic, OMD’s Dazzle Ships, or even Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. The original track listing opens with “Flying North,” a stellar introduction to one of the most prominent themes of the album: freedom!

Music: “Flying North”

“Flying North” is an exultant anthem of self-determination, and one clearly mediated by “metal birds”--aeroplanes, that is. It’s a celebration of the independence allowed by technology, and a rather winsome one, in which this almost macho image of a heroic pilot takes center stage. The final track of the album, “Cloudburst At Shingle Street,” is a bit more esoteric, but seems to be aiming for a pretty similar idea overall, and I’d argue that the two of them form thematic “bookends.”

Music: “Cloudburst At Shingle Street”

“Cloudburst At Shingle Street” leads us through the technological evolution of mankind, from swinging from trees to paving concrete beaches--but the spacey synth warbles beneath those lines give them an ominous bent. The assertion that we might be heading into a cloudburst “mindless,” “naked,” or “blindly” is unnervingly cynical, but, we’re told, “there’s no escaping it.” Despite all of these signs that our better judgment should be resisting the temptation of this miraculous cloudburst...this triumphant, rising coda, with its powerful choir encouraging us onwards, seems to muddle the whole thing. The untethered, free-roaming nature of modern life isn’t always this sexy and exuberant, though--consider the track “Weightless,” as a counterpoint.

Music: “Weightless”

“Weightless” certainly seems to be about modern transients of some sort--in this case, traveling by car--but never lionizes them or makes them too terribly enviable. Instead, the focus is on the image of the draining fuel tank: the constant emptiness and craving for meaning, validation, and genuine love. No matter the allure of this very American, Route 66-like setting, the gas stations, cinemas, and decadent diner meals along the way are never any real substitute for an emotionally authentic life. That setting is, of course, a wistfully backward-looking Midcentury one. Nostalgia and childhood naivete are also among the album’s major themes, and are expressed the most clearly on “Europa and the Pirate Twins.”

Music: “Europa and the Pirate Twins”

Narratively, “Europa and the Pirate Twins” is a bittersweet story of childhood playmates who never quite re-unite, despite promising to be together again someday. The really interesting wrinkle is the fact that the narrator’s beloved Europa has become a famous celebrity as an adult, and the narrator is essentially a fan of her despite their real-world relationship. It’s an uncanny, confused parasocial relationship dynamic that feels extremely contemporary, despite the fact that it’s ultimately more of a commentary on the rise of teenager-oriented marketing during the Midcentury than anything else. The strange, often unhealthy relationships between young people and mass media, particularly radio, are another one of the major sources of tension on The Golden Age of Wireless. “Europa and the Pirate Twins” is also one of the more interesting tracks, instrumentally, featuring a prominent harmonica part, performed by Andy Partridge of XTC. Given how much the album strives to be about the future and past simultaneously, steeped in nostalgia and utopian visions alike, it makes sense to hear Dolby blend elements of traditional folk or popular music with forward-thinking synth-pop sensibilities. Listen also for a flute on “Windpower,” and a substantial amount of guitar on “Commercial Breakup,” a song that proves Dolby certainly can rock, if he feels like it.

Music: “Commercial Breakup”

The cover art for The Golden Age of Wireless isn’t exactly the most iconic, but I’ve always thought it was very beautiful. You’ve got this very eye-catching, lurid, pulp magazine style illustration of Dolby as a diligent, yet glamourous engineer, radiating with the complementary colour palette of orange and blue, the perfect picture of retro cool. But it’s framed and inset, to give us a conscious sense of observing something that’s coming to us from another time, an artifact preserved. That patina and sense of the antique is amplified by this dull-coloured background, which actually shows a marble sculpture gallery in a museum, though that’s tough to make out unless you have it right in front of you. The numerous shades of irony operating here are another thing that make the album feel strikingly contemporary.

I’m also a huge fan of the album’s title. “Wireless,” if you weren’t aware, is an old-fashioned term for radio. Radio itself is a strong theme on the album, most obviously on the track “Radio Silence,” but the use of the term “wireless” isn’t just another piece of retro nostalgia--I think it’s also evocative of that sense of free-flying, untethered independence I talked about earlier. The first half, i.e., “golden age,” is perhaps even more important. “Golden age” is an extremely loaded term that brings a number of rich associations to the table. “Golden ages” are simultaneously longed for, but not fully believed in. They’re bygone eras that usually felt like nothing special to the people who actually lived through them, despite their greatness being palpable to anyone reflecting on them in hindsight. In every golden age, there’s a poetic tragedy.

I think that even if someone did buy this record just to get their hands on “She Blinded Me With Science,” they’d probably be at least a little bit disappointed in what they got. The album does have some decent pop singles, chiefly “Radio Silence” and “Europa and the Pirate Twins,” but they’re still humming with nostalgia and unease, and not without some substantial experimental DNA.

Music: “Radio Silence”

While they cut the single weirdest track on the album, “The Wreck of the Fairchild,” they still retained some fairly ambitious tracks, such as “Windpower”--clearly an ode to Kraftwerk’s “Radioactivity.” It’s hard to be angry with an electronic musician for trying to rip off Kraftwerk, since they all do it one way or another, and in this case it invites a natural comparison between two great concept albums focused on the theme of radio.

Music: “Windpower”

Overall, though, The Golden Age of Wireless is still a reasonably accessible album on the whole. Possibly not what you expected, and certainly, a work that’s more sentimental and affecting than good for the dance floor, but as far as poignant, ballady, diesel-punk odes to the tragic techno-optimism of the Midcentury go, I’d say it’s not all that hard to get into! Dolby does have a pop core, as an artist, that he’s quite capable of selling to us if he chooses to. For proof of that point, look no further than the single “Hyperactive!” which he followed this up with a few years later:

Music: “Hyperactive!”

When discussing an ostensible one-hit wonder, there’s a distinct temptation to resort to “they deserved better” style rhetoric. On one hand, yes, I do think more people should hear Thomas Dolby’s music, and that it has a lot to say to us. I’m all about obscure music finding new life and being appreciated. That said, in the case of Dolby, I think he basically got what he wanted, in the end. He’s always been more keenly interested in music’s many behind-the-scenes roles than he has in chasing pop stardom himself--he’s produced music, and scored a number of films and video games over the decades. It feels kind of wrong to tell someone who’s successful at one thing that they “deserve” to be successful at something different, just because we may want to hear him do it, or because we esteem one skillset more highly than the other. Ultimately, The Golden Age of Wireless is a Great Album on its own terms, whether Dolby ever decides to grace us with another synth-pop release under his own name again--which he did in 2011, with A Map of the Floating City. But it’s his decision, as an artist, and the fact that he can choose to or not is a luxury that allows him integrity. I think that’s the way it ought to be.

My overall top track on this album has got to be “Airwaves,” a song in which the narrator dies, tragically and suddenly, in an automobile accident. It’s not the sexy, “Warm Leatherette” sort of car accident, but rather a dismally realistic one, that shows quite frankly how undignified death can be. Sometimes, we aren’t so much doomed heroes as we are frightened, sickly children, defeated by our own fickle bodies. The last thought our narrator gets is “I itch all over, let me sleep”; their honour perishes just moments before they do. Meanwhile, the radio is a constant presence throughout, and serves as both something to anchor the scene in the droll and quotidian, as well as ultimately becoming something transcendent. The promise of “airwaves” is not only the human interconnectedness made possible by technology, but also a hint at the ultimate destiny of human souls, a kind of ethereal afterlife in the sky. The meandering lulls of the verses contrast sharply with the song’s eerily soaring refrain, which enhances that feeling that those “airwaves” occupy some sort of higher plane. On that surprisingly heavy note, that’s all I’ve got for today, so thanks for listening!

Music: “Airwaves”

[imaginaryelle]

Thanks to @morphia-writes​ for beta help, and to @miyuki4s for all the brainstorming help that went into this chapter!

An excerpt:

There are some things Lan Wangji cannot doubt: Wei Ying’s love for his sister, and her children. His affection for Jiang Wanyin, and the Wens. His dedication to ensuring that Lan Wangji himself does not succumb to the curse he carries.

Every evening, he creates a fresh talisman to replaces the one on Lan Wangji’s arm. He brews one of three different medicinal teas from Wen Qing, in sequence, and serves it, sometimes drinking a portion or two himself. He invites Lan Wangji to play Rest as a duet for the suppressed, resentful souls they carry, and then other, less spiritually charged music, and asks after his core, after their evening meditations.

Every morning, Lan Wangji takes longer than he needs to to comb his hair, and tie it up, and dress. Wei Ying looks younger in the diffused dawnlight inside the tent. Softer, sprawled carelessly under blankets with his sleep robe twisted out of place to reveal the hollow of his elbow and the line of his collar bones.

It’s an indulgence Lan Wangji shouldn’t permit himself. A few moments, watching Wei Ying breathe and concentrating on the steady warmth of the soulbond under his own skin.

Read on tumblr under the cut!

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 |

*

It takes more than one day for a sect leader to prepare for the sort of journey they’re planning. Not because of the journey itself, Wei Ying is quick to point out, but because of all the things he has to make sure are done beforehand.

“Wen Qing is locking me in my study today,” he says over breakfast on the first day, “but Sizhui, Xiuying and Weixin are meeting with a tailor for new clothes and you should go.”

As he has been wearing borrowed or stolen clothes for several days now, Lan Wangji cannot bring himself to protest. He has no desire to wear extra infirmary underlayers while traveling, and the plain black outer layer Wen Qionglin had brought to his door was clearly intended to fit as many people as possible. Commissioning something new, or at least something altered to fit properly, is only reasonable.

Wei Ying insists that he’s already paid for the service, which Lan Wangji can only thank him for; he has no funds of his own, or reputation to call on.

“Get something you like,” Wei Ying tells him, even as Wen Qing looms over his shoulder. “Anything you want is fine.”

Lan Wangji assumes this event will take place within Yiling-Wei’s walls, as was generally the case in Cloud Recesses, but instead he finds himself following Wen Sizhui, Zhou Xiuying and Liu Weixin through a town that looks much more prosperous than the Yiling he visited thirteen years ago, and is almost certainly louder and more crowded than he remembers.

That impression may be influenced by his company. Certainly he had felt there were entirely too many people in the street when he was surrounded by onlookers with a toddler clutching at his leg, but if anything their small group draws even more attention now.

Everyone seems to know Wen Sizhui. There are street hawkers and shop owners who greet him by name, and press freshly steamed baozi and sticks of hawthorn candy into his hands, and it is clear from their comments that the townspeople of Yiling are close to their Sect in a way that is certainly not true of Cloud Recesses and Caiyi, or Jinlingtai and Lanling. One merchant is so insistent on thanking them for some past service that all four of them end up holding packages of lotus root, despite the fact that Lan Wangji can have had nothing to do with solving the woman’s problems.

The pattern continues inside the tailor’s shop—the young Wei cultivators are being fitted with new black outer yi and trousers designed to the Jiang Clan’s specifications for the upcoming archery tournament, but they are all clearly well-known to the staff. And Lan Wangji has come with the Sect Leader’s express instructions. And also the offer of his purse.

“Wei-zongzhu said you might prefer these,” one of the tailor’s assistants says, his hands full of fine-woven cream and blue fabrics, “but we do have other colors, of course.”

None of the fabrics on display are the shining, pure white of Gusu-Lan, but there is sun-bleached silk and cloud-white cotton and pale wool woven thinner than paper. It doesn’t seem to matter what he says, or how he responds: he is fussed over, and measured, and prodded. Silk and wool and brocade are draped over his shoulders and held up to his face for comparisons of shade and texture, and he leaves the shop—it is much later in the afternoon than he expected—with the black robe he arrived in newly altered and a sash of summerweight wool dyed the blue of a pale spring morning tied around his waist. Travel clothes, he is assured, will be delivered in the next few days.

He could not bring himself to commission a forehead ribbon, in any color; he is already quite certain these new robes will exceed any budget or social standing Liang Feihong could expect to claim. Wei Ying seems unconcerned.

“It’s a gift,” he insists after dinner. “Besides, you’re still a cultivator, and you’re traveling with a sect leader. It’d be weird if you looked like a fisherman.”

Lan Wangji is certain there are several measures of difference between the dress of a fisherman, a rogue cultivator, and the fabrics that were held before his face today.

“Look at this map with me,” Wei Ying says, the topic apparently closed. “I’m trying to figure out which roads are least likely to be blocked by mudslides. Wen Qing says if I get on a boat during the spring rains she’ll kill me now to save herself the trouble of burying me later.”

Lan Wangji may not have any formal responsibilities at Yiling-Wei, but Wen Qing makes it clear that she expects marked improvement in his spiritual power before he leaves her area of influence. He is given a list of meditation exercises and a schedule of daily training sessions for sword and unarmed work with her apprentices on hand to monitor his condition.

This is not a hardship. He had already planned to dedicate most of his time to this task, and the Wei cultivators have a unique style—not quite Yunmeng-Jiang, but not Qishan-Wen either. Wei Ying, of course, is the most practiced in it, and his version does not even involve a sword; Suibian is distinctly absent from their training sessions, but this does not seem to affect Wei Ying’s efficacy. Twice Lan Wangji is not fast enough to avoid the touch of a talisman to his shoulder, or his core.

He takes no actual damage from them—Wei Ying is careful in his craft, and these were written specifically for this purpose, but the failure drives him to train harder, even against other sparring opponents, until whatever apprentice is observing him steps in and orders a rest.

He spends this enforced downtime reading theory texts from Wen Qing’s library or at his guqin, picking out simple practice scores and more complex Lan melodies in the hope of re-training both his fingers and his core in the delicate language required for performing Inquiry. He works outside, in the scattered gardens, whenever the weather allows. A few hours spent alone in his shuttered room during a sudden storm proves detrimental to his focus, no matter how many handstands he does, or what other meditation techniques he tries. It is better to be out in the open air, where he can breathe more easily.

“Lan Zhan!” On the afternoon of the third day Wei Ying leans around the mulberry tree on the other side of a plot dedicated largely to cooking herbs. He looks around as if he thinks they’re being watched, and then all but runs over to crouch next to Lan Wangji. “I want to show you something,” he whispers. He tugs on Lan Wangji’s sleeve. “Come on, quick!”

“Something” turns out to be the paddock, where a 2-day-old foal is taking in the outside world for the first time under his mother’s watchful eyes. Wei Ying drapes himself over the fence and watches them both with a rapt expression Lan Wangji has never seen him wear before. Zhou Xiuying is also in attendance, alongside her wife—Feng Xinyi—who he learns is the one of the Wei Sect’s grooms.

“Xiaoying and Heitu are just one pasture over, if you wanted to meet them,” she says, which is how Lan Wangji learns that Wei Ying intends to travel by mule.

“Do you know how hard it is to feed a horse?” he says as they walk through tall grass flushed green with the rains. “Have you ever tried to train a horse for night hunting? In a Yunmeng summer? The heat is terrible for them. I think the only reason Jiang Cheng still has horses is his grandmother sent a whole caravan of grooms and breeding stock from Meishan when the war ended.” He produces two apples from his sleeve and holds one out to the nearest mule and the other to Lan Wangji. “Mules are better,” he says, his tone flippant as he pets Xiaoying’s long nose. “And almost as impressive.”

Xiaoying and Heitu are undeniably beautiful animals; good conformation, clearly healthy, and their dark bay coats shine red in the sunlight. And Lan Wangji knows that he will not be able to travel by sword for some time yet. Not alone. He cannot expect Wei Ying to transport them both, and walking will be too slow. Riding makes sense.

“Little Shadow?” he asks, of Wei Ying’s mount. “And … Black Rabbit?” They are hardly the sorts of names he is accustomed to hearing for a cultivator’s steed. There is little sense of speed, or power, or even luck in these names. Wei Ying shrugs.

“Xiaoying used to lie in the grass and pretend to be dead. Sizhui tripped over her all the time, and then she’d follow him for hours. And Heitu likes to jump, she hopped all over the place as a filly--ah! Lan Zhan!” He grins, gleeful, mischief in his face. “Do you remember the rabbits I gave you, all those years ago? And now I can give you another one! A bigger one!” Wei Ying laughs, just as he had laughed in Cloud Recesses, depositing two rabbits on the floor of the library, some sort of gift and joke and torment all in one, Lan Wangji had been sure.

Lan Wangji hadn’t known what to do then, with the boy who refused to leave him alone, who insisted on teasing him at every opportunity. Now, he stares at Wei Ying’s hands, at long sleeves pulled back to reveal his wrists, at his lips, and he knows what he wants to do.

He steps closer to Heitu, offers her his hands in a bowl instead of reaching out beyond her.

“I remember,” he says. It’s possible that his brother allowed his pets to stay, after his death.

Unlikely. But possible.

Heitu snuffles at his hands, all warm breath and soft nose in a way that is, in some small semblance, reminiscent of the soft warmth of his rabbits. She bears nothing like their fragility, but she takes the apple he offers delicately, and he keeps his fingers well clear of her teeth. Wei Ying strokes Xiaoying’s face and talks sweetly at her until she takes his sleeve in her mouth, at which point he switches over to annoyed admonishments. Lan Wangji has just stepped nearer to help him when Wen Qionglin appears at Wei Ying’s shoulder.

“Qing-jie wants to know if you finished that letter to Ouyang-zongzhu yet,” he says.

Wei Ying jerks, and there’s a sound of tearing cloth. He sighs.

“Feng-shimei told you to stop keeping food in your sleeves,” Wen Qionglin notes, even as he distracts Xiaoying with a hand on her neck. She drops Wei Ying’s sleeve and nudges her nose into Wen Qionglin’s chest. Both animals seem accustomed to his presence.

“I took it out as soon as we got here,” Wei Ying grumbles. “I wouldn’t have torn anything if I wasn’t surprised.” He sticks his fingers through the tear in his sleeve and wiggles them. The look on his face can only be described as a pout.

“I can fix it for you—” Wen Qionglin actually looks worried. Wei Ying just sighs and flaps his sleeve.

“I’ll fix it,” he says. “Why should you fix it? It’s fine.” He frowns at Xiaoying for a moment, then leans into Lan Wangji’s shoulder.

“I really can’t recommend becoming a sect leader,” he says, low-voiced, as if this will affect Wen Qionglin’s hearing. “The number of letters you have to respond to is too much work. I don’t think Ouyang-zongzhu even reads them, he just sends some new complaint every few weeks, as if I can control the weather, or the river, or how sleepy his cultivators get when they’re on tower duty.”

Lan Wangji has never heard his brother or his uncle make similar complaints, but they are Lans; they would not say such a thing even if it were true.

“Did you not choose the position?” he asks.

Wei Ying’s face scrunches up with displeasure. He shakes his head, though whether it is denial or dismissal is impossible to determine.

“I better get back to it,” he says instead of answering the question. “Before Wen Qing tells the kitchens to put radish in my food again.”

He sighs, and waves aside Lan Wangji’s bow. “I’ll see you both at dinner,” he says, and Wen Qionglin nods. Lan Wangji watches Wei Ying walk back up the hill towards the main compound until Heitu seems to take offense to his distraction and knocks her head against his shoulder, huffing at him.

“Does Liang-gongzi know how to ride?” Wen Qionglin asks. It’s a fair question: Lan Wangji does not actually know if Liang Feihong was trained in riding. He prevaricates. What is true for him is just as likely to be true for Liang Feihong as not.

“It has been a long time.”

“Would you like to practice?” Wen Qionglin asks, and Lan Wangji agrees without hesitation. Practice, and especially practice in caring for his mount without servants to help, can only improve the upcoming journey.

Wen Qionglin shows him to the tack room, and he manages to brush and saddle Heitu with a minimum of fuss. The main difference between outfitting a horse and a mule, he finds, is that Heitu’s tack includes two belly cinches, there is an extra strap that goes under her tail to stop the saddle moving too far forward, and he has to be especially gentle with her long ears while placing the bridle. Xiaoying is the more mischievous of the pair, Wen Qionglin tells him, and has to be watched carefully so she doesn’t puff out her stomach and make the cinches too loose.

Riding is initially awkward, but after a few slow circuits of the paddock he finds his seat and is able to push Heitu faster without losing his balance too badly. She takes direction well, has a steady, comfortable gait, and doesn’t startle as easily as some horses he’s ridden. He will almost certainly be sore later, especially without a dependable supply of spiritual power to speed healing, but the wind in his face and the simple pleasures of riding are more than worth that discomfort. He turns back toward the stables when they have both worked up a light sweat and sees Feng Xinyi speaking with Wen Qionglin. She smiles as he approaches, but doesn’t stay.

“I should get back to the little one,” she says. “But I’m glad to know Heitu will have a rider who knows what he’s doing.”

Wen Qionglin leads Heitu to a water trough and pets her cheek until Feng Xinyi is out of earshot.

“Wei-zongzhu trusts you,” he says. As if this is a fact.

Lan Wangji stares back at him. Wen Qionglin does not breathe, and he does not blink. He stands perfectly, unnaturally still, and waits. Apparently some response is required.

He settles on, “I trust him, also.”

Wen Qionglin watches him for a moment longer, and then nods. Then he says, “If he truly needs help, I will know. No matter where he is. And I am very fast.”

Oh.

This is probably intended as a threat.

Lan Wangji slides off Heitu’s back, so that they are eye to eye.

“I mean him no harm,” he says. In his current state of spiritual power it’s almost reassuring to know that someone else is concerned for Wei Ying's welfare. It should not be at all surprising, but he finds he is often surprised by Wen Qionglin, who has continued to move and talk and physically reside with his family for over a decade when everything Lan Wangji has been taught says he should not even exist.

Those same teachings would object to his own new existence as well; they are, both of them, supposed to be long dead.

“I will not let him come to harm,” he says, “if I can help it.”

He worries for a moment that this will be too revealing, but Wen Qionglin does not question him further. Perhaps he doesn’t need to. They are both well aware of the loyalty Wei Ying can inspire, under the right circumstances.

“I will show you where to find the saddle bags and travel rations,” Wen Qionglin decides, and he doesn’t speak of anything but Xiaoying and Heitu’s care and habits for the rest of the afternoon.

The evening before their planned departure, Wen Qing summons Lan Wangji once more to her study. Wei Ying arrives partway through her examination of his meridians and, surprisingly, sits quietly beside her desk until she’s finished. When she nods he joins them both behind the privacy screen and produces two cloth-wrapped packages—in one, two coiled lengths of red silk string, and in the other a pale jade carving of an endless panchang knot.

“Our hope is to give your spiritual power a new path through your meridians,” Wen Qing tells him as she inspects the strings. “One that minimizes the curse’s influence.” She blocks the meridians at his shoulder with her needles, and then ties one string to his arm, above the curse mark, and the other below it, each secured with a cloverleaf knot and sealed with a touch of spiritual power.

Wei Ying leans in close and presses two fingers to the talisman over the curse mark, but doesn’t touch either the silk or the jade. He keeps his silence. Lan Wangji watches his face and cannot read his thoughts.

“Just making sure this doesn’t interrupt us,” he says when he sees Lan Wangji watching. He holds up a second talisman in his other hand. “Wouldn’t want to have to start over in the middle.”

It’s a reasonable precaution: Tying the new charm is a long process, a progression of knots that covers most of his forearm. The jade panchang knot is tied in just above the curse mark, and another panchang knot of red silk tied below the wound. Wen Qing and Wei Ying both study it closely, and then she removes her needles and takes his wrist again, walking him through a slow meditation, cycling spiritual power through his body.

The flow of power is smoother, though it does perhaps take a little more time than he expects.

Wei Ying removes his fingers with a nod and a sigh. Wen Qing smiles, satisfied.

“The talisman will still need to be reapplied regularly,” she says, “but these charms together should be enough to minimize the curse’s effect on your meridians, so your core can begin to heal.”

It has already begun. He can feel the difference.

“Thank you.” The words seem inadequate, but he has little else to offer. Even this, she waves aside.

“I’m sure you don’t need my guidance for the proper exercises, but I do have many more theory texts, if you wish to read them.”

“We can bring some along,” Wei Ying promises. “Most of the best ones, we have more than one copy.”

Lan Wangji thinks of the library—of the many books that bear the same hand. Some copied by Wen Qing. Some by Wei Ying. Others in a clear, steady hand he doesn’t recognize. Of the single bound copy of the Lan Clan rules he’d found next to a copy of the Wen principles, and the books that he doubts his brother knows exist, copies of texts that were available to guest disciples studying at Cloud Recesses.

He wonders if his brother knew, when he was rebuilding the Library Pavilion, just how exact Wei Ying’s memory can be.

“Thank you,” he says again.

“Get some sleep,” Wen Qing says. “Both of you.” She stares hard at Wei Ying. “I’m not going to be the one dragging you out of your rooms in the morning. It’s no matter to me if you miss traveling during the coolest part of the day.”

Traveling with Wei Ying, and only with Wei Ying, is different from traveling alone, or with other Lan disciples, and different again from his memories of travel during the Sunshot Campaign. Then, Wei Ying had shifted through moods like ripples in water, sometimes predictable but more often not. A laugh like a clash of swords, a glare that pierced like needles. More than once Lan Wangji had found him alone but for the poor company the dead might provide, brooding under a shadow that seemed to cling to him even on the clearest of days. And then he would turn and ask if Lan Wangji knew this or that song, or if he wanted to spar, or if he’d eaten because surely it must be time for the next meal by now, and Lan Wangji would push aside his concern until hours later, when Wei Ying was just as likely to pull a prank as get in a fight with an ally. A fight with Lan Wangji himself, more often than not.

But that was the war. Decades ago, now, for everyone but Lan Wangji himself.

Now, Wei Ying laughs with more humor, and the cant of his eyes is merely sly rather than cutting. He grumbles through his breakfast and morning tea. He bickers with Xiaoying while saddling her and slouches through the morning hours until some unknown precondition is met, and then he begins talking aloud about whatever is on his mind at the moment: the weather, which continues to be wet, with cool mornings and steamy afternoons, or theories on their two investigations, or tales of past night hunts, which quickly shift into stories of Wen Sizhui, or Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan, and from there to the other members of Yiling-Wei, and Yunmeng-Jiang, and Lanling-Jin. Once, when they stop and take shelter under a half-repaired watchtower to wait out a storm, Wei Ying says, “Ah, Lan Zhan, do you remember that week we had rain every day, in Gusu?” and he speaks of Lan Xichen, and the Lan Sect, and what little he knows of its current status.

Cloud Recesses has been rebuilt, reportedly exactly as it was before the Wens attacked. Lan Qiren still teaches, and Lan Wangji feels a swell of relief to know his uncle still breathes. The Sect still hosts a year-long seminar for young disciples of any sect, every few years. Wen Sizhui, Liu Weixin and Zhou Xiuying have attended it, and returned with reports of young Lan cultivators who Wen Sizhui described as friendly, Liu Weixin called unbearably rigid, and Zhou Xiuying pronounced worthy sparring opponents. Lan Xichen has, unsurprisingly, built a widely-spoken reputation for even-mindedness that Lan Wangji knows he himself could never hope to match.

There is no bitterness to any of Wei Ying’s tales. No mention of hardship or enmity, over a span of more than a decade that Lan Wangji knows cannot have been easy, especially near its start. But then, Lan Wangji has long known that Wei Ying lies more easily than he tells the truth, omits more than he ever says openly. Even when he was living among the Mass Graves, quite obviously short on food, the only hardship Wei Ying would admit to was a lack of visitors, and news.

Still, there are some things he cannot doubt: Wei Ying’s love for his sister, and her children. His affection for Jiang Wanyin, and the Wens. His dedication to ensuring that Lan Wangji himself does not succumb to the curse he carries.

Every evening, he creates a fresh talisman to replaces the one on Lan Wangji’s arm. He brews one of three different medicinal teas from Wen Qing, in sequence, and serves it, sometimes drinking a portion or two himself. He invites Lan Wangji to play Rest as a duet for the suppressed, resentful souls they carry, and then other, less spiritually charged music, and asks after his core, after their evening meditations.

Every morning, Lan Wangji takes longer than he needs to to comb his hair, and tie it up, and dress. Wei Ying looks younger in the diffused dawnlight inside the tent. Softer, sprawled carelessly under blankets with his sleep robe twisted out of place to reveal the hollow of his elbow and the line of his collar bones.

It’s an indulgence Lan Wangji shouldn’t permit himself. A few moments, watching Wei Ying breathe and concentrating on the steady warmth of the soulbond under his own skin.

He turns away. Steps outside. Rekindles the fire for breakfast.

During the long afternoon of the fourth day, after they have shared a quick lunch beside a clear-flowing stream and are letting Xiaoying and Heitu forage their own meal, Wei Ying draws out Chenqing and plays songs that seem to be purely for personal entertainment; there is no spiritual power behind them at all. Some, Lan Wangji recognizes as common to drinking houses and inns. Others he doesn’t recognize at all. He is considering unwrapping the guqin when Wei Ying’s somewhat random little melodies turn suddenly familiar.

Not just familiar.

Every note is etched into Lan Wangji’s soul.

Wei Ying catches him staring. He’s not certain what expression his own face is making, but Wei Ying looks suddenly defensive. His hands drop to his lap, wrapping around Chenqing as if Lan Wangji will try to tear the flute away from him.

“What?”

“You remember.” Lan Wangji shouldn’t be surprised—Wei Ying has remembered enough of his brief time at Cloud Recesses to reproduce the Lan Sect’s rules and three different treatises, and that’s only what Lan Wangji found. But it had been only once, in the Xuanwu’s cave. That song has only ever had an audience of one.

Wei Ying frowns at him.

“What ...” his eyebrows rise high on his forehead, his mouth forming a perfect circle. “Lan Zhan.” He leans forward, suddenly eager. “Lan Zhan, you know this song?”

Of course he knows it. How could he not?

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying continues. “No one knows this song. How do you know it? Is it a Lan Clan song? What’s its name?”

Words stick in Lan Wangji’s throat. Wei Ying doesn’t remember. Not really. He looks away. At the play of light on water. The swirl of shadowy fish, underneath.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says again, moving closer. “I can never remember where I heard it, and no one ever recognizes it. How do you know it?”

No one ever recognizes it, he says. Which means Wei Ying has been playing it. For other people. For thirteen years. And he doesn’t know.

Lan Wangji swallows back his foolish hopes. The words he might have said.

“I wrote it,” he admits, to the low rush of the spring and the whisper of reeds in the light breeze.

“What?”

When he risks a glance back, Wei Ying is staring. He looks utterly shocked.

“What do you mean, you wrote it?”

Lan Wangji does not want to have this conversation. Not now. Not if Wei Ying doesn’t remember something so important.

At least, it had been important to Lan Wangji.

“We should keep moving,” he says, and stands. Heitu is drinking from the stream, but she only flicks her ears when he touches her shoulder, and doesn’t offer any more protest than a shift of her weight as he unties her hobble and mounts.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying is frowning at him.

“We are wasting daylight,” Lan Wangji tells him. It’s true enough. This break is no shorter than any other.

Wei Ying grumbles. Retrieves his things.

“What’s its name?” he asks as he settles on Xiaoying.

I have already told you. Lan Wangji locks the words behind his teeth. Wei Ying does not speak of the soul bond, never broaches the topic of their battle with the Xuanwu or anything else from their lives that occurred after he left Cloud Recesses months before any other disciple, does not remember this, despite Lan Wangji telling him, despite his clear memory of the music itself and his perfect recall of texts long burnt to ashes.

“Think about it.” He says instead, and urges Heitu into a quicker pace, too fast for easy conversation.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying calls after him, but Lan Wangji does not look back.

When Wei Ying catches up he speaks of other things, and does not mention the song again.

Notes:        

For the curious, Xiaoying and Heitu are named as references to famous horses from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 絶影 (sometimes translated as "Suppressing Shadow" or "Shadow Runner") was one of the horses of Cao Cao, head of the state of Wei. He famously kept running despite taking three arrows, and thus saved his rider from enemies. 赤兔 (Red Hare) was described as "the best of horses" and within the tale people considered him to be too good for his original master. After that master died he was given to a new, more virtuous hero (Guan Yu, sometimes described as an ideal incarnation of loyalty and righteousness), who he was extremely loyal to.

(on to part 11)

[crusherthedoctor]

When taking Lutrudis as a concept into account, it could be argued that the decision to have her live in a big, fairytale-like castle would be an unwise idea, maybe even counterintuitive, since a place so extravagant might undermine her intended loneliness and yearning for a more fulfilling life, adventure, and all that jazz before Sonic and company entered the picture. The last thing I’d want with Trudy would be to remind people of Chris “woe is me” Thorndyke and his rich kid mansion lifestyle. Not to mention that since some of the townspeople in Lime Shores can act rather ignorant (and in some cases, antagonistic) towards her, a lavish castle might also undermine the underdog nature of that particular setup.

Despite these concerns however, I felt confident with my plan, and I figured that as long as I knew what I was doing, readers would understand what I had in mind. I’ve explained in the past that a castle would better accommodate someone with her EDS, so right off the bat, you already have a practical justification for it. It also helps that whereas the accursed Thorndyke had his parents, friends, grandad, butler, etc etc etc etc... Trudy genuinely had no one to turn to before the heroes arrived for their intended vacation. So with that said, let’s examine this particular building for a bit, complete with pics for comparison’s sake, as well as a certain cavern full of Ethereal goodness that happens to be nearby...

Creating the Residence: Trudy’s Castle

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: The outside environment is not too subtly inspired by Autumn Plains from Spyro 2, better known to non-Spyro fans as my blog background.

A serene yet lonely autumnal forest backdrop, with a big stone castle smack dab in the center. It’s not one-to-one the same of course - instead of a pool, the front area boasts a lovely garden full of different flowers, and there’s also a lake nearby - but the mood is more or less what you see here.

However, this partly serves to contrast with what’s behind closed doors. As acknowledged in Beyond the Stars proper, the interior of the castle instead goes for a different and grander, yet equally inviting atmosphere when you take that first step inside. Instead of stone, you see marble and wood, and instead of grey and green, you have reds, creams, maroons, and golds (with a few complimentary blues and purples thanks to the flags hovering above).

As the lady herself mentions, Trudy discovered that the interior was in a state of disarray when she obtained it, and she was of the belief that a castle as beautiful and rich in history as this one deserved better than to be forgotten and wither away in the coming generations. The least she felt she could do was give it a modern, yet respectful redecoration, and give the old building a second, loving life in the process.

Yes, that means every spot of detail inside this castle was done single-handedly. Entirely on her lonesome. It took ages to complete, especially when taking her EDS into account, but she was determined to give the place its due, and lo and behold, the effort more than paid off. (You know, such levels of determination bring a blue hedgehog to mind...)

And that’s just the intended vision for the main hallway! We haven’t touched the other rooms yet! (Since a castle would have quite a lot of rooms, it goes without saying that for the sake of keeping this post from going even longer, we won’t be covering literally every single room... just the most important and/or most noteworthy ones. :o)

The bathroom can be described as a mix between the two examples below, combining the semi-medieval build of the former with the sky blue palette and general relaxing style of the latter.

Though that said, while the bath remains there for any guests to use, Trudy personally uses a shower since it’s more convenient for someone with her condition.

The kitchen (or as Sonic likes to call it, “the palace of chili dog magic”) mostly comes in cool browns and blacks, and its intended appearance is probably one of the more obvious combinations of old-timey and modern. It also has a slightly country aesthetic compared to the other rooms, because ha ha, horses, geddit.

The greenhouse at the back brings back the heavy amounts of green (well duh, the clue’s in the name, isn’t it?), while also providing contrast with the whiteness of the structure and architecture. Complete with giant arched windows, because of course.

And the segue point between the greenhouse and the rest of the castle looks something along these lines, at least with the way the building itself connects.

Even the chambers underneath the castle manage to look classy and clean. And just as well, since it’s where Tails parks the Tornado for the remainder of his time in Viridonia, once he FINALLY remembers to get it off the Lime Shore beach...

You know another benefit of such a spacious area? You get to turn it into a makeshift workshop for all your gadget needs, Tornado-related or otherwise. I’m sure that won’t come in handy at some point...

The guest bedroom is one of the most curious rooms of the lot, because even though it’s as nice and tidy as you’d expect, it’s also rather... muted compared to everywhere else. Perhaps Trudy felt no need to modify it further in any specific way, since no one had ever bothered to stop by anyway... until you-know-who and the gang.

And we can’t forget to mention our fair equine’s OWN bedroom now, can we? Her bedroom opts for darker colours, yet no less therapeutic, which includes the canopy bed that she rests in. You can actually see the general idea with the bedroom (and the outside of the castle for that matter) for yourself, in the Dame of the Daisy mini-comic, courtesy of my awesome friend @benignmilitancy​.

Likewise, although this shot is currently incomplete (don’t worry, Benign is fine with me using it :P), meaning some details haven’t been added yet, you can also get a basic idea of how the balcony is supposed to look here, along with the complimentary view of Viridonia’s oceans.

So what kind of music would befit Trudy’s castle, you may ask? Well, taking every detail into account, we would need something that goes for that perfect mix of adventure, wonder, warmth... and a faint hint of sadness lurking beneath. Something that gets all four across, but not in a generic, run-of-the-mill orchestra sort of way. Something a little more ambient and down-to-earth, with a more unique and specific kind of intimacy. Something like...

This would apply for when you’re inside, mind you. Outside the castle, the surrounding forest would have a theme of its own, though it would share that similar combination of melancholic friendliness. So for the outside, we would go with something more like...

Overall, the idea behind Trudy’s castle - aside from being her residence and looking enviously pretty - is to add to Trudy’s own character. It’s said that one’s home can say a lot about a person, and I made sure that every room shared a consistent narrative when reading between the lines. They may differ in shape, and they may even differ in colour, but the story is kept consistent at all times. We know that our girl is elegant, we know that our girl has slightly antiquated tastes... and we know that until the arrival of Sonic and Co, our girl was extremely lonely, and isolated by her peers, to the point of staving off said loneliness and isolation by making the place as lavishly detailed as it is in the first place. And just as the stony exterior hides the more fanciful interior, so too is there more to Trudy herself than at first glance.

Besides, not counting Eggman’s endless list of tributes to himself, we don’t often see the characters’ homes in the games, do we? We’ve seen Angel Island for Knuckles, the Space Colony A.R.K. for Shadow, that shack belonging to the Chaotix in Heroes, a few pads of varying consistency depending on the game (Tails’ workship in SA1 VS his house in Battle)... but not much more than that. And what better contrast to Sonic being something of a nomad, than by Trudy living a place like this?

But we’re not done just yet. Last but not least, we can’t forget that mysterious cave hiding down below, where countless amounts of Ethereal Crystals can be found undisturbed... You can bet that such a place would be suitably attention grabbing.

Since the crystals themselves come in practically every shade of the rainbow and then some, the resulting combination - specifically their reflecting shine - ends up painting the cavern walls with just as much colour.

It may feel a tad surreal and almost alien, to the point of being a little intimidating for some, arguably. But you know in your heart of hearts that as long as Eggman isn’t in the equation, there is no need to be fearful. After all, Trudy knows it better than anyone else, and although the crystals and their properties may hail from unknown, possibly uncomfortable origins, the horse herself continues to use them for wholly benevolent purposes.

Such a cavern would deserve a theme of its own, no? We’ll need something that drives home the point that the power within has no inherent morality, and can only be as good or as evil as the person using them. So although Trudy’s own intentions are firmly on the side of good, we’ll also need an added touch of minor eeriness lingering in the background, to represent the overarching threat and subsequent implications of Eggman dipping his own hands into the metaphorical Ethereal well, on top of its already unexplained otherworldliness...

So yes, it’s quite a pleasant castle that Trudy has, eh?

But this isn’t the only castle that can be found in Viridonia...

Well, it used to be the only one of its kind on the island... until a certain doctor stopped by, decided to beat the horse at her own game, and create his own, darker counterpart in response... But we’ll get to that when we get to that, ho ho ho.

[themyriadmen]

21:13

“Well, aren’t you a stubborn one.” The voice was… detached, the faintest notes of amusement just barely audible beneath the polite disinterest. Idithal turned in place, looking for its source - and taking in his surroundings as he did. A posh sitting room greeted him, the decor tastefully extravagant, all done up in deep, bloody scarlets and burnished gold. Sin’dorei colors, though of darker shades than the heraldry he was used to. He wondered if it were a deliberate choice of style, or if the room was simply dulled with age. A coat of dust covered every surface he could spy, cobwebs hung limp in high corners and between furniture that was beginning to tatter and fray.

It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that the world was in a fidelity he did not recognize. More vibrant, sharper, but oddly muted. Walls did not allow his sight through, but stood immutable with their aged filigree and chipping paint. This was, a distant, academic part of him realized, how others must see. How he had once done, before he had consumed a demon and become who he now was. Not that he could remember anything from before.

In fact, he could not remember coming in to this room, or the home that presumably housed it. He had been… Had been… 

Crumbling architecture, broken tombstones, candles burnt down to the quick, chains made of old, blackened iron. They burn as they are wound around him - the metal frigid cold against his skin. She is a shadow in a corner of the room, imposingly tall and in a frilled dress more suited for a ball than a mausoleum. Firelight dances in her eyes, flashes across pointed teeth when she apologizes and promises him it will hurt.

He looked down at his arms, bare and scarred, sickly light spilling through rends in his flesh. The weight of iron pulled at their every movement, but he could not see the chains.

“Fear not, your shackles still remain.” That voice again, closer - by the fire. Had it been lit a moment ago? “Forgive me that I found them a touch unsightly, and so elected not to see them.”

There was a plush sofa that he did not remember seeing as he spun, and a man sat in it that he most certainly would have remembered. He was an elf - sin’dorei, to match the room, with eyes that glow a dull, lifeless blue beneath a head of neatly coiffed hair. His face had the usual noble bearing of his kind, and his lips were pulled into a recreation of a smile that was just slightly off from perfect.

“Please, sit. You have come all this way to see me, I would be remiss if I did not offer you at least some comfort as reward.” Idithal blinked, and between the fluttering of his lids another sofa had spontaneously come into existence beside the stranger’s. He stood still, and invisible hands gripped him by the shackles he could no longer see and dragged him to the seat.

“Wonderful,” said his host, that same, emotionless smile not so much as twitching.

He made to stand, but leaden weight forced him back into the cushion. “Who are you? Where are we?”

“I believe you know the answer to at least one of those questions.”

The world tinges red, the chains tightens around him until they bite into his skin and his blood is lost in the haze of anima. It screams from him, torn from his soul and drawn out through his throat in tormented cries.

“Remember, boy,” she says, claw-tipped fingers outstretched towards him as he writhes. “Remember, and repent.”

“Revendreth,” he mumbled, phantom pains echoing through him and causing him to grimace. “I went to… To find out who…”

The stranger across from lifted a hand and gave a small, sarcastic wave. “Hello, me,” he said, voice filled with false cheer. “I had hoped never for us to meet, but as I said. You are frustratingly tenacious when you wish to be - not that I ought to have been surprised.”

“I don’t understand,” was the first thing Idithal could think to say, and his… twin? Doppelganger? Psychotic break? The other guy gave a mirthless chuckle.

“Not precisely quick on the uptake, though I believe that to be more of a fault of environment than intrinsic flaw. You tend to rely upon others to do the thinking for you.” The other hummed, the hand that had waved now drumming across the arm of his chair. A leg lifted to cross over his knee, and his head tilted in consideration. “Entertaining, certainly, though I must admit to a hint of frustration. I was always rather self reliant, whereas you tend to fall apart without guidance - no offence intended.”

“Fuck you,” he growled, and the ghost of a rattle sounded out as he attempted again to leap from his seat - again without success. “Tell me what’s going on!”

His answer was that same, damnable smile, as though it had been chiseled into his other’s face. “Ah, there is the temper. Naughty naughty, brother, dear - do you mind that I call you brother? I find it helps to keep things a mite less confusing.”

Idithal’s chair hopped with the force of his next attempted escape. It righted itself immediately after.

“Now,” the other continued, as if he was not the subject of a murderous glare, “I am sure you were expecting some… tragic play in three parts that would sum up your backstory - or, better yet -”

Idithal blinked, and the posh sitting room had been replaced by the demon-infested ruins of the Vault of the Wardens. He was no longer sitting, but stood up within one of the crystalline prisons, frozen but aware, staring out at the other-him on the other side of the cell.

“- something more akin to this, yes? Perhaps with the demon you had subjugated in place of me, exuding its malevolence into you, giving you an excuse for the evils that you commit?”

Another blink and he was back in the chair. A tremble passed through him.

“I wish that I could regret informing you that such is not the case. The simple truth is that there is no jailer, not any longer. The act we undertook, taking the essence of the Legion within ourselves, warring with it to come out the victor, was above all else a matter of will. A pity for the departed, then, that will happens to be a thing which I have in abundance. I subjugated the demon in whole, took its essence within myself and became it. I won the war.”

Idithal’s jaw worked for a moment as he attempted to find the words. “Then what is this? Why are… How am I here?”

“A miscalculation on my part,” his other shrugged. “Or, perhaps, finding myself unused to our newfound ability. You know well by now that the demon consumed specialized in withdrawing and storing the souls of others. Due to my unfamiliarity, I managed to slip myself into the bounds of that metaphysical cage, leaving my body temporarily without… agency, shall we say. You were a sort of autonomous response, the simplest, most basic parts of me taking hold so that I was not some empty husk upon the floor. I had, in fact, been near to wresting control of myself back when the Illidari threatened to kill us, but then…”

The silence was leading, and Idithal’s voice was small when he answered it. “Vylen.”

“Just so. I found myself intrigued by her intervention, by what use she might have had for you. I contented myself to sit back,” he waved a hand at the room they were in, “and watch events unfold, with the knowledge that I might intervene should the need ever arise. And, in truth, it never did. My experimental interest became more of an… existential one, I suppose you might call it. I came to wonder how you might grow, with the seeds of me in you, sewn in some foreign soil. It has been a treat, watching you become an arguably better person than I had ever pretended to be, when I came from a loving home and family, and you were birthed in a camp full of demonic betrayers. Not to mention that, through you, I have been able to experience my revenge far greater than I had ever dared to hope.”

Idithal’s head spun. His entire life was just… a fluke? A game? A story, to stave off the boredom of the man he had once been?

“Your revenge? I don’t… I don’t understand, any of this.”

The other’s legs uncrossed, then came together again - the opposite leg now on top. “I should, I suppose, start at the beginning. Allow you a bit of the catharsis you sought in that fool plan of yours -”

He has screamed and screamed and screamed until his throat has torn to pieces and there is not enough of him left to rebuild it.

“- if only to prevent it from ruining my fun. We were born with what our dear sister once described as a remarkable capacity for apathy. In truth, a mind healer likely would have done us some good in our formative years - especially after father’s passing, but mother was a proud sort who refused to admit that anything might be wrong in her baby boy’s head. She coddled, and I loved her for it, but one cannot help but wonder how they might have turned out in different circumstances. Well…” 

He trailed off, sending Idithal a look that sent shivers down his spine.

“One who did not have the particular opportunity that you have afforded me might wonder, I suppose. I digress - as you have experienced for yourself, it is intensely simple for us to assign no value to life. Conversely, for those few we do manage to care for, the depth of our esteem for them is… worrying, in a certain capacity. A thing which you have also found out. Tell me, which hurts worse? The scar she left, or the intangible ache of betraying your friend?”

His expression shifted for the first time, to one of honest, open curiosity.

“I had never been able to manage friends, you see. My family - my loved ones, were all that I required. To bother with those of lesser value seemed too inefficient for me, but I watched you try it. You cared for - care for? - that Light totem far less than you do dearest Vylen, but even that is more than I am familiar with.”

“Isilliya,” was all he could bring himself to say. “Her name is Isilliya. Not ‘Light totem.’”

His other waved away the correction. “Yes, yes, as you say. Mn. Carrying on - to me, my mother and sister were as Vylen is to you. They were the ones I loved. The only ones. Naught else in all the worlds and all the realms mattered. I used that, to keep them safe. Used how little value I saw in others to place value upon myself. I learned to spy, to stalk, to kill - and I charged good gold for all of it.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Idithal murmured. He wasn’t an idiot, he could see what was coming.

His other’s face froze, became as blank as a statue’s. “It was not. War has a habit of spilling over, of claiming lives uninvolved in it. I lost them both in the Second War, in a clash between the Horde and Alliance. Tell me - in what you imagined to have been a threat against your love, you tore to pieces a friendship you had actually valued, and visited great harm upon a person you had found the capacity to admire.”

Idithal’s head fell, shoulders slumped in shame.

“Tell me, knowing you would do such a thing to a ‘friend,’” the other continued, “how do you think I reacted to the loss of those I loved? What would I have done to those I assigned the same importance as the dirt beneath my shoes?”

“You killed them.”

It was, after all, what he would have done.

“In droves,” the other agreed, that stony visage cracking to show just a hint of maddened glee beneath. “Any I could find bearing those standards. Any who called themselves soldiers in that damned war. All were complicit. When the dead marched upon Quel’thalas, I stood aside, because it was right. It was just, that innocents suffer and die as my family had, meaninglessly, mercilessly. When the Sunwell fell and the quel’dorei withered, I drank a toast. When the Dark Portal sparked to life and armies marched upon it, I stood within their ranks and planted knives in their backs.”

The madness began to creep into his voice, a sort of keening, hysteric pitch.

“I sabotaged garrisons. I slit the throats of scouts and messengers. I bled them for every step they took against the Legion, against Illidan… and when I had weakened. When I could no longer hide amongst them, or steal enough to sustain myself, I turned to him. Gave myself freely to his cause, because it brought him into contest with those I would see destroyed. It did not matter that we might fail. That my death was likely. So long as we hurt them. So long as they paid in blood and souls for every victory against us. So long as a score of them fell for every one of ours…”

“Why didn’t you come back?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Why did you let me… Live?”

“Curiosity, at first, as I said,” the other shrugged, dragged back from his manic and melancholic edge. “While I had my goal in mind, my vengeance left to take, you were being directed in ways that satisfied that goal. Vylen wielded you rather expertly, and I found myself enjoying the life she found for us. It was… nice, I believe is the proper word, to have others to work with. Educating, to see how your sense of self formed around them. In time, I found myself loathe to part you from the one you had come to love so fiercely, knowing as I do the pain of that loss. I am a monster, brother dear, but I do frown upon hypocrites.”

“So, that’s… That’s it? You just… You think I’m entertaining?”

“You?” The other scoffed. “Heavens, no. You are rather a disappointment. All of my worst traits, and a refusal to acknowledge them. Even now, you crossed over into death and subjected yourself to torture in effort to find someone else to blame for your actions. You came here expecting to find a demon, a dragon to slay, some dark spectre tugging at your thoughts and directing your ill intent. Well, surprise,” he smiled that old, fake smile. “I have done no such thing. Your failures are all your own.”

Idithal felt suddenly nauseous, and a chain snaked its way up his chest to cinch around his throat.

“Not on this carpet,” the other warned. “Mother loved it. Where was I - ah. No, it is not you I find entertaining, it is your life. Had I retaken the reigns of my being, there is every likelihood I would not have survived the tribulations you bumbled your way through. Would not have had dearest Vylen there, holding my hand, keeping me safe from my own inadequacy. No, I would have fallen - perhaps at the Temple, perhaps before, and none would have mourned my passing. You, though… You lived where I would have not, and because of that I have seen so many wondrous things. Countrysides burning in felfire as the Horde and Alliance failed against the Legion. Watched their own paranoid, greedy idiocy then see them taking up broken arms against each other once more. Through your eyes I saw Teldrassil burn. I saw you turn your blades against men and women who thought you their comrade. I watched an Old God’s dreams call them like lambs to the slaughter. I watched the dead rise and turn their cities into charnel houses. I watched them scramble and flail as their leaders were whisked away into a shattered sky.”

As he spoke he had risen from his chair and crossed to Idithal’s. His twin leaned down, a hand placed upon each of the sofa’s arms, and bore his crazed eyes into Idi’s own.

“Through you, I have witnessed my enemies suffer beyond even my darkest imaginings, and I will not stand for your foolishness interrupting my fun. You will leave me, never again to return. You will fix your mistakes, grovel and plea to be taken back into their arms, because they have the strength to survive within the eye of the storm, and I would see it rage around them. You will be better, because I demand it.”

The other abruptly rose and took a step back. He lifted one leg, pressed the sole of a polished boot against Idithal’s chest.

“Goodbye, brother, dear,” the smile was back as the leg pushed out, knocking Idithal back in his chair. “Pray we do not meet again.”

Idi tipped backwards in his seat, and when his back struck the ground he found himself lying on the floor of a crypt, weeping blood and tears, his own breath choking in his lungs.

“I warned you that it would hurt,” said Inquisitor Anasthia, as she floated above his broken form.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Amazing Spider-Man: Full Circle #1 Thoughts

Well...this was odd.

I’ve never read a Round Robin before, not in comics or any other medium.

I think the first thing to acknowledge is that this wasn’t intended to be taken strictly seriously (let alone canonically) and certainly wasn’t treated as such by the creators. It’s more a creative exercise or experiment, the reading equivalent of a theme park ride I suppose.

That makes critiquing it weird and tricky. Thus I’m going to treat this more like an anthology book than one big story as the creative teams were not put in the best position to make everything hang together. I’m going to briefly talk about if I liked the art, the characterization of Spidey (and any other regular characters who pop up) and really that’s it. I don’t think it’s fair to lambast a this comic for taking Spider-Man into space or into a mystical direction as it’s supposed to be weird, wacky and fun, not taking itself seriously.

Also I’ll be writing about each part immediately after I’ve read it and before I’ve read the next part.

Awaaaaaaaaaaaay we go!

Part 1

Didn’t care for this one. Perhaps it’s because it’s the opening chapter and gets to set the stage, I can’t give it as much slack as everything else.

I’ve never liked Hickman and whilst the stuff about his work that annoys me wasn’t present here, his characterization of Spider-Man was very off. It felt ripped straight out of Brand New Day in how buffoonish and infantilized Spider-Man was (he even unmasks in the corner for no reason), the art not helping in this regard.* The art itself wasn’t very good because...well it’s modern day Bachalo and he’s literally leaving panels blank for no reason. Plus in some scenes I genuinely couldn’t tell what was happening.

The final thing to not about this part is that it might be set in the 1980s as Spider-Man is wearing his black costume and the recap page claims this to be an untold tale for Spider-Man. plus it features Hasslhoff Fury instead of Jackson Fury.

Big take away.

Hickman shouldn’t write Spider-Man in the future.

*Not to mention other people were treating Spider-Man as a joke.

Part 2

I liked this one much better. There was one moment of buffonishness with Spider-Man where he was in his underwear, but the other gags (like Spider-Ham and Fury shooting a ferret) I thought were earned enough. I also liked that Duggan provided a way to allow for the black and the red costumes to appear in the story. I adored the reference to the Florida Spidey theme park ride and the art was beautiful.

The only questionable parts were Spider-Man’s webbing working in space (how, there is no gravity?) and the werewolves kind of coming out of nowhere. Maybe that’s a little too harsh on my part given the nature of this story though.

My takeaway is that Smallwood should draw more Spider-Man and Duggan might deserve another shot at Spider-Man as this wasn’t all that bad.

Part 3

Wow.

In a project that was supposed to just be silly fun Nick Spencer put in way more effort than he had to.

First of all the art is lovely even if the human faces are a tad stiff.

Second of all, if you were in doubt that Spencer is qualified for the job as ASM writer, this should dispel those reservations.

Whilst the story has some wacky comedy ala Superior Foes it also has a dash of depth and plot development too.

In a story that thus far has featured Spider-Ham, falling from space and wacky hijinks, BAM, Spencer organically brings up Spider-Man’s origin in a way that’s logically consistent in a story inherently illogical in the first place.

More than this he throws in another brief yet organic reference to Man-Wolf and even uses the continuity of the book itself by referencing the previous two stories.

He ties this all together with the theme of choice and the random unintended consequences of those choices, thus delivering a meta commentary upon the inherent premise of this comic book. It’s actually rather ingenious and he did it in like 10 pages!*

Also I hope and suspect that werewolf MJ will become a fondly referenced moment in the future of the fandom.

*It also touches upon similar themes of quantum theories present in the current 2099 centric storyline in ASM.

Part 4

Mixed feelings.

I really liked Thompson’s Rogue/Gambit mini-series and whilst I’ve not gotten around to checking out her Mr. And Mrs. X ongoing, I made a point of buying the book.

But she’s never written Spider-Man before to my knowledge and whilst this isn’t awful...my eyebrow was raised.

Putting aside how we’re in Forest Hills when the last story clearly didn’t leave off there, there are some lines early on which don’t ring true to Spider-Man at all.

Case in point.

Spider-Man treats his problems like nails he has to hammer because he’s an Alpha super hero. Um...what character has Thompson been reading for 55 years? How many times has Spider-Man NOT tried t resolve problems via simply punching it, even in the Ditko days?

Peter feels like he’s always been alone? Aunt May and Mary Jane are literally in this story!

And where did the man in the box’s psychoanalysis randomly come from?

A part from that the art was beautiful here and I loved Peter’s upset over werewolf MJ and his consideration in subduing her. I also really liked the ending and the main action set piece.

Maybe Thompson could do better with a second bite at the apple, but this wasn’t a strong first impression for her grasp of the character.

Part 5

Holy shit that was awesome.

Al Ewing to my knowledge has never really written for Spider-Man before but goddam I’d love for him to do it more often!

This was fantastic, the first story in this comic book to dive into who Peter Parker is.

It retained the wacky humour the rest of the comic possesses via the inclusion of the Spider-Hams, but it used them for deeper purposes.

Classic Spider-Ham represented Peter’s more positive impulses, or positive assessments of himself.

Black Spider-Ham represented the more negative impulses, the times Peter has questioned himself and wondered if he’s nuts or doing the right thing.

Bag-Ham represented Peter’s humours side.

Seeing Ham and Black Ham argue over Peter’s nature was rather meta as it has often been debated in fandom about whether Peter’s driven by guilt or by the desire to be good, whether he’s fighting the good fight to make him feel better about Ben’s death because he can’t move on, or if he’d do it regardless. There is an answer to that, but I’d rather not dive into it here.

But it is simply brilliant writing on Ewing’s part to include it at all, and he continues the character exploration in the form of Peter’s conversation with ‘the man in the box’. Apart from some funny dialogue and the further debate about Peter’s life style, the conversation lays new layers of intrigue into the story. Could the Man in the Box be the weapon? Or could it be Peter? What if the Man in the Box isn’t real at all?

Ewing also takes the weird wacky situation thrown to him and actually brings things together a little more with a plan for world domination and world order that, whilst comic book mad science, kind of makes sense. It’s impressive that he made such great lemonade out of the lemons handed to him frankly. I also liked he made the werewolves thinking and rationalizing rather than feral animals, as that’s something you rarely see in werewolf stories.

Aaron again, brings it all back around to Spider-Man’s character though because Peter’s presented with a situation that echos his origin story. He has the chance to stop bad people doing a bad thing, but this time the end result could be something positive.

Like Spencer’s story it’s just brilliant and demonstrates a writer who cares enough to put in way more effort than they had to.

The art was quite nice too.

Part 6

Nice art off the top.

And a funny ending.

Considering this was Zdarsky this wasn’t that bad. The worst stuff I could say involves the idea that Peter was psychoanalyzing and second guessing himself earlier, but of course those stories were not written with the intention of being a future version of Peter.

I guess that makes Zdarsky bad for retroactively screwing stuff up but really I’m not holding that against this type of story.

What did make me confused though was that the idea of Nick Fury being an imposter beginning at the end of Part 3 seems weird because, the story lines up. Fury’s eyepatch was on the wrong eye but does that mean this comic was more planned out that it was letting on??????????

I don’t know.

I do know that I’m not fond of Fury and Logan turning this into a Marvel team-up/Zdarsky Spec Spidey story.

Also I don’t get why Fury was unaffected by the transformation and why Peter randomly reverted to normal.

Finally...fuck...I hate the High Evolutionary in Spider-Man stories. I really do.

Part 7

I don’t know how to feel about this one.

I’ve never been fond of Aaron, and his take on Spider-Man is very much from the BND era of ‘he’s a loser we can trash on’ camp.

He does however embrace the Round Robin nature of this comic book like perhaps no other author before in this story.

He does this by simply upending half of everything up until this point (the man in the box is retconned again and dispatched with little ceremony) and then he throws a hell of a cliffhanger for the next person to resolve.

Essentially he did random stuff that ignored the random stuff before him then did more random stuff to make it harder for whoever to bring it home.

You also got the impression that he was throwing shade at how dumb and insane everything had been up until this point, hence he summed up most of it in the final lines of his story.

All of which can be forgiven due to his utterly hilarious Kraven’s Last Hunt homage.

It totally doesn’t jive with what came before but it’s so great I do not care.

The art though, whilst getting the job done, is the weakest after Bachalo’s.

Part 8

Jesus Christ!

I wasn’t expecting that at all.

Walking into this I thought I might get some good art with some funny moments and wackiness upon wackiness due to everything becoming deliberately convoluted.

I wasn’t expecting great craftsmanship like Spencer’s story or a an outright GEM like Al Ewing’s story.

And I certainly wasn’t expecting a grand summation about Spider-Man as a person or life in general.

Now look...it doesn’t really make sense, let’s not pretend it does. There are plenty of loose ends.

But whilst I was never expecting this story to deliver a coherent narrative (that was if anything the opposite of the point), I was equally not expecting the whole thing to wind up being as good as it was.

Al Ewing’s story set up a debate about the nature of who Spider-Man as a person is and as weird as it is to say once you’ve read through the whole comic book, this final instalment essentially answered it. It folded in the convoluted nature of it’s premise and tied it in with Spider-Man’s origin.

Having read the e-mail chain at the back of the comic the resolution to the story makes a lot of sense.

Essentially Ewing provided the basis for a resolution that Spencer tweaked and then made work via Spider-Man’s character and emotional journey. The hypothetical dialogue he proposes as a resolution is almost identical to the finished product.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the best element of this final part, the part that nails Peter as a person, came from Spencer but there you go.

This story, whilst honestly not worth $10, is very much worth a read.

[horncity18-blog]

How anime works?

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[ryouverua]

Trial 6 - Retrial (1)

...... Alright, let’s do this.

Speculation post with theories are here.

It’s so... blue....?

i’m not saying this shade of blue makes me think of anyone in particular but I’M TOTALLY SAYING IT MAKES ME THING OF SOMEONE IN PARTICULAR -

Is that a ‘the results will speak for themselves’ thing or literally ‘someone else will choose’ thing??? We’ve had to deal with ‘an outside force is actually a part of this’ thing, but last time that was a force for good and they were pretty much rendered helpless. What are the chances that’s the same this time...

Probably because he and the mastermind being threatened with exposure are two different entities??? It sounds like he doesn’t have anything on the line this time!

MONOKUMA DO YOU REALLY HATE US THAT MUCH

LMAO

Damn you Monokuma you really can make me laugh sometimes when I’m not ready for it.

“’They’ being ‘me’, in case I didn’t make that clear.”

And then, after setting up for the trial and a long pan around the remaining participants, we land on....

.... one Very Tired Detective.

There’s one pretty glaring reason to have a class trial even if there hasn’t been a murder; someone incredibly significant still left to identify....

.... I-I guess this is the way we’re doing it though! Okay! We’re going to straight-up retry it!

I guess this is as good of a way to do it as any! This all pretty much revolves around the events of that night in the end!

“Incredibly ironic, considering the circumstances.”

lmao I swear I mentioned the Ultimate Mastermind as a joke possibility at one point whoops

I do like how we have Himiko to confirm it for us. Actually, that works out perfectly - we have a classmate almost every step of the way to confirm most of the evidence, except... I guess in the case of the flashback light room, right? Which is, y’know, good, considering we’re probably going to be accusing one of them within the hour... 8′D

And he wanted a second. Most people don’t want to go back in for seconds. Here’s a question though - did he remember the last killing game in the prologue? Is that why he recognized Monokuma? But.... why wasn’t he freaking out at that point? Or maybe that’s just because of his apparent ability to keep calm under pressure...

HE GOT FUCKING PLAYED

This speaks to the hidden trap that’s always existed in Shuichi’s own mind - that he often assumes that anything he can do, such as notice the hidden door, other people can do just as easily. Because ‘if someone like me can do it, who only became the Ultimate Detective by accident, then surely it would be presumptuous to think that no one else could make the same observations as me’. N-Not that I understand those feelings on a personal level or anything.............

Out of pure curiosity, I wonder if he was given the Monopad specifically by Monokuma or if he just woke up with the second one? Or maybe it was left for him in his room? He had to have reviewed it at some point in isolation, because he was clearly shaken up by it. For that matter, when did he see it? Just after we first originally met up in the gym, post-talent acquisition? Or later than that? I wonder if it’s possible to pinpoint before and after him going through the Survivor’s Perk based on his reactions? I do remember he was checking out the library during one of Kaede’s FTEs when we approached him, but I can’t quite remember when that was...

Wait, are you telling me the video itself was on his Survivor’s Perk? I thought it was just in that safe - then why was there a copy of it on a USB in his lab??? Was it to paint him as suspicious if we got that far? A bonus prize for someone if they were able to figure out the clues?? Hell, was it a ‘motive’ to paint a target on Rantaro’s back the same way the flashback light targeted Kokichi in Chapter 5, in case he made it that far? WHY WAS THE DECK SO STACKED AGAINST THIS POOR BASTARD

“He just had an incredibly scary face while coming to that conclusion, so naturally it was very suspicious at the time.”

.... Man, what’s with all these people with our best interests at heart having such terrifying sprites? Rantaro, Kokichi, Gonta, Ryoma, and I’d argue Angie in her own strange way - all of these guys had some of the creepiest reactions in the game. the lesson is it’s the plain cute ones you gotta watch all the pun intended -

don’t be rude Himiko

“If only I’d had the protagonist power at the time - I could have wooed him. I could have wooed him!”

This is pretty damn sad, though. I wonder if there was anyone he was considering reaching out to? There’s at least one person that comes to mind immediately and I 100% guarantee it’s not who you think it would be:

.....

Ready? No, it’s not Kokichi.

It’s Ryoma Hoshi.

No, seriously! Ryoma literally made it clear that he was willing to give up his own life to end the game. He showed the resolve to help someone get out of there in order to rescue the rest of them. Rantaro literally had to argue him down from doing that. I know at that point it was the day of the deadline, but... man. What if Rantaro had come clean with Ryoma about what he knew? Could something have changed?

Behold: Rantaro Amami, the Ultimate Cryptic.

How heavy was this burden on his shoulders...

I know it’s not relevant to the flashback but SHOW HIS SCARY SPRITE YOU COWARDS

RANTARO WE WILL MAKE UP FOR THIS IN THE BONUS SALMON MODE, I SWEAR IT TO YOU RIGHT NOW -

Behold: Rantaro Amami, the Ultimate Sacrifice -

if there aren’t what-if AUs out there about potential scenarios where Rantaro opens up to someone I will riot.

I-I mean, we weren’t going to explicitly say that but -

“.... Patience, Shuichi. Their time will come. And they won’t know what hit them.”

I see you, sneakily trying to sneak that truth and lie theme back into the trial, and I wholeheartedly approve ~

Are you just saying that...? You were there, right? You saw that we found the Survivor’s Perk. You know we found the lab, so why are you not trying to redirect us? Will you try to do that in the debates or -

oH -

SHE DOESN’T KNOW WE FOUND THE HIDDEN PASSAGE FROM THE BATHROOMS

SHE DOESN’T REALIZE WE CAN PIN HER DOWN WITH THIS

LET’S DO IT!!!!!

Well THIS explains why the Monokubs are participating in the trial. 8′D

E N O U G H

We can match it... aaah, we can match it to the picture that shows him holding it! And it wasn’t there with the body, but in the mastermind’s room!!! Man I’m so pumped up!

I love how Shuichi’s shutting down the Monokids lmao - I’ve never seen him act so aggressively in a Rebuttal Showdown before. 8′D

Man that’s a lot of blood to have landed that way, but who am I to argue about blunt trauma blood physics. THE POINT IS WE HAVE PROOF, BABY! CONFIRMED SECOND PERSON IN THE ROOM!

oh right also this happened:

So we’re just gonna lose them one-by-one during the trial, huh? I’m okay with that.

can you let it slip again

pretty sure you’re thinking of Scar and Simba was Mufasa’s cub -

THAT TOO

DO MONOKUMA AND TSUM - THE MASTERMIND HAVE BEEF OR SOMETHING DEAR LORD

“And it’s totally not someone in this room.” awkwardly attempts to not make eye contact with a certain plain girl -

In those brief few precious seconds...

Cutting all the fluff out, but all you need to know is that all the Monokubs are absolutely useless and don’t know anything except for Monodam because of course.

T... The interval timers. We’ve talked about this already. It was a big thing in the last trial - literally why Shuichi was suspected for a while, and how it got narrowed down to her and Kaede.

It’s always her. It’s always her.

TSUMUGI IS LITERALLY ‘CASUALLY’ TEAMING WITH MONODAM TO DISPROVE SHUICHI I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW BALLSY SHE’S GETTING

Didn’t the mastermind have the advantage of Rantaro triggering the camera both times and setting the ‘30 second’ clock between intervals? Just sayin’ ~

I’m so glad and not surprised that K1-b0 is the one remembering Miu’s contribution. look I have room for kiiruma in my heart too okay

with that said I love the ‘so done’ look he has while he’s next to her in this picture

30 seconds sounds like a short amount of time, and it is. but it can also be surprisingly long. She would have to be quick and deliberate... but she could do it. Dart out, grab it and go. And she’d probably be watching the live feed so she would know exactly when to do it! Between the flash and the ball dropping on him, she has two cues to work with!

I see you too debate online.

this is the ‘take a minute to appreciate the text and graphic design’ minute, don’t mind me - I just really l ike how they have such different styles denoting who’s speaking. Man I can’t get over how well designed it is.

....

Wait, we really have to bring up the idea that they have surveillance cameras? When one of the biggest sticking points of the last trial was that Monokuma didn’t know who the victim was because Kokichi interfered? YOU THOUGHT WE WOULD GET THROWN OFF BY THAT POINT -

This is K1-b0′s big win, so I’m glad he’s the one sassing them and presenting the sixth cub ~

this better be the last damn time we ever agree on anything EVER

I mean, I guess we had to clarify that for the sake of being able to move on but... eh.

OH

Though! Though it does help us confirm that the mastermind had to have been in the room and not one of the people who were known to be downstairs, so that is good! I mean, we honestly pretty much knew that already, but it definitely doesn’t hurt. Gotta tighten that trap after all!

I DUNNO TSUMUGI, WHY WOULD THEY?

“The mastermind is a punk bitch -”

“O-Okay, we plain get it, that’s enough -”

“No. No, I think I need to elaborate on what a scaredy-cat coward the mastermind is -”

LMAO HE’S REALLY INTERRUPTING SWEETCHEEKS ON THIS

..... What a weird point to be hung up on. And the way you’re talking, like you are the mastermind rather than an independent AI, is definitely different than before.

i-i mean look what just happened with kokichi and maki but okay, yeah, we’d totally work together and not have a random student try to make a stand on their own or, hell, have a flashback light designed to instigate chaos and confusion -

Yes............. but. Uh, I’m going to bring this to the point below actually - *

HA

okay blow up a Monokub now

....

damn it

Oh damn, I didn’t think that rule would ever actually come up in a trial. Cool.

LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU -

YOU LITERALLY SET HIM UP YOURSELF!!!

.... Or, the mastermind did. One of you did. I don’t know - I know in my head that I should probably be treating them as one and the same - but they just feel like different entities to me. And if I’m going to humour that idea, that means there is the very real question of ‘who decided to set him up with that message’, ‘who decided they had to steal the Survivor’s Perk back’ and for that matter, ‘were these decisions made independently of each other or was the idea to take back the Perk back conceived the moment the Perk itself was created?’

* To pick up where I left off earlier -

It sounds like discrediting the idea of the mastermind would all be much more important to said mastermind moreso than Monokuma... right? Because Monokuma seems convinced that everything will be fine (the game will continue) even if they find the mastermind, right...??? So I don’t know if the reason was to keep the killing game going, because she clearly showed she is able to create a motive even when the students are banded together against a single person, and she can even misdirect them - I think it’s more to protect herself, because she never wanted that to happen in the first place. Iunno. It just feels a bit different to me than how Shuichi put it.

Oh....?

B-BUT, LIKE, WE CAN STILL FIGURE OUT WHO IT IS FROM THAT... >:( let me accuse my cosplay girlfriend you monojerk

So, erm. Right.

At this point, if you weren’t seeing my little spur-of-the-moment text reactions, you wouldn’t know that I did a double-take when I saw this happen live. Because, well... I’d figured out the whodunnit, the whydunnit, the when, the how - but apparently I’d managed to miss the fact that there was a ‘what’ to resolve. So I figured out the culprit.... but didn’t realize that we weren’t just investigating a theft, but the actual murder again.

With that in mind -

[funky murder mystery jazz music stops]

IT’S    A    W H A T ? ! ? ! ? !

TSUMU - I-I MEAN -

MISS MASTERMIND, WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!?!

[obfuscobble]

SO I got my hands on the Japan Animator Expo 2015 collection and I thought it a good time to rate each short because I have some very concise opinions.

1. Dragon Dentist 4/5 Girl volunteers to be a dragon's dentist in the midst of a war. Inventive, compelling, beautiful.  Works incredibly well as a short, managing to tell a story far longer than its timeframe without leaving us wondering what happened or what will happen.  A very strong start to the collection.

2. Hill Climb Girl 3/5 Girl wants to be a great bicyclist, and the first step is beating her friend up the hill to school. Pretty good for cel-shaded computer modelling.  If you like Yowamushi Pedal, you'll like this.  Not stand-out but it's an endearing.

3. ME!ME!ME! 4/5 Boy gets dunked on by his own objectification of women. A truly stand out music video not just for this collection but within the genre.  That said, you do have to rewatch it closely to glean its themes and true place as a condemnation of misogyny as seen through the self empowerment male fantasies used by the boy to combat his own misogynistic fear of female desire and deep shame over his otaku life.  And there is quite a lot of female objectification in his life.

4. Carnage 3/5 Gunslinging girl seeks revenge for her family and her arm. Great attention paid to the one armed gunslinging.  The conclusion openly and somberly lays out what will happen next as this old town must pay for its sins, even if it perpetuates the cycle of girls losing those they love.

5. Gundam key animation 1/5 Literally the key animation drawings from Gundam shown side to side with the classic footage. Pretty cool for animation nerds and gundam fans but otherwise not really compelling as a storytelling vehicle.  I have to take off points on that account, but it is really worth a watch to see the keys.

6. 20 min from Nishi Ogikubo Station 0/5 not actually 20 min long. Just kidding! 4/5 woman turns into a cockroach, much to man's dismay. The sketchy art style, soft colouring, and jittery movement add perfectly to the piece's theme, making them obviously intentional choices.  The piece is still fluidly put together, with inventive plays on human/cockroach interaction and the how's of being so small.  The woman as cockroach is envisioned naked, but I feel that this is presented in a naturalistic (ie she just shrunk out of her clothes) and not at all prurient way.  Didn't think I was going to like it as much as I did!

7. until You come to me 1/5 Oh Shinji boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. Shinji silently misses Kaworu or five minutes. I mean I don't blame him but... Nothing happens, and if one has no inkling about Evangelion, this short has absolutely NO meaning.

8. Tomorrow from There 3/5 Woman avoids responsibilities, calls from her mom, and the creeping sense of adult dread, until she reconnects with her inner sense of joy. A wonderful counterpoint to ME!ME!ME! that focuses on universal human fears and dilemmas, without objectifying women.  Uplifting with a powerul backing song.  But I have to be honest and say that its visuals aren't going to stick with me as powerfully.

9. Electronic Superhuman Gridman 3/5 You are a human with the capacity for joy and wonder, so you will appreciate this heartfelt ode to super sentai live action and robot anime. Comes complete with character design details to reflect the rubber suits and even the tiny screw to hold on the back of a model's head.  Has nice internal logic about the Gridman.exe who fights monsters with the power of the electrical grid, such as circuit power ups and smashing a tv screen to get at the enemy.  Even for those unfamiliar with the tropes, it's just a fun 6 minutes.

10. Yamadeloid 3/5 An ode to historical fighter anime with neat brush-line visuals and fitting soundtrack. But it just didn't grab me by my heart's cockles like Gridman did, probably coming entirely down to what shows I grew up on.  It was also a lot more fourth wall breaking, which is entirely subjective for one's enjoyment, even from one short to another as you'll see.  So I'd like to give it a 2, but I know that nostalgia was the only thing inflating Gridman to a 3, so I'll be fair.

11. Power Plant No 33 2/5 What if we just... turned off our millenial facebook phones... and really lived.... yanno? The instantly gripping visuals of a society powered by a beast that creates electricity, which must then go on to fight a space robot, are immediately undermined by the totes not subtle digs against modern technology.  I get it, technology is literally a destructive beast.  I get it, we should unplug and learn to live freely.  The animation was great but the moral was giving me the feeling that I should get off a luddite's lawn.

12. Evangelion Another Impact Confidential 2/5 Tall woman looks for her daughter, finds hostile wasteland. But what a woman!

13. Kanón 3/5 A Japanese take on a Slavic philosophic parody of Jewish folk mythology, or, "On Solipsism." Actually fascinating as a piece.  It moves very very quickly though, leaving little time for the jokes and philosophy to set in, but I feel the frantic pace was meant to reinforce the confused, overworked, utterly helpless feelings that the main character was experiencing.  The fourth wall break right at the end completely charmed me and even elevated the piece.  Loses points for the inherent misogyny of the novel it was based on, but otherwise worth a watch for the curious, and one of the most interesting Japanese takes on Judaeo-Christian tradition I've seen.

14. Sex & Violence with Machspeed 0/5 Just because you admit that you're being gross for gross' sake doesn't mean you're not gross. Look I could get into it, but I just hated this one.  If you liked Panty and Stocking, maybe give it a try.

15. Obake-chan 3/5 A series of charming shorts about a girl who wants to be a spoopy ghost.

16. Tokio of the Moon's Shadow 4/5 Boy who has, I goddamn assure you, THE. SHINIEST. eyes in the universe saves earth and his radio penpal from a space creature. Come for the innovative mix of animation styles, stay for the dance sequence.  Just watch it.

17. Three Fallen Witnesses 2/5 Ambition: the Anime. Like seriously, this is the 3d animation equivalent of the Ambition games.  It's also a very ambitious premise, based on prosecuting attorneys using "DNA time travel" to gain evidence on a murder case.  Alas, I really feel it should have had longer to play in its world and the case itself.

18. The Diary of Ochibi 3/5 Edible stop motion is here!

19. I Can Friday by Day! 5/5 Tiny space squirrels fight tiny space rabbits, each piloting robot teenagers. Highly creative, wondrously fun, and yet with a good plot and even characterisation to hold it together past the visuals.  I'd love to see this as a short series, as I feel the premise, world, and character sketches could easily be filled out into a humourous and yet compelling larger narrative.

20a. ME!ME!ME! Chronic 1/5 Basically a remix.  Lacking the narrative of the original hurts it because then its just boobs and yonic symbolism and the guns that shoot them.  Still good music.

20b. The Making of Evangelion Another Impact Confidential 1/5 Interesting if you want to see how the short was designed and technically compiled.

21. Iconic Field 2/5 Never try to fit 13 episodes into 6 minutes. This is obviously angling to become a longer syndicated series but not only did they rush too many of their ideas and subplots into it, but they obviously ran out of money and production time.  Some shots are replaced with concept sketches, and there was no voice acting when clearly it was intended to be present.  It's creative in its character and mecha design, but the plot is another riff on the seeded earth hypothesis whose unanimated conclusion you can still see a mile away.

22. On a Gloomy Night Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! Nippon Banzai! 1/5 Never try to fit 13 episodes into 6 minutes using Auld Lang Syne as your backing track.

23. Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen 1/5 Honestly not sure how to classify this one.  It's about a sex worker, it's presented with a quite effective animation style, but in the end it's all about the sex worker accepting abuse from another as her tragic role in the world. Ehn.

24. Rapid Rouge 4/5 In the world of the techno-daimyo, there is only loss. BRILLIANT use of a limited colour palette.  Loses one point due to not fully delivering on the emotional character-sacrifice punch it wanted and for being unartfully open ended.  If it delivers on a second episode like it promises, I might amend my opinion.  It was so close to being perfect, yet didn't manage to get me to care enough about its characters in its short run time, unlike...

25. Hammerhead 5/5 Highly violent, yes, but emotionally impactful to the extreme; I cried both times I've watched it. Update: three times. Wonderful traditional animation, powerful emotional centre, and perhaps the best animation I've ever seen to portray a human's physical demeanour in deep emotional distress.  I absolutely recommend watching this.

26. Conte Hitman 3/5 Manzai routine with clever twists and turns.  Porque no los dos, the sketch.

[amarabhilash]

Any gamer worth their salt know that after a particular threshold of budget, it’s better to build a gaming PC to get the best experience. But what if you’re someone who travels frequently? Or perhaps, you could be someone who doesn’t want a big tower PC but all the power? For those cases and more, there are a fair share of extreme-performance gaming laptops out there. They may cost a pretty penny, but they are worth it. One such beast in question is the MSI Raider GE67 HX 12UHS, a 2022 high-end gaming laptop that is MSI’s successor to their previous-gen GE66 series. Sporting top-of-the-line specs with a beautiful design, the MSI Raider is a laptop that will attract any gamer at first sight. Well, I have been using this machine for a few days now, and here’s my in-depth review of the MSI Raider GE67 HX 12UHS.

MSI Raider GE67 HX 12U Review (2022)

Since this performant gaming laptop has many aspects to it, I have divided this review into various sections, touching upon the gamery design, crazy beautiful display, top-of-the-line internals and its performance. That said, let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents

Design and Build Quality

The MSI Raider GE67 HX 12UHS is one gaming laptop that invites you in immediately by its design. This beast is a performance machine that looks the part and appeals to the gamer inside us. The entire body of the laptop has been crafted out of a mixture of metal and plastic in various parts. That leads to a combination that is both durable and appealing at once.

Design msi ge 67 hx

The top panel of the laptop is made out of metal and sports the ever-famous MSI logo in the middle and an additional laser-engraved MSI branding on the top left. This laser engraving is a new addition to this year’s HX lineup and looks quite cool.

The bottom half of the panel splits off and connects to the bottom hinge of the laptop. The sides of the hinge themselves are connected with a slightly glossier and darker shade of grey plates which give off a futuristic vibe. The bottom half itself also is also shaped in a way that gives way to the back I/O ports which sport a healthy variety but we will talk about those later.

Opening up the lid of the MSI Raider GE67 HX, you’re welcomed by a modestly separated design between the big enough keyboard and trackpad. The interiors again have a metallic finish. MSI has incorporated a SteelSeries specialized keyboard inside the GE67 HX that fits perfectly along the intended sides that giving it a sunken-in feeling. While the trackpad itself is smaller than I expected, it will do since gamers often stick to mice.

interiors MS GE 67 hx

The display itself is slim enough with thin bezels at the sides and top and a thick one at the bottom. MSI didn’t go for a 16:10 ratio here which I would have loved. I bent the lid as far back as it goes and it stops around 140 degrees which are good enough. However, even for a laptop this size, it has a lid that opens with just one hand which is nice.

While the keyboard also supports RGB, the real RGB attraction is the big light strip at the front of the laptop. The sides of the laptop also conform to the same vibe and have accentuated vents for styling. It is also on the sides you will find the two speakers. So if you were hoping for some bottom-firing ones, sorry to disappoint you.

MSI Raider GE67 HX Review: Buy for Gaming, Stay for OLED

The bottom of the Raider GE67 HX has been redesigned by MSI to provide even better cooling. It gets its own spaceship vibe that you feel from the dual-division design. The top half is slightly raised to give the laptop more height. It also gets some sculpted lines around its sides. The bottom half itself matches the feeling and features more MSI branding and the Raider GE67 HX tagline.

The entire combination of the design choices by MSI has led to the Raider GE67 HX feeling like a solid gaming machine. Thankfully, the build quality itself matches the design. I encountered little to no flex over the entire body. While there is some flex on the lid, it’s nothing too major.

However, a big thing to note here is that the Raider GE67 HX is not a portable machine by any means. Weighting in 2.38 KGs along with a massive 1.5 KG charger, this is one big boy. So if you do intend to keep this laptop as a traveling companion, be sure to do some weightlifting beforehand.

That aside, I actually love the design of the GE67 HX and would love to use it as a daily driver for my gaming and daily needs.

OLED 240Hz Display

Most gaming laptops stick to either refresh rate panels or an OLED one. MSI however, has combined the two facets and created a 240Hz OLED display. Sporting a QHD (2560×1440) resolution, the display is a 240 Hz panel that sports lightning fast 0.2 ms response time. Unlike many companies, the display gives a nice peak brightness of 500 Nits which feels more than sufficient in all use cases. As for you color purists out there, MSI has also given a 100% DCI-P3 coverage in the Raider GE67 HX. My main use case of the display was in gaming, working, and entertainment consumption, and I’m impressed with all of them.

Throughout my time using the screen for gaming and entertainment, the experience was consistently good. The wide color gamut coverage showed in real-time as the colors remained vibrant and popped out. Whether it is going inside the horrors of the Oldest House in Control or watching Our Planet on Netflix, it was beautiful. While I felt the default setting was fine, MSI does provide the TrueColor software in the raider to make that lets you choose from various display modes including the sRGB color profile with adjustment for color values.

Since this is an OLED display with a rich contrast ratio, dark shots inside while consuming content felt pitch black and almost palpable. So if you’re someone who loves to repeat watch Polar on Netflix, this display is a dream for you.

As someone who is a sucker for OLED displays, I am happy with the panel. The high brightness also meant that HDR and even SDR performance was amazing and didn’t feel inadequate. While I didn’t do a lot of traveling with the Raider, I did use it under direct light but didn’t feel the display being dim.

Now some of you might be worried about the infamous OLED burn-in that might befall this display. Now to counter that, the MSI has equipped the Raider GE67 HX with OLED Care. Found inside the MSI center software, OLED care allows users to perform a set of steps to basically refresh their displays. So you can run a 30-second screensaver to move your pixels, have the machine run screensavers, and more.

Lastly, if you’re someone who also plans to use this display for work, you’ll be pleased to know MSI performs well here too. The text is extremely sharp and very legible. The high resolution also means you get less stress on your eyes and the overall experience is comfortable.

As someone who cannot use a laptop without a killer display, the GE67 HX really pleased me.

Performance

When you’re buying a laptop as expensive as this you expect nothing but the best performance that outmatches everything. And I was pleased to find out that indeed is the case. The MSI GE67 HX Raider comes with a mammoth 16-core Intel 12th Gen i9-12900HX combined with a 165W NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti. Combined together, the two parts can go as high as 220Watts which is also the reason for the bricklike charger. On the memory side of things, you get a superfast combo of 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD.

To make sure all this power remains cool, MSI has also included a dual fan and 7 heat pipe system that is amazing in its own right. This ultra cooling tech popularly known as MSI Cooler Boost 5 will see your laptop keep the temps down even when the pressure is rising up.

I primarily used this beast for gaming. However, I also made sure to real-life usage and benchmarks to get a metric too. I have divided my experience into sections below for your ease so feel free to browse through them.

Daily Usage

My daily usage as a writer revolves around a couple of tabs of a web browser like Chrome combined with software like Paint.Net and Spotify in the background. While that is definitely light use, I decided to amp it up a bit by adding a few more RAM-hungry Chrome tabs combined with a couple of 4K videos.

As expected, all this daily/intensive work did not stand a chance against the power-packed laptop. MSI made sure that my problems of lag and anger are a thing of the past in the GE67 HX. Even after all the above scenarios open including a few more, the CPU and RAM usage barely had a dent in them. This meant I could easily go on to open more of the same and even more apps without any lag. While I could have amped up the fan speeds for better performance, I did not feel I needed that either. Since you can use the Raider GE 67HX as an editing suite, I also ran Premiere Pro and Photoshop and encountered no lag there either.

When it comes to daily work or entertainment, this beast of a laptop will pose no problems to you. So if you’re someone working a 9 to 5 before your gaming sesh, feel free to use this laptop for your work. I can say the same for students who would like to multi-task with various apps.

Gaming

And on to the heart of the matter where the primary use case of the Raider lies. I’m someone who loves to game a lot. Perhaps a bit too much to be honest. In the same obsessive spirit, I put the MSI Raider GE67 HX through a series of games. I’ve included a healthy set of AAA and E-Sport titles that put stress on the system while looking amazing. Since the laptop also contains an RTX GPU, I included a title for Ray Tracing too. Furthermore, to fully test out this laptop’s capabilities, I made sure to use the native resolution of QHD (2560×1440) for the full effect. This is what I found.

Control Ultimate Edition – QHD Ultra Preset with Balanced DLSS

Even though it was released back in 2019, Control is a game that remains a heavily demanding title on even the most modern PCS. The included RTX functionality only increases this burden and makes the game a good benchmark. I tested out the RTX version on the Raider. To put the most stress on the system, I used the Ultra preset including RTX. However, I did leave DLSS on the Balanced setting since I found no difference between that and the native res.

Control game

Without any surprise, MSI delivered as the Raider GE67 HX took it on the chin. I got an easy average of 75+ FPS with frames peaking 100+ in easier scenes. Checking GeForce Experience, I saw the full 165W TGP being used without any issues. I also want to mention the temps remained below the safe threshold of 85 Celsius without any problems. Furthermore, while I did get an instant boost to 100+ FPS by dropping resolution, I reverted back to QHD because of the insane level of detail in the game and happily enjoyed playing it.

God of War – QHD Ultra Preset with DLSS Off

Kratos’ arduous journey with his son is one that lies close to my heart so it was almost obvious I would run this demanding beauty. I made sure to again run the game at its native QHD resolution combined with an Ultra preset. However, I kept DLSS off this time to see how far I can push this laptop.

god of war msi

To my pleasant surprise, it delivered once again with consistent FPS across the game. The high wattage 3080 Ti delivered a consistent 75+ FPS experience throughout my time playing the game. The cooling too remained consistent and without issues and the GPU temps remained below 85 Celsius. This ensured my devastating fight against Baldur was satisfying and without any issues. While I expected minor stutters, I did not get even those so I’m happy.

Rainbow Six Siege @ QHD Ultra

Rainbow Six Siege is a well-optimized game in 2022. However, as someone who has almost 3000 hours into it, I was curious to see how it performs. Since R6 doesn’t have DLSS, I used the Ultra settings on the native resolution. I again liked what I saw.

R6 Siege MSI GE67 HX

R6 Siege delivered a good 150+ FPS experience while I was going training grounds on the Coastline map. While the frames did drop once or twice below that level, they quickly recovered. The thermals again were satisfying and actually kept the temps below 80 Celsius.

If you’re someone who lives to indulge in E-Sports titles, the MSI Raider GE67 HX will not disappoint you.

Forza Horizon 5 @ QHD Ultra

Lastly, for some good calm measure, I also decided to race a bit in Forza Horizon 5. While I expected more FPS from the game while driving through Mexico, the experience was still pleasant. The 3080 Ti gave me a 70+ FPS experience with frames peaking at 80 at moments. This was during casual driving and races. The thermals here too remained satisfying at keeping the temps down.

Forza Horizon 5 MSI

MSI has done a fantastic job when it comes to managing the proper thermal and power ratio. The high wattage CPU + GPU combined can reach a total of 220 Watts and that certainly shows. Throughout my time gaming on this machine, the Raider did not lag or stutter in any major way. This was helped even further along with its excellent thermal management.

No matter if you’re a hardcore gamer looking for a high-end laptop or a casual one who plays only a few games, the Raider will not disappoint you in the realm of gaming.

Benchmarks

While real-life usage depicts performance better, benchmarks are also good for establishing a good numeral set. For the same reason, I ran a set of benchmarks including your popular ones to test it out. These are the results.

Cinebench R23

MSI Raider GE67 HX Review: Buy for Gaming, Stay for OLED

Long hailed as a popular CPU benchmark, R23 is a good metric to test out your CPUs’ single and multi-core performance. Running the benchmark, the laptop dished out impressive results. I received a huge multi-core score of 19330 with an equally impressive single core of 1856. Infer from that what you may, but to simplify, these are some extremely impressive results indicating what I already knew; a powerful Intel inside.

PCMark 10

PCMark 10 is a benchmark meant to test out your machine’s productivity performance. This 25-minute test was smooth enough and dished out a high score of 8160. A score above 5000 is considered to be very good as an 8K+ score is extremely impressive. This also confirms the smooth as butter daily and intensive performance I experienced above.

3DMark Time Spy

3DMark tests out your machine’s GPU by making it run through a sequence of rendering cycles of animation. With the thermals kicked up to maximum, I ran this test and received a huge score of 12975. I don’t know about you but this is one of the highest scores I’ve seen while using a machine so I was very impressed. As before, this also confirms the same smooth gaming experience I had with the machine.

Crystal Disk Mark

For those who do not like waiting at all, MSI has equipped the GE67 HX Raider with a Gen 4 SSD for super-fast transfer speeds. I decided to confirm the same by running a disk benchmark and was not disappointed. With read and write speeds of 6672 and 4930 MB/s, it is obvious that this drive is Gen 4 and can easily handle intensive copying across the board. For those of you only focused on gaming, this also means little to no loading times which was also the case in my experience.

While I do believe in real-life usage above numbers, there is no doubt the MSI Raider GE67 HX delivers some impressive results.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The MSI GE67 HX comes with a cool yet functional keyboard that is meant for gamers and casual users alike. During my testing of the laptop, this per-key RGB keyboard provided an excellent typing experience. The keyboard provided a perfect combination of tactile feedback and comfort. Since the keycaps have been shaped so evenly, the fingers fall naturally on the fingers and I had little to no errors.

This experience was also reflected while I was gaming away on the machine. I also had my fair share of fun customizing the RGB keyboard along with the lightbar using the SteelSeries GG software which I’ll detail below.

The trackpad itself doesn’t give the level of experience I expected. This small-sized trackpad is a bit uncomfortable to use. The internal left and right buttons don’t feel as smooth to click on day to day. The trackpad however has a smooth surface so there’s that.

Despite the average trackpad, the overall experience of using the MSI GE 67 HX’s keyboard was quite nice.

Software and MSI Center

Like every laptop, the Raider GE 67 comes with its fair share of pre-installed software. This includes a collection of MSI-related ones like MSI Center, Afterburner, and TrueColor and then you have your Norton Antivirus. I’ll begin with the best one.

MSI Center

Meant to be an all-in-one suite for the MSI Raider GE67 HX, the MSI Center is software that lets you manage it all from one place. Users can basically oversee and control everything including real-time monitoring, turning on the MUX Switch, various User Scenarios, OLED care, and more.

However, the first and foremost thing is the real-time hardware monitoring which is an informative screen showcasing everything. This is the place where you can see the live CPU and GPU usage keep an eye on its load and see if any app is drawing power.

To see even more in-depth information, the column to the right holds information including your specs, RAM capacity, Speeds for Fan 1 and 2 in RPM, LAN and Wi-Fi speed, Power Plan, GPU and CPU Temp, and more aspects. Since this screen opens up when you open MSI Center, you can simply press the handy F7 shortcut for it.

Another handy addition is the included user scenarios meant to manage the laptop’s performance. Depending on your use case and app usage, you can select a particular profile and have the machine react. So if you’re currently just browsing a tab or two, you can keep the laptop quiet. However, for the times you need nothing but the best, turn on Extreme Performance.

This puts the system into overdrive and lets you use all of its power for the best performance. If you feel like quickly tinkering with your GPUs Core Clock and VRAM offset, you can do that too. However, for the ones who don’t want Discrete Graphics on all the time, the MSI center holds the MUX switch option. Simply go into general settings and choose from the drop-down menu to switch.

MSI Center is chock full of different feature sets. From pinpoint monitoring, system diagnosis, Wi-Fi Analysis, and OLED Care to much more, you can explore around and check it all out.

Afterburner

If you’re in the habit of messing around with your GPU to push it over the limit, the GE67 HX does come with MSI Afterburner. Long been famous for its extensive overclocking abilities, Afterburner contains a variety of settings gamers have come to love. Like MSI Center, you can see your GPUs’ real-time stats including its memory clock, voltage, and exact temperature.

You can also overclock its core clock and memory clock through the handy sliders provided. Just make sure to be careful and not blow it. For those into video capture, you can use Afterburners’ built-in recording capabilities to quickly record your gameplay. Or if you’re bored simply change the software’s appearance through the dozens of skins provided inside.

SteelSeries GG

Since the MSI Raider GE67 HX comes with a specialized SteelSeries keyboard, MSI has also provided the SteelSeries GG app. While built for many purposes, the primary one on the laptop is to control the beautiful RGB keyboard and the Aurora lightbar placed on the front of the laptop.

Going into the Engine tab, you find the RGB controls for both there. The MSI Aurora lightbar is a massive 35-zone bar. You can control all of its individual light zones to create your own palette. Or if you fancy presets the GE67 HX comes with a lot of them. Some of these include Aurora, Casino, Chakra, Disco, and more. No matter which way you go, you will have lots of fun customizing the lightbar according to your taste. I decided to have a mixture of odd colors on various zones and created a breathing RGB pattern for myself.

rgb keyboard msi ge 67 hx

The per-key RGB keyboard works the same way with its light patterns. You can choose from the numerous pre-sets available which look super cool. Or if you’re an FPS gamer who likes their WSAD highlighted, simply choose those individual keys and assign an effect or color to them.

I had lots of fun making weird patterns on the keyboard and lightbar. Once you get your GE67 HX do let me know about your experience.

As you can tell, MSI does pre-load the GE67 HX with some software. While I loved all the software above, the pesky Norton Anti-Virus is something I could have lived without. I don’t know about you but I feel Windows Defender is enough in 2022. Nevertheless, even with all this loaded, my Windows 11 experience was smooth.

Ports and Connectivity

The MSI Raider GE67 HX is basically an entire PC replacement.

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[dramirezarts102-03]

Blog#1

The reading for this week was a collection of transcripts that recount the thoughts and expressions of numerous graphic designers. Each of the artists listed comes from a different background and path to the career field, though they all share a single similarity: they all agree that inspiration was the key to art. The artist Stefan Sagmeister had a specific influence on how I view creativity, especially through the visual examples in his interview section. He believed in taking breaks from the labors of work in pursuit of personal motivators, stating "I had the insight that I could come up with different kinds of projects when given a different time frame to spend on them." The free spirited nature of his pursuit of art aligns itself with how I aspire to come by my own art style. I'm not much of a sculptor or painter but I've loved the idea of 3D modeling and fantasy design. With my passion, I find it really easy to drag real objects into my artwork and put my own twist on it, so long as I have the motivation to act. His type of mental therapy works well with people like me because it gives an artist time to think over their piece's thesis and get a clearer idea on where to start.

My first picture is titled "In The End". The idea came to me when I was driving home from class a couple days back. The snippet comes from a song that isn't often played on radio stations so it stood out to me. I recalled all the times I had heard the song from my childhood and what the lyrics meant to me. following that verse in the song, the line "it doesn't even matter". As an artist, I decided to spin the idea into something happier. The new continuation is "In the end you were always beside me". In practice, my art was extremely rushed. you can see with the silhouette asset I used that it has a sharper contrast than most of the picture. The text also doesn't blend well into the photo so it loses the intended effect. I wanted for it to be something like an old timey photo where someone had signed over the top.

My next photo is titled "So What Next?" The idea also came to me through an audio snippet but this time it was something my sister was watching on TV. She just recently fell in love with a crime show about witness protection officers and how they solve mysteries with help from their witnesses. The show is called "In Plain Sight". During one of the episodes, the team gets stuck in the case. A character exclaims "So What Next?" in a defeated tone. I really liked this snippet because of the hopelessness in his voice. The pitch and frequency made his words much more believable. The art I chose hopefully captures that feeling of loneliness with the way a single candle flame draws the viewer's attention towards the center of the screen. The edges are faded to black so that only the table's surface is illuminated. I chose to put my text in the darkness above so that the words themselves also carried that feeling of loneliness, being spaced further apart and almost a dim shade of white. The word "Next" is purposefully brighter. I intended for the viewer to hang their eyes on that word as to help them feel what the characters in this show felt, hanging onto that last piece of information and hoping for some clues.